Three very prominent entrepreneurs are out there building interesting products in the space we loosely call remote tech. Others put the ‘future of work’ label on that bucket. Either works.
First, there is Howard Lerman. The Yext co-founder is now the force behind ro.am (remote offices and more), a startup that aims to connect all the players within a distributed workforce (remote, HQ, and satellite offices) on a single collaborative platform. Why schedule a 30-minute meeting when I can just stick my head in Nate’s virtual office and have a chat?
True to form, Lerman is relentless in his evangelism for ro.am.
Then there is David Shim, who recently raised a $21 million Series A to scale Read AI his startup that applies AI to online meetings to find out how engaging the meeting was (and how engaged its participants were) and to extract to-dos and insights that can help improve operations. Shim sat for a very engaging fireside chat at the recent L24 conference.
From Waitroom to Rumi to…
And finally, there is Vinny Lingham. He is a serial tech founder (Yola and others). Vinny is also a judge on Shark Tank in his native South Africa (though he lives in California). His startup Rumi.ai also exists in this remote tech space. Of the three companies, Rumi seems to be having the hardest time finding traction.
Rumi began its life in 2020 as Waitroom, a concept that seemed to be, “Why try to book a 30-minute meeting with your business hero that you will never get? Instead, get 5 minutes with them through this platform.”
That wasn’t going to scale and Waitroom soon evolved into an AI-assisted video conferencing platform (and the name change).
Rumi says its current core product, “is designed to outsmart and replace conventional meeting tools, enabling participants to concentrate on their priorities.”
This is very close to how Shim might describe Read.ai. So Rumi may not be chasing the wrong opportunity.
However, Rumi is now pivoting to Enterprise SaaS. That is a lot of pivots in a short amount of time. And it has brought in a new CEO to get there. Lingham has kicked himself upstairs to Chairman of the Board”. This move makes room for new CEO Ramsey Pryor.
“Ramsey joined our team earlier this year to lead sales and has been instrumental in harmonizing our strategic vision with our product roadmap and market approach,” Rumi wrote in a LinkedIn post this week.
“With over two decades of top-tier SaaS leadership, including a transformative tenure at Branch Metrics, Ramsey is the perfect choice to guide us on this B2B journey.”
Ramsey joined Rumi in February of this year.
