"The first mover Advantage/Disadvantage" Robert Bob Okello - Mojanity - Matterpod Ep. 12

We are so lucky to be joined, all the way from Uganda by another great and and talented Matterport Professional, Robert Bob Okello. Robert shares so many great insights, this conversation is sure to make you a better Matterport Pro and person! Enjoy!

To get in contact with Bob, you can visit his website here or reach via Instagram.

Christian Adams
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the MatterPod. We're really excited because today we are joined by Bob here from from Uganda. Actually, welcome to the episode, Bob. We appreciate you taking the time to record this podcast episode with us.

Robert Bob Okello
Thank you. Thank you so much, Christian, for having me. And it's an absolute pleasure to be on this podcast. I've been, as I mentioned, you know, an avid listener and watcher, especially on YouTube, and it's been a great resource for us. So it's such a high honor to be here today.

Christian Adams
And we're really grateful to you because you're the first Matterport provider that we've had join our podcast from Africa. And so we're really, really excited to hear about the Matterport Market in Uganda and in the Africa area a little bit. So if you want to, Bob, if you could just take a quick moment to introduce yourself and your company and maybe talk a little bit about how you got started with Matterport.

Christian Adams
That would be great.

Robert Bob Okello
Absolutely. And thank you once again. So my name is Robert Bob Okello. I am actually based in Uganda, born and bred, but I've had the opportunity of actually traveling the world a little bit. And I've spent some time in Europe. I spent about two years in Norway, actually, and then I ended up in the States. I spent about four years in the state of Oklahoma, in the States before coming back to Uganda.

Robert Bob Okello
Yeah.

Christian Adams
So but that makes sense why your English is so great. I mean, I'm sitting here talking to my man. This guy's English is perfect.

Robert Bob Okello
Right? So, you know, in Uganda, actually, English is the first language for most people. So, you know, your learning is going to school. But yeah, definitely a thing that has helped. So how did we get started? You know, my company right now, we actually just had a spinoff from a parent company that does a few other things. But the company that I'm mostly focused on right now is called Mojanity technologies

Robert Bob Okello
limited and we are mostly providing our 3D virtual tours for the real estate and tourism industry in Uganda. But before majority came into existence, you know, I was running another parent company called Maarifasasa and one of the key services we're offering as Maarifasasa had to do with 3D virtual tours itself, which was a late addition.

Robert Bob Okello
But we actually began with virtual reality services, mostly in the education space. So what we are doing now, around 2018, 2019, basically helping Ugandan schools reimagine how they could engage with their students by offering more immersive learning experiences. So one of the most common things in Uganda is, you know, their subjects like geography, where students typically have to go to particular sites to learn about different geographic features.

Robert Bob Okello
And what we imagine was how we could perhaps bring those places to students and into classrooms where schools are not able to send students to. And so that's how we're uniquely applying virtual reality. But fast forward COVID 1910 and all schools in Uganda were closed, and even those physical trips were almost impossible to do. So one of the clients we were working with actually reached out to us and said, Well, is it possible for you guys to offer something similar to the virtual reality experiences?

Robert Bob Okello
But one that doesn't require 3D headsets, The VR headsets, and that's where the idea of the Matterport 3D effects to us come in. So our first project involved basically creating 3D Matterport virtual tours for different companies and factories across the country that would allow us to have a more immersive experience of being in those places without necessarily going there because they couldn't go there anyway because of the COVID lockdown and the restrictions in movement.

Robert Bob Okello
So we did that exciting project and it was a bang. You know, a lot of interest arose from different players beginning the education industry. And, you know, right after finishing that project, the Real Estate Association in Uganda reached out to us. If you could do actually a presentation to their members exploring the possibilities of 3D, what it was in the real estate industry.

Robert Bob Okello
So we did that. Then we actually got our first real estate client after that presentation, which was online and via Zoom. So once we did that project, basically this client has several properties that manage on their portfolio. And the COVID-19 lockdown was a big hit for the real estate industry because traditionally the way it works in Uganda is you have the real estate agencies with several brokers that work with them.

