Patrick was joined by special guest Joe Manuele, who is the CEO of Highfive.
Joe looks back at the most crucial aspects of the last 12 months from a Highfive perspective. Raising investment funds was crucial for them, and Joe explains that due to the competitive landscape in terms of start-ups, it is more difficult than it might appear.
"There is a lot of people that get rejected. It was very exciting that the company was funded because of the vision that it had."
Joe explains that the founding vision of Highfive was based on simplifying the video conferencing experience. Due to historic costs and complexities, video is still an underutilised medium in meeting rooms globally.
"We should be able to make video ubiquitous in a conference room-type environment. Over 90% of conference rooms don't have any form of video today."
The main focus from Highfive was to make sure that their product was enterprise ready. They had experienced great success in the SME market, with the first WebRTC 1080p camera, but wanted to expand the enterprise features to make the solution more suitable for larger environments. They have now released a 4K camera, in partnership with Dolby, and meeting recording and storage features utilising the AWS platform.
Patrick asks Joe about the main trends that are impacting Highfive. Joe explains that audio conferencing is still a huge market, when there are significantly cheaper and better options available with video solutions. The conference or huddle room space is developing rapidly and that is Highfive's primary target. "You should be able to unpack the three boxes we send you, plug everything in, download an app and within 15 minutes your video conference room is up and running."
