Video: Matterport ShopTalk #25: A Matterport Service Provider Journey to Success with VirtualSpace 3D Capature CEO Basm Mohsen. | 7 July 2021


Join Amir for Shop Talk 25 on July 7, 2021, as he hosts Basm Mohsen, CEO at VirtualSpace 3D Capture, to learn how he started his 3D capture business from leveraging his small real estate network to owning a thriving company all within three years. Basm will give insight on how he has mastered the different scanning techniques, gains new business opportunities and differentiates his business from everyone else.


Source: Matterport eBlast

Transcript (video above)

Amir Frank (00:02):
Hey Shop Talk listeners. We don't actually have a slideshow presentation today. We're just focused solely on our special guest, Basm Mohsen, who has joined us today. Let's go ahead and just jump right in. Hey Basm, how's it going? Thanks so much for joining.

Basm Mohsen (00:21):
Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Amir Frank (00:24):
As I mentioned, we're doing things a little bit differently. What I was hoping to do in this webinar is basically get your story and hopefully inspire some of our listeners to do what you're doing and to kind of, I guess, see what you've done, maybe how you've done it, how you look at scanning as a service and things like that, and learn from your experience. So basically what I wanted to do is just start with your Matterport story essentially. I mean, where did you first hear about Matterport? How did you get into it? How did you discover Matterport?

Basm Mohsen (01:05):
It was a little over three years ago. At the time I was living in New York. I was working with a real estate technology company. And in a webinar, kind of like this, where they were doing a demo of the product, someone in a Q&A asked, "Hey, is this compatible with Matterport?" I had never heard of Matterport at the time, but I quickly opened up a new tab, typed in Matterport and landed on the Matterport website. And the moment I played one of those demos, I was just so impressed by the tech and just how realistic it is, that that very night I purchased my first Matterport camera.

Basm Mohsen (01:59):
When I look back to the first time I experienced a Matterport tour, that experience kind of fades after trying out a few times, but it's very impressive the first time around. And that's something that a lot of people in the industry tend to forget is how cool this product really is when you see it for the first time. Seeing it just pulled me, and I figured if I'm impressed by this, then I could definitely sell it.

Basm Mohsen (02:36):
As soon as I got the camera, I think it was a week later, I started to go around to residential real estate offices that I had worked with in the past through another business and started to offer the service and they were interested. I think as everybody has seen in the industry, probably the most popular vertical for Matterport is residential. These days you mention the name Matterport and people know what it is, in the residential field.

Amir Frank (03:13):
You had some kind of connections? You had a small network in residential real estate, or was that just real estate in general, either corporate or commercial as well?

Basm Mohsen (03:23):
I had another business at the time where I would install led displays for residential real estate brokerages. And it would be those ones that you put in the windows where you slide a piece of paper in it, and it has all the listing information. And so I started to think, how cool would it be to have a QR code in this listing where you can scan it and the tour pops up. And that's how VirtualSpace started. We quickly jumped into other verticals like restaurants and bars and salons and gyms, pretty much everything else. That was all open.

Amir Frank (04:11):
Because at the time, I think Matterport was pretty much focused on residential real estate. That's where they saw the wild factor that you were saying. I mean, I remember the CEO at the time talking about that and how he presented it to a bunch of agents, I think, and it was like this audible gasp as they first saw the tech. But you're saying that you saw a lot of promise, not just in residential real estate, but also in commercial real estate, salons, gyms and whatnot.

Basm Mohsen (04:48):
Yup. And that's really where our success came from. It was everything outside of residential. It seems like residential was kind of the low hanging fruit, and so there's a lot of companies focus just on that. And it's great, but there's so many other verticals that can make use of this Matterport technology and Digital Twin and all the use cases that come with it.

Amir Frank (05:15):
So you got the camera, you said a little bit more than three and a half years ago. You started scanning. Initially it was just you and your wife initially that were scanning? Did you have one or two cameras? How long did it take you to go from the one camera to the two cameras and you were both out there scanning?

Basm Mohsen (05:35):
I think it was pretty evident that we needed a second camera as soon as possible. So I think it was maybe two or three months, we had purchased a second camera at the time. It was the Lite. It was the Pro2 Lite.

Amir Frank (05:52):
Okay. Yeah, yeah. So you got the camera, you're just knocking on every door of every business. You're only two to three months into this when you get your second camera. At that time, how much of your business would you say was salons and gyms versus residential real estate where you pretty much had your initial network of agents and brokerages?

Basm Mohsen (06:20):
I think at the start, residential was kind of the easiest to pitch to. I would say half of our business was residential and then the other half was just random spaces, restaurants, some hotels, wedding venues. There was a good amount of variety in there.

Amir Frank (06:47):
Did you see any kind of like returning customers in commercial versus residential? Customers that you had serviced and scanned for them before that they would come back and say, "Hey, I've got another place that I'd like you to scan."

