By Alla Malova / Migrante21

“I remember being at the airport, and I saw this really long car -it was apparently a limo- and I kept thinking: How come the car doesn’t break in the middle?” Michael Antonov was 14, and that was the first time he set foot in America with his family, coming from his native St. Petersburg, Russia. That once wide-eyed kid is now the co-founder and Chief Software Architect of Oculus VR. It is an American Dream story in the 21st Century.

“I was lucky enough to come [to the United States] with my parents. I went right into high school when I moved. My step dad is Jewish, and he applied for an immigrant visa to join his family here, which was a long process from Russia – or the Soviet Union at the time – but once you move, it makes it easier to actually start living here. In fact, one of the really good things he did was to apply for a lot of jobs – he sent hundreds of letters to apply for research work in different universities, because he’s a biologist. By the time he actually moved to the United States, he already had two offers, which was good for getting us started. That part really paid off to be more comfortable when we moved.”

“As a teenager, the exciting thing was a lot of cars. It’s not that I didn’t see cars before, it was the highways, how you can just go on a big road for a long distance. But then once we moved to a more suburban area in Baltimore, a lot of people would need cars to get to school or to the store – so that was different, since I was from a city where you would walk places, or take the metro or the bus. That creates a different social dynamic – especially for children growing up in this country, who are a bit more dependent on parents or having cars as teenagers. For me, as a teenager, the transition meant that I stayed inside learning computers and doing my own thing versus going out and meeting other people. That had its good and bad sides.”

– How did you come to be one of the co-founders of Oculus? How has your life changed since Oculus?



-It really started with our first company, Scaleform. I met Brendan [Iribe] fifteen years ago in college. We knew each other from the dorms and shared a passion for video games technology. We had this vision for making a company. What we actually made was a user interface company for games. So people would buy our technology and use it to create user interfaces. Many games, like Mass Effect and Crysis and so on, are made with our user interfaces. That really got us into the game industry. Having that experience from the game industry, knowing how to work with engines, and having that incredible opportunity – I was very excited, and that’s what got me in.

And the most exciting thing about [starting Oculus] is that there is a community, and the world got so excited about it. It wasn’t just about me, Brendan and Palmer, it was about all the people online who supported us through Kickstarter, and all the people who came to lots of meetups around the world, including here in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. People would come together, show demos, hang out, and we did not organize many of those meetings – people just did it because they thought it would be fun. The whole industry became organic, people were so passionate, it was a totally different world. The experience of something like that happening with me and around me has been humbling, because this company was so much more than just a company – it was a vision of community, of people. It takes so much to make that device. The people we brought were brilliant. We’ve been so lucky to hire top experts in the industry and in the world. Working with them has been incredible. It really creates a contrast with my prior company, as you realize how much you have to learn.

– How do you think virtual reality (VR) is going to change the way we interact with technology? Why is it important beyond video games?

-The exciting thing about VR is that it’s a new medium, which, in a virtual world, could be anything. You could be on top of Mount Everest, or you could be in Tuscany. That kind of visualization and immersion is obviously super fun for games. That’s one of the main things that got us into it. I’m originally from the game industry, too.

And going forward, the social aspect of it actually can be incredible. One of our most recent demos, which we showed at this year’s E3 [Electronic Entertainment Expo], was Toybox. It actually combines your hand with a motion controller, so you can see your hands in the game and you can interact with another person – another human being that can talk to you, waive at you, make a hand gesture. You feel like you’re right there, right next to him, but in reality that person can be anywhere in the world.

– There have been reports that Oculus VR has started producing VR movies. What is that all about?

-Our VR movies right now are very short animated films made with game engines. So there is Henry, and Lost, and there are a few short films in production. They are made with game technology – Unreal Engine – in real time, that’s why you can put them in a headset and move within it. There is also a lot of interest in the Hollywood industry in being within the action and looking around. There is a lot of research going into that, and the studios are excited about that.

– How many people does Oculus VR currently employ? How many of them are immigrants?

-We have hundreds of people. We have an office in Seattle with Industrial Design Group, originally called Carbon Design, and they really contributed a lot. We have people in Dallas, Texas, and of course the biggest part is in Menlo Park, Facebook campus.

There are a lot of immigrants at Oculus. I think there are a lot of immigrants in general in technology, and we brought some people from our original company, who are immigrants. Sometimes we do company acquisitions – recently one from Israel, who are really talented research scientists in computer vision, and they will be moving here. So it’s a pretty big percentage of immigrants in technology.

– Any advice for immigrant entrepreneurs to succeed in the United States?

–The big advice for entrepreneurs in general is to build relationships. When you go out and you meet people who are interesting and who have ideas, who are doing something exciting – stay in touch with them. Find people who are interested in doing similar things that you are. Staying in contact is an incredibly huge thing, especially here in Silicon Valley.

I think the other big part is to try and figure out what the market wants. That’s such an obvious simple thing that they probably teach it in business school 101. But with our first company, it took us several years to start building something that people actually wanted. Our first product was a child of our own minds, which was interesting and useful for some people; but it wasn’t until we talked to game developers and learned exactly what they wanted that our company started becoming successful. So you need to really figure out who you are helping and focus on those people. Sometimes it may not be so obvious!

– What are your plans for the future?

–There are a lot of exciting things going on in Silicon Valley, so I would like to learn about them, meet the people, sometimes invest, something just talk to them. There are people doing robotics, drones, all kinds of communications software apps, you name it. It’s just a great environment.

There are a lot of exciting things at Oculus. Virtual reality is in its infancy, and there’s going to be an insane amount of research and work involved, so I plan to be a part of that. I also have some of my own research projects that are more technical, so we will see.

This interview is part of our Immigrant Success Stories series.