We interview Alekos Martínez, CEO of one of our featured startups, Veris Behavior. His vision is to understand the consumer with virtual reality.
What problem does your startup address and what solution does it propose?
There is a big difference between what people say they are going to do when they are within a traditional market research process vs. what they actually do inside the store, which leads retail and mass consumption companies to design marketing strategies. , commercial and inadequate product and, therefore, losing a lot of money in the process.
At Veris Behavior, we develop a technology that mixes Virtual Reality (VR), Neuromarketing and Data Science to carry out consumer studies, recreating the store and taking advantage of the immersive effect of VR to simulate behavior in the most real way possible, allowing Companies validate their strategies before launching them on the market.
How and why did you start this entrepreneurial adventure? Any advice, fruit of your experience, that you want to communicate to future entrepreneurs?
My partner and I came from the world of digital marketing, where there is a lot of data and tools to be able to do a/b testing studies of any campaign and be able to validate the effectiveness, and we understood that in the world of physical retail there were no tools to be able to do the same. same. We joined the Venture Builder Eywa Space, specialized in VR startups, and together we conceptualized the technology and developed it.
My advice would be that before any step, validate 100% that there is a market need, that the market is willing to pay and that it is a large enough market. Many companies focus on the technology and not the problem, which is a mistake.
How do you expect the sector to evolve? And, what expectations do you have regarding your startup?
The truth is that I see the sector a little slow, both VR and retail tech. I believe that there will be a greater focus on Artificial Intelligence technology and that in the future of mixed reality technology, the big winner will eventually be augmented reality. Precisely, at Veris we are studying how we integrate both technologies.
Any news in the near future that you want to share with the rest of the startups?
We are soon going to launch a stage and studio configurator that will work like a Saas, which will give companies the autonomy to design stores or VR spaces and define their studios. It will be an important step in the democratization of immersive XR studios and in the scalability of the company.
In what areas would you like to collaborate with other startups, companies or other organisations?
I would like to collaborate in the development of projects where different technologies are applied, whether AI, data visualization or sensors.
You have been winners of the first edition of TheCircularLab’s Proof of Concept program, could you tell us about your experience?
We are working on a very interesting project that will allow us to understand what packaging should be like to communicate sustainability. It is a project that excites us very much, because we want to contribute our grain of sand to make a more sustainable world.