Immersed built the most-used work app in AR/VR, with more than 1.5 million users and at least one inside every company in the Fortune 500. Founder Renji Bijoy got there by chasing a problem he kept hitting as a software engineer, most recently as a chief software architect at CNN, where distributed teams were stuck collaborating over pixelated, low-resolution screen shares.
In 2017, at Techstars Chicago, he bought a Google Cardboard viewer, dropped in his phone, and built a prototype that streamed his MacBook screen wirelessly into it. The idea looked strange until COVID sent everyone home, and Meta reached out to make Immersed the first non-gaming app in the Oculus Store. Immersed launched in 2020 and quickly became one of the platform's most-used apps.
The hardware bet
To reach everyone else, Immersed is building its own work-focused headset, Visor: roughly six ounces, about $1,000 against Apple's $4,000, with 25 million pixels. Renji first tried to avoid hardware altogether, pitching Meta, Microsoft, Google, Dell, and Lenovo to build it in exchange for access to Immersed's software and user base. They agreed the product should exist but lacked his conviction to build it, so he decided to fund it himself through his community.
Why retail capital, not just VCs
Immersed had already raised about $4.5 million in venture capital. But as momentum built, Renji’s thinking shifted.
"I just wanted to allow users and followers and friends and family to be able to partake in our company's financial upside."
— Renji Bijoy, Founder, Immersed
Raising retail capital also let him skip the months-long VC roadshow, giving up board seats, and stay focused on the product while the raise ran in the background.
Why DealMaker
Immersed's earliest rounds ran on another platform that worked well for small, organic raises driven by Renji's social following. Scaling a larger Reg A+ raise called for something different: full control over the investor experience.
"You have to use something where people come to your own landing page, where you can A/B test the messaging and make LIVE changes rapidly."
— Renji Bijoy, Founder, Immersed
DealMaker's white label tech let Immersed host the entire Reg A+ raise on its own site, under its own brand, with the flexibility to test, iterate, and scale marketing to new audiences it had never reached before.
The community as a growth engine
For Immersed, retail investors are more than capital. They amplify social posts, refer enterprise customers, and come back round after round.
"Having an army of retail investors is just a better approach to getting more eyeballs onto your stuff. It's almost like free marketing."
— Renji Bijoy, Founder, Immersed
That loyalty shows up in the raise itself, where investors leave notes like, “I'm a multi-round investor, very motivated to help promote and grow this company.” It also changed who showed up. More than 80% of the capital in the Reg A+ round came from investors over 55, a markedly older base than Immersed's earlier social-led rounds. The channel drove the shift: social media reaches a younger crowd, while financial newsletters reach people who have watched computing move from desktops to laptops to smartphones, and who want a stake in what comes next.
Backed by people who know the industry
Immersed's backers include names that know the industry. Intel's former CEO Pat Gelsinger met Renji on a panel at SXSW and later invested. So did Mark McClain, who sold Waveset to Sun and took SailPoint private off the NYSE for $6.9 billion.
"I've seen many different iterations of AR/VR over the years, and this is the first time it has actually resonated with me. I love Immersed because it's focused on things I actually understand: virtual work and collaboration."
— Mark McClain, Investor