Before going through the entire manufacturing process, we sold around 700 to 800 units of our product, which helped validate our idea.

We built our first 500 watches by hand in a garage, which gave us a deep appreciation for the effort involved in creating consumer electronics.

In our first year, we ended up selling about 600,000 units after addressing the initial quality issues.

When we first launched our product, I was embarrassed about its readiness, but we had to ship it. We learned from our initial customers, who provided valuable feedback that helped us improve.

After demo day, we had to ship our first units, which required moving most of our team to China to manage manufacturing.

The initial traction we received was surprising, leading us to iterate quickly based on user feedback and adapt our product accordingly.

We faced the reality of having to manufacture 8,000 smart covers to ship around the world, which was a significant challenge for us as none of us had hardware experience.

During Y Combinator, we focused on building strong relationships with our first 100 customers, doing things that don't scale to ensure they loved our service.

During the first two years at Oculus, we experienced rapid changes and learning, managing to get our first development kit into customers' hands in just six months, which is not typical for hardware development.