Tellaport

Virtually transporting your eyes, ears and voice somewhere else, on demand

Project overview

Video demo of Tellaport Live with scout

Summary

Tellaport is a platform that allows users to virtually transport their senses—sight, sound, and voice—to any location of their choosing, all at their convenience. Imagine needing to tour an apartment you're considering renting but living hours away. With Tellaport, a human or robotic surrogate can visit the location on your behalf, while you experience the environment in real-time through 360° or standard 2D video, accompanied by live audio, streamed directly to your phone, desktop, or VR headset. This not only saves you time and money but also reduces carbon emissions by eliminating the need for travel.

Video of testing live 360 degree camera stream with VR, which feels like having an out-of-body experience.

Inspiration

Tellaport draws inspiration from my experience working with VR/AR technologies at Blu Homes and Intuitive Surgical. At Blu Homes, I managed the development of immersive VR home tours and augmented reality applications for home siting. At Intuitive Surgical, I led UX projects on a robotic system where doctors use 3D cameras and stereoscopic consoles to virtually teleport themselves inside a patient’s body to perform surgeries. Having used this immersive robotic system in testing environments, I can attest to the profound experience—it truly feels like being transported to another place in real time.

What if we could extend that feeling of virtual teleportation to anywhere we choose, live and on demand? Imagine being able to immerse yourself fully in a new location, exploring it in 360°, hearing the sounds, and using your voice to interact—whether you're touring a potential apartment or virtually walking through Madagascar’s lemur-filled forests. Tellaport aims to make this vision a reality, offering a transformative way to experience places you can’t physically go or prefer not to visit in person, changing how we accomplish tasks and create memorable experiences.

How it works

Tellaport’s service functions similarly to Uber, but instead of ordering a car ride, you’re ordering a virtual experience. With Uber, you open the app, select your destination, choose from various service options (e.g., UberX, UberXL, or black car), agree on a price, and a driver comes to take you to your destination. With Tellaport, you open the app on your smartphone, tablet, desktop, or VR headset, choose the location you want to virtually visit, select the type of experience you prefer (e.g., 360° video, 2D video, with or without a video feed of your face), agree on a price, and a Tellaport scout visits the location for you. From there, they broadcast a live video stream, communicate with you, and facilitate your experience in real-time. Just like Uber, the potential applications for Tellaport are vast, ranging from virtual tours and remote inspections to site-based training and more.

Example figure showing the high level of detail in the RFP. This table showed the controls and gestures available depending on what mode the mobile app UI was in.

My role

I independently conceived the idea for Tellaport and founded the company, self-funding the early stage of the venture to bring this vision to life. After registering a C-corp and securing the domain tellaport.com, I began managing the development a functional prototype as a proof of concept. I designed the UX for a smartphone application that enabled bi-directional communication, with one side streaming live 360° video that the other side could explore interactively. I wrote a comprehensive request for proposal (RFP) and obtained bids from several external software development teams, ultimately hiring one to execute the build. Acting as the project manager, I successfully led the team to deliver a working prototype.

Impact

The next step would have been to use the functional prototype to raise capital for developing a revenue-generating app through subscriptions. However, I founded Tellaport in 2019, shortly before my partner and I decided to start a family. With the financial demands that come with having children, I chose to pause the startup and secure a job at Google. This not only provided reliable income but also allowed me to further develop my product leadership skills. Around the same time, I was offered a head of design role at a more established, venture-backed startup in the 360° streaming space. While that opportunity was appealing, joining Google made more sense given my family's needs at the time. Although the timing wasn’t right to bring Tellaport to full launch, I’m proud of the functional prototype that was built and the fact that I brought such a futuristic concept to life.