Robert Bob Okello
And typically the brokers will, you know, directly engage with the customers and physically take you to average property. And if you've been to a city like Kampala, you know, the traffic is crazy. Moving around is just insane. But you spend the whole day seeing multiple properties and still not find what you're actually looking for. And so the unique use case we actually offered them was how they could better engage with their customers, especially those who are looking to rent.

Robert Bob Okello
And they're looking to buy a property. And so that was exactly what we did. We created 3D virtual tours to us for about the first of our three properties in their portfolio as a pilot, and that also helped us sort of expand a bit of our portfolio in terms to realize that space. And ever since then, it's just been an incredible journey of growth and experiences.

Robert Bob Okello
Yeah.

Christian Adams
That's incredible. So right now you say you're not doing experiences surrounding education as much or more So virginity is focused on the real estate and the tours. Like travel.

Robert Bob Okello
Yeah, traveling, hospitality. Exactly. Exactly. Which is quite interesting because, you know, I mean, our core business was education, edtech, and then we tinkered with this 3D virtual tour. And very quickly, the real estate portfolio grew so much that it became our cash go option, yet our primary focus and I think that's what informed it is to actually have a spinoff company to focus exclusively on offering 3D virtual tools to us for real estate and then tourism and hospitality or travel and hospitality.

Christian Adams
Does the edtech portion of your business still exist? Are you guys still creating experiences for schools in education systems?

Robert Bob Okello
Yes, indeed it does. So what we are doing now, especially in the tax base and for schools mostly a lot of schools that want to, you know, find more interesting ways of engaging with parents especially and prospective students. So they are still using 3D, you know, virtual tours as a way of doing like school visits and stuff like that.

Robert Bob Okello
So that's mostly the main use case in the education space. And we're seeing quite a lot of schools actually, you know, coming on board as well because to gives them a more competitive edge as well, because it's something still new in the market and being able to offer that sort of experience, especially for parents who may not be able to do physical school visits if there's something that they see a lot of value in.

Christian Adams
Yeah, gotcha. So if I understood you correctly, you mentioned earlier that you started creating virtual tours of, you know, different businesses or different places where the students could actually walk around and learn more about that specific place because they weren't able to go on field trips due to COVID and visit and learn about new places. So in that case, I'm just curious, in that use case, was the school paying you to go out and create these experiences for these businesses, or was it the business themselves that was paying for your services?

Robert Bob Okello
Right? So in this case it was actually the schools that were paying us to go and collect the services. Yeah, but in one unique situation we also had we had a development partner that was working on building capacity of a lot of schools. So in that situation they actually contracted us to work with the schools and develop all this what it was so that they weren't paying us.

Robert Bob Okello
So we've had both situations where schools directly pay us, especially the for the what they call the virtual exposure visits. And then we have always had situations where our partners and most development partners working in the Ugandan education space, paying us directly to deliver such services.

Christian Adams
And interesting. So what the schools just tell you is, hey, we want you to go try and create a virtual tour of this place. And then you would go to that place and ask them for permission to create a virtual tour of it, and then the school would pay you for that.

Robert Bob Okello
Yeah. So basically the way it works is that while, you know, the school would say, okay, we have this particular, for example, module that involves understanding, let's say the coffee value chain, and we have identified this coffee factory that basically would be sort of a good use case for us to expose our learners to. Then in many situations, they would actually make the introduction to the company and then we would go site.

Robert Bob Okello
But the development of the process would be basically based on the learning objectives, such as very unique situation actually in terms of how we apply the 3D virtual tours in the education space. So having in mind the learning objectives and what the school wants to get out of it and then would then you know, cue read that and actually create different matter tags and all that into the entire process to basically ensure that at the end of the day, when learners go through this value tour, they are actually able to, you know, hit all those learning objectives and get some up to value.

Christian Adams
Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. That's a really, really interesting model, actually, as I'm sitting here thinking about it because really the school is telling you, we want you to go create a virtual tour of this place. And in what you're saying is in some instances they would actually make the intro to that place. And so then you show up to that business with your camera and you create a virtual tour of it and give it back to the school or the school already paid for it.

