The virtual world isn't easy to explain. Even a brilliantly-composed, in-depth explanation fails to draw an audience fully into the kaleidoscope of possibilities inside a VR experience.
That makes it a tough thing to pitch to venture capitalists -- especially those who are thousands of miles away or have limited time to tinker around inside the program.
So TheWaveVR, an Austin-based social VR platform for music and art, conducted their pitch sessions with VCs in California and New York inside of a custom VR experience. The team used its custom tools to create a pitchdeck on its platform. The VCs just opened an app, clicked, put VR goggles on and met up with TheWaveVR team in a real-time virtual setting.
"The joke has been... we can pivot to become a VR PowerPoint startup," TheWaveVR co-founder and CEO Adam Arrigo told me.
But it's unlikely they'll need to do that. TheWaveVR on Thursday announced it has secured a $6 million Series A funding round to expand its VR concert experiences and grow its social network within the platform. The founders even signed a term sheet inside its VR platform.
The investment was led by RRE Ventures in New York, which has backed companies including Venmo, Giphy and Palantir. Other investors included Upfront Ventures, KPCB, Greycroft VR Gaming Tracker Fund, The VR Fund and Capital Factory. Angel and strategic investors include Giphy co-founder Alex Chung, General Assembly co-founder Matt Brimer and Andy Ross from OK Go.
That brings TheWaveVR's total funding to $10 million. It has 14 employees now, and Arrigo said the company will likely bring on new talent to build a team of about 20. The company also announced it has opened a small office in Los Angeles where it creates custom VR concert experiences with new artists.
"Our company is pretty weird. We’re doing stuff that hasn’t been done before."
“When Adam and his team pitched us in VR, from within TheWaveVR itself, we saw that the possibilities could go far beyond music,” Alice Lloyd George, principal at RRE Ventures, said in a news release. “TheWaveVR is a brilliant venue for concerts, but also much more. We're already seeing users explore it for other experiences, from digital art to narrative storytelling to business meetings."
But, for now, concerts are the most prominent use case for TheWaveVR. The platform has a set of tools to create custom environments to suit whatever type of music or mood artists and developers want.
TheWaveVR is also engaging with new audiences across the country via its collaboration with Warner Bros on a dance club experience based on the movie "Ready Player One," which was written by an Austin author Ernest Cline and features an Austin actor Tye Sheridan in the lead role.
The fascination with virtual reality has been building for decades, and reached a new level of hype in the past two years as consumers got their first chance to try HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Sony PlayStation VR and other VR headsets.
Tech hype tends to come in waves -- with technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain and cryptocurrencies generating a flurry of news and excitement before people start to learn their limitations, Arrigo said. And VR was no different, generating a ton of hype before many started realizing user experience issues or didn't find enough cool content.
"It's still waiting for that moment like when the iPhone caught on and hit that inflection point," Arrigo said.
But the popularity of "Ready Player One" and the launch of updated, stand-alone VR headsets that don't need to be tethered to computers, is likely to bring VR to a new set of consumers.
Meanwhile, TheWaveVR will be getting more active inside the Austin startup scene, and it will continue to build out its core products here.
“Our company is pretty weird. We’re doing stuff that hasn’t been done before. It's experimental and ambitious," Arrigo said. “We see the city as part of our DNA.”