Basm Mohsen (07:05):
Residential, for sure. Outside of that though, it was more of one time captures. Every now and then, a space would renovate or change something up and want something rescanned, but for the most part we've seen that it's residential that has people coming back to order multiple scans.

Amir Frank (07:27):
Okay. So residential has a lot more returning customers versus ... It's probably a lot more effort put into the marketing and going door to door with the commercial spaces.

Basm Mohsen (07:39):
Yeah. And this is at the start. I mean, these days there's so many different types of customers. Construction is one of them. That's a client that would need progress monitoring and you'd go there every two weeks, every month, once a week. There's a lot of opportunities for recurring business from the same client and other verticals. Interior designers are kind of similar to residential in that every week, "Hey, we've got a new project and we need it captured." It's kind of similar.

Amir Frank (08:14):
Did you find that to be a challenging transition going from ... I mean, you started with residential real estate, but very quickly went to commercial. How was the transition from commercial to construction? Because that's a completely different vertical.

Basm Mohsen (08:29):
Yeah, yeah. Construction is a different animal and it requires a lot of knowledge in the industry itself. It was actually the reason for starting a second company called Virtual Asset Management, which focuses primarily on the architecture, engineering and construction industries, just because they're a little more complicated than these one-off captures that you do for everything else.

Amir Frank (08:56):
We'll get into scanning differences and how you worked on your skills and experience and scan the different spaces in a minute. So you started in New York? You're in New York when you first started three and a half some years ago?

Basm Mohsen (09:14):
Yeah. That's where most of the team is located today.

Amir Frank (09:19):
So from New York, you're now in several other geo locations. You're across the East Coast. At what point did you say to yourself, okay, New York isn't big enough. It's time to tackle another city. How did that work out?

Basm Mohsen (09:46):
Matterport gave us the freedom to ... We're like, "All right, we could sell this anywhere, so why stay in New York?" I had been there my whole life and we have family there and friends there. And so these were the people that we started to train on doing some scans. And once we felt comfortable with them handling any incoming captures, that's when we felt like, okay, we can move somewhere else and do the same thing over there.

Amir Frank (10:17):
Got it. So you and your wife had already built a small team of techs going out there and scanning and helping you guys with the company in New York. And then you decided, okay, the two of us can now go and do the same thing, just kind of rinse, repeat in another city and then grow the small team of people over there and train them up. Is that right?

Basm Mohsen (10:38):
Yep. Yeah. We didn't wait for it to fully mature, but it was just, I think, to capture specialists at the time. And then we went from there.

Amir Frank (10:50):
The marketing efforts that you had done in New York, initially you said that you've gone door to door and you kind of built a small reputation for yourself, for sure. Was there anything that you were doing to maintain that? I mean, obviously you're not physically there to go knocking on doors, but what about your online business, what you're doing to keep that going?

Basm Mohsen (11:12):
I think one of the most important things was just having a website with enough information so that when people go there, they have everything they need to decide whether this is a good fit for them or not. It was all kinds of things in the beginning. We were doing brochures, going door to door. There was a lot of email campaigns, some digital advertising here and there. That's where we're at today, it's more advertising, and then a lot of incoming leads just organically through the website. Three years in, we've built a good reputation with our existing clientele that we are starting to see a lot of referrals come in from these clients.

Amir Frank (12:00):
You started with very simple kind of knocking on doors, literally going to an establishment, whether it's like a retail store, a salon, gym, we talked about that, and just pitching the manager at the time at the store, the idea. And then quickly migrated to a website that's got all this information and probably examples of what you've done.

Amir Frank (12:28):
Tell me a little bit about the email campaign. How do you get those emails and what are you using? Because a lot of our users come from photography, for example, and they know that very well and see themselves as providing this as an additional service to their clients, but marketing is a challenge and not everybody is as proficient in doing that.

Basm Mohsen (12:56):
Yeah, marketing is tough. There's so much trial and error that comes with it. I think the most effective thing by far is still going to be to go door to door and meet people face to face. That's been probably the most effective thing out there. Email campaigns work, but it varies. There's so many parts to these email campaigns. One, you have to have good leads, and we would do this by walking through the city of Manhattan and collecting business cards from all the restaurants, from all the different businesses that are out there and then compile a list of emails and then send out an email campaign to them. But if the email campaign itself doesn't have enough information and then it leads them to a website that doesn't have enough information either, it's not as effective. All the parts have to tie in together.

Amir Frank (14:01):
For sure. Interesting. So getting all those emails, I mean, very much like pitching the idea, initially it's just, like you said, going door to door and getting business cards and just manually typing them into a list.

Basm Mohsen (14:15):
Yeah. It's time consuming, but they can work here and there. I can't say that it's the most effective thing out there. There's enough people these days looking for the service, that you really have to make yourself available and known through a Google search.

Amir Frank (14:37):
Okay. So what do you mean by that? How does that happen?

