The AR VR Journey : Part 1
My last post was about how I started up. And that’s where the ‘I’ ends.
This is a post about how a group of passionate people are trying to build the Products company of the Spatial Computing Age. So here we go.
By the time we started up, Four of the world’s largest tech giants had already committed to AR VR Hardware and Software. Facebook had just acquired Oculus Rift, Google had already released Cardboard SDK, Samsung Introduced Gear VR, Apple had just bought off Metaio.
The message was clear. The age of computing will transcend from two dimensional displays, and input devices to a three dimensional, multi sensory form of computing. Connecting with humans at many levels, to bring out the best of us. It was only a question of when, and who is going to take home the bounty.
The only better form of computing than spatial computing would be a direct human brain machine interface. But we got decades to get there, even with an Elon Musk in the team.
What the shift also meant was a point of vulnerability. Similar to the introduction of Internet, then cloud computing, then smart phone. So that was an ego boost to us to jump in.
But, initial research and market understanding made one thing clear. AR VR is not a consumer technology yet. The pain of using AR VR Solutions, be it the price, or the logistics, or the even the capabilities of the technology at that time were simply not worth while for a consumer to use.
Conclusion : Only a problem whose pain is much bigger in magnitudes can have AR VR as an solution to it.
This strengthened our interest in leveraging the technology for Industrial use cases.
The only pain point that we could think of at that point of time was Industrial training. Simulating industrial work spaces, and operations right from the comfort of their offices and that while increasing the quality of training was too good a deal for them to miss.
The next big decision we had to arrive on, was to choose between being a products company and a services company.
Both of them are equally painful, and tiring game. The only difference being the risk vs reward ratio.
It dint take us long to decide.
We decided to do both.
But the devil is in the why, how and when.
Why ?
The AR VR medium as such isnt ready to support an off the shelf product yet, and wont be so for the next many years. It is so new, and literally a dimension apart that there needs for educating your own market. Solution — Educate your own market.
The AR VR technologies had too many services component, and things that need to be customized for every section of the user base, ex — creating the 3D assets, programming the 3D world etc. Solution — Wait till the big guys figure out.
The AR VR Development pipeline was in infancy, and there was lot to learn. Even the components that were taken for granted, such as UX UI was a mountain of challenge in this new medium. Thus projecting years of runway for learning and development if we are pivoting to products only model. Solution — Get paid for learning.
Doing both was hence the most rational answer we could arrive on. With services creating the market and the brand value, and products leveraging the resources when the market ( and our Team) matures.
Hence the two biggest decisions at Metarvrse yet, B2B Focus with a services plus products approach.
More on how we figured out the other services offerings, and how we are figuring out Talent, Marketing, Revenue and Innovation in the upcoming articles.
Disclaimer :
None of the above learning happened easily, neither were they the first idea that hit us. Behind every right decision we took, are tens of failures, apparent doom, bouts of emotional breakdown, and sleepless nights.
I would highly recommend the book ‘Hard Thing about Hard Things’ by Ben Horowitz. A book that ignores what startups get right, but focuses on what they get wrong. Till date, we are guilty of about half of them.
