My name is Don Stein, and I’m the Founder of Roomkey.co. As a first-time entrepreneur trying to figur e out the right way to operate, it’s really instrumental to have VC’s who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. I’ve been so fortunate to work with many great backers like Larry Braitman, Spark Capital, General Catalyst, betaworks and more. They are the type of investor who offer advice, guidance, mental support, and many introductions. It’s so valuable. But one special investor has really leaned in to help me over the past six months, and I’d like to thank them. They are the investor who was willing to work on a project with me from start to end, fitting into deadlines as needed. Always doing what’s best for the company. That’s the type of investor we have with Biz Stone of Future Positive.

Future Positive is a new fund started by Biz Stone and Fred Blackford (who recently joined the Board of NotCo, a leading food-tech company in Latin America). I believe they are one of the strongest global teams for investment in the world, with close ties to London and Silicon Valley. Fred is well connected within the realm of capital. And Biz, he’s an All Star within entrepreneurship. Having co-founded Twitter (NYSE), Medium (yes, this Medium), and Jelly. If you’re in the mood for a good burger, he’s also on the Board of Beyond Meat (NASDAQ: BYND). Biz has great access and support in the UK as he’s currently involved with Oxford.

‘’I’ve always been an investor, Fred just figured out how to turn it into a real job’’

In partnership with Future Positive, Roomkey co-hosted The Social Entrepreneurship Festival 2021. Biz and I spoke for 2 hours on the virtual stage over the course of Thursday and Friday, in a public setting within the Roomkey.co app. The feeling of inspiration was just as strong in-person as with his avatar.

At the age of 9, Biz had to work on a lawn mowing company in order to help bring in money for his family to pay for food and other necessities. He ran this company through high school. He maintained an optimistic spirit to build his own startups. He initially started Xanga prior to Twitter, and despite it growing to 1M users, he felt his time was better spent working on projects with Ev Williams. So he discontinued with Xanga and buddied up with Ev. At that time, Ev was a popular blogger, so his friendship with Biz was a natural fit.

1: Serendipity can change your life, keep meeting people online!

The serendipity of the internet brought these two together, Ev and Biz, the co-founders fo Twitter. Although they were working on a product, it was not until this extremely unique moment when they incorporated.

2: Act fast when you see an opportunity

Don’t let opportunity pass you by. There are many stories of elderly people on their death bed regretting ‘not taking action’ to capture something they feel is an opportunity. Biz is not in this category. Prior to even starting Twitter as a business, they built it as a product with a SMS messaging system. During their trip to SXSW, they witnessed the power of this platform. After this story happened to the twitter co-founders, they knew they had an opportunity, and incorporated Twitter Inc. the next day. We are glad Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams went to SXSW!

3: Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much

You’ve heard the saying. It’s the common theme of Biz’s career, book, and life philosophy: the power of groups of people. Biz finds great people, and sticks with them for a long time, and his platforms allow others to do this as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZEX-T1bxbY

All of his companies; Twitter, Medium, Jelly, and even his first one, Xanga, are about helping people share ideas into a pool of collective intelligence. A virtual space where people come together to engage with each others ideas, and build bonds. In some ways, ‘’the internet already is a mini-metaverse.’’

The reason why Biz is so inspiring to myself, and to others, is because we all have that one passion we care about. The thing that we would do regardless of money, yet most of us have financial or psychological reasons why we are not pursuing our passion.

4: Follow your passions, even with no money

Even while growing up on welfare, Biz found a way to do what he loves. Part time, full time, half time, or just a little time, any time you can find to work on your passions is time well spent. (Mine are music and startups). Below, he discusses how as a 9-year old to help get his family off of welfare he would work lawn mowing jobs, and continued to work various gigs his whole life.

He wanted to be an artist, but became an entrepreneur out of necessity

Biz’s unique combination of nurture and nature made him a global citizen who thinks deeply about the world, and gives back with philanthropy. Every time we have an adviser-advisee call we laugh a ton, and it’s because of his comedic wit plus genuine nature.

