Foundr Magazine publishes in-depth interviews with the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. Our articles highlight key takeaways from each month’s issue. We talked with Kirin Sinha, founder of Illumix, about building a future-state business and what’s next in augmented reality. To read more, subscribe to the magazine.
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Kirin Sinha’s favorite fictional character is Harry Potter.
The boy wizard with unkempt hair, broken round spectacles, and a lightning-shaped scar goes from orphaned outsider to chosen hero through seven books and eight films. Sinha says Potter’s journey is one many entrepreneurs can relate to.
“I think feeling out of sorts in every world that you’re in, [feeling] isolated but having to believe you’re special and you have some kind of power to solve something that others can’t, I think is part of the gig,” Sinha says.
Sinha and Potter share several character traits. After foregoing an academic career path, Sinha started dabbling in the tech industry’s new magic—augmented reality (AR). In 2017, after three months of research, she began Illumix, an AR technology and media company that empowers the creation of AR-first experiences.
Sinha also boasts several achievements you can’t earn at Hogwarts.
Illumix was named to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in 2020, accepted into the Disney Accelerator in 2021, and spotlighted by Google as one of its limited partners for the Depth API to further enhance AR realism. In 2022, Sinha was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She’s one of Silicon Valley’s few minority female founders and CEOs with a technical background. To date, the startup’s raised $31 million from investors like Mark Cuban and acclaimed director Michael Bay.
Like Sinha’s beloved fictional character, her hero’s journey started with a calling to an uncharted path.
The Hype Cycle
Sinha never wanted to run a startup. But, while studying for an MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business, her research into AR showed a vision of the future.
“I became obsessed with the idea of doing something in augmented reality,” Sinha says.
“I fundamentally do not believe that we as humans are evolved to tap screens all day.”
AR is similar to its cousin, virtual reality (VR), but with a key difference: While VR users enlist a device (like a headset) to plug into a virtual world, AR allows virtual objects to enter our world. Sinha describes AR as the work of “digital-physical interaction.”
Sinha says there was a “hype cycle” around the metaverse and Web3 that began shortly after she started Illumix and peaked in 2021. The discourse came from early tech adopters and Silicon Valley stalwarts and centered around the economy shifting from the physical to the digital world. For example, banking transitioning to cryptocurrency, art sold digitally through NFTs, and entertainment consumed through VR and AR instead of screens.
While there’s validity to the hype, Sinha says, now that the fanfare has settled, businesses have the practical challenge of implementing these new technologies. That begins with understanding definitions.
“There are all kinds of vocabulary that are being developed and evolved over time,” Sinha says about the metaverse, even with the people who are acclaimed experts in the field. “In general, I think it’s great to establish what we’re talking about right up front.”
Sinha defines the metaverse as more than humans interacting in a digital world but blending the physical and digital.
“This idea of a real-world metaverse is where information, rather than being locked into your phone, is something that’s more naturally presented in front of you,” Sinha says. “So, for example, maybe shopping on a website no longer looks like scrolling through 2D images, ordering something, and sending it back if it doesn’t fit but actually … scrolling through a website where you can actually see these items on you.”
These 3D interactions use digital twins, which Sinha describes as a physical version of something in the virtual plane (or vice versa). She advises that the first step businesses can take to tap into the metaverse is investing in 3D assets over 2D ones. For example, a 2D asset of a sneaker on an ecommerce site might have multiple flat images showcased in a slideshow. In contrast, a 3D asset would allow a potential customer to digitally rotate and maneuver the shoe to see a comprehensive view of the product that’s closer to how it would look in reality.
“There’s no doubt to me that the metaverse and this next version of the internet [are] much more 3D than it is 2D,” Sinha says. “And ultimately, it’s better for the consumer, better for the brands, [and] better for the environment.”
In 2016, before the hype cycle around the metaverse began, Sinha was interviewing with companies in the Bay Area, but none were investing in AR technology. Sinha says that during those conversations, she’d get laughed at when describing the future of AR.
“If 50 percent of people think you’re out of your mind when pitching something, you probably have a big idea,” Sinha says. “So I would never be discouraged by that.”
Then in the summer of 2016, Pokémon Go! was released on the app store.
