The rise of video conference has opened up a new way to analyze the effectiveness of the conference.
Seattle start-up read has just released its first research report. Since its release in September, the company has measured more than 3 million virtual conference minutes, when the company announced a $10 million seed period. The company’s software measures the participation and emotions of video conference participants.
For meetings with seven or more people, some findings include:
50% of participants were late
40% of people have below average or poor participation
22% of the participants did not say a word
11% had no video or audio
Overall, one in five videoconferences scored below average and 31% of meetings started late.
“The scale and impact of bad meetings is a huge drain on resources and morale,” said David shim, read’s CEO.
Shim said that because workers were away from work during the pandemic, people made mistakes in inviting more participants, and the default response of invitees was to accept. He said that this is the origin of “zoom fatigue”.
Related: reading room – Virtual: Seattle startup received $10 million to analyze faces and sounds in video calls
This is part of the problem that read is trying to solve through its products. Reed’s software uses artificial intelligence, computer vision and natural language processing techniques to analyze sounds and facial movements. The idea is to give people feedback on how their audience reacted emotionally, whether it was a sales pitch or a weekly full staff meeting – such as Fitbit tracking steps, but a virtual meeting.
Reading aims to answer the question: are people involved? Are they depressed? Do they feel efficient?
On Tuesday, the 20 person company released three new products as part of its “chief meeting officer suite”, including a “read meeting manager” that provides post meeting analysis and a virtual tool “read executive assistant”, which help ensure that meetings end on time and balance conversations through real-time call time indicators.
“Since its launch six months ago, the opportunity has been much greater than we originally expected, as has the need to meet measurement and optimization,” shim said.
Read offers free software and has paid enterprise customers.
Shim co founded read with Elliott Waldron and rob Williams; The three men previously founded the location analysis startup placed, which was acquired by snap for more than $200 million in 2017.
Madrona venture group led the company’s seed round, including the participation of PSL ventures and various angel investors, such as David Joerg, a former board member; Former snap executive Imran Khan; Oren ezioni, CEO of AI2; Coomulo CEO Bill Richter; Woodman CEO Shane Acheson; Ma Yun, founder of divvy; Snap’s executives Peter SELIS and NIMA hajanuri.