Tired Of Zoom? Here's How Spot Meetings Lets You Engage With Professionals On The Go

Spot Meetings, a mobile and browser-based platform for voice conference calls, formally announced $5 million in seed funding led by Ilya Fushman at Kleiner Perkins.

In light of the development, Benzinga spoke with co-founder Greg Caplan.

Origin Story: The average American is active less than 20 minutes a day.

That’s according to Caplan, who founded Spot this year alongside Hans Petter Eikemo as a platform to foster productive meetings on the go.  

“I think the challenge is that so much of our lives are now digital, and we’re spending so much time sitting inactive,” Caplan told Benzinga in a discussion on making people happier and more productive through physical activity.

“We really need to help people get out there and active; it makes them happier and healthier, as well as more focused, engaged and creative.”

The idea behind Caplan’s new company came after years of success in entrepreneurship and leadership. After graduating from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Caplan started as a founder-in-residence with Lightbank in 2011. Thereafter, he co-founded the e-commerce site oBaz.com, and worked in management at Groupon, as well as Cameo.

In a more recent role, as founder and CEO at Remote Year, Caplan worked on ways to help remote workers be successful while living across the world.

At the time, the face of remote work was nascent and comprised of a mix between people who would sit in a conference room and those who would join in remotely, Caplan said. 

“It was really hard for those folks to have an equitable role in the conversation while remote,” he said. “We came up with this concept called the ‘all or nothing’ rule.”

The rule dictates that if all people can’t be together in a room, then conferences are to be remote for all participants.

After championing the idea for a while, Zoom Video Communications Inc ZM came along, making remote meetings open to the masses.

Amid some introspection during the coronavirus pandemic, Caplan said he realized his lifestyle of back-to-back Zoom meetings was becoming unsustainable.

“I went outside and my first call was to my co-founder,” Caplan said in recollecting the basis for Spot.

“We went through our stuff and I was in the sun — the birds were chirping, the dogs were everywhere — it just felt great. We were just chugging through content quickly because we were leaning in and moving.”

That’s when Caplan had a light bulb moment.

“That was a pretty big turning point for me, professionally, moving from spending my whole time on Zoom, to really opening my eyes to the opportunity of doing more and more by calls walking.”

Spot Takes Shape: In a move to help people from crumbling under the weight of remote, home-based calls, Caplan began building Spot in January 2021.

Presently, the product is in beta with core features like a shared notepad, voice-activated recording and digital spaces to share content. 

“While you’re walking around with your phone in your pocket, it’s really hard to take notes,” the co-founder said.

“So, at the bottom of the screen, we have this timeline of the call. It is recording by default — so the recording will be there — and then it’ll basically take a note for you, triggered either by pressing a button, or you could just say ‘Spot, fetch!’ and it’ll do the exact same thing, essentially transcribing the last 30 seconds of the conversation.”

At the end of each call, the contents shared, as well as recordings, are stored in so-called ‘rooms’ for future reference.

Spot's Product Status: After launching the first week of March, the team at Spot has been busy optimizing based on beta user feedback.

“We have over 6,000 teams on our waitlist,” Caplan added in a discussion on the demand for Spot by companies small and large in size.

Additionally, after raising a $1.9 million pre-seed round led by Chapter One earlier this year, Spot added the $5 million led by  Fushman at Kleiner Perkins to accelerate innovation.

“Everything people do in a professional environment is digital,” Caplan said. “In-person will continue to happen but, increasingly in the future, it’s going to be the exception and not the rule. As that happens, people are going to get more and more fluent, and native, with different tools to help them collaborate in a professional environment, digitally.”

Spot's Innovation Outlook: At hand is improved iOS, calendar, and productivity suite integrations, as well as partnerships to bolster mobile engagement for professionals and the addition of new voice commands.

“We’re getting deeply integrated into the iOS ecosystem. Our calls are based and embedded into the call kit, so they’ll actually show up right in your recent call logs and you’ll be able to make Spot calls from there.”

Going forward, Caplan said the future looks bright: trends suggest the demand for new ways to develop and maintain engaging experiences online is increasing.

“I think that’s really one of the most important things about Spot. We’re using this activity that feels really natural — walking — to help people focus and be creative.”