VR Leader’s 6 Business Growth Lessons
When people think of virtual reality (VR), most people think of video games. But, did you know there’s much more to VR than gaming? One of the earliest references to virtual reality was imagined by Stanley G. Weinbaum in his science fiction thriller from the 1930s, Pygmalion’s Spectacles. Since that time, many iterations of VR have come and gone. Today, VR is used in healthcare, military and police applications, education, corporate training and much more.
Democratizing education with VR
Mat Chacon, CEO of Doghead Simulations, and his team are making VR a mainstream reality. The team of three founders, Chacon, along with Elbert Perez and Chance Glasco, created the first iteration of their VR application, rumii, over a three-day weekend several years ago. Since then, the VR dream team has expanded and become a leading force in helping organizations deliver VR-based remote corporate training and education in K-12, universities and continuing education around the world.
We caught Chacon during a multi-week European tour. Chacon took time out of his busy travel schedule to share his perspectives on the future of VR, business and education. The lessons he shared can be used broadly in defining the future for your business.
Lesson 1: Be the missing piece
“There was a big missing piece in the way people around the world educate and collaborate. We saw an opportunity to use VR to fundamentally bridge social class and close the resource gap for educators globally,” explained Chacon. As remote education and distributed workforces become more the norm than the exception, the interaction and collaboration experienced in a traditional classroom or work environment are lost. The company seeks to use its VR software, rumii, to democratize education and level the playing field regardless of where someone lives.
Making education more accessible has been a crucial factor in growth for Doghead Simulations. When it comes to business, having a purpose that goes beyond creating profits is not only good for the world, it is good for business.
Lesson 2: Recruit the best talent with a distributed organization
Everyone on the Doghead Simulations team is an owner. The entire team is inspired both because they are owners in the company and they are living the solution every day. The reality of today is you need to grab the best talent wherever they are or wherever they want to be. Today, it’s possible for people to create income from just about anywhere. Most employers haven’t realized this new reality and it is hurting their recruiting efforts. Especially for hard-to-hire technical and programming positions. Yet, for Chacon, having a distributed organization has been the norm since the beginning.
“The success of Doghead Simulations belongs to every person that works at our company,” said Chacon. “We are so fortunate to have a team of quite literally the best people in the VR industry. We don’t have a physical office. We work inside VR every single day with rumii as our office. In fact, every hire we have made has been done via VR.” continued Chacon.
This unique approach and capability have allowed Doghead Simulations to tap into the best VR talent in the world.
“The success of Doghead Simulations belongs to every person that works at our company.” – Mat Chacon
Lesson 3: Create a flexible environment
The rumii platform delivers a virtual classroom that makes it easy and natural for students to participate in as if they are sitting in a traditional classroom setting. With many different headsets and platforms available today, the software needed to be compatible with every system available. Plus, it needed to be accessible to those coming into the platform without a headset.
“Because our software is device agnostic, we’re fortunate to run on any PC or Mac built in the past 4 years, as well as all of the major VR Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) on the market, like Oculus and HTC Vive,” shared Chacon.
Flexibility built into the platform has paid dividends. In a situation where users may not have access to HMDs, it is important to support them in collaborating in the virtual environment. That forethought has allowed Doghead Simulations to appeal to more education and corporate leaders while supporting VR and non-VR hardware.
Lesson 4: Be a rule breaker
Doghead Simulations is breaking all the rules of traditional education and training in order to make it accessible to everyone. “Today’s learning environments are falling short of state-of-the-art capabilities,” insists Chacon. “The rumii platform solves these problems by re-engaging people in an immersive and social environment.”
Videoconferencing has been a collaboration platform for years now, but it has limitations. It is expensive, takes an enormous amount of bandwidth, creates large replay files and makes it easy for people to check out. People are easily distracted while taking online courses.
Doghead Simulations has changed this by creating a captivating environment that literally brings you into a virtual classroom. By making the experience immersive, texting, phone calls, email and social media distractions are eliminated. It’s like a true classroom experience where you can interact with classmates and the instructor. Plus, it does so with just a few Kbps instead of the up to 20 Mbps videoconferencing requires.
Lesson 5: Be a super hero
When you are a disruptor using a disruptive technology as the basis for your solution, it takes a lot of grit to continue forward in the face of roadblocks and setbacks. As would be expected when developing any new solution that counters traditional norms, the Doghead Simulations team have faced challenges over the years, but that hasn’t stopped them. Chacon has hard-won advice when it comes to continuing on when the going gets tough. He recommends embracing your inner superhero.
“When things get tough, and they will get tough, think of your favorite action hero and remember that they are you and you are them,” suggests Chacon. “You are the hero and you can overcome anything. Let me say that again because it bears repeating. You can overcome anything!”
