ShapesXR is a creation and collaboration platform for XR content and experiences in the metaverse. Pulse 2.0 interviewed ShapesXR founder and CEO Inga Petryaevskaya to learn more about the company.
Inga Petryaevskaya’s Background
Inga Petryaevskaya is a computer scientist by education. And Petryaevskaya said:
“I’ve worked as a researcher at Siemens’ R&D-focused unit called Corporate Technology. Soon enough, I realized that I have a passion for applying innovation, even something that would be considered fundamental research, to internal business units or even external clients.”
“At Dell Technologies, I was part of the office of the CTO and new business development group looking at innovations both inside and outside the company – from M&A to joint research with top universities and ISVs.”
“I’ve experienced breakthroughs in ML/AI at Siemens, cloud computing at EMC/Dell, and when I tried VR headset for the first time it was clear to me this is going to become the new computational platform. I knew that I wanted to be on the frontier of the new platform shift, although it would take time to become mainstream.”
“So after almost 12 years, I was ready to leave the corporate tech world and start my own company – leveraging this platform shift. It was very clear for me that this technology and spatial computing overall are going to change the way we work, learn, and entertain. And I was thrilled that I have been able to experience this happening in real-time.”
Formation Of ShapesXR
How did the idea for ShapesXR come together? Petryaevskaya shared:
“Our first product, Tvori, was a real-time animation and storytelling VR software. And the motto we had was ‘Anyone can tell a story.’ It resonated with me a lot as sharing your story and vision in 3D was such a powerful way to inspire people. I was pitching ideas and demoing prototypes throughout my career, and it was amazing to see the future when you can spend just a few hours building an animated pitch that can convince people to be on your side. But there was no consumer market for VR in those days. Our experiments with real-time animation to speed up the flat screen 3D production (such as creating previzes and animatics for 3D feature films) were also way ahead of the market given the state of VR those days.”
“After three years, we had learned a lot about what works in VR and what doesn’t. My biggest disappointment while building a VR product was that as a product owner, I didn’t have any tools or ways to describe my ideas to developers right in VR or run an ideation session right in the media – not just in 3D, but being fully immersed. It was slowing down the process. Eventually, I realized that other XR teams were trying to use our animation software to build prototypes to share with developers, even though it was never built for UI/UX designers or product owners.”
“The market was missing a very simple yet powerful tool to get together as a team, run a body storming session in an immersive 3D environment, design 3D UIs, and prototype immersive user flows, for both AR and VR. In 2020, I started interviewing XR teams and by the end of 2020 it was clear for me that I want to build such a product. As soon as we had the first collaborative build of ShapesXR we started to design, prototype and run user testing.”
“I’m a product type of a CEO, and it’s my biggest inspiration to imagine the product, stay close with users and clients, define product vision and work on the roadmap.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Petryaevskaya’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Petryaevskaya reflected:
“There are so many challenges that we’ve overcome as a team. I’m happy I made the decision to park the previous product and pivot to something that addresses immediate pain and inefficiency. Even though we had an offer to port Tvori to mobile headsets as is, I knew that this was not what the industry really needed now. As a product person I could see the inefficiencies and inability to ideate right in the space – be in the context of my user, a collaborative environment and a powerful yet very easy to use ideation, design, prototyping and presentation tool.”
“Fundraising is tough; fundraising for XR is super tough, but fundraising in 2023 was a whole different story. But we have a bold vision, we are building an infrastructure company that enables this industry to happen by enabling the creation of different and high-quality apps, games, and experiences. So we made it.”
“Growing from 4 people to 10 was such a significant step. Expanding from 10 to 24 and going remote was the next move that required new processes and a strong culture. Our own product enables us to be very efficient and communicate in a way I always wanted to do.”
Core Products
What are ShapeXR’s core products and features? Petryaevskaya explained:
“ShapesXR is a collaborative design platform that allows product teams to do body storming for their future app or game, create user interfaces, prototype user flows, run usability testing, and pitch designs to stakeholders. It’s a design, prototyping, and presentation tool for spatial apps and games.”
“Within ShapesXR there is a rich library of primitives and objects, but you can also import your own models and files, as well as there is a powerful Figma integration. Support of various pipelines and workflows is a priority – you can export the space, select objects, or open an entire project within Unity utilizing our Unity plugin.”
“Shapes is a prototyping tool meaning that you can show design in motion. You can build a linear storyboard or interactive prototype and play it to demo the user flow or interaction.”
“ShapesXR democratizes 3D content creation and spatial design by enabling non-technical users to create 3D designs, prototype immersive apps such as VR and AR games, training and real world design.”
“ShapesXR allows product owners, designers, and developers to think and create spatially together, build interactive prototypes, and run user tests with clients — and all of that with no single line of code.”
“In ShapesXR, designers are able to work directly with dimension, immersion, and ergonomics while designing inside the medium itself. They can then meet directly in the space to review and critique the concepts. Designs can then be turned into interactive, animated prototypes, which allows them to be tested with actual users, all before any code is written.”
“We’ve observed that teams who design in a spatial medium are able to find the right design faster and more easily communicate their ideas to stakeholders. Designers are able to iterate faster and more frequently. Developers receive more accurate, validated specifications. The end result is better spatial apps, made faster.”
“Truly great Spatial experiences are impossible to design outside the spatial medium, at least those that feel and look like they are born spatially for spatial media. They are magical, they give us wow moments.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of ShapeXR’s most significant milestones? Petryaevskaya cited:
“Since 2021, ShapesXR has been adopted by hundreds of XR teams — indie game developers, VR/AR studios, and Fortune 500 companies. More than 350,000 projects have been created in ShapesXR. 100 Universities applied for a ShapesXR education license and are introducing courses and design labs in Shapes. The platform is the Top 20 best-rated free apps on the Meta Quest store.”
