It’s a Saturday afternoon and I keep asking myself more VR or more BR. I will let you decide that at the end of this story. There has been a lot that has happened in the last couple of years in the emerging tech world. It has seen hits and near misses starting with categories such as Wearables, Drones, Gaming and Immersive reality. As somebody with interests in the immersive reality space, I wanted to find out how we are performing at the grass root levels of capitalization. How much capital is being raised for Virtual Reality and where does it stack up to its other nascent category cousins.

A quick glance at one of the most popular crowd funding platforms, Kickstarter provided me with some interesting data snippets:

Wearables leads the way in the number of projects. A total of 865 projects. The top two funded projects are Pugz and Blocks with about $1.4 and $1.1 million dollar capitalization backed by 10k and 3.8k backers respectively.

This is closely followed by the Drones category. A total of 306 projects. Top two funded projects are Zano and Airdog.com with about 2.3 mill pounds and $1.3 mill dollar capitalization backed by 12K and 1.4K backers respectively.

Virtual Reality based projects are 193 in total. Among these three, 85% of the projects are in the category of Wearables and Drones. The Top two funded projects are Stem system by Sixence and FOVE with about $0.6 Million and $0.5 Mill dollar capitalization backed by 2.3k and 1.4k backers respectively. Last year, Oculus led this category with $3.0 Mill capitalization and 9.5K backers. Of the 193 projects out there, I would think 80% of these projects are dealing with the hardware stuff like more goggles and gizmos. In the equity-funded marketplaces such as Angelist, VR does have a healthy 329 projects at play with an average $4.5 Mill valuation. Please see the related article on Top IR/VR Startups.

I think that for VR to take the next leap, Content development will be the key. At and below the $1000 dollar price point for VR G&G( read Goggles and Gizmos), there have been quite a few product announcements this year. As more hardware gets developed the costs will come down. Content related platforms and products will be the key to raising awareness and this will start with the VR Gaming, movies and education based products. More seed money will drive these categories in the coming months and years. Marketing is hard when you are in the process of developing and defining a new market. It is achieved by spearheading numerous awareness campaigns. Some companies are hitting the road to bring awareness. The HTC Vibe world tour has been generating buzz in the east coast last week. As more players drive awareness campaigns to develop this market, more capitalization at the grass roots will transpire. For me, I think that when the project mix starts shifting more towards content, we will see interesting things. It’s only time that few Indie game developers take advantage of this new platform to provide some jaw dropping content.

By the way, Beer still has more projects than all the three tech categories combined. At 1,291 projects with the Top project Ukeg generating $1.6 Mill with 10k backers at the grass root levels. Perhaps a combination of these categories will attract more value and raise awareness. Remember the Dos Equis VR campaign. Well enough said, I don’t know about you but for me it’s time for a frothy foam BR transition. Cheers and have a wonderful weekend!