Dive-in: A Look Behind a Virtual Reality based Start-up
It’s been nearly a year since we’ve decided to team up, quit our day jobs, and invest in creating a Virtual Reality data-visualization start-up.
And it’s been the most exciting time of our lives. How? Well — because we’ve been given the opportunity to bridge the gap between creativity, technology, and of course reality, to discover innovative ways to help companies visualize their big data sets. It was definitely challenging— and it still is, but it’s been incredibly worthwhile.
Here are just a few things we’ve learned along the way…
The VR & AR community is inspiring
We were fortunate to attend and exhibit at multiple Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality events, such as Augmented World Expo 2018 and network with thought leaders and industry experts. There are so many ambitious and outstanding individuals, and having the opportunity to meet VR-evangelists allows us to build our network and offer us a chance to collaborate in the future to create the best virtual reality worlds.
You have to become an educator in VR
Why would people trust your company if they’re not sure you know what you’re talking about? It’s important to not only familiarize yourself with Virtual Reality (this is really just the bare minimum) but become an expert to educate others on the topic.
Since early 2018, we own many VR and AR headsets available. This includes:
- HTC Vive
- Oculus Rift
- Lenovo Explorer
- Magic Leap One
- + more
We always invite friends, family, VR enthusiasts, and pretty much anyone to try out and demo these headsets. This is crucial because non-industry people need to become comfortable with using these technologies to enhance their user experience. Normalizing this technology will ultimately make these headsets more accessible and mainstream. Through this, you’ll be able to excite others about VR and eventually allow people to lose the fear of utilizing this technology.
Trial, error, learn, and try again.
There’s really no right or wrong when it comes to trial and error. Whether it’s building new products or testing social media marketing, you really have to figure out your own solution, what works best for YOUR brand.
And even if you think you’ve found a solution, chances are a week later, there’s bound to be some sort of errors that’ll inevitably arise. But that’s okay — that’s the fun part. Just keep building, testing, learning, and iterate this for as long as you can, because that’s how you create.
For us — one of our major challenges was brand awareness. We started with no social channels, no customers, no email list — pretty much nothing, to building our reputation and brand one follower at a time. We’re picking up speed, slowly but surely.
We’re continuing to allow our creative minds to mock up ideas on how we can optimize our content and channels to best attract new visitors and have them learn who we are, but more importantly, understand how profound Virtual Reality can be for their business.
You can’t expect money to grow on trees
A start-up is essentially an investment. And of course, you have to invest much of your own time and money to keep it up and running. But it’s a lot more complex than that — it’s not just a matter of spend, spend, and spend. It’s a process and a long one at that. From pitching your ideas to investors, to demo-ing a product to potential customers, you can’t always expect to win at the end of the day.
But that’s okay.
It’s a process.
Needless to say, what does grow on trees are inspiration, creativity, and innovation. We’ve planted the seed back in December 2017, watered it daily and allowed for a considerate amount of sunlight before it grew to become something unimaginable. Of course — there were days when the tree was stagnant and didn’t grow for weeks. But when you continue to put in work, the results inevitably show.
We’re building, and we’re growing.
Come grow with us!
The current VR Market is BOOMING in growth!
VR is a technology that could fundamentally change lives. There are many unlimited opportunities with both AR & VR, which allows industry experts to throw out estimates on the market.
The International Data Corporation believes the global market for virtual and augmented reality will grow from $14 billion this year to $150 billion in 2020. A tenfold increase in a single industry in just 3 years — seems unbelievable, but definitely could be a reality.
It’s important to take into account the current VR market when building a business run on Virtual Reality.
Conclusion
It’s taken just one year for the lives of the BadVR team members to dramatically change, and in a similar way, we hope we to make the same massive change in the data visualization, VR, and AR industries.
If you want to join a team of passionate creators, innovators, and dreamers, that's embracing an industry experiencing rapid growth, check out our careers page for current openings or simply learn more about BadVR here.
