Teooh Inc., an avatar-based mobile app virtual gathering platform, today announced that its total funding has reached $4.5 million with further participation from Spark Capital and General Catalyst.

The announcement follows the initial beta launch of the platform in April. Teooh’s platform operates by creating a virtual meeting space with avatars representing people, which can then interact in virtualized meeting places that represent real-world venues. These venues can support intimate groups as small as two, with full audio between participants, and gatherings as large as 100 attendees.

The platform uses a mobile app to provide the maximum accessibility for users to gather virtually, enabling remote meetings, personal gatherings and virtual events, such as conferences and even concerts.

“Webinar platforms fail to deliver social experiences that foster genuine human connection, and ‘being in the right room at the right time’ is primarily why people attend events in the first place” said Jon Hibbins, co-founder and chief technology officer of Teooh. “The need for building and maintaining community connection remotely has always been essential, and there’s an obvious demand for tools that do more than just livestream our faces.”

Since the beta launch, Teooh’s platform has become host to over 4,000 virtual events that take place in custom-built virtual environments for events, remote team meetings, personal gatherings and more types of virtualized gatherings. From April to May the platform experienced growth of 107% in events created.

“People are using social media and collaboration tools more than ever, but the current video ecosystem lacks the ability to let individuals sit down next to each other and truly connect,” said Bijan Sabet, co-founder and general partner at Spark Capital.  “Real human connection happens in a shared environment, virtual or physical, and Teooh has created a safe, comfortable space where people can focus on growing genuine relationships.”

Teooh’s platform arrives on the cusp of a rapid shift to remote work and work-from-home by numerous companies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Many teams used to working together in offices are currently still acclimating to new communication needs, and text and video chat tools have become commonplace to keep collaboration alive.

Even now, numerous big companies have considered making work-from-home the new normal. According a report from CNN, industry leaders joining in this cultural change include Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., Square Inc. and a multitude of others.

Using this platform as a way to bridge the literal distance gap and the lack of socialization that workplaces now experience, Teooh believes that it can help relieve the friction created by remote work. The virtual meetings hope to replicate the benefits of physical gatherings without the danger of spreading illness or costs such as travel and time constraints.

“We’ve created a platform that puts us back in the room together so we can do what we do best and what we miss the most when we’re remote—connect with others and create communities,” said Hibbins.

Teooh is currently available for mobile devices with iOS and Android apps — and a PC version in beta. It was created with maximum accessibility in mind and does not require expensive or hard-to-obtain VR headsets. The company also intends to develop a version of the app that will work with AR/VR headsets; however, it intends to keep the core app on mobile devices to make it available to the largest audience possible.

Image: Teooh