So a VR startup might be a tough sell right now (tougher than usual) until they think that trend changes from fake to real (if ever) is how I understood what he was saying.
VR is just really bad right now. Every experience either requires a thousand dollars' worth of equipment or it's going to make the user nauscious. The only borderline acceptable experience I've had was a Vive, and that required 2 lighthouses, an HMD, 2 controllers, 400 sqft, and a $2000+ gaming machine -- and I was still tripping over the fucking wires.
Any sub-$100 system is a total joke that no one is going to use for more than a minute. Anything less than $1000 isn't pushing the frame rate or the latency to keep users from vomiting, and even if you don't get sick you're probably constrained to your chair.
It's going to take serious technological advances to get VR into a place where it's fun to use consistently for most people.
IMO, the best place to look for VR opportunities right now is actually in AR/MR. Plenty of enterprise customers interested, frame rate comes second to utility, augmentation means you can actually see what's going on so frame rate doesn't actually matter that much (indeed when I developed for the HoloLens, 30fps was sufficient.)
I think one of the "killer apps" for VR will be in education. It will be for unique user experiences related to whatever the student is studying. Right now most students learn by lecture, reading books and maybe going online to watch a video on youtube. Well just imagine if you can do activities like this:
Now compare that to the lecture, reading books or watching a video. The VR experience is educational, it is interesting, it is fun, it is exciting. When you ask many kids how they feel about school, what do they say? They say it is BORING and I tend to agree with them (based on experience in school). Add in these VR educational experiences and the whole game changes.