Basm Mohsen (14:41):
Ads are pretty effective in that sense. SEO is really important as well. There's a lot of websites out there for service providers that are just very basic and they just don't have enough information. And so this is something that we've been really working hard to accomplish over the last few months is revamping our entire website and it's still a work in progress, but the idea is that when you land on the website, you should have everything you need to make a decision. All the questions that can possibly come up, need to be answered, because that's really your selling tool, is you and then your website.

Amir Frank (15:26):
Yeah. You've got maybe 30 seconds to answer all their questions, to get their attention before they move on and find somebody else?

Basm Mohsen (15:36):
Maybe less.

Amir Frank (15:37):
Maybe less. Exactly. Okay. So focus on a quality website that can answer all the client's question, whoever you're targeting, their questions and concerns. Talk to me a little bit about SEO. What have you done with your website to try and improve that?

Basm Mohsen (15:59):
One of the things is including the word Matterport in there. It's become almost a household name and plenty of verticals that there's enough people out there searching for a Matterport and not virtual tour, because virtual tour isn't everything. You may be touring a residential property, but then you don't really need a virtual tour of a retail store, that's more of a shopping experience. There's a lot of different terminology in relation to Matterport and 3D virtual tours and digital twins and all of that. I think for people who are focusing on Matterport, they definitely need to make sure to include the Matterport branding on their website and just incorporating within their own brand.

Amir Frank (16:51):
Have you done any research on your competition basically? Others that are out there and seeing what they're doing to either emulate that or to improve upon that, see what kind of systems they are using?

Basm Mohsen (17:10):
Of course. Yeah. I think it's very healthy to keep a close eye on other companies that are doing the same thing and learn from them. If anything, VirtualSpace is kind of a culmination of dozens of other companies put into one. Kind of take the best qualities from everywhere.

Amir Frank (17:30):
Yeah. Like you are saying the terms used and having Matterport be part of your content in your website, we do see that a lot of different terms are used. Like you said, Matterport and virtual walkthrough and digital twins can get a little bit confusing. Have you done any kind of short or long form writing on your website? Like a blog section or something like that? If not, is that something that you're thinking about doing?

Basm Mohsen (18:06):
We've experimented with it. Right now it's not a public page on the website, but we have done plenty of blog posts in the past. And we plan on doing that again, just because it is very effective for SEO.

Amir Frank (18:20):
Are there any communities that you have become a part of to kind of, not so much aggressively say the name of the company and virtual spaces can solve this problem for you, but just more be there to answer questions and do more inbound marketing in that sense. Is that something that you've found to be helpful?

Basm Mohsen (18:48):
Can you clarify the question again?

Amir Frank (18:51):
I know a lot of times what some people will do is they'll get onto communities and forums where people in the industries that they're looking for, if you're doing a lot of construction, then you'll go into like a construction forum and just provide advice and just be kind of like this ... I don't want to be too cliche about it, but be kind of information where you're not saying, oh, virtual spaces can help you with that. Not be so proactive about putting the name of virtual spaces out there, but more be like, hey, I'm this guy. I'm an expert in my field. I have all this information. And then people will just naturally gravitate towards you because of that. See you as an expert and say, hey, maybe you can help me out. That kind of thing.

Basm Mohsen (19:39):
Yeah. I mean, we've learned that when it comes to all these different verticals, there has to be an expert in each one. I've been working with my team closely on having each person handle an industry and be the capture specialist just for that industry, because they're also very different from each other, and they all have very different use cases and very different clientele and just very different backgrounds. And so you can't have a company doing everything and being good at it without breaking it down and specializing in all these different verticals.

Basm Mohsen (20:20):
We've been very active on forums and like the Facebook group, always keeping an eye on what's new in the industry and all of that, but we've definitely seen a lot of ... And work with a lot of companies who could use some kind of help getting started. One of the things that we're launching very soon is something called on-site, and it's basically a capture alliance. It's a little bit more than a community. It's more of just support and training.

Basm Mohsen (21:03):
The goal of it is to have a movement of capture specialists around the globe who want to work together to digitize this world. Because it's kind of what we're all into these days, but there's just so many verticals like construction and architecture and engineering and insurance that we all need to learn a little bit more about because it's going to be the next big thing following up with residential.

Basm Mohsen (21:35):
And so this onsite capture alliance, I envision it to be a community that really takes place in digitizing this whole world years from now, because there's Matterport, but there's also a lot of other solutions for 3D capture. Matterport I think is the best for interior, but then there's exterior, there's buildings as a whole, so there's a solutions like Skydio, there's the BLK 360. I think the industry needs a group of kind of capture specialists that could really work together to make this a reality.

Amir Frank (22:24):
That's great. And that's absolutely awesome. I love the idea of creating a network of capture techs who can support each other to cover more than just a city or even country, as you said, in this case, you're looking really globally to have that network effect. That's awesome. So that actually brings me to another question. When we spoke, you mentioned that sometimes you'll get a job or a lead to scan something that isn't in a location that you have a technician. What do you do in that situation?

