From the founders of Owlchemy Labs (acquired by Google in 2017), comes a new company absurd:joy aimed to bring joy to remote collaboration. Unsatisfied with virtual office platforms currently available, the team decided to build their own from the ground up, and Tangle was born.
Built to be fun, Tangle is optimised for creativity, natural serendipity, and those swivel-around moments that are so difficult to achieve in a virtual/remote setting while also focusing on user agency, privacy, and comfort.
Cy Wise, founder of absurd:joy, says: “We created Tangle for ourselves. To collaborate meaningfully with our team. To jump into side conversations with each other seamlessly. To do focus work without being isolated. To leave notes on each other’s doors. To wander by our artist’s desk to see the concept art strung up around it. To laugh at the memes left on whiteboards in meetings we weren’t a part of. After months of building games as a team with Tangle as our primary communication platform, our friends began begging us for access and we realized that sharing this tool could bring us, our friends, and many others in many industries, vastly more joy.”
The $5.35mil seed round is led by March Gaming with participation from Dune Ventures, WXR Fund, Gaingels, David Helgason, and others. This round follows their pre-seed funding from Ed Fries at 1UP Ventures and WXR Fund.
Tangle is currently in closed beta and has been in use for the past 8 months by over a dozen pilot customers including Bad Robot Games, Squanch Games, Lightforge Games, Skymap Games, and more.
Anna Sweet, CEO of Bad Robot Games, says: “The team at absurd:joy has always been at the cutting edge of innovating new ways for humans to express themselves and feel connected in digital spaces. Their backgrounds in gaming and virtual reality have made them the perfect team to disrupt the way we work together remotely and finally give teams the tool they need to express their creativity, personality, and individuality in a shared space.”
Matt Schembari, CEO of Lightforge Games, says: “We’ve been using Tangle as our virtual office since our first employees joined 9 months ago. We’re a fully remote studio, and it gives us the social and productivity benefit of an in-person office. Tangle is far more than a video conferencing app — it employs human-centric and fun design principles to make an engaging space people want to hang out in throughout the day. I’ve said this many times — we’re a closer and more effective team because of Tangle.”
Companies can apply for access to the beta at http://tangle.app