Macro

Nov 21, 2021

As is evident by its most recent acquisition, Mmhmm views video-conferencing as fun, flexible, and emotive. Evernote co-founder Phil Libin, who founded the video-conferencing startup, announced today that it has acquired Macro, a company that creates filters, reactions, and tools to take the pressure off of virtual meetings (and increase relationship building). Late September, Macro and Mmhmm began talks, and the deal closed just a few weeks later. The transaction’s terms were not disclosed, but given Mmhmm’s recent $100 million raise, it’s clear that the early-stage company had some cash to spare. In contrast to Mmhmm, Macro changes the actual interface that users work from, rather than customizing their video feeds. Macro was founded by Ankith Harathi and John Keck in 2019 and has raised $4.3 million in venture capital. Macro, for example, features the Airtime feature, which allows participants to see who is speaking most frequently within a particular meeting. Each person’s engagement adjusts the video size, which helps teams distill influence and figure out who may need extra encouragement. Custom windows allow you to “unbox” yourself on the screen, as well as filters. Because Macro can be used with MacOS and any Zoom client, even if everyone else is using Zoom, it promotes ease of use. Harathi explained that after Macro’s first fundraise, he and his co-founder had to decide whether to keep building, raise another round or join forces with another company. It was becoming increasingly competitive from other Zoom clients, a demand that was great for validation, but challenging for development. Mmhmm had a lot of the functionality they felt was imperative to be successful in the video-conferencing space. “How do you make meetings more human? How do you make them adapt to the people we are, as opposed to putting identity-driven and expressive organisms into constrained boxes,” Harathi said of his discussions with Libin’s team. “They were debating going down this camera route, or the client route, and they chose one, we chose the other.” “We really think that the company that is going to win this video 2.0 world is the product that goes seamlessly between asynchronous and synchronous,” Libin said. “Letting you shift between recorded and live, and doing that smoothly is the near term of what video is going to be.” Harathi noted that the winning app must address all the ways people will communicate in a distributed world, from on-the-fly chat to high-level meetings. Mmhmm’s big vision, as Libin’s been clear about from the beginning, is to redefine video as a medium for expression and relationship building. Trust of this kind is hard to build, literally. With more surface area offered in Zoom rooms, as well as Mmhmm and Macro, there is a greater chance to understand whom you are speaking with. “What room did they choose? What effects are they doing? It gives everyone more opportunity to be creative and customize how they’re appearing,” he said. “And it becomes a little closer to you and I hanging out in person and getting to know each other. The foundation is far more expressive.” Mmhmm has acquired Macro twice so far. The company announced last year that it had acquired Memix, a startup from San Francisco that offers a series of filters that can be applied to both pre-recorded and live videos to change lighting, background details, or what appears across the entire screen. Mmhmm now uses Memix’s technology at its core, according to Libin. By the end of November, macro will be sunset. Macro’s seven members have decided to join Mmmhmm to continue building.