Why We Invested in skignz: Turning AR into a Tool
Augmented reality (AR) is expected to be a $143B market by 2020. But where is the industry really headed?
Coming in here are the truths we saw:
- AR should do more than entertain: it should provide purpose and utility. Most AR on the market today doesn’t take full advantage of the technology. Even in the most successful applications on the market today (i.e., Snapchat, Pokémon Go, Houzz, IKEA, Warby Parker) are essentially entertainment and untethered from reality. The AR is “cool” but it’s never the core business and just another add on feature. We believe there’s massive potential where AR can be the “main” value add rather than a “nice to have feature.”
- Most of the applications we hear about for AR are consumer oriented. What we don’t hear about are all the B2B applications where AR is already starting to take off and arguably where there’s room for true value and innovation.
- Location based augmented reality is perhaps one of the most powerful use cases of augmented reality, since it allows for true interaction between the physical world and thus is heavily monetizable by businesses using it.
skignz is the epitome of these trends, and the founders have been in AR for the last ten years developing a simple system that makes augmented reality really useful.
Businesses can “place, edit, or remove content anywhere on the planet” using skignz or “signs in the sky.” Want to mark your car in a crowded parking lot? Find your lost child? Need details about your hotel or directions in a new city? Visually see which restaurant has 50% off appetizers at the baseball game? skignz creates virtual beacons that information within seconds.
Importantly, skignz provides a platform, an easy-to-use, scalable AR backbone (i.e. a software development kit or SDK) that can be adapted for enterprise use so that businesses can add their own beacons anywhere they want (i.e., the Atlanta Braves can place a skign whenever and wherever a player is signing autographs).
But at the end, our bet on skignz was really a bet on the founder Si Brown, who has over 25 years experience with digital advertising, augmented reality, and brand design. He’s already led his team to onboard an impressive roster of clients including companies and organizations like the country of Great Britain, Coca-Cola, and the Atlanta Braves.
With a calendar packed with exciting product releases including a brand new IOS app and SDK/API package in September, skignz is set to become the backbone of the next generation of AR, a sort of operating system to power all future location-based augmented reality.
We look forward to working with them and together building the framework for an AR that is useful as well as it is entertaining.
Here’s to the future of AR :)
Team Prototype Capital
