Igloo Vision, shared VR company
Igloo Vision has raised £1.4M in total. We talk with Dennis Wright, its CEO.
PC: How would you describe Igloo Vision in a single tweet?
Dennis Wright: We are the #SharedVR company. We take any VR or 360° content and put it in an immersive space anyone can use. It’s a bit like stepping into a giant VR headset.
PC: How did it all start and why?
DW: Igloo was established in 2007 by a group of technically-minded dance music enthusiasts who wanted to create the ultimate party venue. They had bought a second-hand geodesic dome and intended to fill it with seamless 360° projections, but soon realised that any existing projection systems were prohibitively expensive. So, using their own skills and knowledge of open-source programming tools, they decided to build their own technology.
They took their new creation out on the music festival circuit and attracted plenty of attention. Festival-goers with a corporate background saw many uses cases and those with a technical background were intrigued how Igloo had put it all together.
In 2010 there was a dramatic change in pace, with large-scale projects for clients such as Sky, Toyota and UKTI. With the launch of a new generation of VR headsets, such as the Oculus Rift, clients began to see the potential of Igloo as an alternative delivery platform for simulation, visualisation, and virtual reality content. Now, Igloo continues to provide Shared VR solutions for clients all over the globe, including Accenture, Hyundai Motors, Crowe Global, and many more.
PC: What have you achieved so far?
DW: We’ve built a strong footprint in three main business areas:
Experiences — using immersive environments to engage, inspire or entertain, for clients such as Adidas, BBC, Colgate, Ford, Hyundai and the Vodafone Foundation.
Simulation — immersing teams of people into any scenario, usually for training or familiarisation, for clients such as BP, the Ministry of Defence and Qinetiq.
Visualisation — enabling groups of people to understand how finished design concepts will look and feel, for clients such as Arup, BAM, Lendlease and Skanska.
We offer a range of Igloo projection domes and projection cylinders, ranging from 5 to 21-metres in diameter. We also create custom-built projection spaces and installations. Everything is powered by the Igloo Media Player backed-up by a growing suite of Igloo enterprise software.
PC: How will you use your recent funding round?
DW: For a VR company, we are unusual, because we are already profitable and already selling to many of the world’s biggest brands. The one thing that has held us back is that we haven’t had enough investment to expand as quickly as we would have liked. Frontier Development Capital’s involvement now enables us to accelerate our growth.
PC: What do you plan to achieve in the next 2–3 years?
DW: We envisage Igloo Shared VR being firmly embedded as an enterprise tool across the industries we work with. For example, the architecture, engineering and construction industry is one of our fastest-growing sectors. We foresee a future when an Igloo is a standard tool in every architect’s office, in the home office of every engineering firm, onsite at every sizeable construction project, and part of every marketing suite.
