Highlights
- Shared Studios began as an art project connecting strangers around the world through immersive, life-size video portals.
- Noro evolved as a business solution to overcome video conferencing limitations by enabling full-body, room-scale interactions.
- Local curators play a vital role in fostering community ownership and ensuring respectful, meaningful cross-cultural exchanges.
- Universities and corporations have become key buyers, using portals for global collaboration, mentorship, and immersive education.
- AI and machine learning hold promise for enhanced real-time video quality and translation but come with trade-offs regarding authentic experience.
- Building a collaborative, inclusive, and patient company culture is critical for long-term success and innovation.
- Amar’s founder advice emphasizes humility, balance, and recognizing both the importance and limits of one’s work.
Summary
Amar Bakshi, founder of Shared Studios and Noro, shared an insightful and inspiring conversation on The Innovators and Investors Podcast with Kristian Marquez about his evolving vision to enhance human connection through technology. Amar’s journey began in 2014 as an art project aimed at creating intimate, meaningful encounters between strangers across the globe using life-sized video portals. These “portals,” originally installed in shipping containers in places from New York to Tehran, provided immersive experiences allowing people to interact as if they were in the same room, fostering profound connections and emotional exchanges that went far beyond traditional video calls.
The success of Shared Studios, which expanded to over 60 locations worldwide including refugee camps, universities, and museums, demonstrated the power of human connection even in politically or culturally challenging environments. The project evolved into Noro, a business that aims to bridge the gap between digital meetings and in-person interactions with a purpose-built technology—life-size, full-body, room-scale video conferencing walls designed to reduce the need for short-haul business travel. Noro targets longer and more organic meetings like product sprints, co-working, or M&A discussions, where traditional video conferencing platforms like Zoom fall short.
Amar’s inspiration stemmed not only from his travels and experiences as a journalist but also deeply personal stories, such as wanting to provide his grandmother with a way to connect to her childhood home in Pakistan through immersive technology. The conversation explored the logistical and cultural challenges of deploying these portals globally, especially under repressive regimes, and the critical role of local curators who manage and nurture each site’s community, ensuring shared ownership and respect.
Amar discussed how Shared Studios initially grew through PR efforts rather than traditional sales or marketing, relying heavily on storytelling and newsworthy events to garner attention. He acknowledged the complexities of identifying clear buyers given the project’s unique nature but described how universities, educational institutions, and corporate clients have emerged as the most reliable audiences over time.
The conversation also covered technology and innovation aspects, including the limitations of current video conferencing methods, the importance of non-verbal cues like body language, eye contact, and movement, and how Noro’s solution addresses these needs to build trust and creativity in remote meetings. Amar touched upon their incorporation of AI and machine learning to enhance the user experience, especially in improving real-time video quality and overcoming language barriers with advanced translation tools, while reflecting thoughtfully on what might be lost in the process.
Team building and company culture were important themes in the discussion. Amar emphasized the significance of fostering a collaborative, curious, and inclusive culture that values difference and mutual learning. Drawing from his experience transitioning from an art project to a business, Amar shared lessons about balancing vision, profitability, and pragmatism while investing deeply in a committed long-term team. He also spoke about a compassionate approach to hiring, focusing on growth and fit over speed or efficiency, and outlined the importance of alignment around a clear, stable company vision.
Finally, Amar shared wisdom for founders, encouraging a balanced perspective that embraces humility and acknowledges that while dedication is vital, it is essential to remember there is a broader world and other issues beyond any single venture. His reflections underlined the human and emotional core that drives technology and innovation at Shared Studios and Noro.
Key Insights
- Technology as a Bridge for Human Connection: Amar’s work exemplifies how technology, when thoughtfully designed, transcends pure utility to create deeply emotional and communal experiences. Shared Studios’ portals are not just communication tools but spaces for serendipity, empathy, and shared humanity, demonstrating that digital platforms can foster human connection in truly meaningful ways.
- From Art to Enterprise—Evolution of Purpose and Product: The evolution from a public interactive art installation to a scalable business model with Noro reflects an adaptive innovation process. Amar’s approach shows the importance of starting with a human-centric vision and iterating technology and business models to fit different contexts—from art galleries and refugee camps to corporate boardrooms and university campuses.
- The Power of Community Curation: The role of local curators as cultural ambassadors and community managers is a critical success factor. By empowering local stakeholders, the portals build trust and relevance in diverse contexts—even in politically sensitive environments—highlighting that technology deployment must prioritize social infrastructure alongside hardware and software.
- Addressing Limitations of Traditional Video Conferencing: Noro’s technology targets very specific pain points in remote collaboration—especially for longer, more interactive sessions where Zoom and similar platforms falter. By enabling full-body visibility, natural movement, and genuine eye contact, they recreate important nonverbal cues essential for trust and creativity, emphasizing that future collaboration tools must go beyond simply transmitting faces and voices.
- Identifying Market and Buyer Complexity in Innovative Products: Amar’s journey reflects the challenges of marketing an unconventional product without a clear, singular buyer. His long discovery process led to identifying universities and corporations as reliable customers, showcasing the need for patient iterative discovery and the flexibility to serve multiple segments.
- Articulating and Maintaining Company Culture Through Transition: Transitioning from an art project to a business challenged Amar to reconcile activist and profit-driven cultures. He highlights the importance of defining consistent goals, embracing diversity, building emotional safety, and adopting an aligned yet flexible leadership approach that empowers collaboration across disciplines and backgrounds. This reflects broader leadership insights for mission-driven companies navigating commercialization.
- Thoughtful Integration of AI and Translation Technologies: Amar’s cautious optimism about AI recognizes its transformative potential to enhance communication but also warns about what might be lost in the nuance of human interaction. His reflections urge innovators to balance technological advancements with preserving the complexity and depth of cross-cultural human connection. This nuanced stance offers a model for responsible AI adoption in social technologies.
In sum, Amar Bakshi’s story and insights provide a compelling case study in innovation driven by empathy and cultural respect, underscoring the importance of aligning technology with human values, iterative learning, and mindful leadership.
Stay up-to-date with Amar Bakshi and his work with Noro.
Follow the show on your podcast channel of choice or listen below:
