We invest in Amazing Humans -- and we want to share their stories, insights, knowledge, and all-around awesomeness. As builders and leaders, they work tirelessly towards their vision of the future they want to realize. Our founders make science fiction a reality, and we want to show off their superpowers!

Meet Inga Petryaevskaya, CEO & Founder of ShapesXR, a collaborative design tool to prototype AR and VR content and user experience for real-world products.

ShapesXR allows remote teams to brainstorm and ideate in 3D, do rapid prototyping, share instantly with team members, and co-edit in real-time. ShapesXR is live to download in the Oculus Quest App Store (Free + Pro Subscription for 9.99 USD).

Boost VC is a proud investor, alongside WXR Fund and HTC Vive. We are excited to support Inga who was also recently featured in Forbes as the “Future of Collaborative Design,” and won the 2021 AWE Auggie Award for “Best Collaboration Tool.”

Inga, let’s dive right in. Why VR, why ShapesXR, why now?

We’ve been on a mission to solve XR collaboration and real-time synchronization as a team for the last 3 years. When we all went fully remote in 2020, it became overwhelmingly obvious that existing tools made it painful to iterate fast in XR. We wanted to ideate spatially and communicate the vision BEFORE we started to code in Unity. After 50+ customer interviews with XR teams at many enterprise and small studios, we realized we weren’t the only XR team with this problem. The Oculus Quest headset has incredible distribution to gamers, developers and designers -- and ShapesXR will allow all Quest users to start rapid prototyping for future XR products and content immediately.

Who is seeing the most value using Shapes today?

ShapesXR gives designers, project managers and studio owners the ability to create a complete user flow and show a 3D prototype of the proposed product directly in VR. This keeps the early development costs low, removes the 2D to 3D conversion miscommunications and collaboratively engages every decision maker -- making your pitch more efficient and effective from the start.

Additionally, ShapesXR cuts development time, rework and design waste by creating a 3D vision in real-time, where remote teams can sync and iterate before even a single line of code is written. ShapesXR smoothes the transition for the idea of the clients/stakeholders to the design team to the development team, streamlining the workflow and speeding up delivery to a complete product.

Lots of debate about continuing to live in a remote world vs returning to in person collaboration, what do you see as the future of work?

Before the pandemic, I was very conservative about fully distributed teams. After almost two years of being fully remote and hiring 6 new team members without meeting them first -- I admit I have changed my mind.

Now, I focus on ensuring our remote team has the right culture, process, and tools to be efficient, connected, and keep all team members involved in the mission. We’ve integrated daily standups and reports, are dedicated to managing projects in Asana, and we have a blast running design sprints in our very own ShapesXR. We make decisions faster now too. I love when I see an upcoming ShapesXR meeting on my calendar.

What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the XR industry today?

I am excited about way more than 3 things in the XR industry but here are my top 3:

The number of new AR/VR/XR hardware that are coming to consumers is really incredible. Over the past few years, we went from expensive and cumbersome XR setups to portable all-in-one solutions. This is only going to get better over time - and help XR reach more and more people!
We see a XR use case expand beyond general gaming and enterprise training to new and interesting use cases like fitness, media consumption and most importantly productivity. I feel XR has the potential to be a game changer in different parts of our life (fun, health, media) as well as integrating with our work / productivity routines.
AR and VR are really blending faster than I imagined. With the recent passthrough feature launched for Quest developers, plus other Mixed Reality headsets coming into the market, we will need new experiences, interactions, and worlds. We are fully committed to that vision and are already experimenting to help creators shape their visions and products with Shapes XR.

What has been the hardest part of building an XR company? Any lessons learned?

Yes, the hardest part was definitely finding the right people - building our team and finding the right investors and strategic partners. We believe in VR as a new medium and we needed anyone we brought on board totally dedicated to our vision of the future. Especially our team - we needed motivated, driven team members that are passionate about solving this problem and willing to dedicate their time, talent and energy to through the development challenges and market rollercoaster.

It was also important to find the right investor who was really excited about XR, sees the potential and is long-term committed to the vision. I recall my meeting with Adam Draper, Managing Director at Boost VC before they decided to invest. He believed in the team, in our bold vision and to our customers who were eager to see us keep developing an accessible tool for 3D and XR. It was inspiring and energizing. So many investors are sleeping on VR and are still waiting.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you?

It might sound cliche, but my first encounter with VR was in the book “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline. The idea of stepping into a world where I can have superpowers was fascinating. I loved the power VR gave me to be whoever I wanted and create without boundaries. We celebrated an early launch in 2018 by going to see the “Ready Player One” movie in theaters with our team.

Recently, I read “That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea” by Marc Randolph. I can see parallels between new markets like video-streaming early on and the current XR market being established today. I can’t predict the future, but we can learn, and look for the patterns we learn from history, especially with more Black Swan events happening in our lifetime.

Any advice for future XR / VR / AR founders who want to take a leap and start a company?

XR is the future of computing, but being an XR founder is not for the faint of heart. It’s crucial to think hard about the people you surround yourself with. It’s not just about your team, but the broader community of developers, entrepreneurs and advisors with a shared passion for exploring this new world. That is the reason I am so grateful to be part of Boost VC and have the chance to celebrate successes together, support each other through the challenges and failures, and push forward on this ever-changing journey together.

Also, it is vital to have a BOLD vision - be sure and ask yourself, Why XR? Why this hardware? Why now? Is immersion key to solving a problem for your user? I think it’s important to remember that if the headset doesn’t critically improve the experience or outcome, people will stay 2D on their computer or phone.

What is the best way to access ShapesXR or contact you for enterprise remote team collaboration?

Head to the Oculus Quest App Store and give it a try. It’s free for individuals, $9.99 / month for professionals. https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3899112273551602/

You can contact me directly on Linkedin or through our website. If you are up for some “high-energy” onboarding you must connect with Gabriele Romagnoli on my team. He is an absolute master when leading these creative workflow sessions in VR :-)

Boost VC invests $500k in VR/AR/XR founders. Learn more.

Boost VC is the $500k Accelerator for Sci-Fi, co-founded by Adam Draper and Brayton Williams in San Mateo, CA. We invest at the intersection of Amazing Humans, Sci-Fi Tech and Trillion Dollar Markets. Learn more: www.boost.vc

Inga Petryaevskaya, CEO of ShapesXR