Basm Mohsen (23:10):
So over the years we've worked with a lot of other companies throughout the nation and even globally. Let's just say we were to get a request in an area that we've never worked in before. We'll reach out to a service provider in that area. Usually it's do a Google search. And from there, I'll go through maybe 10 websites, narrow it down based on the demos that they have on the website of their previous work, because there's definitely a difference in the quality of the work that's out there. We really try to have high standards when it comes to capturing these spaces. You can put two people in the same space with the same exact camera, but then the output is very different. The dollhouse isn't complete. It's got holes in it. Windows aren't marked, things like that.

Basm Mohsen (24:15):
So that's really important for us and our clients. Just to push the Matterport camera to its absolute limits. That's really what we like to do. And so when we're looking for these service providers, we're trying to make sure that they are at the top of their work in that city. From there, we'll reach out to them and we'll say, "Hey, we've got an opportunity. This is what we're looking to get done. This is the quality that we're looking for." We'll share some examples of our previous work and just make sure that we're all on the same page.

Basm Mohsen (24:55):
And 95% of the time, they are more than willing to take the job on. We make a little something off of it, they make a little something off of it, and everybody's happy. I think that the industry needs more of that, because you've got clients who have spaces all over the world, and they could use either a referral or sometimes they just want to work with you directly and want you to handle the management side of it.

Amir Frank (25:30):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's really the start of this network effect that you're talking about. I imagine once you've got someone who's done a good job, you've vetted them, I mean, they're officially added to your network of contacts. Yeah, it just kind of cycles. That's great. And I assume likewise, if they get a lead, they can rely on you and your team to provide the scanning services for their lead. And again, you make something, they make something, and everyone's happy.

Basm Mohsen (26:06):
Exactly. And that's why I think everybody's businesses can grow if we all work together to build these strategic alliances.

Amir Frank (26:16):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just expanding the network. That's interesting. So if anybody wants to reach out to you, for example ... Okay, let's take a step back. We haven't talked about all the locations that you are covered in. You have 10 techs out there?

Basm Mohsen (26:38):
12.

Amir Frank (26:39):
12 techs. Awesome. Where are they located? So you're in New York?

Basm Mohsen (26:45):
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and South Florida. And then we worked closely with probably a good hundred technicians throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America, some in Europe. We've done a few in Asia. I mean, it's growing, but internally as a team of VirtualSpace Capture specialists, we've got 12 technicians, and I think about 14 cameras, because we have a few backups.

Amir Frank (27:21):
So 12 in-house technicians and then the rest is this network effect that you're talking about and you're working on expanding that, to really cover as much as possible.

Basm Mohsen (27:29):
Yeah. All these capture specialists that we work with throughout the nation, some of them are new to Matterport. Some of them have been doing it for longer than we have, but I've noticed just this trend of people focusing just on residential real estate and struggling to penetrate any other industry. I want to help them see that there's definitely more than just residential. You just have to understand the industries enough and understand the use cases that come with all of them. And then all these amazing solutions that are starting to come out these days, like virtual staging and wayfinding and AR integrations. I mean, there's so many exciting things happening within Matterport SDK.

Amir Frank (28:15):
Yeah, for sure, partners are doing some amazing things by taking advantage of the SDK and APIs. That's interesting. A couple of questions, one, couldn't agree more. I think a lot of folks out there are definitely focused on residential real estate because that's still our biggest and strongest vertical, even though we're definitely making some massive headways into every other vertical in the life cycle really of any structure. Whether it's construction and designing it or insuring it and even managing it. So all of those are covered and Matterport can be used with that. How did you make that transition? I mean, we touched on this, but knocking on doors is one thing, but it doesn't seem to be as easy to go knock on the door of a construction company. How did you get into construction?

Basm Mohsen (29:18):
So there's other company that we started called Virtual Asset Management. I partnered up with a friend of mine who had background in the construction industry. That's what I encourage people to do is talk to people that are in these other industries, so they could teach you a little bit about how it can be used. Because in the beginning, I didn't really understand, how does this benefit a construction manager? But speaking to my friend and showing them all the different solutions that are out there, we put our minds together and realize, wow, this is a construction manager's dream. That's kind of how that started, but you can do this with everything.

Basm Mohsen (30:01):
If it's a hotel and resort, maybe you have a friend who is an event planner or something like that, and they can tell you how it can make their day to day a little bit easier. And I think that's how you have to approach these things is what does a working day look like for someone in a hotel and resort sales and marketing team? What does that feel like, their day to day? And once you understand that a little bit, you say, okay, well. So you spend three hours walking around the hotel, doing tours every day. What if you could do a virtual tour? How would that change your day? What would you do with these three hours? That's where you can understand some of these use cases and offer the value, which is either to save them time or make them money or save them money.

