team-culture
(2)
SoWork
SoWork is a generative-AI-enhanced virtual office platform that gives distributed teams a persistent, customizable workspace where avatars work side by side, spatial audio recreates hallway serendipity, and AI quietly captures meeting notes and action items. Founded at Harvard by three co-founders and legally incorporated as Sophya, Inc., the company raised a $15M seed round led by Talis Capital in 2021 and counts teams from startups to large enterprises among its users - with a stated mission to move workplaces from the earth to the cloud.
Vishal Punwani
Vishal Punwani is the CEO and co-founder of SoWork, a generative-AI virtual workplace platform born at Harvard's Innovation Labs. A medical doctor turned founder, he traded clinical medicine and a stint at the World Health Organization for the question of how distributed teams keep a culture alive when nobody shares a hallway. He and his two co-founders, who first met playing World of Warcraft as teenagers, set out to borrow what video games solved decades ago - presence, spontaneity, belonging - and bring it to remote work. In October 2021 the company raised a $15M seed round led by Talis Capital, counting Tinder among its early customers.