The road to practical virtual reality applications as been exhausting, and there are few people who have traveled as far as Shanna Tellerman. We’re excited to announce that she will join a panel of virtual reality experts at Disrupt NY.
Her latest venture blends 3D applications with the power of virtual reality. Called Modsy, the service allows customers to see their homes completely redecorated. The customer first uploads a few photos from their smartphone to Modsy, which then, using sophisticated 3D modeling, turns the space into a 3D sandbox. The customer is then presented with 3D renderings of their new digs — and of course these 3D renders can be viewed in virtual reality. I found it to be a magical and inspiring experience.
Tellerman has been in the 3D industry since working at EA as an intern on the Sims 2 team in 2004. Following that she founded her first startup in 2006 called Sim Ops Studios (Wild Pockets), a spin-off from Carnegie Mellon University that focused on democratizing 3D game development. The company was later acquired by Autodesk in 2010. She stayed at Autodesk as a product manager until joining Google Ventures as a partner in 2013 until she left to start Modsy in March of 2015.
While Modsy is not a company focusing purely on virtual reality, its implementation shows that VR can be simply a feature of a service. Modsy’s use of VR is simple yet impressive. If VR is to succeed, consumers need to be wowed, and there are few experiences as wowing as seeing your living room redecorated in virtual reality.
Tellerman joins Disrupt NY 2016’s huge list of speakers that includes The Honest Company’s Jessica Alba, Betaworks’ John Borthwick and Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley. This is the first time the show will be in Brooklynn and we hope you can join us. Tickets are available here.