I built a open source wireless IMU (http://adjacentreality.org/), integrated it into some projects, and posted about it on a hobbyist virtual reality forum in 2012. I sent one of two working units to another hobbyist there to use on the headset he was prototyping called the "Oculus Rift". A few months later, Palmer was looking for an engineer to build a VR tracking system, and the rest is history!