Beau Cronin

Product Manager, WeaveGrid · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderscientistengineeroperatoranalyst@beaucronin ↗teetotality.blog ↗

After earning a PhD in computational neuroscience from MIT, he co-founded the predictive database startup Prior Knowledge, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2012. He became widely known for his essays analyzing the future of virtual reality and applied neuroscience before joining WeaveGrid.

9statements → 5claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 4.33/5average certainty → 1.89/5average debate potential →

3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 3 assertions · 2 opinions · 2 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Beau argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Cronin: No standalone mobile VR headset offers positional tracking without external camera
“And positional tracking is not available in any purely mobile system that doesn't have an external camera”
Beau Cronin Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 5:40 a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
100% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

274 words/min while actually speaking · 19.9 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Beau Cronin: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 5,289 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Beau Cronin said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cronin: VR and AR Will Eliminate the Need for Physical Stores
“The idea behind behind VR and also AR, which we'll get to in a second, is that it really eliminates that, that final reason that you actually would ever have to go to a store.”
Beau Cronin Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 36:14 a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality
Opinion
Cronin: History and science education should be taught in VR
“For VR and education, I think that it's fairly obvious that both history and science education should just be in VR. Like, why on earth would I want to, you know, read about a, you know, these important historical events rather than be present within them?”
Beau Cronin Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 25:47 a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cronin: Holding Business Stand-Up Meetings in VR Is Definitely the Future
“I was really excited to see that Altspace, and of course their early adopters, they do their stand-up meetings in VR right now, and I think that's awesome. I mean, it's obviously weird and awkward to a certain degree right now, but that is, that, that's defini…”
Beau Cronin Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 32:06 a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality
Insight
Cronin: VR eliminates scarcity of premium live experiences by digitizing them
“Being courtside at a basketball game is one kind of prosaic example of that. I mean, you're basically removing the scarcity of courtside seats. You are transitioning that scarcity from the world of atoms and, you know, it's now, you know, zero marginal cost, w…”
Beau Cronin Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 46:45 a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality
Opinion
Cronin: Social features are a core requirement for VR platforms
“I'm one believer, and I know that there are others who think that, you know, social is not just something that's a nice to have in VR, but for many application domains, a core and fundamental capability that is going to be built into everything.”
Beau Cronin Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 16:54 a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality
Assertion Supported
Cronin: No standalone mobile VR headset offers positional tracking without external camera
“And positional tracking is not available in any purely mobile system that doesn't have an external camera”
Beau Cronin Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 5:40 a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality
Insight
Cronin: Brains fill in incomplete haptic feedback if visual cues align
“If you get a certain amount of, for example, visual cues right, then even very incomplete or crude Haptic cues will feel very complete because your brain is expecting them, and it's going to basically fill in all those details that, you know, may not actually …”
Beau Cronin Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 20:33 a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality
Assertion Supported
Cronin: High Fidelity is using cell biology as an initial VR application
“High Fidelity, one of the, Philip Rosedale's company, is, Is using cell biology in particular as I think their sort of initial application for exactly this reason.”
Beau Cronin Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 29:03 a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality
Assertion Supported
Cronin: Samsung Gear VR is priced at $100 plus smartphone cost
“Now Sam, with the Gear VR, you have something that's available for anyone to buy for a hundred dollars on top of the price of A Samsung phone.”
Beau Cronin Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:01 a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality Jan 2, 2019 22m
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