Since before the pandemic, productivity has been a key focus for many enterprises businesses. It's even more important since its inception. John Keck and Ankith Harathi, founders of Macro, are taking a completely different approach.
The team behind the startup Zoom SDK-powered product is revising it and it's relaunching today.
Macro launched beta with $4.3 million of Seed capital from FirstMark. The idea behind Zoom calls was to make them more useful and equitable. The company developed a Zoom overlay to allow users to enter action items and takeaways. Right during the call. Macro would then convert all this information into a Google Doc, and send it out to the attendees.
Users could also choose the layout they wanted, such as skins that displayed thumbnails of attendees instead of the entire screen. Airtime, which showed how many people were talking in a meeting, was a feature that ensured everyone's voices were heard.
This relaunch was made possible by the final feature and user feedback. Macro has shifted its focus from its early productivity bent to focus on self-expression.
We think that video communication, which is one of the most intimate forms, will become super personal in the future. Harathi told me that you and I are fundamentally different. We are now in the Zoom era and all of us were using the same, generic interface regardless how different we may be.
Macro lets users personalize their interface by using colors, shapes, filters, and other tools. The company has partnered with some major artists (TBA), to give users special reactions during Zoom calls. No matter if other call members are using Macro or not, they will still see you using it.
Airtime is one of the features that was retained from the original Macro version. TechCrunch was informed by Harathi and Keck that users were most interested in the product's features about self-expression and inclusion. However, very few people were actually using the services productivity suite.
Macro is also introducing Rooms, the skin that allows users to interact (and see one another in Zoom) in another application called Rooms. Macro works currently with MacOS.
The company will continue to grow its bottom-up model by offering the product free of charge to anyone who uses it without having to recruit an entire team.
Macro is riding the Zoom wave, as the video conferencing giant shifts its focus to its app ecosystem. Keck and Harathi believe that Macro can be used to video conferencing as Superhuman can to email. However, Macro will continue to prioritize self-expression and productivity.
They believe the winner of the UI award has a lot in the future as video meeting protocols continue to thrive. The company is aiming for that win.
