How evolving leads to future innovation: Glimpse is reinventing face to face communication

The Pandemic has caused many businesses to have to adapt, shift, and evolve to meet challenges.

Many of us have had to switch to a completely virtual workforce and many businesses were not prepared for the change. The decision to go virtual was quick for most businesses and did not leave time for questions. The unprecedented rise of Zoom began and we all did our best to stay afloat in unfamiliar waters. Then came the dreaded Zoom fatigue. Over time, it became more and more difficult to feel excited about another conference call.

Fortunately, with change, and then fatigue, came innovation. Botree discovered Glimpse, a new virtual meeting software, in early spring of 2021 as a software option for our Virtual Facilitation service. Glimpse is a social platform for back-to-back, 1-on-1 video chats, utilizing a “speed-dating” style to create engaging conversation. Believe it or not, Glimpse was actually developed and released in March 2020, just before the world came to a halt.

Glimpse was created by former Duke students looking for a way to make meaningful connections in a disconnected world. Despite the rise in social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, Helena Merk, Co-Founder and CEO, and her team believed that many people were feeling even more disconnected than ever. Merk is not alone in this belief. According to Psychology Today, “Researchers have found that people who use multiple social media platforms report more symptoms of anxiety and depression.”

Merk is 22 years old. Despite her incredible successes in the tech industry, she jokes that sometimes people ask her if they can speak to her manager. She speaks with knowledge, charisma, and passion. It doesn’t come as a surprise to me when she says that she is most inspired by anyone who is passionate about what they do.

It is easy to feel inspired by her. She is driven and motivated, dropping out of Duke in 2018 to pursue her tech startup dreams. She was accepted to the Y Combinator in Winter of 2020, the seed money startup accelerator most known for companies like DoorDash, Instacart, Airbnb, Reddit, and Dropbox. Even with a new partnership with the web-based video conference platform “Zoom”, Merk still sees the Y Combinator as one of the most important experiences of her career.