The Ledger
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Dixon: Oculus would never have been funded without initial crowdfunding
“We were investors in, in Oculus, and I don't think Oculus would have ever gotten initially funded had it not been for the crowdfunding.”
Evans: If Daydream succeeds, Oculus risks becoming a subscale Android fork
“And so if there's a hundred Daydream devices, then the Facebook product, you could argue, ends up looking a bit like Kindle Fire. It's sort of subscale, squeezed out fork, and no one bothers developing for it.”
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…”
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…”
Horowitz: Nearly all a16z hardware investments required follow-on rescue funding
“I don't think that we've done anything in hardware where that hasn't been the case. I mean, the one was Oculus, but Oculus got, you know, they sold relatively early to meta.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
Russell: PSVR sales will surpass Oculus before 2016 holidays end
“At the very least, they will probably surpass Oculus plus Rift combined before the holidays are even out.”
Andreessen: Anyone who tries Oculus believes VR is the future
“I'd like to say the world's now divided into two groups of people. People who haven't tried the shipping consumer version of Oculus who think VR is stupid. And then people who have tried it who think it's the future of everything.”
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…”
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 …”
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'…”
Boyle: Anduril wouldn't exist without Oculus and Palmer Luckey's gaming obsession
“Because Andrel would not have happened if not for Oculus. Oculus would not have happened if not for Palmer's obsession with gaming, right?”
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 …”
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…”
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.”
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…”
VR telepresence will eventually render physical co-location unnecessary
“Before Oculus kicks in with proper telepresence, like it will take some time, but we'll get there.”
Dixon: A16z tried to recruit Michael Abrash weeks before Facebook bought Oculus
“We'd like, for example, Michael Abersh, we try, I actually flew up to Seattle a couple of weeks before the Facebook acquisition, cause we were trying to recruit him for so long.”
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 …”
Shankar: Microsoft WMR headsets launched at $350 compared to Oculus's $800
“But it's also higher resolution. It's at an affordable price point, so they're launching at 350 dollars. Rather than how Oculus launched a year and a half ago at 800. So it's lower price point, easier to use.”