A look at the growing world of virtual HQs on services like Branch, Gather, and Huddle, which are using spatial tech to create a metaverse dedicated to work
‘The future of transportation is no transportation’ — In retrospect, 2019 feels like the working world's last dance with spontaneity. Tweets: @azeem , @nmasc_ , @drorpoleg , @zck , and @joshelman Tweets: Azeem Azhar / @azeem : also are they just reusing old startup names now? https://twitter.com/... Natasha Mascarenhas / @nmasc_ : For my latest feature story, I explored the growing world of virtual HQs, online spaces where employees can “bump into” each other, pass glowing Google Docs, and, hopefully, avoid some Zoom fatigue. https://techcrunch.com/... Dror Poleg / @drorpoleg : “The future of transportation is no transportation.” Ex Uber engineer & others are building your next HQ, on the cloud. https://techcrunch.com/... Congrats @Altimor Zak Kukoff / @zck : Keeping an eye on this... 👀 Huddle has become my favorite way to cowork and host meetings https://twitter.com/... @joshelman : The idea of walking out of a meeting with someone and saying bye feels much more human than just clicking “leave meeting”. Let alone just having a sense of shared presence when you are working alone in your home. This is a necessary skeuomorphic transition. It will evolve. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Natasha Mascarenhas' feature lands mid-arc in a wave of tools trying to rebuild what video calls flattened. Weeks earlier, services like Donut and Hallway were already attempting to revive serendipitous encounters atop Slack; Branch, Gather, and Huddle push further by making space itself the interface — persistent rooms where employees 'bump into' each other and pass documents, rather than scheduling every interaction.
The demand side was set months before: Zuckerberg had said Facebook could reach about half its staff working remotely within 5-10 years, positioning it as the most forward-leaning company on remote work. A distributed workforce of that scale needs more than meetings — it needs an always-on place to inhabit, which is exactly the gap these virtual HQ startups occupy.
First-order effects
- Branch, Gather, and Huddle compete directly with scheduled video calls for the same workday hours, pitching spatial presence as an antidote to the Zoom fatigue Mascarenhas cites.
Second-order effects
- Slack-native serendipity tools like Donut and Hallway face pressure to add spatial layers, since virtual HQ platforms absorb the 'bump into a colleague' use case without leaving their own environment.
Third-order effects
- If distributed-first employers scale, the office becomes software companies rent per seat rather than real estate — though the pattern cuts both ways, as Zoom itself later asked nearby employees back two days a week, and workplaces were still experimenting with VR-based socialization using spatial audio two years on.
The trend: Remote work is spawning a parallel market for persistent spatial workspaces, as companies that went distributed following plans like Facebook's half-remote commitment need somewhere persistent to gather.