5: “Attitude determines your latitude” -Kanye West

Biz has a theory that “money doesn’t change you, it amplifies who you already are.” As he frames it, an evil billionaire will let go of all of the caged tigers in San Francisco. But a good person will give back and help others who have a social cause. Given the entire thesis of Future Positive is to help those who want to achieve success in the right way, it’s great to know who will be funding the next evolution of businesses. Always humble, it’s hilarious to hear the founder of Twitter say, ‘’I’m not great with technology.’’ LOL.

Truly a fun conversation, our attendees and guests joined via our Roomkey.co app for any device, anywhere (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac). It seems everyone really enjoyed, and was honoured to have a chance to meet Biz!

— Don Stein

don@roomkey.co

—

For those of you who are looking to grow your global network, there is no better platform than Roomkey! Avoid video, and yet feel a personal connection to others! But don’t just take our word for it…

We are SO thankful for those of you who joined us as one of 40 people in the room as an avatar. We started this company in 2018, and after going through many ups and downs, it’s so amazing to see such positive reviews of our NPS. Thank you.

Don Stein Founder/CEO of Roomkey

Please do not hesitate to email me if you feel your community could benefit from some really memorable avatar based talkshows and social mixers. It’s fun and free :)

If you run an online community. Let’s get you set up on Roomkey

Email me, about anything!

Originally published at https://roomkeyapp.medium.com on June 7, 2021.

“how many years do I expect it to take until this VR startup is used by my friends & family back in the midwest?”

This question has repeated over and over in my head. My friends and even my Mom have began to read VR newsletters on a consistent basis. In fact, one of my friends from the midwest just ordered a cardboard/homido style headset the other day. He is one of the first of any of my friends to express true interest in having VR within his home. But even so, my friend and my Mom both now need to begin to understand the difference between true VR and 360 video, room scale vs mobile, teathered vs untethered; they need to find useful content, they need to understand interactive vs cardboard, and so on. There is a lot of education that has to happen for a consumer to even take the leap of faith that a more high quality headset is worth purchasing. Not to mention the array of technical (and installation!) problems that go hand-in-hand with all early generation software and hardware.

VR is a discontinuous tech in a lot of ways to our current computing habits, and adoption will have massive friction when switching over from traditional computer screens. The headsets will take awhile to get into user homes, honestly it could take ~6 years (depending education and demand), but then again it could also happen in the next ~2. Nobody knows. And this is why there is so much opportunity within the investment space for VR.. and also why it is so dangerous.

I assume we will not go directly from excitement to adoption. Most likely before adoption we will see a pullback in funding. So if you are a startup, make sure you have enough cash or a good enough revenue run rate to be able to ‘bundle up’ for the winter when the going gets tough.

A smart way to ‘bundle up’ is to essentially become a paid VR department for larger corporations. For example,

Obviously much easier said than done, but if VR does take ~6 years to adopt (which may or may not happen) then the added leeway will be well worth your efforts. This also means that investors need to be able to make legitimate corporate connections for portfolio companies to help them stay alive during the pre-adoption phase. Or investors need to be able to help portfolio companies raise enough capital to extend their runway for pre-adoption. I firmly also believe as a result of this corporate demand for VR knowledge we will see an above average frequency of acquisitions but at a lower than average price. This seems to make sense with this overall thesis because the demand from corporations will mean many acquihires. This is a shortcut method for corporations to find talented VR teams, VR IP/hardware/software/process/general know-how.

Besides these smaller but more frequent private acquisitions, there will probably also be a select amount of legendary VR companies created during this time period who eventually IPO, these companies will be the ones who solve the problems that we all know need to be solved over the next 20+ years in this new virtual future.

__ WHAT WILL EXIST IN 10 YEARS in VR? __

• Un-teathered HMD’s.
• Web VR
• Telepresence // Social VR.
• Mobile structured light capture.
• New content creation tools within the HMD.
• Development tools within the HMD
• Companies to teleport you anywhere on earth.
• True positional sound.
• 8k displays.
• HMD analytics
• Faster more efficient processing.
• AAA studios and interactive content
• Maybe even a VR browser integrated w/ Blockchain
• And many others, feel free to add some by inboxing me.
• Also feel free to email Don@VirtualRealityInvestment.com if you would like to explore synergies to see if I could maybe help you with your funding

Companies that solve these problems and other similar will most likely set the VR standard, and become the next Oracle, SalesForce, Apple, Microsoft, Tandem Computer, Atari, Intel, HP, Fairchild Semiconductors.

