So-called virtual HQ companies are in vogue – if you haven’t heard, these are virtual workspace providers that seek to replicate the experience of being together in an IRL office for remote teams.

$5M financing.  Nooks recently raised $5M in seed capital from Tola Capital; Floodgate, Julia and Kevin Hartz (the CEO and chairman of Eventbrite) and Julia Lipton, the founder of Awesome People Ventures, also participated in the round.

Groups of investors like these are betting that Zoom fatigue will lead to the blossoming of video game-like platforms in which metaverses of work and productivity will be the next big thing in remote.  Sequoia Capital recently invested in the $26M Series A round for Gather, another virtual HQ company.

Stanford roots.  Nooks was launched in May 2020 by Stanford students Daniel Lee, Rohan Suri, Nikhil Cheerla, and RPI student Andrew Qu.  Zoom fatigue from school and classes led the team to build a virtual space for teams and like-minded communities to bolster productivity and at the same time enjoy the virtual experience.

Spaces.  The app is built around “spaces’ like the front desk, conference room and other rooms to simulate a real office.  The company uses a video API for each employee to have a circular avatar floating around the space and has integrations with platforms like Google Docs, YouTube, Asana and GitHub.

Traction.  They currently have thousands of weekly active users from teams and organizations like Stanford, Embroker and Workato that spend an average of six hours a day on the platform, per the company.

A big challenge for these virtual HQ companies to succeed is dealing with hybrid work settings and the proximity bias that the employees in the office get over the ones that are remote.

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