At the Harvard Tech Conference (held this weekend at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Mass.) attendees waited in lines that stretched out the conference room door to try Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR and other VR tech. They giggled as they attempted a virtual basketball free throw contest and pulled virtual guns from their shins in a first-person shooter game.
But in the corner of the room, NotionTheory, a DC-based development startup, had attendees step into a virtual conference room through a smart phone and a pair of $15 VR goggles, for a virtual meeting with avatars and a virtual white board. It may not be the most exciting application of augmented realty and virtual reality, but NotionTheory doesn’t see why it couldn’t be one of the most lucrative.
The 14-person startup provides AR/VR development services to clients interested in exploring the possibilities of the nascent tech. So rather than doubling down on one focus or industry, NotionTheory is trying out a bunch of things and seeing what sticks.
“We don’t necessarily know what the big thing in VR is going to be, right?” said founder Kristian Bouw, a self-taught engineer who founded the startup in 2014. “There hasn’t been enough substantial market adoption to say, ok, this is the killer app. This is the killer demographic or industry because there is just not a big enough sample size yet.”
That has led to a range of products with a range of clients. With Johns Hopkins University, they created an proof-of-concept augmented reality app where visitors to a hospital’s chapel can state their religion and the app will switch the room’s religious iconography to match their beliefs. This summer, they created the East Coast’s first virtual reality arcade in MakeOffices in Dupont Circle. Bouw said they’ve had interest from clients ranging from Lyft to the Washington Redskins to Yelp to Wale.
Given these clients’ customers may not be VR early adopters, NotionTheory is also looking at new platforms where new customers might be more likely to interact with the tech. Currently they’re focus on developing for WebVR, web-optimized apps that are device agnostic and can be accessed via link. “The general population consumer [is] probably not going to spend $1,500 to $3,000 on this headset plus the PC,” said Bouw.
However, going low-tech also means fewer immediate possibilities. For example, smartphones don’t have positional tracking, which means users can’t interact with their surroundings.
But for the non-gaming population, even low-tech has its appeal. Bouw said they’ve had significant interest from enterprise clients on productivity and collaboration apps (like the virtual conference room mentioned above), and are in talks with WeWork, General Assembly and Ernst and Young.
“The reason that they’re interested is because they have distributed work teams all over the world, so the opportunity to jump into the same room and stand beside each other and collaborate on the same white board is massive for them,” said Bouw.
We caught up with Bouw with a few more questions on how he approaches innovation, what it's like to run a startup in Washington's innovation economy and his advice for other entrepreneurs.
How do you challenge yourself to think differently from other people in the industry?
Kristian: One of the key things is mentorship. No matter how much you think you know, you don’t know. Perspective is key to success. I’m my me-mentor. In my office, it looks crazy because littered all over the wall are thoughts and opinions I have. They cover machine learning, marketing. I’m challenged every time I wake up and come home. I stare these questions in the face and I think, do I agree with this opinion or not? Why? It either reaffirms my beliefs or changes my perspective. I write notes on those papers to see that progression on how I came to that conclusion. The overarching thing is mentorship. I haven’t gone the traditional route. I don’t have any personal mentors except the wall in my office.
Where do you find inspiration?
Kristian: My grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. He was taken back in 1944. He was one of 37 taken from his town. He was the only one from the town who came back when Dachau was liberated. After seeing all of that, all of the horrors, he still went on to have a family of eight kids. It’s incredible to see someone go through something so horrifying and have the mental character to go on and raise a family. Anytime the going gets rough, I hark back to him and think that things could always be worse. ‘The hottest fires forge the hardest steel,’ is one of my favorite quotes. Maybe in some sick, twisted sadistic way, when I’m going through hard times or it’s stressful, it builds character. There’s going to be shitty times. So in terms of inspiration, he’s one of the primary examples.
I don’t believe in work life balance. My hope is that everyone’s work contributes to his or her life and vice versa.
What job have you had that has had the greatest impact on your career?
Kristian: I haven’t had too many. I was pretty naďve when I was young. But the one I’d say had the most impact was a job at a deli when I was younger in North Carolina. When I was in college, I needed a job. It was exciting and novel at first, but a few weeks in, when I went in, I knew exactly what I was going to do. It was a fear of a vegetable-like state; I knew what I was going to do weeks before I was at work. It wasn’t stimulating me; it wasn’t a challenge. That’s what entrepreneurship gave to me.
