{"id":14281,"date":"2019-02-19T22:10:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T22:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/slack-off-send-videos-instead-with-11m-funded-loom-2.html"},"modified":"2019-02-19T22:10:48","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T22:10:48","slug":"slack-off-send-videos-instead-with-11m-funded-loom-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/slack-off-send-videos-instead-with-11m-funded-loom-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Slack off \u2014 send videos instead with $11M-funded Loom"},"content":{"rendered":"

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many emails can you replace with a video? As offices fragment into remote teams, work becomes more visual and social media makes us more comfortable on camera, it\u2019s time for collaboration to go beyond text. That\u2019s the idea behind Loom<\/a>, a fast-rising startup that equips enterprises with instant video messaging tools. In a click, you can film yourself or narrate a screenshare to get an idea across in a more vivid, personal way. Instead of scheduling a video call, employees can asynchronously discuss projects or give \u201cstand-up\u201d updates without massive disruptions to their workflow.<\/p>\n

In the 2.5 years since launch, Loom has signed up 1.1 million users from 18,000 companies. And that was just as a Chrome extension. Today Loom launches its PC and Mac apps that give it a dedicated presence in your digital work space. Whether you\u2019re communicating across the room or across the globe, \u201cLoom is the next best thing to being there,\u201d co-founder Shahed Khan tells me.<\/p>\n

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Now Loom is ready to spin up bigger sales and product teams thanks to an $11 million Series A led by Kleiner Perkins <\/a>. The firm\u2019s partner Ilya Fushman, formally Dropbox\u2019s head of product and corporate development, will join Loom\u2019s board. He\u2019ll shepherd Loom through today\u2019s launch of its $10 per month per user Pro version that offers HD recording, calls-to-action at the end of videos, clip editing, live annotation drawings and analytics to see who actually watched like they\u2019re supposed to.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re ditching the suits and ties and bringing our whole selves to work. We\u2019re emailing and messaging like never before, but though we may be more connected, we\u2019re further apart,\u201d Khan tells me. \u201cWe want to make it very easy to bring the humanity back in.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Loom co-founder Shahed Khan<\/p>\n

But back in 2016, Loom was just trying to survive. Khan had worked at Upfront Ventures after a stint as a product designer at website builder Weebly. He and two close friends, Joe Thomas and Vinay Hiremath, started Opentest<\/a> to let app makers get usability feedback from experts via video. But after six months and going through the NFX accelerator, they were running out of bootstrapped money. That\u2019s when they realized it was the video messaging that could be a business as teams sought to keep in touch with members working from home or remotely.<\/p>\n

Together they launched Loom in mid-2016, raising a pre-seed and seed round amounting to $4 million. Part of its secret sauce is that Loom immediately starts uploading bytes of your video while you\u2019re still recording so it\u2019s ready to send the moment you\u2019re finished. That makes sharing your face, voice and screen feel as seamless as firing off a Slack <\/a> message, but with more emotion and nuance.<\/p>\n

\u201cSales teams use it to close more deals by sending personalized messages to leads. Marketing teams use\u00a0Loom<\/span>\u00a0to walk through internal presentations and social posts. Product teams use\u00a0Loom<\/span>\u00a0to capture bugs, stand ups, etc.,\u201d Khan explains.<\/p>\n

Loom has grown to a 16-person team that will expand thanks to the new $11 million Series A from Kleiner, Slack, Cue founder Daniel Gross and actor Jared Leto <\/a> that brings it to $15 million in funding. They predict the new desktop apps that open Loom to a larger market will see it spread from team to team for both internal collaboration and external discussions from focus groups to customer service.<\/p>\n

Loom will have to hope that after becoming popular at a company, managers will pay for the Pro version that shows exactly how long each viewer watched. That could clue them in that they need to be more concise, or that someone is cutting corners on training and cooperation. It\u2019s also a great way to onboard new employees. \u201cJust watch this collection of videos and let us know what you don\u2019t understand.\u201d At $10 per month though, the same cost as Google\u2019s entire GSuite, Loom could be priced too high.<\/p>\n

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Next Loom will have to figure out a mobile strategy \u2014 something that\u2019s surprisingly absent. Khan imagines users being able to record quick clips from their phones to relay updates from travel and client meetings. Loom also plans to build out voice transcription to add automatic subtitles to videos and even divide clips into thematic sections you can fast-forward between. Loom will have to stay ahead of competitors like Vidyard\u2019s <\/a> GoVideo and Wistia\u2019s Soapbox that have cropped up since its launch. But Khan says Loom looms largest in the space thanks to customers at Uber, Dropbox, Airbnb, Red Bull and 1,100 employees at HubSpot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overall space of collaboration tools is becoming deeper than just email + docs,\u201d says Fushman, citing Slack, Zoom, Dropbox Paper, Coda, Notion, Intercom, Productboard and Figma. To get things done the fastest, businesses are cobbling together B2B software so they can skip building it in-house and focus on their own product.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

No piece of enterprise software has to solve everything. But Loom is dependent on apps like Slack, Google Docs, Convo and Asana. Because it lacks a social or identity layer, you\u2019ll need to send the links to your videos through another service. Loom should really build its own video messaging system into its desktop app. But at least Slack is an investor, and Khan says \u201cthey\u2019re trying to be the hub of text-based communication,\u201d and the soon-to-be-public unicorn tells him anything it does in video will focus on real-time interaction.<\/p>\n

Still, the biggest threat to Loom<\/a> is apathy. People already feel overwhelmed with Slack and email, and if recording videos comes off as more of a chore than an efficiency, workers will stick to text. And without the skimability of an email, you can imagine a big queue of videos piling up that staffers don\u2019t want to watch. But Khan thinks the ubiquity of Instagram Stories is making it seem natural to jump on camera briefly. And the advantage is that you don\u2019t need a bunch of time-wasting pleasantries to ensure no one misinterprets your message as sarcastic or pissed off.<\/p>\n

Khan concludes, \u201cWe believe instantly sharable video can foster more authentic communication between people at work, and\u00a0convey<\/span>\u00a0complex scenarios and ideas with empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/ZVzt2Bog_Jo\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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