a16z-backed Rooms.xyz lets you build interactive, 3D rooms and simple games in your browser
techcrunch.comA team of ex-Googlers is today launching a new digital creativity platform, Rooms.xyz, into beta testing. The startup, backed by $10 million in seed funding led by a16z, offers a browser-based tool for designing 3D spaces — or “rooms” — using drag-and-drop, editable objects or code, allowing users to express themselves through creative play as they design rooms, basic games or other interactive activities contained in these small, online spaces.
The idea is something in between a simple creation tool like Minecraft and a more advanced world-building platform, like Roblox. Or, as the company describes it, it’s like the “digital equivalent of LEGO.”
Image Credits: Rooms.xyz
The idea for Rooms was inspired by a combination of factors, explains co-founder Jason Toff — namely, that 3D model creation today was far too difficult.
Prior to Rooms, Toff spent ten years at Google, off and on, in product marketing and product management, including at YouTube, Area 120, and in VR/AR. Before that, he spent a couple of years at Vine as Product Manager, including after it was acquired by Twitter. And most recently, Toff worked at Meta, where he dabbled with new product experiments, like the zine maker E.gg and music-making app Collab, among other things.
After leaving his last position, Toff decided to take some time off, which he decided to fill by trying to learn how to make 3D models — something he always thought sounded like fun. As it turned out, however, the process was actually fairly complicated and involved the use of complex software. Around the same time, Toff’s six-year-old son had just started playing with Minecraft where designing with 3D models was easy, but it had to be done one block at a time.
This prompted the idea of
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