4 min read
I used to want one thing - to be recognized as a mini-Dave-Grohl on the drumkit.
Then I got called a mini-Dave-Grohl at a high school battle of the bands (we won, nbd). Now I want something else - to be the man who killed meetings. Yes you too can have 70% less meetings by enabling immersive co-presence in today’s software-hardware-home-office-hybrid world.
If you’re still wondering how a Katmai Virtual Office is different from zoom, our CPO Dan already covered that. Katmai is a place for people. Zoom is a bridge for a scheduled video call. You meet on Zoom. You meet in Katmai.
Today I want to talk about Katmai and the other Virtual Office startups; Kumospace, Gather, and Roam. We all think we’re the office of the future; we’re all a little bit right and a little bit wrong probably, but let’s break it down some more.
"That's not office, its's a floor plan."
-Erik Braund, when scrolling down right now.
Here's visuals I found on their websites.
Roam
"Company visualization with live presence on the map"
Gather
"Look around and find who's free"
Kumospace
"Makes managing teams like being in the same room"
Katmai
Brings your team into the same 3D immersive space,
visually and naturally.
Is Katmai the same as the other virtual offices?
They’re the same like visiting a new city or getting a post card of the city are the same.
They’re the same like Pixar and MS Paint are the same.
They’re the same like a real person and a mannequin are the same.
They’re the same like a subway car on the tracks and a map of the subway are the same.
They’re the same like an actual office and a Zoom grid are the same.
At Katmai, we want people to feel. We consistently hear things like “natural” and “light” and “conversation, not a meeting” and we know we’re onto something.
We went all-in on providing a sense of place - the digital third place. A shared foreground, background, views, vistas, objects, the ability to move…. With something new and novel; no avatars - just YOU. We plug in live audio and video into the 3D world and let you be you. With WASD, arrows, a mouse, a trackpad, or game controllers, you can move around - you’re live, you’re with people, in some fantastic looking 3D places that behave like real places. Doors close, hallways fill with people, water cooler moments, guests dropping by… before you know it, you just popped across the hall and popped across the continent at the same time. And you didn’t have to schedule it.
We all agree.
Roam, Katmai, Gather, and Kumospace all share one core belief - coexisting in a virtual environment can bring us together and open new avenues of collaboration. Shorter meetings with less people. We all agree.
But Katmai is a fork in the road.
We believe in super high quality 3D.
They believe in top-down 2D that enables just-another-zoom-call basically.
Katmai lives in a PS3-PS5 world (depending on your machine).
They are playing the Nintendo my brother bought in 1989. Well, that Nintendo didn’t have webcams, but we’re talking aesthetics here.
We provide real immersion and connection in an actual full on representation of some expensive looking and feeling spaces. They don’t.
It took us 4 years and over 50 patents of inventive work to make that happen. Btw, 50 patents is the equivalent to about 900,000 words, or 10-15 full length non-fiction books. I used to feel guilty for not reading more books since Katmai’s inception, but now, well, I don’t. That was a lot of homework.
“This feels like a grown up version of Gather Town. Aesthetics Matter.”
-- A potential customer who had tried Gather and was touring Katmai with us.
Aesthetics matter. This is part of the reason we’re able to call some of the world’s largest and most recognized companies users of Katmai. Everyone gets a shared experience and a new connective tissue - a place that looks and feels like theirs. Calls don’t have place, and place is a shared language. Place provides spontaneity. Visual cues don’t exist in 2D, unless you consider a red, yellow, or green status dot a visual cue.
A rising tide floats all boats
I should probably say - I am not actually trying to be an asshole to the other companies; I love everyone and believe (to a fault) that everyone is awesome and great and I want to be friends. I am pumped that 100-200 people at these four companies are succeeding at bringing the concept of a Virtual Office to the world. The more of us that normalize the decentralized team getting centralized online, the better. It’s 2025 — let’s all accept that video conferencing hasn’t evolved in a long time, and the centralized office is great but comes with loads of cost - opportunity and financial. Oh, and the Virtual Office can actually compliment a physical office - it's not an either/or situation here. We have fully in-office customers because at the end of the day, people and their companies are more and more global.
Knock Knock
I’ve reached out multiple times to the founders of Kumospace, Roam and Gather to try and bond/riff/commiserate/say hi/talk shop — to talk about the thing we’re all trying to do - build better culture and collaboration with a new paradigm - with virtual spaces. None of them have written back. Come on guys - lame! Slide into my DMS plz. There’s millions of businesses out there, we can all get customers because we all have different flavors. We all bring something different to the table.
I’d kill to be able to smash beers with them and say “so why did you guys go so hard on X instead of Y” – and talk the ups and downs, but none of them will write back so I guess I will just go back to the F-14 Tomcat parked out front of our Virtual Office right now.
I am calling you all out - Howard, Tom, Philip, Alex, Kumail, Yang, and Brett - LFG dudes. Drinks are on me. Or you, depending on who has more runway. We don’t have to be BFF but we could certainly have one of the most hyper-specific-conversations in a long time. I’m in the NY area - WYA?
If you need me, I’ll be in the cockpit.
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Erik Braund
Founder & CEO, Katmai