By “metaverse,” I mean the world of virtual and augmented reality. Until recently, it was a term mostly relegated to science fiction and gaming. But with Facebook’s recent name change to Meta, the reality of a future where these technologies are apart of our every day is close at hand. Mark Zuckerberg’s definition is “the next generation of the internet.” I like that, but it still falls a bit short of everything I believe it to be.

This year, we moved our primary place of business to virtual reality, making us the first colony in this new world. We committed to rolling out VR headsets for our 150+ team members around the globe and began meeting, collaborating, socializing, and even selling our intelligence solutions to pharma and biotech customers in virtual reality. I’ve even committed to stop taking video calls or in-person meetings and lean completely into the metaverse as a place of business for a full year.

Why? I’ve answered this question more than a few times in the last year. There are a three important business reasons for our move to the metaverse:

1. The Metaverse gives us the proximity we didn’t know we needed.

LARVOL has always been a remote company, starting with the first team members to join me in 2004. Over the next 16 years, we became experts, experimenting with every available tool for collaboration and connection. By the time video calls became a necessity during COVID, our global team was already using them exclusively to work together across the miles (and time zones). Before I strapped on a headset last summer, I would have told you that we had the most connected team possible.

But I was wrong. We were dealing with a lack of connection that was a symptom of our lack of proximity. I didn’t recognize what was missing until we found it in the virtual reality workspace.

‍Today, our offices are built in the VR/AR collaboration platform Spatial. We have the option to gather in an outdoor amphitheater, a beautiful boardroom, a campfire under the starry night sky, and any number of personalized office spaces. The first time our executive team gathered around that boardroom table, I turned my head and made eye contact with my VP of Operations who I have worked closely with for 12 years but never met in person. We immediately felt the difference. 

VR collaboration gets so much closer to recreating the genuine feeling of human connection that we experience in person. When “in the room” together in VR, we can read each other’s body language, gesture and nod to one another, move closer to high-five or have aside conversation, and yes, even hug.  There is an energy to this togetherness that is impossible via video calls, and we find real empathy for one another in the process.

There is also a benefit to closing out the other screens, tasks, and people that may be distracting us from the task at hand. With the blinders of a VR headset in place, we are more productive and purposeful with our time together and have fewer meetings as a result.

2. The Metaverse offers an experience our customers (and recruits) will never forget.

As soon as we felt the benefits of engaging with one another in VR, we started thinking about the applications beyond our internal team. While the technology is still new, we can introduce this world of the future to others and form a connection with them they will never forget.

In the last year, we’ve hosted top oncologists, pharma executives, and friends from across the business world in unique VR spaces including: an NFT Gallery of our own digital art collection under a starry night sky, a Star Wars style cantina, and a futuristic floating island in the sky. We’ve even invited applicants in the interview process to visit our offices in VR to get a feel for our work culture and test their fit in an entirely new way.  

Introducing someone to the metaverse for the first time is still a complicated ordeal. It requires purchasing and mailing a VR headset, walking them through the technical setup from afar, and troubleshooting any number of potential problems. But the payoff is always worth it. Our guests will never forget their first experience in this new world, and whether it’s for a networking event, a sales call, or a happy hour, the unique experience cultivates the kind of forward-thinking partnerships we want to build with our customers.  

3. The Metaverse shift is unavoidable, and that’s a good thing.

We are in the very early days now, but like the internet before it, the metaverse is here to stay. Facebook’s Meta announcement sealed the deal. The metaverse will profoundly change our world, but I believe it will be for the better. It may take 5, 10, or even 15 years (and several generations of hardware), but many other businesses will experiment with from the metaverse. And when they do, I believe they will find the benefits of connection, collaboration, and creativity too tempting to resist.

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