TC Sessions AR/VR 2018

Agenda

October 18th

8:30AM – 9:30AM

Registration Opens

9:30AM – 9:35AM

Welcome Remarks from Matthew Panzarino (TechCrunch)

9:35AM – 9:55AM

Fireside Chat with Jon Snoddy (Walt Disney Imagineering)

9:55AM – 10:15AM

Creating an AR Creator Network with Eitan Pilipski (Snap)

Getting users into AR has proven challenging at times, the same has definitely been true for developer platforms. Snap was early to the AR selfie filter world and is trying to use that advantage to bring more developers into the fold building Lenses for the Snapchat app, but for a company partially staking its future on AR, how meaningful can these short experiences become?

10:15AM – 10:40AM

Ditching Headsets for Holograms with Ashley Crowder (VNTANA), Shawn Frayne (Looking Glass Factory), and Brett Jones (Lightform)

Augmented reality may be a powerful sight, but it requires participants to own expensive hardware. Is there a workaround? Startups are working to centralize the experience but it’s going to look a lot different.

10:40AM – 11:00AM

Staying Lean and Mean with Maureen Fan (BaoBab Studios)

Baobab Studios has raised $31 million from top investors to create cinematic VR that excites audiences. While VR startups raised plenty of cash in 2016 and 2017, slow headset sales have caused startups to focus on building for a virtual future that might take a couple more years to reach.

11:00AM – 11:25AM

Reality Checks with Niko Bonatsos (General Catalyst), Jacob Mullins (Shasta Ventures), Catherine Ulrich (FirstMark Capital), and Stephanie Zhan (Sequoia)

“[VR] is the frothiest space in the Valley right now. Nobody understands it but everyone wants in. Any idiot could walk into a f***ing room, utter the letters ‘V’ and ‘R’, and VCs would hurl bricks of cash at them.” – Erlich Bachmann. While this may have indeed been the case a couple years ago, investor cash has been a bit sparser in 2018. Where are the opportunities now?

11:25AM – 11:45AM

Kickstarting an Industry with Yelena Rachitzky (Oculus)

Oculus has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into funding VR content, and while the headset market is still small, developers have built plenty of games and experiences. Facebook’s VR future rests on people finding new worlds that they want to step into, how will Oculus make this happen?

11:45AM – 12:05PM

Energizing the Social Camera with Ficus Kirkpatrick (Facebook)

Today’s most mass-market AR apps seem to center on augmenting the user’s camera to inject some fun goofiness into their photos and videos. Facebook has deemed this their entry-point into AR tech as well, but for how long will selfie masks and filters be the extent of their grand ambitions?

12:05PM – 1:05PM

BREAK

1:05PM – 1:25PM

Cloud 6 with Matt Miesnieks (6d.ai)

AR is out there, but the experiences available today are still feeling pretty isolated. 6D.ai is building out cloud AR tech to link these experiences together on a digital layer of the real world.

1:25PM – 1:50PM

Finding the Potential of Phone AR with Parham Aarabi (Modiface), Kirin Sinha (Illumix) and Allison Wood (Camera IQ)

1:50PM – 2:15PM

Augmenting the Office with Derek Belch (STRIVR), Clorama Dorvilias (DebiasVR), and Morgan Mercer (Vantage Point)

How can businesses learn from mistakes before making them? By training employees with VR, there’s the potential to more accurately simulate key scenarios and push people towards good choices.

2:15PM – 2:40PM

The Social Experiment with Adam Arrigo (The WaveVR) Gil Baron (Mindshow), and Sophia Dominguez (SVRF)

If anything, the OculusVR acquisition in 2014 signaled that Facebook saw VR as a social final frontier. No one really knows what exactly those interactions look like though, but there’s an awful lot that’s already been explored.

2:40PM – 3:00PM

BREAK

3:00PM – 3:05PM

Live Demo of CREED: Rise to Glory (Survios)

3:05PM – 3:25PM

Game Theory with Alex Silkin (Survios) and James Illiff (Survios)

While VR might not just be about gaming, it’s accurate to say that, in 2018, it mainly is. Survios has raised nearly $55M to show the potential of VR gaming, as the studio continue releasing new titles, can they keep their momentum going and will gaming continue to be the big opportunity?

3:25PM – 3:50PM

Early Days, Early Bets with Greg Castle (Anorak Ventures) and Peter Rojas (Betaworks)

Fewer AR/VR startups seem to be raising big seed rounds in 2018, but how have early-stage investors changed their approach to funding new talent in the space? How should founders get their attention?

3:50PM – 4:15PM

The Future of Storytelling with Mariana Acuna (Opaque Studios), Guy Primus (Virtual Reality Company) and Jay Tucker (UCLA Anderson)

4:15PM – 4:35PM

Making the World Your Game with Ross Finman (Niantic)

Between the worldwide craze of Pokémon GO and the soon-to-launch Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Niantic knows AR. We chat to Niantic’s Head of AR Research to find out what’s next.

4:35PM – 4:40PM

WRAP

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