Veeraj Chugh could carry a good camera in his pocket and still look disappointing on a work call. In 2020, that mismatch became difficult to ignore. The phone had received years of photographic attention; the camera perched above the computer screen seemed to have escaped the meeting. Chugh began asking why an object occupying so much of the working day deserved so little care.
He had worked in product operations at Uber. He could have bought another webcam, complained about the result, and carried on. Instead, he and his collaborators started experimenting with a replacement. Opal emerged that year, built around the proposition that video calls deserved better equipment without requiring everyone to assemble a small television studio.
It was an ordinary grievance with unusually demanding consequences. Once a complaint becomes a piece of hardware, it needs a factory, working software, and someone willing to answer for it. Chugh became Opal’s cofounder and CEO. The blurry rectangle had acquired an operations department.
The work before the webcam
Chugh’s background included Google, Jump, and Uber. At Uber, he led product operations for New Mobility, a role that put him on the operational side of getting technology into use. His education included a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business; he also studied at New York University’s Gallatin school.
At Opal, the early division of labor was explicit. Chugh headed hardware. Cofounder and president Stefan Sohlstrom led software, drawing on experience at Plaid, Otto, and Uber Freight. Industrial designer Kenny Sweet brought work for companies including Google and Beats. The camera would need those disciplines to agree with one another.
That arrangement matters to Chugh’s story. A CEO can be the public face of a product without being its sole author. Opal was a collaboration among people with different jobs, and its central claim depended on their work fitting together. A lens could gather an image; the rest of the experience required decisions extending well beyond the glass.
An object with opinions
The collaborators had been working on products at night and on weekends for years before the webcam became their focus. In 2020, Chugh redirected that attention toward the problem in front of their faces. The project grew from a working relationship already in motion.
The C1 had a square aluminum body and a coiled cable. It looked like somebody had considered the object between calls, too. Chugh objected to the visual choices dominating computer accessories: elaborate gaming equipment at one end, devices carefully imitating Apple at the other. He wanted Opal to have an appearance of its own.
There is a dry practicality in that preference. A webcam remains on the desk after its useful moment has passed. It becomes part of the room. Chugh treated that visibility as a design problem worth solving, alongside the quality of the video. The camera had to spend the afternoon staring back at its owner; it might as well have some manners.
By then, the brief had two parts: improve what other people saw, and give the buyer an object they were willing to keep looking at.
The first shipment starts the next job
The C1 began shipping in December 2021 at $300. It combined a Sony sensor, an Intel processing chip, microphones, and software intended to help close the gap between a webcam and a more complicated camera setup. A buyer was paying for the relationship among those parts.
Early software offered controls for exposure, contrast, background blur, and framing. It also encountered practical limitations. At launch, some applications could not use the enhanced virtual-camera feed in the same way as a standard camera. Switching off the software restored wider compatibility while giving up its enhancements. The proposed simplicity had conditions attached.
Chugh’s own launch-period assessment left room for that unfinished work: “It’s still early days for us, and we have a lot to prove.” The sentence is a useful counterweight to the polished object. Hardware can arrive looking finished while the experience remains under construction.
For an operations-minded founder, that is where the job becomes concrete. A customer buys a camera to enter a conversation. Any configuration demanded along the way becomes part of the product they remember.
The desktop camera arrives.
The brief moves with the laptop.
A broader company identity.
A camera with a future tense
Chugh and Sohlstrom persuaded writer and photographer Om Malik to replace his Logitech Streamcam with a C1. Their argument was that a camera should be capable of improving through software. By April 2024, Malik had been using the device for over a year.
The distinction changes the relationship between buyer and maker. Traditional hardware is relatively easy to judge as an object delivered on a particular day. Hardware tied to evolving software asks the customer to assess both what works now and what might improve later. It gives the maker another opportunity, and another obligation.
For Chugh, this was part of the product’s appeal. The camera could gain capabilities after leaving the factory. That possibility helped explain why an ambitious webcam company needed to care about computer vision as well as enclosures.
It also made patience a business consideration. Future improvements have to reach a person who still wants to use the device. The appealing idea of a camera that gets better carries a rather prosaic requirement: somebody must keep making it better.
The camera leaves the desk
Tadpole arrived in November 2023 with a narrower assignment. It was made for laptops and tablets, connecting over USB-C and working on Mac and PC without extra software for basic use. The shape of the problem had changed: people were carrying their work between locations, and the camera needed to come along.
Opal gave it a clip, a woven cable, a directional microphone, and a touch-sensitive mute control. Chugh described work taking place on couches, in coffee shops, and over unreliable hotel Wi-Fi. Those were recognizable situations rather than an abstract vision of a workplace. The product brief followed the person carrying the laptop.
The mute control sat on the USB-C plug. A connector became a button, giving a frequently handled piece of the device another purpose. It is a small feature, but small features are much of what an everyday object has to offer.
Tadpole also illustrates a limit that comes with a clear brief. Designing around portability means making choices about size, attachment, and controls. Each choice gives the intended user something and asks other users to accept a compromise.
Nine months is a long time to be wrong
By March 2024, Chugh was comparing design notes with Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, an Opal investor. They met in Aspen, in an Airbnb, to discuss products and customer experience. The venue at least spared one of them the trouble of explaining his business.
Chugh had a clear description of the timing problem in hardware. Decisions could precede the release of a product by nine months or more. “One wrong decision can lead you astray,” he said. That short sentence contains an expensive amount of elapsed time.
Gebbia’s involvement linked Chugh to a founder whose work had also centered on how people experience a product. Their conversation concerned design beyond appearance and the teams needed to deliver it. For Chugh, it was a chance to examine the operating choices behind a design-conscious company.
The familiar startup instruction to move quickly becomes more complicated when the decisions are physical. A changed mind has to travel through engineering and production before a customer can hold the result. Speed still matters. So does choosing a direction that remains useful when the shipment finally arrives.
“One wrong decision can lead you astray.”
Veeraj Chugh · 2024
The table gets bigger
Opal’s ambitions had already widened by October 2023, when it announced a $17 million Series A led by Founders Fund. Marques Brownlee and Casey Neistat were among the investors. The announcement described plans to enter other consumer electronics categories, alongside work on cameras. That year also brought Chugh recognition on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Consumer Tech.
It also recorded less photogenic progress: rewritten camera firmware and a new application, Composer. Expansion and maintenance were sharing the same company. That is a useful detail in understanding Chugh’s brief. The next idea does not cancel the product already sitting on someone’s desk.
His stated principle was that frequently used products should deserve the attention people give them. Opal’s proposed next devices were tied to specific experiences, including learning, preserving memories, and conversation. The webcam had supplied a starting point for a broader argument about dedicated objects.
On June 1, 2026, Opal announced the Electronics name. Its message described an office table holding finished work and unreleased ideas. The company wanted to remain small, release more products, and make distinctive devices. Cameras would retire, with support continuing for years.
That leaves Chugh with a familiar question in a larger room: which everyday experience deserves the next object? His first answer grew out of staring at a disappointing image of himself. The table now holds other possibilities. Each one will eventually have to leave the table, find a customer, and work on an ordinary Tuesday.