Virtual Mojito Live EP023 / Create a unique view of virtual events
Virtual Mojito Live EP023 / Create a unique view of virtual events
Organize customizable and brandable events, Distraction-free meeting experience
Hello community,
How important are virtual events to you?
Recently, we talked with some founders and community builders. We have realized many nuances in the industry.
We have seen a significant decline in the desire to organize, participate and engage in virtual events. Do you feel the same? What have you done to ensure that you provide a unique experience?
Felix
@felix12777 on Twitter
Tools and resources
Zuddle →
You don't have to choose between configurability and ease of use. Zuddl's all-in-one platform gives you complete control to build the virtual event you've imagined. Create engaging and immersive experiences for your attendees in minutes.
Community spotlight
Remote Leaf helps job seekers save time by scouring hundreds of remote job boards and send them the ones that are fit based on the skills and location. Give it a try for free!
Meet-a-Mojito
Hey! Tell us about yourself and a fun fact.
Hey! I'm Dave and I'm building Circles for Zoom to give people more control over the Zoom UI and meeting experience. A few fun facts about me: I have no sense of smell, I helped to open and build Facebook's NYC Engineering Office, and I love punk rock concerts and getting outdoors - snowboarding, tennis, beach volleyball, and more 🤘
What motivated you to start your company?
While we were building our last company, I felt the pain of having to resize the large Zoom window on my screen during sales and support calls to keep an eye on the other person and have room to take notes.
After the pandemic hit and we went remote, our team struggled to collaborate effectively because the Zoom window took up so much space. We experimented with building a new interface for Zoom that turned everyone into little bubbles on our screen so we could see each other while reviewing code, documents, and other materials on calls. This was a massive boost for our team's productivity!
How do you acquire users and grow your company?
We originally built Circles as an experiment for our own team. After talking to friends about the productivity boost we felt, we started passing it out to friends' companies and the product started to take off from there.
The most successful growth channel for us has been posting to relevant subreddits about our development progress and engaging those communities. We're also always trying to get our users into Zoom calls with us to share feedback - this not only helps us determine our roadmap and prioritize features but building these relationships has driven retention, loyalty, organic referrals.
One thing we've learned about productivity tools is that everyone has a different workflow so it has been an interesting process for us to support multiple interaction methods for different types of users.
What is your future goal?
There are many directions we see the product evolving into. Overall, we want to build the best experience for remote meetings and collaboration, similar to what Superhuman has done for email.
One potential direction is to support other meeting platforms, so if you enjoy our interface for meetings, then why not use Circles for meetings on Google Meet, Teams, Webex, etc.
Another direction that's particularly interesting to us is always-on collaboration. Because of the lightweight feeling of a Circles meeting, some of our users just stay in a room together all day muting/un-muting to ask questions of each other and feel more connected.
We think this is an interesting behavior that we could build better experiences to support. One thing we know for sure is that the direction we move in will be heavily guided by the needs, feedback, and usage patterns of our users.
Anything our readers should know?
Circles is free to use. We're a small team, working as hard and as fast as we can to build the best meeting experience out there. We love feedback (especially critical feedback) so we'd really appreciate anyone who's interested in trying Circles to share feedback - we work hard to deliver features and wins for our users quickly!
Dave Schatz, Co-founder, Circles for Zoom
Virtual events that you should not miss
21 Apr / DigiConf21 - The B2B Marketing Conference
22 Apr / Working with Breakthrough Technology at Intuit
23 Apr / Techstars Startup Weekend Online Estonia Sustainability
27 Apr / EXPAND 2021
29 Apr / #5 HealthTech Session
What we’ve been reading
The 9 best hacks for working from home →
“Working from home can be challenging, especially for teams who aren’t used to working remotely. But with the right work from home tips, tools and mindset you can make it work. Here we’ve collected the best work from home hacks to make your working-at-home experience more manageable and efficient.”7 Best Work From Home Gadgets To Excel In 2021 →
”Well, it looks like remote work isn’t going anywhere soon. And for many of us, that’s a relief. Remote work has given us greater flexibility, decreased our commuting time, allotted us more time with family, and more. But there’s definitely an “art” to working remotely — many of the tips and tricks for working in the office don’t apply any more. That’s why we’ve decided to round up the best work from home gadgets that you need for 2021.”
Thanks for reading! You can find the list of curated virtual event resources on our website virtualmojito.com or read the previous newsletter.
I would love to hear your ideas - send me a message at hi@virtualmojito.com and start a conversation!
And of course, share this post with your friends who might find it useful!