Q&A: Trace CEO Greg Tran talks building AR in Ohio, digital retail experiences, and more

Trace Co-Founder and CEO Greg Tran

Three former employees of renowned augmented reality (AR) company Magic Leap have raised $2 million to build their own AR business with headquarters in Ohio.

Founded in 2021, Trace builds location-based branded AR experiences and counts among its customers Qualcomm, Telefónica, T-Mobile, and Lenovo.

The company is led by “boomerang” founder Greg Tran, who spent time in Miami and San Francisco before returning to Columbus.

Tran talked with OhioTechNews.com about what they’re building, why Ohio, and how they managed to land funding from a wide range of investors that includes locally based Rev1 Ventures as well as Silicon Valley stalwarts Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.

OhioTechNews.com: Where is the team based? 

Tran: We’re in many places. In Portland, North Carolina, but our headquarters are here in Columbus. Also, we're hiring interns locally, so we’re working with folks at Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD), we have someone starting from Ohio State and someone from Miami University.

With AR/VR a lot of people come from game design due to the overlapping 3D skills, so CCAD has actually been great for the art and design side. It has been really positive to have that local community. Rev1 Ventures helps us to connect with people around the state, so we’ve found some engineers through their programs and have had way more people interested than we could even consider.

I think there are good people everywhere. It's more a question of how you’re able to connect with them. 

OTN: How did you get into this space? 

Tran: I grew up here in Worthington, went to Ohio State for undergrad and did my architecture degree there. I went to Harvard for grad school in architecture as well. My focus was on how the digital world can overlap with physical spaces and that’s how I got into AR and architecture for my thesis. After school I worked for Samsung, then Magic Leap in Miami, and then I left to start this company. 

OTN: What problem are you solving? 

Tran: We just saw how hard it is to make AR and immersive content. Usually you have to have teams of 10 people who have expertise in 3D, Design, Engineering, Computer Vision, etc. We worked on a lot of these types of projects in-house and for other companies and it would always be very bespoke to build content from scratch. You'd build something really cool, but it wouldn’t last because you’d need the staff to continue to support it throughout the product life cycle. I think that's pretty much how any new medium is, whether it’s film or web or whatever. It starts with these experts and then more democratized tools come about, like Squarespace or Canva, to help people tell their story. We saw a lot of these challenges that brands were having and the challenges that people had just making content in general. Our goal with the Trace platform is to make that process easier from end to end. 

OTN: What sort of experiences are you creating?

Tran: We're focused on how we can enable location-based, immersive AR experiences that are tied to physical spaces for things like events, branding, retail and training. I think about it almost like making a website for a physical space. A lot of AR content you'll see is ephemeral, and tied to product packaging or little popups. We think about Trace as almost like a dedicated overlay to your space. You set up your 3D website and you can continue to update it over time. That's how we want our experiences to be seen and perceived.

With the Trace app, people can set up a space, add content and make 3D recordings that are branded to their products and company. So if people arrive at a location, it'll recognize that space. We also have a cool feature where you can record yourself in 3D and basically turn yourself into a hologram and share information. I talked with the team at the Ohio State House for example, and they were loving the idea. We discussed having historical experiences, information and the expertise that could be shared even when there's not an expert on hand.

The other aspect that we're doing with our current round is building tools that make it easier to create that content too. So you could drop in a CAD model or you could drop in your brand model and you don’t have to be a designer at all. You could have pro-level output without having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on professional animators and 3d designers. 

OTN: How did you pull in such a diverse investment group?

Tran: Some of these big firms have a scout program. So what that means is they put in $10,000 to $50,000 and they'll basically track your company. So it's not a big check, but they can follow along and potentially be involved in a very substantial way in the future. I think what that shows is that even the big players are interested in this space.

—

You can visit Trace’s website for more information.