FIRST ZOOM, NOW A BOOM
Hunt on for video apps that work in unique situations, deliver more intimate experiences
SAN FRANCISCO When Arthur Wu worked at the data-mining company Palantir, he spent years flying across the U.S. so that his team, dotted around the country, could meet up in person.
The jaunts came at great expense, both financial and social, and Wu had all the digital tools such as Slack and Zoom meant to cut down on such meetings. But he and his staff did them anyway.
“Being there in person just felt key to building a genuine relationship. They were the moments when we felt the most comfortable,” he says.
It's an experience that many would relate to. As the coronavirus pandemic has kept workers away from their offices and colleagues, face-to-face interactions have been replaced by video screens.
Recently, Zoom — which has become a vital resource for meetings, job interviews and socializing — reported an explosion in growth that sent its value soaring 40 per cent in one day.
But despite its popularity, Zoom has proven no match for real-life interaction. “Zoom fatigue” — the exhaustion of back-to-back meetings — and “Zoom bombing” — in which pranksters invade a meeting, often to share explicit material — entered the pandemic lexicon not long after Zoom itself.
Wu is now one of a string of entrepreneurs seeking to create the next wave of video services, ones that are more suited to specific tasks, or that better replicate the feeling of being in person.
His startup, Sidekick, makes video screens designed to be always on while employees work, creating a feeling of attachment more similar to sitting next to a co-worker at a desk.
The vertical screen, the size of an iPad, constantly broadcasts a video feed to members of the same team, and is typically used for around six hours a day.
Users spend most of that time muted, but they can instantly start conversations with co-workers by tapping a screen, in the same way they might have once tapped on a shoulder.
Based on around 80 groups of early users, which pay around $50 per tablet per month and include Bloomberg and the defence company Anduril, these conversations tend to happen around 12 times a day — far more than the average number of video meetings.
If Wu and other startups get their way, Zoom, Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams will one day seem like the Model T of video calling services: functional and pioneering, but primitive.
As the stubborn coronavirus continues, and the likelihood of increasing reliance on screens even after it passes, investors and entrepreneurs are now going through an explosion of dedicated video apps intended to replace the one-sizefits-all services.
Sarah Cannon, a partner at venture capital firm Index Ventures, says people were drawn to Zoom during the disorienting early weeks of a pandemic for which nobody was prepared.
“It was a crisis. And Zoom was what people knew,” she says.
“We had this massive demand, so when the product works, everybody kind of took it and applied it to whatever their challenge was. No one knew any other tools and no one was used to the behaviour. Now that behaviour has shifted.”
Cannon says Zoom fulfils the specific and valuable task it was designed for: virtual workplace meetings.
But it was not designed for classrooms, doctors' appointments, live concerts or gabfests, all of which it has been co-opted for in the last six months.
The most recent batch of companies at Y Combinator, the leading Silicon Valley startup school that is seen as a barometer of new tech trends, had at least a dozen video-related services.
They ranged from Together, a video chat app for grandparents and grandchildren that includes games and bedtime stories, to Zuddl, for holding and streaming large business conferences online.
Another, Rally, aims to let people hold parties online without everyone shouting over one another: Individuals can “take the stage,” for example, when delivering a speech or groups can split off into “tables” where the muffled noise of the rest of the party can still be heard in the background.
Former yoga teacher Rachel Lea Fishman founded Sutra, which lets fitness instructors host classes online, earlier this year. The service was originally designed to let instructors rent out space and host classes, but was forced to shift to video as gyms closed.
Fishman says most instructors started out teaching on Instagram before moving to Zoom, but it quickly became apparent it is not suited to many fitness classes that rely on staying in time with music.
“Zoom needs to be replaced long term. There's obviously improvements that can be made,” she says.
Wu also says his Sidekick device is not easily replicated on existing video call services.
“With an always-on Zoom, psychologically it feels very different. You get this feeling where there's 11 people who could be just staring at you if your Zoom window is running underneath other windows.
You feel spied upon.
“People just stop logging in because they forgot to or they just think it's creepy.”
Rytis Vitkauskas, an investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners, says the explosion of comedians, musicians and speakers broadcasting themselves has made it difficult to find what to participate in.
Investors are starting to put money behind Zoom's rivals. In May, two top venture capital investors, Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund, put $10.8 million into Run the World, an online video events company founded by two ex-Facebook employees.
One of its key features is a “cocktail party” function that puts a group of attendees in a chat at random so they can network.
There is a question, however, about how much video calls will persist when the virus subsides.
A mass return to the office, gym and social events could see people ditch their video screens in favour of the human touch.
Cannon says she estimates that roughly 80 per cent of our behaviour will go back to normal, but that the remaining 20 per cent is still a major opportunity.
“Some fraction of this behaviour will be sticky and some fraction of (Zoom's) $130 billion is still a very large market.”
London Sunday Telegraph