In creating our organizational structure, we had to borrow from two other known business structures: that of the video game publisher, and that of a lean game jam team. 

Acting in a similar capacity to A&R folks and talent scouts, Rob Ruffler and I sought and took meetings with independent creators from across real-time animation and independent games as we matched their talents with our strategic needs internally to experiment with different aspects of spatial content.

In growing our internal team, I took a cue from lean game development teams and built project teams that consist of at least one designer, one software developer, one artist, and one producer. In time, we scaled up the team such that we could do up to 2 projects in one 3-month cycle. As our projects were all meant to be prototypes and experiments, Rob and I managed taking all projects to market. As we developed more mature products that required a full product life-cycle, we had planned to add product managers to scale.

Following our mission to bring in a diverse group of collaborators, and to invite external voices and perspectives from beyond our circle of technologists, game designers, and linear content creators; we also partnered with our friends at the NYC Media Lab to operate an annual Viacom NEXT VR Fellowship – a program where we paired talented creators from any of the university programs around New York City with mentors from throughout the Viacom organization. This program also had the bonus effect of discovering talented creators that we would eventually hire as full-time employees.

Supervising us all was our leader Chaki Ng, who managed our internal stakeholders, presented our work and findings to senior leadership, and helped us fight the constant battle of getting more resources to do even better work every new financial year.