“Mark Zuckerberg singled out ShapesXR as an example of VR’s unrivaled capacity for creativity and collaboration. Anand Dass, Director of VR/AR Content at Meta, called ShapesXR: “One of the most promising VR applications I have come across” and the “future of collaborative design.”
“Closing the $8.9 million round allows us to go for our very ambitious roadmap and build ShapesXR 2.0.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Petryaevskaya about customer success stories, she highlighted:
“Logitech’s use of ShapesXR is a prime example of utilizing VR creation power for visualizing environments and spaces for the real world at human scale. An entire conference in Berlin was designed in 3D with all their different stakeholders working together to finalize the look, feel and layout of the venue. They were able to see how participants would interact with booths and features and showcase the whole design to prospective sponsors.”
“Qualcomm Technologies produce immersive journeys like the XR music experience in collaboration with Trigger XR and Duran Duran.”
“Pico design team, which is part of ByteDance, is exploring the future of user interactions in ShapesXR as they are building various spatial apps and OS itself.”
“I’m very happy to see other XR teams and studios adopting ShapesXR. Our clients include many of the known titles on store, like FitXR, TRIPP, Transfr, WinReality, Nanome, Immerse – to name a few.”
“ShapesXR can be used for any 3D design – real-world physical products, services and experiences, and virtual 3D apps. But the highest adoption right now we see from XR teams, and we have preliminary built Shapes to help teams build for this new spatial internet. That’s why the biggest advantage is designing in the media itself: at actual human scale, utilizing dimension and space around, exploring UX with actual ergonomics of interactions in the headset/glasses. The quality and diversity of ideas and designs is drastically different whether XR team is exploring them on 2D flat screen and then port to headset vs exploring and ideating, designing right in the headset.”
Funding/Revenue
After asking Petryaevskaya about the company’s funding and revenue information, she revealed:
“We recently secured $8.6 million in Seed funding. We are now working on ShapesXR 2.0 – adding powerful features for UI design, high fidelity prototyping and going cross-platform.”
“We have the free tier of the product as we’re building an industry standard. Anyone can find ShapesXR on Meta Quest store and start creating, collaborating with other people, and sharing their vision. We’ve also introduced the team/studio and enterprise plans that have valuable features for organizations, like assigning permissions and roles, creating projects, organizing files in folders, and advanced collaboration like a presentation and same page modes.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Petryaevskaya assessed:
“We’re serving XR teams – any teams that are building VR, AR, and MR apps, games, and experiences for the wearables. We think that the recently announced $2 billion revenue figure for apps on the Meta store is a great indicator for our market.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Petryaevskaya affirmed:
“One of our biggest advantages is that you do not need to be an experienced user of VR or in 3D to create in ShapesXR. Our tool uses the inherent 3D nature of XR to make designing 3D easy. You don’t have to fiddle around with abstract 2D controls, as in the case of flat screen tools. In XR, your controls are native, you grab and move objects like you would in real life. So, any UX developer or 2D designer with no 3D skills can easily access and learn it.”
“Another important advantage of any flat screen tools is the fact that designers can explore the idea and design at actual human scale and right in the medium they are building their app for. Normally, this transition of designs from flat screen to headset and glasses usually costs a lot of time and effort in iterations, and that results in many compromises being made due to time.”
“We’re a spatial design tool that allows you to truly design spatially in a headset. Being in the medium itself opens up the users’ minds and instantly affords them an intuitive understanding of spatial design considerations such as scale and ergonomics.”
“We have many advantages over other platforms available in the market. Most importantly, you do not need to be an experienced user of VR or 3D. ShapesXR is easy to learn and one can easily get to grips with it, just like they would with PowerPoint. So, any UX developer or 2D designer with no 3D skills can easily access and learn it. The big advantage of any flat screen tools is the fact that designers can explore the idea and design at an actual human scale and right in the media they are building their app for, as the transition from flat screen to headset and glasses usually costs a lot of time, effort and ends up with many compromises on ergonomics and magic.”
“The DNA of ShapesXR is the ability to show the design in motion without any line of code – one can build a storyboard or an interactive prototype that can be tested and interacted with. We give UI/UX XR designers a superpower to own the design process and iterate on the design, run user tests without the need to involve the developer early on. It saves a ton of time and ends up in better, magical designs.”
“The ease of co-creation in real-time in ShapesXR enables the team to unleash their creativity at full and run brainstorming/ideation sessions right in VR in 3D with all types of roles – designers, marketing experts, product owners, and developers. ”
“In ShapesXR designers are able to work directly with dimension, immersion, and ergonomics which is crucial for any immersive experience. With no effort designers can build an animated or interactive prototype and share the space with end users and stakeholders to run the review and get important feedback early on in the design process.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Petryaevskaya concluded:
“Our goal is for ShapesXR to become the de facto industry standard for UI/UX design of spatial apps. Ultimately, we want to democratize XR content creation so that everyone can become visual storytellers. To do this, we are really engaging with our customer base to understand the features and improvements they would like to see.”
“This enables us to build ShapesXR with the needs of a range of users in mind. By making ShapesXR as functional and as accessible as possible, it becomes a platform that every member of a team in every type of organization can use. That’s key for a platform to be truly collaborative. The other side to this is ensuring that ShapesXR can be used on every device. This is why we are quickly adapting to new VR devices as they come on the market.”