Christian Adams
But you also have an additional opportunity to begin working directly with that specific business and help them potentially display that tour on their website as well. And so it's kind of like, yeah, you kill two birds with one stone potentially. Exactly. The business likes the experience that you've created and you can show them, Hey, look, the school is going to use this for this purpose, but we can also repurpose this and you can begin using it on your own website or your own social media channels or email campaigns, etc..

Christian Adams
And so that's kind of an interesting and interesting way to approach it. I've never considered or thought, Oh yeah.

Robert Bob Okello
Exactly. And I see some very interesting situations where we had, you know, this coffee company, they do a lot of coffee export, but most are dealing in organic coffee and Fairtrade coffee. And one of the things that I really wanted was to offer amends through which a lot of the buyers, especially in Europe, could actually, you know, virtually to their facility to ensure that they are basically following all the different protocols and all that.

Robert Bob Okello
So so that was a very unique situation where they actually, you know, then repurpose what the school ask us to do to meet their own needs as well in terms of, I guess, giving their partners across the world access to their facility remotely.

Christian Adams
That's incredible. That is so, so cool. I literally never thought about using schools for that purpose. And then you also mentioned that one of the main things that you will do for school is actually creating a virtual tour of the school itself, and the parents can use it to walk around the school and get familiar with it because, in a lot of cases, you're saying parents don't have the ability to actually go and visit the school themselves in person sometimes.

Robert Bob Okello
Exactly. Especially in the aftermath of COVID. So one thing we observed was our schools were very open. You know, parents are still very reluctant about, you know, the social distancing, you know, structures and how schools are actually prepared to receive students. But for the first time after the opening and after the lockdown. So one use case was where, you know, a particular school basically said, okay, we have set up our classrooms in order to meet all the standard operating procedures.

Robert Bob Okello
So for, you know, COVID, social distancing and all that. But I think it would be a really cool thing for us to show our parents this so that they just get the confidence that as they take their children to school, they know that the school is actually ready to receive their children and they are being fully compliant with all of the Senate operating procedures.

Robert Bob Okello
So that was another use case where we actually saw that. You know.

Christian Adams
I think a lot of kids, too, when they're new to a school or they have a new teacher and they're going to be going to a new classroom, I do think, at least for me personally, when I was younger, you know, you kind of have a little bit of nerves on your first day or so because you're going into an environment that you're not familiar with.

Christian Adams
And so if you can provide a young student or a child with the ability to walk around the room and kind of experience it virtually before they go and visit it, you know, physically, I think that that can decrease a lot of the anxiety and stress that comes with that new environment for them.

Robert Bob Okello
Absolutely. And actually, I think a lot of schools also see this as a way of doing sort of as a tool for orientation. Right. So, you know, for new students who are coming in, you know, helping them get familiarized with the different facilities of the school, the classrooms and different aspects of the school. So it's an incredible tool for just doing student orientation as well.

Robert Bob Okello
Yeah.

Christian Adams
So cool. Well, I love the education concept and the ability to use Matterport for some of the needs that they have. I think it's kind of an obvious use case and surprise because we haven't seen a ton of Matterport tours created for schools. So I'm interested to see over the next year or a couple of years to see if it gets more adoption, because I do think there's a huge opportunity there.

Christian Adams
I think it makes a ton of sense, but for whatever reason, I don't think schools have totally latched on to the the full capabilities and use cases of creating virtual tours of their schools.

Robert Bob Okello
Yeah, definitely. I think I think there's a huge opportunity there. And yeah, it's largely untapped.

Christian Adams
Yeah. We at Openhaus, we've actually talked a lot about the education space in general and one use case that we thought about that would be super beneficial as well as if there's ever any security threat. If you ever have a shooter in the building of any kind to be able to sit with the first responders, their teams a little or all virtual tours of the entire school so that they can see exactly what the space looks like before they go in and formulate a plan of how they're going to go and extract that shooter.

Christian Adams
Right. It seems to add to, in a sense, in our mind. And so absolutely, I think that there's multiple avenues and use cases you could go down for creating virtual tours of schools. So we're excited to see what the future is of that. But just a couple more questions I've got for you, Bob, here and then more. Go ahead.

