Seattle Startup Week is a five-day celebration of the Emerald City’s entrepreneurial community and its achievements. Participants come together in various venues throughout Seattle to connect, share ideas, and bond over their experiences as local business trailblazers. In the spirit of Startup Week, WTIA wants to shout out two companies that are pioneering new technologies in virtual reality and were finalists for the shark tank portion of the Immerse VR Conference – Doghead Simulations and ensoVerse – and two of their co-founders, Elbert Perez and Eugene Capon.   

Doghead Simulations’ mission is to use VR to “solve business’ biggest problems,” which they do by providing tools to make it easier for professionals to collaborate from a distance.

“We all have issues with voice-only teleconferencing due to the fact that we lose so much social presence,” Perez said. “But with VR, we gain back a lot of that presence through the head movement and hand gestures. Not forgetting the fact that we can do so much more in a full 3D environment. The whole VR field is pretty exciting, and I can’t wait to see more and more innovations with VR in terms of affordability and form factor.”

Doghead Simulations is itself a fully virtual company, with employees living in Washington, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, and Brazil.

“We use our own product to meet every day and conduct our standups,” Perez said.

Another Seattle startup, ensoVerse, is making a name for itself in real estate. In early 2017, it will release the world’s first automated 3D virtual reality real estate visualization app, which will allow real estate professionals to create interactive house tours directly from their smart phones.

The company started out as a five-man team at the third Seattle hackathon, held at the University of Washington. The team took home the “Best Use of New Technology” award and started ensoVerse two months later. They chose to remain in Washington as its one of the few VR epicenters in the US; the same reason Perez chose Seattle as Doghead Simulations’ homebase.

“[Seattle] is the epicenter of VR, with great VR company offices of HTC, Oculus, Microsoft, and Valve. Also, two of our three co-founders call Seattle their home,” Perez said.

Capon said he’s also proud to be a part of the Pacific Northwest’s VR community.

“It’s hard to imagine this all started from a weekend project where none of us knew each other. I’d recommend anyone looking to get into VR start by going to a hackathon, game jam or create-a-thon. You never know what may come out of it.”

Perez’s advice to aspiring startups?

“Be laser-focused on your product and never lose that focus. It is too easy to be pulled into all these directions, with good intentions by team members, VC’s, angels, friends, and the market itself. Find that focus and bulldoze your way to it and you will find that you have a better product overall.”

 

Keep up with Doghead Simulations on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and ensoVerse on Facebook.