Amir Frank (30:52):
Yeah, absolutely. You brought up event spaces. I can definitely see event spaces wanting to present the space staged, but in several different ways, and that's where virtual staging can come in. I wonder, would you say it's better, different? How would you look at this? What would you say? To go broad and scan everything and just put yourself as a scanning service that can meet anyone's needs or find a niche, like I scan event spaces, and then I take it upon myself to work with the virtual stage or like VRPM, Rumii, or doing it yourself through SDK programs like Treedis. We had [Foreon 00:31:52] a couple of weeks ago. And then just being the expert in that niche and just providing like the end-to-end solution for an event. What do you think would be maybe better for somebody who's just getting into this?

Basm Mohsen (32:06):
I think it depends on your resources and your background. Some people might come from an insurance background, and if that's the case, I would encourage them, just focus on insurance and nothing else because it's an open industry. So if you have background as an adjuster or something like that, and you just get the ins and outs of the industry, you can probably figure out use cases for a Matterport Digital Twin that no one else can, and no one else has really thought of.

Basm Mohsen (32:41):
I don't want to say, don't focus on any other industries. I think people should be open to doing all types of captures, because at the end of the day, they are very similar in terms of how you scan them. It's just how you educate the client on how to use them is really the only difference. But as far as scanning techniques, they don't vary too much. They are definitely different, but if you can master one of them, you can probably figure out the rest of them.

Amir Frank (33:12):
Cool. Great. Speaking of scanning techniques, I saw that we did have a question. Before we get into the Q&A, I wanted to get to that. So we do have a couple of questions here that I don't want to miss out on. I'm going to send out this poll to everybody, because this is such a new format. You can go ahead and check that out. I'll just leave that running for a while. Very simple poll. Please if you don't mind, take a minute.

Amir Frank (33:41):
Okay. Let's go ahead and tackle some of these questions. Basm, thanks so much again. This is really great. You were talking about scanning techniques. I know we talked about this a little bit, scanning for residential real estate even within, I would say residential real estate, whether the structure, apartment, building, whatever, is furnished or not, I imagine the scanning is a little bit different. How would you say, I want to say like what the difference is, it's hard to, but how would you say the best way to go about perfecting one's skills in the vertical that they're going after? What are they looking for?

Basm Mohsen (34:38):
I think one of the first questions to start with is, how is this being used? We always ask that for any job that we're capturing. Even if it's residential, you still have to ask, how are you going to use this? Some people don't care for pictures, for example. Maybe they hired a photographer already and they just need a virtual tour. And so if that's the case, the style of capturing it is going to be a little bit different because you don't have to set up a camera in certain angles, so that you're taking good still photos.

Basm Mohsen (35:14):
For example, if we're capturing a bathroom, we lower the camera pretty low because when it's a small space like that, the camera has to be low enough to take a good photo without pointing down at the toilet and sink and all of that. If they need photos, we lower the camera in specific spaces like bathrooms and kitchens and things like that. Whereas if they don't need photos, then the camera's pretty much at one height throughout the whole scan.

Amir Frank (35:51):
And do you set the height differently? You just mentioned you do it different for photographs, but what if the use case is not remote? What if it's not a real estate? Like for construction, is there a different height for the camera in that situation?

Basm Mohsen (36:06):
Absolutely. So some clients prefer that the scans are very detailed. That's part of our onboarding process for any new client is figuring out just, what does this look like for you? Who's using it and how are you using it? We have a client who wants scans to be four feet apart as opposed to the average of maybe six to eight feet. And so those scans take us almost double the amount of time to capture, but the amount of detail that's in there ensures that there's nothing that's missed in this space.

Basm Mohsen (36:49):
That's something that you have to price differently, you have to plan for it differently, you have to have enough technicians, things like that. It really varies with every industry. Retail, for example, you have to figure out how they're looking to use it. And if they're using it for an e-commerce type of solution, you want to position the camera to be in front of all these products. Sometimes you have to scan maybe an aisle in two different Heights. One of them being very low, so you can see the products on the bottom and then another one right next to it with a bunch of scans that are a little higher up to see some of the other products. It's definitely very different for every industry.

Amir Frank (37:35):
Interesting. That's great. Okay. Let's tackle some of these questions here. Brandon asks, what are some tips and tricks you have to make the scan as efficient as possible?

Basm Mohsen (37:48):
I think one of them is really, as I mentioned, to ask for what it's being used for, because you don't want to unnecessarily scan some things that you don't need to. Maybe it's an end use case where the client doesn't really need that much detail, it's just for a reference. And so you can space your scans out to save some time. It really depends on the industry. Planning it out is always good. Having a floor plan before you actually go onsite, kind of gives you an idea of how you want to approach the scan.