Lesson 6: Starve the trolls
Changing the world means building a lot of bridges. And, trolls often live under those bridges. Chacon recommends starving the trolls. There will be fans and supporters, and there will be those with nothing positive to add to the conversation. From Chacon’s point of view, the greatest advancements, art, food, music, came as a result of people ignoring the status quo and creating momentum.
“Whenever you set out on a path to do something that most others are not doing, you’ll run into people that will criticize you, tell you that what you’re doing is not possible or that others can do it better than you,” says Chacon. “Ignore them. Believe in yourself, stand tough and move with purpose. Remember that most critics will criticize because they cannot create. So, do the world a favor and never feed the trolls,” urges Chacon.
It’s inspiring advice and it has worked magic for Doghead Simulations. It’s those that don’t back down and never give up that build the next reality – even in a virtual world.
Let’s review the lessons
Let’s review the lessons we can take from Chacon and the Doghead Simulations team.
- Be the missing piece.
- Recruit the best talent with a distributed organization.
- Create a flexible environment.
- Be a rule breaker.
- Be a superhero.
- Starve the trolls.
If there’s one thing that bubbles up throughout Chacon’s lessons, it is that cultivating a team that brings positive thinking and actions to the game will beat out everything else. His energy, positivity and clear commitment to a team approach are infectious. Doghead Simulations may live in the virtual world, but their success is very much in the real world.
Learn more about Doghead Simulations at www.dogheadsimulations.com.
Transcript from interview:
Mat Chacon, Founder and CEO of Doghead Simulations
Welcome to the Startup Leader Show where we learn lessons from leading startup founders and executives. I’m your host for today, Lisa Dreher and I’m really excited to introduce Mat Chacon. He’s the Founder and CEO of Doghead Simulations. Mat, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Happy to be here.
I am really excited about the work that Doghead Simulations is doing can you tell us a little bit about the work that you’re doing?
About Doghead Simulations
So, Doghead Simulations is a spatial computing company. We have a product named Rumii, r-u-m-i-i. Rumii is a virtual reality platform for education and training.
Talk to me a little bit about some of the use cases or customers that are using Rumii today.
We have about 7,000 institutions around the world using Rumii right now and we operate in three main market verticals. This includes education, enterprise and defense. But everybody uses us for the same thing. It’s typically you know instructor-led distributed education or corporate training and we have a lot of penetration in higher education. Some of our customers and use cases there would be like Harvard University uses Rumii to teach Egyptology. We also have enterprise companies like Ericsson that use us for conferences and corporate training. The defense department uses us the same way – for instructor-led distributed education for their next series of leaders.
Wow that sounds really cool so what is the weirdest thing that someone has put on VR so far in your platform?
Oh my God, that’s a great question. Number one, we had a very secure intelligence conference done in VR. Two, we have been approached on multiple occasions to have adult parties in VR, but we haven’t done this. That’s gotta be one of the weirdest ones.
“Absolutely build a customer-funded business. The reason you want to do that is because it enables you to test the market and deliver what people actually want need and are willing to pay for. That also offers you a freedom that you lose when you raise money through investment.” – Mat Chacon
Lessons Learned Along the Way
That’s awesome, well thank you so much for being here today. Matt has agreed to talk to us about some of the lessons that he’s learned in the development and growth of Doghead Simulations and some of the other startups and other companies he’s been involved in. So, let’s jump into the content here. One of my first questions that I really wanted to talk about is what have been some of the biggest keys to your business success so far?
It’s hard to find just one uh so there’s a few. Actually, the first I would say is focus for sure. So, when you’re building a business it’s really important to be focused on one simple problem and provide one simple solution to that problem. Stay laser focused in order to provide your customer with their most ideal experience. Outside of that I’d probably say is culture is really important. Finding the right team – it’s really difficult thing to do as a leader, but you need to surround yourself with trusted people that challenge you. It is really important to break the rules for sure. Everyone needs to remember there are no rules. I mean outside of like the obvious legal, ethical, and moral contracts that bind us all, there are no rules. There might be best practices, but rules are made to be broken. As an entrepreneur you know you’ll learn to do this. That’s why a lot of industries get disrupted. So be unconventional take calculated risks and be brave. The last thing I’ll say around that is probably the most important thing. As an entrepreneur you always need to be cash conscious. It should take a tremendous amount of effort to blow the dust off your wallet. Keep it open and make purchases. Every purchase that you make should have a very clear return on investment. If it doesn’t you shouldn’t make it. I’ve seen a lot of companies in my own industry – spatial computing industry, raise literally tens of millions of dollars and go on wild spending sprees and then go out of business 18 months later. Don’t do that. I think we’ve all seen that unfortunately. Unfortunately for the investors, right? All of those poor employees that worked at those companies.
Yes, absolutely that’s really good advice. So, when you think back over the years what would you say has been the most valuable lesson that you’ve learned?
