Week 7 Creative Post

This week, I attended a "Design Review" of Brooklyn Navy Yard based, XR community RLAB's accelerator program. Six startups with XR business applications were pitching their ideas to a mix of panels and general audiences, judged according to a set of VC questions on business growth and invest-worthiness.

I was most interested in how the startups use XR experience as a value-add, what were they able to do better with the help of XR, and turn it into a unique business advantage. Two startups caught my eye.

The first one is a crowd-sourcing AR talent platform. Instead of marketers sign contract with big agencies and spend 100k on an AR project, they could go upload their brief on this platform called Poplar and get direct access to over 1000 AR developers. There are a few creative freelancer networks for things from logo design to web development, but since the field of AR in mass-market advertising is relatively new, the unique challenge is that the person commissioning the work may not the familiar with the development process. A platform that specializes, with a large network and a proven record does come in handy for marketers with limited budget.

The second one is called Vermeer, started by a previously drone operating company to disrupt themself. Traditionally, drone operating companies own and maintaining equipments for shooting drone footages. When a film crew need a certain footage, they use such companies who provide all the expensive equipment, and have a network of freelance drone operators. Very often, the client can't describe their need perfectly on the ground, they draw arrows over maps and ended up with a lot of finger pointing on the set. The first pain-point is the drone operator doesn't have creative license, client (film crew) want total control of the footage, yet they can't be hands-on. The second pain-point is cost and turnaround time. The freelance drone operators are expensive, reshooting takes a lot of time, and coordinating client and freelancer to be on set at the same time also slow down the production.

Vermeer created accurate 3D models of popular cities which enable film crews to operate virtual cameras inside 3D landscapes. The exact camera path with then be sent to professional drone operators who just have to show up and accurately recreate what the client has made.

This user flow give creators total control over what to shoot, they can test and iterate without any help from the operator. The drone operators receive exactly what they need shoot and can just execute. The whole process take as few as three days according to the founder.