One of the most bemoaned day-to-day tasks in most organizations is attending meetings. Even before the pandemic, 65 percent of managers reported to the Harvard Business Review that attending meetings kept them from completing work and 71 percent found the meetings to be unproductive and inefficient. Now with the rise in remote meetings, the grind of attending meeting after meeting feels even more detached and monotonous for many.
However, it’s clear that hybrid work isn’t going anywhere, meaning the tech industry is getting creative to fix an age-old issue compounded by remote work. One of those tech companies is Headroom, a smart virtual meetings platform that on Thursday raised $9 million in a funding round led by Equal Opportunity Ventures.
Headroom’s platform makes virtual meetings more productive and entertaining by maximizing the most meaningful parts. Its automatic summaries auto-generate the highlights of each meeting, providing notes and action items that are easy to share with others. The platform also offers live interactive transcripts, real-time engagement analytics, meeting replays, searchable notes and in-meeting gestures.
“The more meetings held, the more time wasted, with too many people spending time in redundant meetings. Headroom is leveraging AI to help companies do more with less, enabling individual workers to be more productive, choose which meetings to attend and which to watch later or just quickly get the key pieces of information discussed,” Headroom co-founder and CEO Julian Green said in a statement. “Particularly in this environment, where for startups every dollar and every meeting minute counts, those that can move faster and stay better connected with people wherever they are — in real time and asynchronously — will win.”
The company plans to use its new funding to hire additional talent and invest in product development and mobile offerings. Currently, Headroom is hiring for three positions with more likely to open once the funding is put to use.