Amir Frank (38:32):
Is that something that you would say is, I guess, common to do? Because I know some of your models are very large, right? Some of these gyms and construction sites are very large. You would ask the client, do you have a floor plan of this or a blueprint or something like that, that I can work off of? And then you can actually better understand the path that you're going to plan on taking without even visiting the site?

Basm Mohsen (38:57):
Yeah. We definitely like to ask for floor plans, especially for some of these larger spaces. It definitely helps. Sometimes you want to do a site visit before you actually do a scan, just so you have an idea what to expect. You could run into a site that needs AprilTags to make scanning a little bit easier. Or prepping the space, having a checklist for the contact, you're dealing with the onsite contact, so that they can prepare the space for you so that you don't have to do anything when you get there. That helps a lot because downtime is a pretty big thing in this industry where you get to a space and they're not ready, and you sit there for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour, before you could even begin. I think another great tool to have for some of the larger spaces, I don't recommend it for residential, but it works for a lot of other things is a Tripod Dolly, those kinds of-

Amir Frank (40:00):
Yeah. For anybody who's not familiar with that, it's just like a little set of wheels for tripod. Tripod just sits right on top of it and you can roll it. Interesting.

Basm Mohsen (40:12):
Yeah. And you have to have a good iPad. It's worth investing in the latest model. Maybe right now if you haven't upgraded for a while, you might want to take a look at the new M1 iPad Pro. That can last few years with Matterport.

Amir Frank (40:31):
Yeah. And you find that the stronger iPads are allowing you to work your way through a space faster.

Basm Mohsen (40:41):
Mm-hmm (affirmative). For sure.

Amir Frank (40:42):
Questioning from anonymous, do you guys see any use in the construction and restoration industry? Yeah, huge. I mean, what would you say to that?

Basm Mohsen (40:56):
Yeah. The biggest thing is construction progress monitoring. A lot of companies have a need for that. In the past year with COVID and everything, this industry and the need for digital twins kind of jumped five to 10 years. A lot of people don't want to go on site for whatever reason. This just makes things much, much easier. Sometimes it's one person that goes into a space and then they take literally a thousand photos and put them into a folder and then share that with everybody else, but you have to sift through this slow folder that's got all these photos in it just to find what you're looking for. And then it's not the angle that you need to see exactly what's going on in there. These tours really make it a hundred times easier to understand what's going on in a space today. There's definitely a need for the construction industry.

Amir Frank (42:05):
Maybe you're not even sure of this, but I'm just wondering, do you know if your construction clients are using some of the last scans in the process of building out the structure? Are they using that to pass on to, essentially their client, as facility management tools?

Basm Mohsen (42:26):
They are. Yeah, they definitely are. You do want to give the final as-built to the client, and this is really a perfect way to deliver it. You can tag all the different assets and all the materials and the equipment and all of that in there. That's something that I think people haven't really tapped into just yet, is really utilizing the Mattertags. And I know that with the SDK and the API, it's going to just become even more robust with time. I think 95% of the tours out there are just very clean and they don't really have any of these Mattertags and there's so many additional features that can just add so much more value to a tour.

Amir Frank (43:19):
So tagging, is that something that you charge more for? Do you do offer that as an additional service? I'll add all these Mattertags and it'll, I don't know how you price that out, but-

Basm Mohsen (43:32):
Yup. I mean, we've experimented with different pricing models for it, but I think something simple like $5 a tag, works for a lot of people. Sometimes it could be a bit confusing and time consuming to do it. You can also just give them collaboration or just editor access through the Matterport workshop and just give them a brief on how to do it themselves, either through training them directly or the Matterport website has some great resources on all these different features, so you can just share the link and it'll show them step by step on how to add a Mattertag. Because sometimes they want it in a specific space. From their eyes, comes out as a better product when they tag it themselves.

Amir Frank (44:23):
Yeah. So it's really a very customized package with a good amount of detail. Like, do you want tags? Okay. Do you want us to add the tags? Do you want you to add the tags? Sounds like pricing models can get very complicated.

Basm Mohsen (44:42):
Yeah. They definitely do. It varies with every industry. There's just so many factors that fall into play when it comes to pricing out a commercial space. What's the size of it? Is it vacant? Is it furnished? Are there people onsite? Are you doing it after hours? How many models are we doing? Things like that, all play into the price.

Amir Frank (45:14):
Have you worked out some kind of like an algorithm that people would be able to like plug in, answer some questions and it just spits out, to at least get them started on your website? Or do you find that actually posting pricing on your website is not a good way to go, and you'd rather sit down with them and show them and talk to them?

Basm Mohsen (45:33):
No, we're all about transparency. One of the things we've been using internally, these are calculators, but very soon, probably in the next week or two, every single industry page is going to have a robust calculator that you enter the number of floors. You enter the square footage. You enter how many spaces it is. You enter the add-ons that you want, whether they're pictures or adding your logo to it, or linking these 10 spaces in this commercial building with a menu, so that you're not sharing 10 different links, but just one link. All these different things, you're going to be able to input that into our website and all of a sudden you get an email with the total price.

