Meet a Milestone Maker featuring Peter Wilkins

Every week we’ll feature the Spring 2017 Milestone Makers cohort. The following interview is with Peter Wilkins, Founder and CEO, Emergent VR.

Can you tell me your name and about your company in ten words?

My name is Peter Wilkins and my company is Emergent VR. Emergent is the platform for capturing, sharing, and discovering immersive content.

How did your business come to be?

Our founding team originally worked together at DreamWorks Animation on Academy Award nominated films like Madagascar 3 and Kung Fu Panda. When the Oculus Rift hit Kickstarter, most people saw the opportunity for virtual reality games, but we saw the opportunity for virtual reality movies. We ended up being the first team to create 360 video for the Rift and then launched the first movie for VR in 2014. That experience was great and taught us a lot, including how difficult it was to create content for consumer VR and how badly the industry needed both compelling content as well as tools with which to create that content.

What’s the dream for your business?

We want to be the Instagram of VR.

Where do you find inspiration when faced with challenges?

When faced with challenges, I find inspiration in the natural world, hiking, and camping. I also find inspiration in the worlds of my favorite authors, musicians, and artists.

What is the biggest learning from the journey so far?

The biggest learning is you truly must be passionate and believe in what you’re doing, or it will be too easy to give up when you hit all of the roadblocks that you are going to hit as an entrepreneur.

What does the term milestone signify to you?

A milestone is the culmination of a lot of hard work and focus resulting in a significant achievement worthy of celebration.

What milestone are you committed to accomplishing by the end of the Milestone Maker’s Program?

Our milestone is to showcase VR experiences created with our new content creation tool.

The Milestone Makers program is designed to help early-to-mid-stage founders set, hit, and celebrate milestones critical to company growth over 12 weeks. Each of our 14 Milestone Makers selected into the Spring 2017 cohort receive the support of a personal business coach, a team of mentors, peer cohort work sessions, as well as curated classes to help them succeed with their individual learning paths to help them reach their goals.