Awkward get-to-know-you meetings are so web 2.0, and some of the Bay Area's top companies are now ditching these video conferences to conduct team-building exercises in a virtual hangout spot, replete with cornhole, a paintball room and some white boards to possibly get actual work done.
Behind the scenes, one driver of this trend is San Francisco-based Remio, which just announced $4.5 million in seed funding Thursday to build up its VR team-building software for enterprises. The round was led by Khosla Ventures and included Version One Ventures.
The firm already has a full product out being used by companies such as Google, Trello and Netflix that can take their meetings in the metaverse. Employees can wear VR headsets to enter the virtual mansion that fields multiple rooms for games, meetings, lectures and even a bar with drinking games like flip cup.
Remio co-founder and CEO Jos van der Westhuizen came up with idea for the company in 2019 when he was running a different startup, an automatic note-taking app called Kristalic, in his home country of South Africa.
"We were fully remote and I wanted to get the team together, but a lot of the VR games available did not cater to getting large teams together in a dedicated space," he said. "When the first company closed, I had the idea to do something to create engagement among teams."
An avid online gamer and longtime fan of the HTC vibe headset, van der Westhuizen founded Remio in 2020 along with CTO Derrick van Schalkwyk.
Van der Westhuizen says the company was soon able to offer a beta version to local tech companies like Fast and Iterable and became a favorite of employees and managers trying to get their teams engaged at a time when remote work was a necessity.
Eventually the product caught on with bigger firms like Fidelity and Pwc.
Customers can either schedule one-off uses of the product, where Remio sends VR headsets to the companies for a single event, or firms that already own VR headsets can use Remio's software under a subscription model, paying per team member.
"Usually after the third try, companies go out and buy their whole team headsets," van der Westhuizen said.
He says Remio will use the recent cash influx to strengthen its existing product and build out features to keep its larger enterprise customers happy. Eventually the company wants to offer built in tools to allow its users to create new areas and games in the virtual space on their own.
"Our customers always have more ideas than we can keep up with," he said.
The company has no plans for a direct-to-consumer version of its VR software, but does offer a free demo to the public in the hopes it will drum up interest and more business clients.
Remio currently has 11 employees and hopes to double staff over the next eight months.