Amir Frank (46:21):
Okay, let's go tackle a couple more questions here. What third-party apps do you use to enhance Matterport or link 3D tours with other spaces like exteriors, campuses, things like that? I mean, you just mentioned, so that your client can provide just a single link or use one link, you've got like a menu. That's a good example. What third-party apps and programs are using?

Basm Mohsen (46:48):
We're working on our own solution right now, but in the meantime, we've used pretty much everything out there, Treedis, MPEmbed, Captured. There's probably a good dozen solutions out there that all do very similar things, but I definitely like using Treedis and I recommend people to check that out. It's a great solution.

Amir Frank (47:15):
Yeah. Treedis, they're doing some amazing things. We had them on our Shop Talk. Very impressed. Especially if you want to get into the niche of e-commerce and scanning retail, they definitely have that nailed. Anonymous asks, where can we join this new On-site Alliance? Is that something that's live?

Basm Mohsen (47:35):
Yeah. If you go to our website, virtualspace.us, there's a banner on top that you can click on that'll take you to the main website for the ... It's called the On-site 3D Capture Alliance. It also has its own website, which is on-site site as in vision, dot global. So, on-site.global. If you go on there, there's a form to fill out which you can enter your information, your experience, the equipment that you have, locations that you're in, and we'll reach out to you from there.

Amir Frank (48:15):
John asked, would love to hear some tips or advice for someone in the Xactimate insurance and claim industries. Have you done any insurance work or mostly just construction?

Basm Mohsen (48:28):
We have. We've done a good amount of insurance work, not so much on this Xactimate side, but it's something that I have someone from my team studying closely and also looking through the certification from actionable insights, so that we can be experts in that as well. I definitely think it's a growing niche right now. It's a really good one. They definitely have a need for it.

Amir Frank (48:56):
How important is Google Street View publishing for small businesses and what is the best way to do it? Is it possible to enter through the front door directly from GSV? That's a good question. Do you have experience? I mean, obviously you've worked with all these retail stores, the bars and gyms, do you offer GSV as part of the package?

Basm Mohsen (49:17):
Yep. It's one of the greatest add-ons that you can possibly do. I mean, we charge a small fee of $50 to publish it to Google Street View, and 90% of the time our clients say, "Sure, why not?" It's a great little add-on that takes less than five minutes for you to publish. I highly encourage it. It definitely strips it down to the Google Street View standard, which is something you should make your clients aware of. It's not going to be that you have a Matterport tour through Google maps. It just gets stripped down to the same Google Street View standard with the little arrows and all of that.

Amir Frank (49:59):
Yeah. As far as coming in through the front door, that's more up to Google, to be honest, if it makes that connection. It's hit or miss. Do you have experience with leading scan positions out towards like the sidewalk and exterior area of the store and whether that helps or not in getting that to work?

Basm Mohsen (50:24):
It's still going to be counted as a completely separate thing on Google's end, but we do have experience scanning outdoor. If you could do it, I highly recommend it, because that's really one of the ways to differentiate your company from other companies is pushing the Matterport tech to its absolute limits, which as you know, it doesn't work in direct sunlight, but that doesn't mean you can't plan out your capture so that you do it when the sun is on the other side, or during sunrise or sunset. Having these unique models that have outdoor spaces linked with them is a great little added benefit.

Amir Frank (51:07):
Another thing to keep in mind, if you're out there talking to a retail client who does want their model to go up to all the panels and their model to go up to GSV, making sure you're there at the right time of day to scan those exterior scans, to make that transition hopefully happen. Any tricks to getting around the real estate restrictions with Google ads and Facebook ads? I'm not familiar with what those restrictions are. Do you have anything to say about that?

Basm Mohsen (51:40):
I think sometimes they may get flagged for, I think, like equal opportunity, something like that. I have seen that in the past, but I'm not too sure.

Amir Frank (51:53):
Okay. So we are close to out of time. Izzy asks, what is your favorite industry to work in?

Basm Mohsen (52:01):
Retail is fun. Retail is definitely fun. I do like commercial because it's easy. I also love doing coworking spaces.

Amir Frank (52:08):
Like WeWork and that kind of thing?

Basm Mohsen (52:11):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Amir Frank (52:11):
Nice.

Basm Mohsen (52:14):
Yeah, retail is a good one these days.

Amir Frank (52:17):
That one you said, getting into that was just a matter of going and knocking on the door. Saying, here's an example. Here are all the cool things you can do with it. Maybe learn up on some use cases of how other retailers are using Matterport models, whether it's for e-com, facility management, I don't know, what would you say?

Basm Mohsen (52:37):
There's definitely a lot of use cases on the resident or retail side. Like you said, people do use it internally. That's another question to ask people is like, are you using this internally or using this externally? From there, you can narrow down the use case. Sometimes you're using it for both. The style of capturing is definitely going to vary based on that.