Christian Adams
But what are some of the biggest challenges that you're facing right now as a Matterport provider in your area?

Robert Bob Okello
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, being I think we in a unique situation in Uganda, especially because we are sort of an early mover, you know, so so there's the first mover advantage, definitely. But sometimes you also have the first mover disadvantage, right? It's a new technology and people are not very familiar with it. You know, open itself before, you know, 3D virtual tours especially in real estate, people are more used to the, you know, the 3D, you know, CAD renditions, you know, so that's the first thing that comes to their mind.

Robert Bob Okello
So for us, there's been a lot of user education and actually, you know, just creating more awareness about this new alternative than, you know, the ideal for us is, you know, as built model. But, you know, I would say that the other challenge you faced initially and I think this is where Openhaus came in quite handy for us is when you know a lot of the clients we were working with wanted. One, some bit of customization, you know, so once you deliver the, you know, the Matterport tours, they want to be able to have the sort of branding attached to that.

Robert Bob Okello
But secondly, they also want to be able to have some sort of, you know, access to some bit of analytics behind the scenes. Right? And so I think for us, that was one key incentive to to hop on to the Openhaus platform. One, we could then, you know, do the microphone and actually, you know, put their own logo, their own colors.

Robert Bob Okello
So that was really, really cool. But also, you know, they the Openhaus Pages, right? Well, we can actually send them a link with a password where they can actually be able to see the basic analytics on how many people are visiting. And all that. So that is really handy for the real estate. So I think that perhaps was a challenge that an Openhaus helped us address very, very quickly and you know, the the the aspect of user education, I think that is now coming, you know, more and more people are becoming aware of this new alternative.

Robert Bob Okello
We have been able to engage target customers on several platforms. And so we actually, in the process of writing an MOU with the, you know, the real estate association in Uganda. So that's the bullet that brings together all the real estate players. And so that's something that is very exciting because that shows that we are really gaining momentum and moving in the right direction.

Robert Bob Okello
And the appreciation for the Matterport Tours are becoming more increased. So definitely the trends are pointing in the right direction. Where we would like to see us self is of course move to now, you know how do we you know of course increase our capacity. We've begun with just a single Matterport camera. We're using the pro two and we had to do a lot of interesting things, especially where, you know, the aspects of our outdoor scans and using the civil trial site and just scanning early in the morning and late in the evenings, we did a lot of interesting projects that required us to work around the, you know, the silver twilight and all that.

Robert Bob Okello
And so we're quite excited about the the Matterport Core three, and that is the next item on our, you know, on our list of equipment. We need to focus because I think, you know, there are a lot of possibilities with that, especially with the outdoors comes. So that's exciting because that was one of the biggest challenges we had.

Robert Bob Okello
You know, when you have a project and you see that there's a lot of outdoor scanning involved, we had to find a lot of ways of working around that. But with something like The Matterport for three, which is optimized for outdoor scans, that's quite exciting.

Christian Adams
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity to create tours of spaces that previously were really difficult. You could do it with a bulk camera or you could do it like you mentioned early in the morning or late in the evening. But with the Pro three, the ability to just quickly go outdoors, capture any space, you can go indoor and outdoor, connect the two spaces together.

Christian Adams
I think that that drastically elevates the the end experience for the user. So we're really excited about the different tours that are going to be created in the future using the Pro three. But one last question I got for you. You mentioned that one of the trials you face is being a first mover and people are very familiar with 3D virtual tours.

Christian Adams
They think CAD or they think computer generated stuff, which usually is really, really expensive and so it's difficult to help a somebody who's new to this space understand what you're offering them. So how have you guys gone about trying to overcome that obstacle of being a first mover and helping break down to the potential customer? Why they should let you or why they should be interested in you creating a virtual tour for them?

Robert Bob Okello
Yeah, absolutely. So I think first one of the first, you know, strategies we devised and put in place was ensure that we have multiple use cases across multiple sectors. So whether it was education that can show we do something to get something released, it is have something in education, travel and hospitality have something there. So we focus on creating multiple use cases.