Word: Once the problem of reading text in VR is solved (described in below link), Word is out the window. https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/40naym/text_in_vr/

Excel: I mean.. Data Visualization will be immersive as data begins to surround you visually in different manifestations. Data interaction and manipulation will also need to be re-invented thanks to hand inputs like Oculus Touch or Samsung Rink. I don’t think voice inputs will solve the ‘numerical entry problem’ so it will be interesting to see how numbers can be input into VR spreadsheets.

Powerpoint: No more sending pitch decks. I foresee entrepreneurs having to create digital environments in supplement of a Powerpoint pitch deck, a digital environment for investors to explore in a linear or non linear fashion in order to learn more about that particular startup. Websites and pitch decks will be replaced.

Business presentations in VR also no longer need to be explained verbally. Presenters will have tools to manifest their pitch as an entire environment for the audience or board room to experience. If a presenter were planning to create a powerpoint about “why we should partner with XYZ” then in the future that presenter will instead create an environment and scene which renders a future as if the company truly did enter a partnership with XYZ. This way the board room can experience the world and start to truly understand what their world/company would be like if they entered into this XYZ partnership.

Overall, I think VR will replace my desktop monitor. And in 6~10 years I will be able to carry around a portable headset with all of the computing power needed right in the HMD. If you know startups solving any of these problems I would be interested to learn more, Don@virtualrealityinvestment.com

~Don

~I love when people disagree bc it helps to speed up my understanding ~ email me at Don@virtualrealityinvestment.com with feedback please.

I can imagine a world where Lytro cameras are located at all corners of a sports stadium. Broadcasting live to viewers at home a perfect representation of the game and players. The advantage of light field: Viewers from home could not only look around in 360 from different vantage points — but because the game was captured using lightfield the players have actual 3D dimensions and shape to them. This allows the viewer at home to put on a VR headset and move freely around the 3D stadium just as she/he would in real life.

At VRLA this year I demo’d a somewhat similar company that uses “tags or other optical technology” to track live players. I was located in Los Angeles in the real world, but using a VR headset was able to walk around a soccer game happening in Europe just as if I was there.But better, why? Because you can not just walk around and take field-side seats, you can walk directly on the field and sit inside of the net as your favorite players try to sneak one past the goal keeper. (I did this).

video: http://www.virtuallylive.com/

Overall there is a huge opportunity for an investor to take a long bet on a company that is able to bring this experience of replicating the stadium and players in live action on a 1:1 rendering.

Virtual Reality technology is working today and is at a high enough quality for mass adoption. However, the industry faces a chicken and egg problem: Currently there are not yet enough pieces of quality content to justify the average consumer purchasing a headset, but there is also not enough potential headsets sold yet for content creators to justify large production budgets. There are huge money making opportunities for companies if they can figure out a way to overcome this first chicken and egg problem.

2. Costs

The second chicken and egg problem we face is that hardware manufacturers need to hit certain economies of scale in order for the hardware to be considered affordable by average consumers. But ironically consumers need to purchase the hardware first before the manufacturers will be able to justify producing hardware at these economies of scale. So we are stuck relying heavily on the early adopters to take the grunt of the initial costs for VR consumers.

Overall, The major problem in VR is no longer tech development. I believe in 2016 the largest challenge facing Virtual Reality is figuring out how create more VR focused investors, more pioneering VR content, and more frictionless VR distribution channels.

Imagine a world where this 5-year-old child will grow up.

When she is in grade school she will take virtual field trips to an African safari allowing her to learn through immersion.

When she is in middle school she will shrink down to the size of a red blood cell. Exploring about her blood stream from a microscopic perspective.