Amir Frank (53:00):
Can you capture in a way that would allow you to provide for both? Like overcapture maybe, and then have, here's the model that you would use for e-com, but here's another model that you could use for your facility management team. Essentially you just had to scan once.

Basm Mohsen (53:16):
Yep. We've done that before and you just upload a duplicate of it and rename it and disable certain scans, things like that.

Amir Frank (53:27):
Great. So you've got like twice the use case for just the one-time scanning. Cool. We are unfortunately out of time. There was one last question here about lighting from Kyle. From a beginner's perspective, what are some tips for lighting? Blinds open, closed, things like that? Lighting I know can definitely be an issue.

Basm Mohsen (53:53):
You always want natural lighting. That's the best. But if you are dealing with like a pretty dark space, you can buy a portable light that you can Velcro on top of the Pro2 camera, and they work pretty well. You can find them on Amazon by searching up like led video light, and just finding something that has a flat top so that you can place it on top of the camera. So that works pretty well, but the camera does a really good job of balancing lighting. Sometimes you'll do a scan and you look at a preview in the Capture app and it looks really dark, but then when it processes, it looks great. Always keep that in mind. Sometimes what you can do is if you have an internet connection in this area, do one scan, upload it, see how it looks. It will take maybe 15, 20 minutes to process.

Amir Frank (54:49):
One last question here from Sophia. What would you say is the biggest reason most people buy virtual tours? What is your best sale clincher?

Basm Mohsen (54:59):
I mentioned before, save time. Yeah, if it saves them time or if it saves them money, it makes sense for them. That's pretty much what every product or service comes down to.

Amir Frank (55:17):
So saving time and money. So in the retail use case, if it's e-com, they can potentially sell more product?

Basm Mohsen (55:26):
Yeah. Save time or make more money, of course.

Amir Frank (55:29):
Yeah. Getting familiar with a retail store. If it's like a restaurant users who go in Yelp, your establishment would like to maybe familiarize themselves with the layout and what it looks like. And if that environment is right for the special occasion they have in mind, that kind of thing.

Basm Mohsen (55:52):
Exactly. Just imagine you are trying to host some kind of private event. Maybe it's a birthday and you've got 10 people in your family and you want to book some restaurant in downtown. And you go on the websites for the top five restaurants. Some of them have pictures. Some of them have floor plans, and then one of them has a Matterport 3D tour. Just like that, you immediately understand, okay, this is what the private events dining room looks like. And if the establishment is making it easier for you to decide, that's probably what you're going to go with. Yelp doesn't really allow Matterport, but you can probably add it in the description, but there's another way to get past that, which is add it to a QR code and then add the QR code in the photos section, and then just have people scan it from the drone. There's a lot of-

Amir Frank (56:49):
Exactly. There's usually a way of, get creative a little bit with it, and there's even those, not all companies support having the Matterport model embedded on their own websites in IFrames or whatever, there's a way around it, whether it's a link or having a QR code as an image, that's a really great idea. That's awesome. Brilliant. Okay. That's been extremely helpful. I think I found that helpful. I definitely learned from that, so I really, really appreciate the time today. Basm, thanks so much for joining us.

Basm Mohsen (57:21):
Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's always nice to talk Matterport with people who are familiar with it and actually have a love for it. There's a lot of, sometimes negativity within the industry. Maybe people are just struggling and they're just not happy with not having enough work, but I think if people can work together, there's enough people out there that need our help and are willing to pay for it, you just have to make yourself known and available.

Amir Frank (57:51):
Yeah, absolutely. This network that you're working on, is this going to be a place where people can come to get like tips and tricks and helpful advice maybe on how to crack some industries and get in there?

Basm Mohsen (58:07):
Absolutely. That's really the incentive is so that we all become just experts in every single field and just share knowledge with each other and be responsible for digitizing the world, years from now. Because eventually it's going to happen to every space within every city, it's going to have a digital twin copy of it. I just want to be responsible for leading this kind of movement where all those can take place in this, using amazing technology like Matterport and everything else that's out there to make that a reality.

Amir Frank (58:44):
Yeah. That's awesome. I personally couldn't agree more. I definitely think this is where things are going by creating a digital twin of a structure of a building facility. How you work with that and what you can get out of it is just so much more. I definitely would agree and that's where things are going and I love it. I think it's awesome that you're taking it upon yourself to create this network and really help out and push this stuff out. Brilliant.

Amir Frank (59:15):
Thank you for all the really great questions. Super appreciate your attendance and helping out with this poll. Yeah, it looks like we've got some awesome feedback. We'll do this again. We'll bring somebody on and get them. Really appreciate it. And again, Basm, hope you have a fantastic rest of the day and same to you all.

Basm Mohsen (59:37):
Thank you.

Amir Frank (59:37):
Take care.