Robert Bob Okello
We then, you know, whenever we approach a prospective new client in that same so we have something to show them that is actually in our local use cases, right? Because at the beginning we didn't have so many Skye And so we just, you know, go to modify them, share them a link from some property in the US or in the UK, and a lot of them, we're just in this belief.

Robert Bob Okello
They're like, Nah, this cannot happen here, right? So having local use cases was very, very important for us at the beginning. But something else that we did was of course ensuring that, you know, we made ourselves available and visible on the right platforms. So I mentioned earlier our partnership with the Real Estate Association of Uganda, you know, targeting sites sort of association as well.

Robert Bob Okello
We knew we would be, you know, hit one target and basically hit everyone within the sector was really, really key. So that was another strategy we use. So on such platforms, our key goal was to really, you know, help people be exposed to this new technology. But then also really educate them on the differences between 3D virtual tours and of course the computer generated graphics and all that.

Robert Bob Okello
We did the same for traveling hospitality as well. They have a similar association that brings together all the key players in travel and hospitality in Uganda. We went there and again, you know, give, you know, a lot of presentations and just, you know, use our indication on the applications of the Matterport 3D virtual tours in their particular sector.

Robert Bob Okello
So I think those two approaches were perhaps us the most impactful, especially in sort of clearing the the glut at the beginning and beginning to get people to actually get interested and see the possibilities of this. But I think another perhaps a bonus is how able to show. So for example, for real estate, you know, showing that by using a Matterport virtual tours you can actually help reduce time on the market is a big one.

Robert Bob Okello
But secondly, a lot of you know, a lot of people are looking for properties. I guess, you know, in this market they're fed up will follow brokers operate that this idea of just roaming around the city for weeks in the properties process and still not finding what you like. Right. Is something that I think a lot of people like and for a lot of agencies that were really, really keen on creating a more enhanced customer experience, they jumped in very quickly because we're solving a real pain that their customers are actually faced.

Robert Bob Okello
So really showing the potential upsides and the savings, especially that using this sort of technology brings to the board also, I think helped us to gain more momentum with prospective clients as well.

Christian Adams
And super, super interesting. Yeah, I think that's a way good way to go about it. I mean, first of all, go creating scans of local potential customers to kind of facilitate competition a little bit because if you can show, Hey, you're competitor over there, we just created a virtual tour.

Robert Bob Okello
Exactly.

Christian Adams
Are you sure? Exactly when it opens their eyes? Yeah, that and so and it works.

Robert Bob Okello
It works. Yeah.

Christian Adams
Yeah. Well, even if you did it with a competitor for free and you're just like, Hey, yeah, just do this for fun, the next person that you talk to doesn't know that you did that for free. And so it's an easy way to try and open their eyes to, Oh, well, if they're doing it, I should probably consider it.

Robert Bob Okello
So yeah, I think the incidence of going after associations where a lot of eyeballs from big players in the space are looking at it makes a ton of sense as well. So those two pieces of advice are super great insights. We appreciate that. But Bob, thank you so much for taking the time to join us on this episode. I think that our listeners, there are a lot of cool insights that they can glean from the conversation that we've had so far.

Christian Adams
So we really appreciate it. If somebody wants to reach out to you and ask you further questions about your experience, what's the best way for someone to get in touch with you?

Robert Bob Okello
Absolutely. So, you know, you can reach out via email and the best email would be hello, like hello@Mojanity.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is Robert Bob Okello. You can find me on Instagram @MisterOkello, Twitter @MisterOkello, Facebook @MisterOkello.

Robert Bob Okello
So consistent across all platforms. But thank you so much, Christian, for having me today. It's been an absolute pleasure. I've been a big fan of this podcast and so you can imagine our honored I am to be as a guest with you today. So thank you so much. And you know, let’s keep building.

Christian Adams
We appreciate it. Just trying to help out everybody here in the space and kind of break down some of the barriers and really help all Matterport providers all over the place in any way possible. So we appreciate you helping the Matterport community in general with the insights that you have. So thanks so much, Bob.

Robert Bob Okello
Thank you.