Oculus
includes Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, Oculus Touch, Oculus Toybox, Oculus Connect, Oculus Santa Cruz, Oculus Story Studio, Oculus Share, Oculus Store, Oculus Medium, Oculus Social
24 statements across 19 episodes · 16 bullish · 3 bearish · 13 people on the record · first statement Jan 2, 2019 by Balaji Srinivasan · said 141 times in 36 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
Mentions by year, the whole family
brought up most by Chris Dixon (42), Kyle Russell (36), Peter Rubin (10), Darshan Shankar (7), Benedict Evans (7), Balaji Srinivasan (7), Beau Cronin (3), Andrew Chen (3)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 7 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 124 mentions in 26 episodes 5 per episode
- a16z Podcast | Truce for Mobile, Battle for VR
- a16z Podcast | When Is VR's iPhone Moment?
- a16z Podcast | Mapping the Future of Virtual Reality
- a16z Podcast | Virtual Reality v Augmented Reality, and What's Next
- a16z Podcast | Writing a New Language of Storytelling with Virtual Reality
- a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality
- a16z Podcast | VR, AR, and Beyond: The New Medium of Human Experience
- a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
- 18 more episodes that year, every mention in 2019 →
2017 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
Everything said about Oculus, oldest first
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Balaji Srinivasan: VR headsets will drive a resurgence in stationary computing
“I think a counterintuitive, but true, if you reflect on it, projection is that a significant fraction of the future is also going to be Sessile. And what I mean by that is it's going to be people who are wearing Oculus, and they're not mobile at all, and they'…”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Srinivasan: Users will control humanoid robots via VR for telepresence tourism
“So one application I'm pretty interested in is telepresence. So, you know, if you imagine in maybe three, five years, they've already got sort of demo units like this, you know, set up, but you've got Oculus on your head, and you've got something like the thal…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Dixon: Ambitious startup missions create talent monopolies by uniting expert talent
“You sort of go out, you plant a flag, you say, I'm building virtual reality, and then all of these people, interesting people who have been thinking about the problem for years, never had a home, all kind of came together, right? And you sort of ended up with …”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Dixon: A16z viewed Microsoft as Oculus's top competitor during investment diligence
“Cause when we invested in Oculus, whatever it was a year and a half ago, we did, you know, we were sort of analyzing the competitors and had heard a bunch of rumors about that, but had heard it was a gaming and heard it was very good by the way. Like the best …”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Sinofsky: Android OEMs will launch dozens of VR headsets by 2017
“Fast forward this, 1218 months, and you could see the reviews and the columns, and it's going to be the Samsung VR kit, the Xiaomi VR kit, and just like 12 different ones that are like the same but different, and people are going to evaluate those, and then th…”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Chris Dixon: Oculus is at the Apple II stage of VR
“We think it's like, this is the Apple II, like the Oculus is the Apple II. And, you know, if you go back and look at it wasn't until 81 when the PC came out that it really kind of exploded. So we're a couple of years away, but it's very, very clear what you ne…”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Horowitz: Software component is the core of a16z's Oculus investment
“Oculus, I think we would all agree that the software component of Oculus is both more complex, has many more people working on it, and is kind of the core of the investment. Sometimes if you have a breakthrough technology, then you require new hardware to actu…”
Jan 2, 2019 bearish
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Stromberg: VR distribution will shift from download stores to subscription models
“Initially where you know when you have sites like Steam and you know, Oculus site and all these will be the first places that you're able to sort of download, but I can see very clearly a time when you will have this sort of Netflix like library to choose from…”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Sinofsky: Facebook operates WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus as independent entities
“You know, between WhatsApp and Instagram, Oculus, and so on, that are run as very distinct entities, and they don't overlay some grand strategy about what's going to go where, and who's going to do what, when, and tie all the pieces together.”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Shankar: Post-Oculus acquisition VR forecasts were wildly hyper-inflated
“Back when Facebook bought Oculus, that's when expectations of VR started to get wildly away from reality. Oh, by 2016, there's gonna be 20, fifty million headsets out there. There might be a hundred million headsets by 2017. Some analysts definitely blew a lot…”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Shankar: Full 6DOF standalone VR headsets will launch within 18 months
“There are going to be dev kits of that next year, and that shows that if you move the price point up, and if you move the timeline of another six to 12 months or 18 months, you do get a fully standalone headset that does have the full capabilities of six degre…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 12, 2023 bearish
Jason Feifer: AR, VR, and metaverse lack a killer use case for mass adoption
“I don't think that the killer use case for AR VR or the metaverse has been introduced yet, and so what people are hearing is a lot of hype, and then if they get the oculus, I got an oculus, you know where it is? It's in my closet. And the reason is because I d…”
May 16, 2024
Sep 10, 2025
Dixon: Investments in Oculus, Coinbase, and Soylent came from hobbyist forums
“3D printing, like this led to my investment in Oculus and Coinbase really were both from that you know, from that thesis sort of VR, seeing the developers and the kind of, you know, Kickstarter community enthusiasm around, you know, when Palmer, Palmer Luckey …”