Essential's startup advantage might come back to haunt it

"Most companies would get a stage, and we'd have lights and music and everything else," joked Andy Rubin as he addressed a group of reporters. He was casually dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt with a coffee mug in one hand as he stood in a lobby-like room. The setup was located just a few feet from an adult-size slide and overlooked a farm of cubicles on one side and a cafeteria on the other. But a product launch it was. We were gathered at Playground Global -- a startup incubator that Rubin founded after he left Google -- for the unveiling of what is perhaps his most important creation since Android.