Roam has raised $40 million for a virtual office space to improve employee communications and even rival Zoom.
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The Roam platform, which works like an office building in the cloud to enable employees to interact more efficiently, has been launched in beta this week.
Howard Lerman, Founder and CEO at Roam and former CEO at Yext, who has spent more than a year creating the platform, shared the news and a number of insights with CNBC.
One such enhancement Lerman spoke about was the transformation and optimisation of meeting times:
“What we are seeing is companies that use the cloud HQ in Roam see an average meeting time of about 8 minutes and 30 seconds, which is staggering, because for me previously, my average meeting times were 30 and 60 minutes.”
Roam is able to gather all employees into a single space, whether they are hybrid or operating remotely. As a result, companies are able to save time by making meetings less formal.
Slack introduced Slack Huddles in 2020 with a similar aim of reducing unnecessary meeting times, replacing half-hour and hour-long meetings with impromptu conversations. At its Slack Frontiers conference in June, the company released new Huddles features, including one-click video, auto-save to channel, multi-person screen sharing, and more.
Employees using the Roam platform appear in virtual rooms, allowing colleagues to drop by for a chat in a single click, as you would be able to in a physical office.
Roam’s HQ provides a bird’s-eye view of the employees’ ‘office floor’ and shows where everyone is, not only which rooms they are in virtually but also whether they are working remotely, at the office or in the field. There are audio-only and video and audio room options to reflect the real-life options of a physical office.
For company-wide presentations, Roam has a theatre-style room which has the capacity to include thousands of employees.
The HQ can be customised to suit each company’s needs by tailoring floor plans, including the number of floors in the virtual office, and designating who sits where. Profile pictures can be added and shelves can be personalised with photos. Lerman has even created his own entrance music.
Lerman’s inspiration for the platform reportedly came from forgetting to invite a co-worker to a Zoom call. Zoom did not provide any way for employees to know that a meeting was in progress and so he resolved to create greater visibility for employees.
Lerman raised $30 million in Series A funding, and he has invested $10.6 million of his own money, making a total of $40.6 million.
Jules Maltz at IVP partnered with Lerman on the fundraiser and Lerman said he is looking forward to partnering with Maltz again.
The pricing model for Roam will be usage-based, only charging for active monthly users. Lerman told CNBC: “I think it’s much more company friendly to do it that way”.
During the beta period, companies will only be able to use Roam if they have been invited to do so and there is a waitlist, according to Lerman. It is aiming to add around a dozen companies per month to the platform over the next six months.
