Startup Spotlight: Gravity Sketch
In our latest Startup Spotlight, Daniela Paredes, Gravity Sketch CCO and Co-Founder, shares how she and the team are empowering enterprise teams to collaborate and create in 3D. We learn about their fundraising journey so far, how the company started from a graduate design project, and her advice to entrepreneurs launching a new business venture.
Explain your product in one sentence
Gravity Sketch empowers enterprise teams to create and collaborate in three dimensions. We build intuitive multi-platform tools to radically improve the efficacy and efficiency of developing 3D products.
Tell us about the problem you’re solving in aerospace
Today’s design pipeline, particularly in designing the interior of aircraft, is hampered by back-and-forth communication in 2D media and isolated individuals working by designers and engineers. The resulting repeated rework inflates both time and cost.
We have created the world’s first immersive 3D design and collaboration platform for professional team use; which streamlines the design process by creating clear communication between global teams. Instead of turning 2D sketches into precise 3D CAD models and discussing these through screenshots and Powerpoints, teams can now create and collaborate directly in 3D, in 1–1 scale. By supporting multiple hardware devices, ranging from VR/AR to tablets and mobile phones, we aim to become to go-to-tool for 3D design and empower stakeholders to think and create directly in 3D.
Gravity Sketch works across a range of sectors including automotive, architecture and industrial design. How did you choose your initial markets?
Gravity Sketch was made by designers, for designers.
Both mine and my co-founder’s background is in design, with experience in industrial and automotive design and manufacturing. Our backgrounds meant we lived with the pain points and knew that every team was required to think and problem solve a 3D concept and that they were in need of a tool that would allow them to communicate in an effective and intuitive manner.
What makes Gravity Sketch special is that, for the first time, it brings spatial cognition into the digital creative world, empowering anyone that lives in a three dimensional world (i.e. everyone!) to express themselves in the most intuitive way, enabling a natural creation and communication process.
How can you empower people to communicate and materialise their ideas in a quick and intuitive way, just as if you were pulling the thoughts from your head?
What’s your fundraising experience been like so far? What’s your latest round going to help you achieve?
It has been a learning experience as we are pre Series A and still in the product-market fit phase — so we spent our focus approaching Seed funds; which sparked up quite a bit of interest. We plan to use this round to scale our sales, marketing, and customer success teams to generate a repeatable sales processes and hone the go-to market in order to hit our Series A KPIs.
Tell us the story of how your team came together
Seyi, my co-founder, and I had both spent 10 years in the design and manufacturing industry when we decided to pursue a joint master's degree at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London called Innovation Design Engineering, where we met. To graduate from the programme, we had to work on a group project that would propose a disruptive — yet feasible — solution to a problem (any problem).
We came together as a team and worked on an area that was close to our hearts because we had lived it all of our professional lives: “how can you empower people to communicate and materialise their ideas in a quick and intuitive way, just as if you were pulling the thoughts from your head?”
What started as a graduation project that was looking to push boundaries, very quickly gained the attention of the design community and the media, as we’d come up with something that the world had never seen before. At that point, we realised we needed to take it to the next level and bring it to the world.
After graduation, we needed to transform that prototype into a real product. This was when we met Daniel, our CTO and now co-founder, a VR developer with a background in Physics from Cambridge, the perfect fit and complement to our small team. For some time it was just the three of us, now we have grown to an incredible team of 23 brilliant people, who are passionate about bringing Gravity Sketch to life.
Be passionate about your vision and work with people that are as passionate about it as you.
How do you find (and keep) tech talent for your company?
We headhunted most of our engineers, looking for those who we thought could potentially thrive within our culture. We empower our engineers and designers with product ownership and tech ownership, letting them focus on the problem domains they enjoy working on. We let them work with the same level of ‘A’ players over fancy perks and free sushi.
Greatest learning from your startup journey so far
I would say I have two:
- Fail fast, learn fast and never give up!
- Work with your users and use the advantages of being lean and small to work with your community to make the best product for them.
What advice would you give to a female entrepreneur launching a startup?
First I would say congratulations for pursuing such an ambitious path! It won’t be easy, whether you are a woman, a man or an alien.
Startup life is a roller coaster of a ride and you need to be prepared to enjoy the victories and learn from the failures. As a woman, you will likely be the only one at the table (of many tables) and in time you will realise the way you speak, or approach situations, is very different from the male majority around you. It took me a while to realise I did not have to be, think or behave like them, but rather bring what makes me different to the table — after all, this is why women and minorities are needed in the startup world. Always fight for what you believe in and be prepared to push extra hard to be heard, women before us have done a great job paving our way, but there is a lot of work to be done for the generations to come.
There are plenty of great people to work with out there, so don’t give the ones that don’t deserve it your attention or time. Be prepared to walk away from situations where you feel uncomfortable or feel that you are not being treated equally and with respect.
And, the most important part, which is usually what happens to me; be passionate about your vision and work with people that are as passionate about it as you, then gender or any other difference will be irrelevant and not worth thinking about it, think about making that change in the world.
Good luck!
Follow Gravity Sketch on Twitter to keep up to date with their latest developments in design.
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For more information about the programme, please contact the ATI Boeing Accelerator team:
Gabi Matic — gm@atiboeingaccelerator.com | linkedin.com/in/gabrielamatic
Wil Benton — wb@atiboeingaccelerator.com | linkedin.com/in/fatkidonfire
Ksenia Kurileva — kk@atiboeingaccelerator.com | linkedin.com/in/kseniakurileva