When she is in highschool she will take digital driving courses for a State recommended amount of hours before she is deemed safe enough to operate a road vehicle.

When she is in college she will have the ability to learn from a world renown professor and there will always be a digital seat that is open in the front of the class.

When she gets her first job her employer will be able to digitally simulate an entire day at the office, and can then run this data through behavior software to identify if she would be a good value-add to the company.

And so on…

As we read about this child’s growth from ‘5 year old’ to ‘employed adult’ it leaves us to wonder if she has gained super powers? Not quite. The common enabler in all of these scenarios is Virtual Realty. VR technology will slowly alter our human behaviors in dramatic ways. Not just gaming, all areas of everyday life will be improved.

1. Healthcare
2. Education
3. Enterprise
4. Productivity
5. Training
6. Many other areas of our world will improve as VR gains traction.

The timeline for VR mass adoption is debatable, but the beautiful aspect of this debate is that VR is working in 2016. VR is clearly a high enough quality to impress anyone who tries a room-scale VR experience. Therefore the next step is figuring out how to orchestrate mass adoption across a favorable timeline.

Timeline of Mass Adoption:

Let’s compare VR in 2016 to the adoption of Color TV’s in the 1950’s. Below is an excerpt from a great article about the history of color television:

This is fairly similar to VR in 2016. 2016 will be the year when one (or just a few) of your friends own a headset, and just like children in the neighborhood used to walk over to see their friends new Color TV set, people will travel to their friends home to try the Oculus, Playstation VR, or Vive headset. These early adopters who demo VR to their friend groups will spark a second wave of early adopters.

Each day that passes in 2016 brings us closer to when VR will find a flagship piece of content, or a flagship use case. To solve the content issue, VR needs to figure out what use case or content will be considered the “books to iPad” or “Halo to Xbox.” Not an experience that is just ‘cool!’ or ‘fun!’ but truly something that draws a user back again because they need it for a specific purpose. Just as Microsoft Excel made my buy a Windows computer, or as Halo made me purchase my first Xbox. VR will take off once a crucial use case or piece of content paves a smooth path for rational early adopting consumers to purchase.

VR Technology Progressing at Extremely Fast Paces

We are already beginning to see huge progress from VR technology over a very small period of time. In 2013, Oculus DK1 was limited similar to how the Gear VR is limited today. You simply had ‘sit down and look around VR’. Which tracked your head direction, but not positional tracking. Then by Oculus DK2 we had ‘sitting down lean around’ capabilities and as that progressed eventually ‘standing VR’. Vive has taken ‘standing VR’ to the next level, enabling ‘walking around VR.” This is also referred to as ‘room scale vr’ and is the ultimate level of immersion. Since 2012 when Oculus Kickstarter was released, VR changed from simple inputs at your desk, to inputs using motion captured hand controllers in a full room scale environment. The speed of progression is impressive.

VC Funding is Becoming Focused on VR

VC’s around Silicon Valley are starting to take notice about the impact VR will have on investing.

Virtual Reality technology is working today and is at a high enough quality for mass adoption. However, the industry faces a chicken and egg problem: Currently there are not yet enough pieces of quality content to justify the average consumer purchasing a headset, but there is also not enough potential headsets sold yet for content creators to justify large production budgets. There are huge money making opportunites for companeis if they can figure out a way to overcome this first chicken and egg problem.

The second chicken and egg problem we face is that hardware manufacturers need to hit certain economies of scale in order for the hardware to be considered affordable by average consumers. But ironically consumers need to purchase the hardware first before the manufacturers will be able to justify producing hardware at these economies of scale. So we are stuck relying heavily on the early adopters to take the grunt of the initial costs for VR consumers.

Overall, The major problem in VR is no longer tech development. I believe in 2016 the largest challenge facing Virtual Reality is figuring out how create more VR focused investors, more pioneering VR content, and more frictionless VR distribution channels.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

My thesis is constantly changing, please email me (Don@virtualrealityinvestment.com) if you would like to talk, I always love to hear feedback that can change my perspective on VR and the adoption timeline of this cool tech.