At the time, Quinn Taber didn’t know. He didn’t know that while learning Arabic and volunteering in refugee camps in the Middle East, he would later co-found a company that would set the market on fire with a new spin on language learning technology that connects millions of students around the world.
The Pepperdine graduate saw a need in the language learning space and in 2017, the well-traveled Taber, co-founder and CEO, and Jacob Furnari, co-founder and chief product officer, connected the dots that turned into what is now Immerse. Along with Christian Rowe, co-founder and head of business development, Immerse became a thing of reality.
Immerse uses virtual reality technology to create immersive experiences so a user optimally learns and recalls another language.
“VR has a ton of really substantial business impact in the next decade, but also social and educational impact; it’s just going to be such a game changer for a lot of reasons,” said Taber. “We saw that and started believing in that future 5 years ago.”
The then small team of co-founders worked tirelessly to develop a platform that puts the user into a real-world setting, like a marketplace or an airport, via virtual reality where they can learn and retain a language.
In 2018, Immerse launched their software and joined UCI Beall Applied Innovation’s Wayfinder program where they utilized the workshops, the Cove @ UCI’s meeting space, and Innovation Advisors, namely Bob Salem, who met Immerse that same year at the Cove.
“When I first met Immerse, the founders seem to gel together; they have strong teamwork, passion for what they’re doing and are really committed to the startup,” said Salem. “I would always find them hanging around the Cove working together, so that shows the commitment to the idea. I look for the ‘fire in the belly’ or the passion in founders to see who has a good chance of success and they definitely have that.”
In 2019, the company became primary VR partners with NASA, Microsoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Orix, and also won first place and $50,000 at Convene’s Leadership Collab 2019, a Christian leadership conference that brings CEOs and executives together. They used the funding to create a viral marketing strategy.
However, their successes didn’t come without its uphill climbs — Taber mentions that although their ideas and software were ready and waiting, , it took time for apps, the marketplace and the software to catch up to the concept of VR language learning.
“2019 was a year of hustling and getting into position so everything could take off but being frustrated because we weren’t getting those big sales that we wanted,” said Taber. “That took a lot of patience and grit that now formed us into the strong team we are today.”
In 2020, however, the pandemic brought many closures to schools across the world, causing virtual classrooms to quickly become the norm. Revenues for VR increased just over 30%, said a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, which put Immerse’s disruptive language learning tech on the map for educational systems around the world. The company has focused primarily on English learners and has since partnered with some of the largest English teaching companies in Asia and Europe.
“We survived because we built an awesome team of great leaders who are hardworking, problem solving and agile; a solid team is the number one thing by a long shot,” said Taber. “The [other] reason why we’ve been successful up until now is we’ve iterated quickly. We haven’t gotten too stuck on any one business model, customer or feature. Instead, we’ve been really light on our toes.”
In addition to creating their curriculum and platform, Immerse’s app now allows instructors to upload their own curriculum to the VR app making this, as Taber says, a new immersive way of teaching that increases the curriculum students can learn. With this feature, Taber wants to empower their partners to feel more ownership of the VR experience.
Ahead of the pandemic’s learning curve, in that same year, Facebook named Immerse a featured educational title for its newest virtual reality headset, the Oculus Quest 2, though the team’s app is not exclusive to Oculus.
“We have plans to continue to make our app accessible to all the VR headsets,” said Taber. “Apple is coming out with an innovative headset, most likely early next year, and Tencent recently bought Pico, the number one headset in China, for $775 million.”
Immerse kicked off 2021 with winning the Edtech Breakthrough Award and in August 2021, the team was named a finalist in the Digital Innovation category for the 2021 ELTons Awards for Innovation in English language teaching, which recognizes innovative English language learning technologies.
In that same year, Immerse also closed a $1.5 million Series A funding round, which allowed the team to bring on strategic hires and, with a roster of now more than 15 full-time, remote employees, Immerse also dedicated much of this funding to payroll and marketing. Through their rapid expansion, Immerse has secured partnerships with eight of the top 10 largest education companies in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
“By working with the eight largest language education companies we have access to 1.5 million students we’re going to be able to start targeting and offering VR to,” said Taber. “Simultaneously we are focused on building our brand on the big VR platforms like Oculus and PS VR so that we become the household name for VR language learning.”
As for blazing new trails, Immerse is far from done. The team is looking into VR English assessment exams for international students who want to enter the U.S., citing that using VR as a proctor can help avoid cheating and allow students to use results from tests like these to get into schools like UC Irvine.
“Everyone that buys a headset hears about the fun video games you can play on VR, but in the near future they’ll also consider VR education. That’s why we’re so excited to be on the cutting edge of this new technology,” said Taber.
Learn more about Immerse.
Photographer: Julie Kennedy
Photo Assistant: Jackie Connor
Bob Salem Headshot provided by: John Glover Photography
Art and Graphics: Evans Akanno & Julie Kennedy