It remains debatable what the next major computing platform will be but many signs are pointing to immersive technologies — a catch-all category for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies.
At Downing Ventures we first invested in immersive tech in 2018 when we led a £1.6m seed round in a relatively unknown startup called Masters of Pie. This week, the company has announced a new £3.6m round, which we were fortunate to participate in alongside Robert Bosch Venture Capital and new lead investors Foresight and the Williams Advanced Engineering Group.
Our investment in Masters of Pie is a case example of our thinking on immersive tech and since we remain open to backing opportunities in this area I thought it would be good to make our thoughts on it public.
Inspiration from Historic Platform Revolutions
In the 80s we had the personal computer revolution sparked by the launch of the Macintosh. In the 90s we had the World Wide Web revolution ignited by the first popular web browser Mosaic. And in the decade that followed we welcomed the smartphone revolution with the debut of the iPhone in 2007.
What’s next will no doubt be built on what came before and a growing number of technology insiders (not least Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg) now believe that the next major computing platform will be immersive technology. We believe this too.
Accelerating Adoption of Immersive Tech
Each tech revolution needs layers of enabling technologies to drive mass adoption. For the PC revolution we needed fast and affordable microprocessors. For the web we needed wide adoption of a standardised communication protocol to get as many computers reliably connected as possible (you can read about why TCP/IP won here). And for smartphones we needed all the above and more!
If immersive is going to take off in the way that PCs, the web, and smartphones did, it will also need many layers of enabling technologies and this is where lots of work is happening at the moment.
We’ve already seen large investments in hardware enablers by tech giants Microsoft (see the Hololens), Facebook (see the Oculus Quest which sold out on launch), Qualcomm/Nokia/Huawei (see 5G developments) and earlier stage startups (see Wave Optics). But now that the hardware is good enough, the case for investing in software enablers has become more compelling.
Why We Backed Masters of Pie
Masters of Pie is a immersive tech enabler startup. It has developed a SDK called Radical that natively adds immersive and collaboration features to host applications. This means VR/AR/MR support can be added to software (initially CAD apps) without developers having to write tons of new code.
We backed Masters of Pie because of the founders’ tenacity and vision, their differentiated approach to immersive technology, and the huge market opportunity that awaits them. More specifically:
The Founders — We first met Karl and Matt in late 2017 and what impressed us was not just their immense technical talent but also their relentless drive to realise an almost prophetic vision of a world where remote collaboration on sophisticated 3D data in an immersive environment was as seamless as 2D collaboration on Slack, Zoom, and Google Docs.
The Technology —The Radical SDK makes it easier and quicker for developers to access immersive and collaboration capabilities. Initially focused on CAD software such as Siemens NX (this has 1 million+ users), the Radical SDK means CAD users can host remote VR/AR collaboration sessions without having to export gigabytes of data to standalone apps. The advantage of this technology is that design reviews be 5–10x more effective.
The Market — Remote working is a fast-growth trend and though we’ve seen huge successes with application layer apps in the 2D realm (Notion, Slack et al.), we won’t see anything in the immersive realm until the basic plumbing is in place. Masters of Pie unlocks new ways to collaborate remotely on 3D data and with millions of industrial designers using CAD software, we believe huge value will be unlocked here.
When Will the Immersive Wave Truly Take Off?
There’s lots more to be done on the hardware front of immersive technology. Headsets are still bulky and the good ones are really expensive (hence our investment focus on enterprise for now, which can afford pricey headsets and is already seeing strong RoI use-cases — lots of great examples here.)
But with Apple reportedly working on AR glasses for mass market launch in the next 5 years, and with lots of entrepreneurial and investment activity across hardware and software enablers, we can expect immersive technology to take off within a decade. Moreover by supporting founders such as Karl and Matt, we hope to play some part in accelerating what could indeed be the next major computing platform of our generation.
27 Jan 2020: Downing Ventures invested in the £3.6m round for Masters of Pie alongside new lead investor Foresight Williams with participation from Robert Bosch Venture Capital.