The game uses AR location technology through a smartphone app that lets users search for animated characters in the real world. That summer, the game’s popularity sent players across the world to public spaces, staring at their phones and wandering in search of Pokémon.
Suddenly, the conversation around AR rose to the top of LinkedIn feeds and graced tech magazine covers, affirming Sinha’s vision.
Building a Future-State Business
Less than a year after the summer of Pokémon Go!, then-25-year-old Sinha started Illumix to lead the innovation of AR technology.
“I believed in it so foundationally that I wanted to work in that space, and I just didn’t see anyone else really committing to that in the same way that I felt [someone] needed to be,” Sinha says. “And so I decided to do it myself.”
Sinha says to build a future-state business—a business structured on solving a need that will arise in the future—you need to predict what the world will look like in the coming decades. Then create the infrastructure to get there.
“Companies are built off this idea of taking something today and saying, ‘How can we make this better? What’s the next evolved version of this?’ And I think the way we built Illumix was a little bit in reverse,” Sinha says.
“We took a long view on what the future looks like 50 years out, 10 years out, five years out, and how can we bridge and create the company that ultimately fuels that really big picture of where we’re going?”
That meant forecasting how entertainment, commerce, and connection would develop with AR technology. Sinha’s primary discovery focused on outward-facing cameras, such as smartphone lenses that can analyze depth of field, recognize objects in space, and take pristine photos of sunsets. Snap Inc. popularized inward-facing camera AR to create effects, props, and faces for selfies on Snapchat. Sinha instead focused her work on outward-facing cameras because of their potential for immersive and interactive experiences.
In 2017, Sinha committed entirely for three months to developing Illumix before going to investors. She employed her own advice: “Have a mindset of learning as much as possible [and] getting your hands dirty.”
Weeks of delving into research made Sinha and her co-founders realize that entertainment is where they needed to start applying AR technology.
“Media and entertainment was a sector that really understood the potential of what we were building,” Sinha says. The team’s first significant investment came in 2018 from 451 Media, owned by blockbuster director Michael Bay. “They could really see what the end consumer experience would be and why it would be valuable.”
Illumix’s prototype was inspired by one of the first films to popularize the frameworks of AR, Star Wars. Sinha says boxy robot R2-D2’s lifelike digital blue projection of Princess Leia speaking the famous line, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope,” gave them the idea to create their first AR gaming app.
The mobile app allowed players to use their phones to wield a Star Wars lightsaber and interact with a training droid projected in the real world. Sinha says the team’s first project allowed them to learn as much as possible about the technology and showed the power of making the customer the hero of the story.
“The first two years, you just have to go for it completely,” Sinha says.
“Completely build out the vision, learn as much as you can, and [develop] some indication whether something is resonating or not.”
Experimenting with the lightsaber app elevated Illumix’s notoriety enough that the team was tapped to adapt the survival horror video game Five Nights at Freddy’s into a mobile AR app. The game’s goal is to make someone believe there’s a scary creature in the room with them, even if they can’t see it.
“There were a lot of questions at some level of, ‘Does that work with augmented reality?’ Because you can just look outside your screen and realize there’s nothing there,” Sinha says.
Even though there were doubts, Sinha believed the AR experience would be effective. She remembers during the first playtest for Five Nights, one user backed themselves into the corner of the room, terrified of monsters approaching.
“It was this incredibly visceral behavior of wanting to almost run or escape that we had created with this new technology. And that is a real emotional connection, right? That is when you know you have tapped in on something that is really core to who we are as humans,” Sinha says.
“And that belief was incredibly powerful. I think that emotional connection that we saw with people made it clear to me that it was going to be a win.”
In November 2019, Five Nights at Freddy’s was released on iOS and Android to rave reviews. The game’s success sealed Illumix as the leader in developing AR gaming technology, earning the startup a spot on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in 2020 and the Disney Accelerator in 2021.
Sinha never stopped believing in her work. Now she was convincing the world to believe with her.
What Are Digital Twins, and Why Do You Need Them?
A digital twin is a 3D version of something that exists in reality. For ecommerce, this could be one of your physical products. Here’s why you need to invest in digital twins:
- Digital twins replicate in-store shopping experiences. This provides more accurate product information than a 2D image.
- You can convert your digital twin into an AR platform. This ultimately leads to a better customer shopping experience.
