The ultimate virtual tour creator and 360° panoramic photography platform for building immersive stories
"We started with almost nothing: no funding, no team, just an idea. I wore every hat: coding, designing, pitching investors, and convincing early users to believe in a vision that didn't exist yet."
Challenge
Building a platform that could handle massive panoramas, 3D/VR features, and run smoothly on web and mobile - while remaining simple enough for photographers, architects, and creatives worldwide. Back in 2012, the technology stack didn't exist yet.
Solution
We built Roundme from scratch, creating custom solutions to render immersive panoramas. The platform lets users upload 360° images, create tours with portals and hotspots, and share them anywhere.
Results
- $3M funding raised
- 25-person team built
- Tens of thousands of users
- Global platform
The Story
In 2014, I launched Roundme, a tool that simplified creating virtual tours for real estate, after seeing how complex it was. It grew into a significant business, raising $3 million and drawing tens of thousands of creators.
Years passed, and it became our main business to provide a platform for educators, photographers, content professionals, marketing managers, and journalists, where they upload, create, sell and buy high-quality VR content.
Challenges
Building Roundme was a journey full of challenges and learning. We started with almost nothing: no funding, no team, just an idea. I wore every hat: coding, designing, pitching investors, and convincing early users to believe in a vision that didn't exist yet.
Finding the right team was tough. I brought together 25 talented people across design, development, and marketing, then worked to align and motivate them through the chaos of a startup.
The product itself was a puzzle. We had to build a platform that could handle massive panoramas, 3D/VR features, and run smoothly on web and mobile - while remaining simple enough for photographers, architects, and creatives worldwide. Back in 2012, the technology stack didn't exist yet, and every day brought new challenges to solve.
Scaling brought its own hurdles. As our community grew, we had to maintain performance and reliability, all while earning trust in a competitive market. In the end, Roundme became a platform relied on by tens of thousands of users worldwide - a testament to what a small, focused team can achieve with a clear vision.
Commercials
Easy Publishing
Easily upload multiple 360° panoramas with single drag & drop. Roundme supports JPEG and TIFF images up to 65,000 pixels. Images are safely and securely stored in the cloud and available for download anytime.
Multiresolution
Depending on zoom level and view angle, only the parts of the panorama that best match resolution are loaded. The quality of panorama is not reduced when zooming in.
Gigapixel
Roundme supports really huge panoramas up to 65,000 pixels. Because of multiresolution technology, such panoramas take minimum time to load.
Auto Position
Map coordinates along with proper view angle and direction will be set automatically based on the EXIF metadata analysis.
Virtual Tour Builder
Portals, Hotspots, Maps, Welcome Screens, Sounds... Everything to produce elegant, aesthetically pleasing and exceptionally beautiful 360° stories.
Hotspots
Information points containing any media information such as text, images, videos, embeds.
Portals
Portals allow navigating between different panoramas within a single tour.
Directional Sounds
Directional sounds can be heard only when observing the particular section of the panorama.
Maps
Maps provide an additional level of navigation within a tour. Use Google maps or upload your own images such as floorplan or aerial photo.
Welcome Screens
Welcome screens are used to onboard the user before he starts the tour. Possible to use video, images, and text.
Pano Folders
Panorama folders are indispensable for large tours. For example, use them to create separate folders for every room within a big hotel tour.
User Profiles
Roundme profile acts like a professional portfolio for panoramic photographers, architects, designers and other immersive content creators. Tours can be easily organized in dedicated galleries with customizable access rights.
World Map
The best 360 stories are showcased on the Google-powered world map.
Curation
All the content uploaded to Roundme is passing through the hands of the curation team. Some tours are chosen to be featured under the "Best New" tab, while the best ones could be found under the "Editor's Picks" tab.
VR
Along with the web VR support for the HTML5-based viewer, we developed VR-compatible native viewers for both Android and Apple platforms.
Testimonials
"I like Roundme for its simple, clean functionality. When it starts hosting stereo panos, it will become indispensable...they are very responsive to user requests."
"Shoot, shoot, shoot. See what works and what doesn't work and always think about telling a story with your work. I mean, that's why I really love the Roundme platform."
"Very clean, beautiful website. Most importantly, it's fast, very responsive and smooth—and works on mobile platforms as well as desktops without ads or clutter."
"Roundme is a very interesting platform for hosting virtual tours...easily integrate with your client's website or your own website."
Press & Recognition
Roundme was featured in major publications, validating our approach to making immersive content creation accessible to everyone.
Conclusion
As Founder & CEO, I led Roundme from nothing more than sketches on paper into a global platform serving tens of thousands of photographers and architects. What began in a small home office grew into a 25-person team building a profitable online business.
The journey was anything but easy - navigating limited resources, scaling globally, and solving countless technical and business challenges along the way. I wore every hat - product designer, recruiter, marketer, fundraiser, strategist, and operator - gaining first-hand experience in the entire product lifecycle.
Those challenges shaped my ability to turn vision into reality, build teams from scratch, and push through uncertainty to deliver results.