Brett Martin, the mastermind behind remote work solutions at Kumospace, is making waves in the tech world. His thought-provoking insights during Dublin Tech Summit highlighted how Kumospace is changing the landscape of remote work, ensuring teams stay connected and engaged in the virtual office environment.
We had the privilege of catching up with Brett Martin, the President and Co-Founder of Kumospace and Dublin Tech Summit 2023 speaker. During this insightful conversation, we delved into the core mission and vision of Kumospace, exploring how it’s shaping the future of work and transforming our conventional understanding of offices.
Solving the Remote Office Conundrum
In a world where remote and distributed teams are the norm, Kumospace offers a groundbreaking solution. It’s essentially a virtual office platform where teams come together daily. This isn’t your typical Zoom call; it’s a space where accountability, camaraderie, and productivity thrive. In the virtual office, you can easily locate your teammates, check in on them, and collaborate seamlessly. It’s like tapping your colleague on the shoulder, but in the digital realm. The result? Improved teamwork, a rekindling of company culture, and a harmonious balance between work and lifestyle.
Kumospace’s mission is to redefine the work landscape. It eliminates the need to choose between working effectively in a dull office environment or enjoying a relaxed lifestyle without achieving significant results. Kumospace introduces a third way – a path where you can excel at your work while living your best life.
DTS: What problem is Kumospace solving at the moment?
Brett Martin: At Kumospace we built virtual offices where remote distributed and hybrid teams show up every day. It’s a place for teams to have the ability to see where their teammates are, be accountable for them and show up for them. You can see where everyone is in your virtual office, you can just easily tap them on the shoulder and get a quick answer to a question or check in on them to see how they’re doing. People are interacting with each other fluently throughout the day and they can actually build culture again, even from a distance so they can engage with each other and really learn how to work together as a team. So I guess our mission is to make it so that people don’t have to have to choose between either getting really good work done but having to suffer in an office all day, or living a really nice lifestyle. We think there’s a third way where you can live your best life and get great work done. I think I would just say that, you know, it’s better for everyone, for the managers, and the teammates. If they at least have a choice between whether they want to have to commute, you know, an hour and a half a day and show up in an office, it leads that they have the choice of being able to say, okay, you know what, I’m committing to be available for my team, but I’m going to do it, you know, from my desk.
DTS: Can you tell us about problems your client faces and how your company is going to change the office space?
Brett Martin: We are a pandemic baby. I used to throw a sort of angel sort of networking event for, you know, 50 other people that angel invested. The pandemic hit everyone said, oh, why don’t you bring this on the zoom? And you know, I was like, well, I don’t really want to give a PowerPoint presentation for 50 of my friends. We needed a platform that enabled small groups to form and people to move organically between them. That happens at events. It also happens in offices. That’s how it began. But then it was pretty obvious. Everyone else has the same problems of visibility, collaboration, and culture. We said, okay, let’s special this with the world.
DTS: What kind of clients do you work with to help them solve this issue?
Brett Martin: We’re lucky, thousands of companies. We use KumoSpace to help their teams collaborate and connect. We’ve got NASA, big four consultancies like KPMG. have big tech companies like Google or Shopify or Amazon. They’re all using KumoSpace. Our core client is either a team of big companies like that or companies that are 20 to 100 people, a lot of marketing agencies actually. Companies that have to work on projects that you have to spin up projects, form a new team, get connected, and collaborate with people you’ve worked with before. That’s sort of our sweet spot.
Problems and Solutions: As Kumospace evolved, it became evident that its benefits stretched beyond Brett’s initial vision. The platform addressed critical issues: visibility, collaboration, and maintaining a robust company culture. Organizations of all sizes, from NASA to tech giants like Google and Amazon, found value in Kumospace. It’s not just for tech titans; it’s a game-changer for teams ranging from a few dozen to several hundred. Marketing agencies, in particular, have been leveraging its collaborative power.
DTS: What is something that you’re most proud of just in your journey so far?
Brett Martin: We’ve got thousands of companies and literally tens of thousands of people spending millions of hours every month, tens of millions of hours every month collaborating and connecting in KumoSpace.Our data scientists recently said, if everyone in KumoSpace was in an actual office it would be the size of the New York Times building, One World Trade Center etc. Just visualising that was a moment of pride.
DTS: What would be your advice to somebody who wants to go into the same industry as you? Or a young person inspiring to become an entrepreneur?
Brett Martin: I think the answer for entrepreneurship is almost always just get started. If you don’t have the right idea, then I would just encourage you to find the best people that entrepreneurs are most inspired by. Shoot them a cold email or a LinkedIn and tell them something about their product, give them some feedback, introduce them to a customer, you’ll get a job pretty quick.
