We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Manu Goffer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Manu, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers
The craziest story and journey of our business is the popularity vr campus tours with athletics over admissions.
The idea behind CampusVR was brought to light when co-founder Zvi Goffer was trying to get his children 15,13 interested in college. Bringing them to the website of his Alma Mater, Binghamton University, he was quickly met with resistance. Images of buildings, & a birds eye view of the campus did not hold their attention. So Zvi asked, Why wouldn’t every school in America have a virtual reality tour?
Although we believe that admissions has the most to gain from a product like this. Its not where we grew. We found it much easier to get meetings with athletic departments. In our short 18-24 month age as a company we have worked with top tier division one programs such as Duke, Alabama, Maryland, Auburn and many others.
The popularity in athletics over admissions is the craziest story at CampusVR. When I asked a coach what he would attribute the popularity in sports instead of admissions he said “I get fired if I don’t win”
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
CampusVR creates moving, walking 360º VR tours of college campuses, facilities and game day experiences for prospective students, athletes and alumni. Immersed through VR and non VR devices you can now bring the campus to them.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
As a founder of a startup, especially one in technology to get used to pivoting often. When we began VR was mainly considered a 360º video. Then, the vr headset became very popular. We aimed for admissions and pivoted into sports. Now we are about to pivot into tourism.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
The best source of new clients would be any professional sports team. We have had great success with creating virtual reality game day experiences.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thecampusvr.com
- Instagram: thecampusvr
- Facebook: campusvr
- Linkedin: campusvr
- Twitter: thecampusvr
- Youtube: campusvr