Comment on AR will be startup dominated, VR will not by Brett Martin

In reply to <a href="reactionwheel.net/2016/07/ar-will-be-startup-dominated-vr-will-not.html Neumann</a>.

Thx for the response.

I've learned the danger of building on other people's platforms (my first company was @sonar, a glorified mashup in retrospect) but saying that "you can't make money on apps" is a bit like saying "you can't make $$ picking stocks (or startups)." Yes, I agree that I am going to "build a app" isn't a business plan (unless you replace "app" with "website" and teleport to 1999) but Uber, Spotify, and Whatsapp are logistics, music, and communications companies, not "apps".

Platform shifts create a new markets and windows for insurgent companies to provide new new types of value in existing markets. The relevant point for our conversation is that when building on a platform (whether that's iOS or Facebook), it's important to know what the platform thinks its core value is. Building on a platform then trying to compete with it's core value proposition is ALWAYS a bad idea (see every recruiting startup that tried to leverage Linkedin data). But I don't see the strategic disadvantage of doing something unrelated (Uber didn't threaten Apple so the advantages of building an iOS app far outweighed the benefits of building on a more neutral platform like the mobile web). Maybe that will change when apple rolls out it's car...but I digress.

All of this is a long winded way of getting at that I envision/hope for a greater diversity of VR applications than games (and bc of this, I think the VR platforms will be incentivized to create healthy, diverse developer ecosystems). I believe that immersion has advantages for tasks that require focus (creativity, productivity, education) and I think the richness of the experience will also lend itself to social (for the same reasons that stickers/emoji significantly enhanced messaging a16z.com/2016/06/17/stickers + My thoughts on social VR: medium.com/@brett1211/spending-time-with-dad-in-virtual-reality-628236458f48).

Re: AR, one thing that your blog post and benedict evans' ongoing commentary has made me realize is that AR means computer vision, image recognition/manipulation more than "hardware" and that Snapchat is actually the undisputed "AR" leader of the moment.

Ciao!