Ex-VR Developers Unveil a Slack Competitor With AR Features

Famously, Slack did not start with the intention of creating a ubiquitous workplace communication app. The app instead grew out of the communication tools that the Slack team, then called Tiny Speck, used during game development. It seems like a new company named Absurd Joy (stylized as "absurd:joy") wants to chart a similar path with its AR-enhanced coworking app Tangle. 

Founded by Cy Wise and Alex Schwartz, former developers at the VR game studio Owlchemy Labs, Absurd Joy is pitching Tangle as an alternative to the likes of Slack and Zoom that’s better because of the team’s roots in game design. That goes a long way to explain some of the quirks that stick out about Tangle: it’s being built using the Unity engine, it’s more colorful than most work-oriented apps, and Absurd Joy counts a few gaming and AR/VR VCs (including March Gaming and the WXR Fund) on its short list of investors. With the reveal of Tangle, the company announced a new $5.35 million seed round led by March.