The use of selective oxidation to fabricate vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers is described. The nativeoxide impacts the device design in two ways, the first being in the introduction of an intracavity dielectric aperture that laterally confines the mode, and the second in the formation of high contrast dielectric Bragg reflectors to shorten the effective cavity length. To date the more important has been the indexconfinement, with record low threshold currents, threshold voltages, and power conversion efficiencies being reported from several groups. However, future designs will likely also benefit from the reduced diffraction loss for a small mode size that is possible with high contrast native oxide/semiconductor mirrors. We describe some of the most important design issues in obtaining ultralow threshold operation.