Meet Tvori, St Petersburg-based makers of VR software that allows creating 3D-animated films in a simple and innovative way. Its founders believe that the current process of 3D content creation is super complicated, and so creating it in VR is their solution.

Tvori were among the winners of a Pitch Battle at Startup Lithuania's Roadshow in St Petersburg last week, so you'll be able to meet their co-founders Dmitry Kurinchenko and Viktor Komarovskih at LOGIN Startup Fair on 24-25 of May. But now, let's have a quick word with Dmitry.

Hi Dmitry. So what is Tvori, how it works, what problems does it solve as a product?

Dmitry: Tvori is a piece of software for making 3D animated films in a simple way. It’s a virtual reality software which means you have to use a head mounted display together with hand controllers to run Tvori. Currently it runs on HTC Vive and Oculus.

This may sound complicated, but when you’re inside and have grasped the basics, it becomes quite easy to set up your scenes, make objects, animate characters and cameras. You can use your hands naturally in all three dimensions and observe the virtual world you’re in on the same level as you observe the real one. So the process of the creation feels almost like playing with toys.

I believe the modern process of 3D content creation is super complicated. For this reason, we try to make it ten times easier and faster to create. This kind of approach and the idea that anyone can create stories in 3D is new and we don’t have direct competitors yet.

When did you launch? What were the main challenges you faced before launching and what are your current challenges?

Dmitry: We launched an alpha version on Steam on August 26, 2016. The main challenge was to release it, seriously 🙂 To be honest, at first I was embarrassed by the state of what we had at that point – the version we released didn’t have necessary features and was buggy as hell. But you know, there’s a quote by Reid Hoffman saying “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late”. I think it’s accurate regarding our product. Feedback, including negative one, helped to sharpen the focus on solving the most important problems.

We work with a nascent technology of virtual reality. Not many people have VR headsets at their homes today and the total addressable market is quite small. There are going to be turmoils, raising of new players, crashes – all the regular stuff happening throughout the evolution of new verticals. I think, to overcome the upcoming challenges we have to sustain a low burn rate and adapt quickly.

What are your target customers?

Dmitry: We target those who seek to create animated films: film directors that want to make prototypes of their future films, educators creating videos for courses, architects presenting projects and so on. Time will tell who will stick the most to the product. Right now, among our users are artists, directors, software developers and people who are generally interested in the idea of making their own animated films. Mostly from North America, Asia, and Europe.

How has business been so far?

Dmitry: We didn’t do any meaningful marketing, didn’t use tools to promote Tvori on Steam, virtual reality is emerging and there’s approximately one million people adopted the devices that Tvori works with. All in all, we got about 500 people who bought Tvori, priced from $40 to $19.

What’s next then?

Dmitry: Short-term: release a new version of Tvori, iterate quickly while talking to users and attracting new ones. Mid-term: have one thousand users who love Tvori and create great stuff with it. Long-term: as computers turned millions of people into writers, we hope virtual reality will turn millions into visual storytellers.

How are you funded?

Dmitry: For the most part, we were funding it ourselves. Recently got an investment from an angel. We’ve been talking with investors now and then, but are not raising right now.

Please introduce your founders and your core team?

Dmitry: There are two of us. Viktor Komarovskih and myself – Dmitry Kurilchenko. Viktor is an artist turned developer and I’m mostly a developer. Together, on January 3, 2016, we started Tvori and have been working on it since.

What do you expect at LOGIN Startup Fair?

Dmitry: I expect to learn more about Lithuania’s startup ecosystem, meet interesting people at the fair, and we’re going to participate in a pitch session there.

I’ve never been to Vilnius and I’ve heard it’s lovely. Viktor quite enjoyed his last stay there. So it’s a good chance to finally travel to Vilnius!

Awesome, see you there guys! And thanks for your time!