No matter the size or how well they are faring, the future of work is a top issue for nearly every company right now.” “The pandemic has significantly accelerated the rate of distributed businesses and the need for a cloud HQ. In pre-pandemic 2019, 40% of US jobs were either remote or hybrid,” Lerman said. “We are in the midst of a massive platform shift from in-office workplaces to various remote and hybrid models. Not all businesses are behind the changes, but there’s no denying that the pandemic rewrote the rules around the workplace - to the benefit of startups like Roam, potentially. Indeed, after more than two years of remote work, many employees have no interest in returning to the office. He points out that as many as 77% of U.S.-based jobs are now either remote or hybrid, according to a March 2022 Gallup poll, representing a huge potential customer base. Other companies are piloting VR and apps such as Oculus for Business or Horizon Workrooms, aiming to boost collaboration with immersive meetings for remote workers.īut Lerman believes strongly that Roam is differentiated, having invested the entirety of the seed round himself. This summer, Microsoft launched Viva Engage, an in-house social media app for employee engagement. Gather is another big winner (despite layoffs) in the space, having raised $77 million in total from investors, including Sequoia, Index and Y Combinator. In August, Kumospace raised $21 million for its platform that leverages lo-fi graphics and game-like mechanics to create a sense of togetherness. In fact, there are dozens of virtual HQ platforms, some venture-backed and some bootstrapped, mixing gamification and productivity into a service. Roam isn’t the first startup to attempt to tackle challenges around remote work with a cloud-based workspace. One recent study out of the University of North Carolina found that unnecessary meetings waste about $25,000 per employee annually, translating to $101 million a year for any organization with over 5,000 staffers. Shorter and fewer meetings can lead to cost savings through improved productivity. My average meeting time in Roam is eight minutes, an astounding number when you think about the prescheduled world of 30- and 60-minute Zoom time blocks,” Lerman said. “I found my own personal meeting minutes dropped by more than 40% when I switched from Zoom to Roam from 4.5 hours per day to 2.6 hours per day. But he argued that the platform as it exists today can save substantial time compared to typical remote setups. Lerman didn’t reveal much beyond that - it’s early days for Roam, which currently has around 40 corporate customers. Roam’s Map View lets workers see what’s going on and have “project presence,” Lerman says, as well as chat with colleagues via text or video chat.
That inspired Roam, which provides what Lerman describes as cloud-based “flex spaces” for workers at home, in offices and in the field.
CLOUD MONEY DISTRIBUTION PROFESSIONAL
One survey suggests that nearly half of employees - 46% - find remote work, at least in the early stages, can make it more difficult to maintain professional relationships with key stakeholders. To Lerman’s point, shifts to a mostly remote workforce don’t occur overnight. “I had this flash of insight - what if there was a bird’s-eye view of all the Zooms going on at a company at the same time that everyone could see? And better yet, what if people could move between and among them so they could participate as necessary and then quickly be on to their next thing?” Lerman told TechCrunch via email. When Yext’s workforce transitioned to remote work during the pandemic, Lerman perceived that employees lost “spontaneity and serendipity,” spent more time in meetings and began to lose visibility into what other meetings were going on and what their colleagues were doing. Lerman previously co-founded and led Yext, the publicly traded brand management company that uses a cloud-based network of apps and search engines to keep company information up to date across the web. The tranche, which comes after a previously unannounced $10.6 million seed round and values the company at $95 million post-money, will be put toward go-to-market efforts in the U.S.
CLOUD MONEY DISTRIBUTION SERIES
Roam, which bills itself as a “cloud HQ” for distributed, remote companies, today emerged from stealth with $30 million in Series A funding led by IVP with participation from undisclosed angel investors.
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