I knew what I wanted to do from an early age and entrepreneurship gave me the intellectual stimulation that I needed. It’s scary for some but exciting for me. It’s a thrill of the hunt, being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Puzzle solving and finding your way out of it.
How will your industry change in the next five years?
Kristian: There’s a services side of web mobile development. You have the 80/20 rule that typically applies to efforts and results. But in the case of services, the majority of projects we get are marketplace and social apps. There’s actually a lot of redundancy in web and mobile applications. You’re starting to see a lot of services come out, like my friends at Hatch, that are taking out the redundancy and then giving people the tools to build their app and get it to a development person. There’s already been a shift. The whole goal of development is that you want to put yourself out of business. Web mobile development is moving toward that, people who are building services with prepackaged code. The process will become more automated.
If you think about the Internet, the Internet brought distributed work teams. It enabled remote working, you can assemble a team across nations, but we still have companies that have to meet and sell in person. There’s all of this need for in person interactions. One of the things missing is non-verbal communication. One of the goals of virtual reality (VR) is give people what they’re craving in terms of non-verbal communication. We had the oncology department at Howard University come to us. They have experts who need multiple perspectives and insights. With VR, they could all put on a headset and collaborate on the same white board. VR offers a sense of immersion. We see VR and augmented reality (AR) as a next-generation computing platform.
How is Washington D.C. unique when it comes to innovation?
Kristian: What I’ve noticed in D.C. from going to other places is the diversification of industries. You have this trifecta of private sector, nonprofit and government. You have a lot of support in terms of grants and funding. I was just at a panel last night in New York and I’m speaking at Harvard tomorrow. The one thing that sticks out is that you can find places that span the spectrum in D.C. The benefit of a place like D.C. is that you have all the industries, but there’s a convergence of sectors.
What’s something that you do every single day, no matter what you have going on?
Kristian: I call my wife and I tell her I love her. And I call all my family members and I tell them that I love them. I don’t believe in work life balance. My hope is that everyone’s work contributes to his or her life and vice versa. But sometimes I get too caught up in work. It’s making sure that you never take the people who supported you throughout the whole thing for granted and giving them recognition each and every day. I hark back to the story of my grandfather. I see it too much; people take family members for granted and then they lose them. It’s making sure to put family first because I have to attribute some of my success to them. I wouldn’t be here without family supporting me.
When we started our company, the first year we didn’t spend money on marketing. We got our first client and spent our money on them and made sure that they had an exceptional experience.
Who do you admire in D.C.? (your industry or other industries)
Kristian: I would say off the top of my head, [nvite Founder and CEO] Marty Ringlein, because he’s not only built successful companies but also really great teams. In my interactions with him and seeing the content he posts, he really truly understands that it’s not possible without his team. His unselfishness is obvious. Even though he’s the head authority figure, he recognizes that he only looks as good as he does because of the team he has behind him. I try to do the same thing at NotionTheory.
What would you change about D.C. or D.C. entrepreneurial scene?
Kristian: How flaky people are. No matter how many people sign up for a free event, only 40% show. We’re joking that we’re going to make the event private and exclusive up to an hour before to draw in more people.
What are some of your short-term and long-term goals with NotionTheory?
Kristian: Short-term goals are to convey the benefits of VR and AR. It’s trying to altruistically trying to get the technology in front of people so they can see how they can apply VR and AR to what they’re doing. That’s coming through in a lot of the projects we’re doing. We’re doing a lot of exciting things. We’re doing our product launch with comic strips that we call Easter Eggs. It has all the secrets of what we’re building and people can put them together like a puzzle to figure out what we’re doing. We’re going to be doing a series of those starting in November.
What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to progress with their business?
Kristian: A key piece of advice is that a major variable of your success is the product you sell. The best marketing in the world will not save a garbage product. You see this a lot in restaurants, and in tech. Products are hyped and then the product doesn’t live up to that expectation. It never will, if the product doesn’t deliver value. When we started our company, the first year we didn’t spend money on marketing. We got our first client and spent our money on them and made sure that they had an exceptional experience. Because of that, they became our brand evangelist. By the time we had our tenth customer, we had people selling our product for free. We didn’t do a blog or other marketing, but we were still outpacing other companies by multiples. This year alone, we went from three people to 12 people.
