As someone who often speaks to many people outside my time zone, I often spend at least a few minutes on a video call explaining my location, the time, and the weather. Communicating that information has just become easier thanks to a Mac app called Boom, now available as a freemium product.
Boom is a bootstrap company founded by ex-Shopify employees Robleh Jama and Krishna Satya. The app works with all major video conferencing apps, including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc. Once installed, you can add customized themes to your video call display, including your name, title, location, time, and weather.
Plus, you can react to calls with on-screen effects, stickers, and GIFs. You can also fine-tune your look with controls like brightness, contrast, saturation, shadows, hue, and exposure. There are also different presets for different looks.
Additionally, users can design the off-camera screen to display a customized design instead of a blank screen.
The company is also currently rolling out a new feature that tracks meeting times.
The co-founders told TechCrunch that they started working on the idea during a period of remote work at Shopify.
“We realized that we were no longer just knowledge workers, we were all streamers. We had the hardware: great cameras, microphones, home offices that doubled as broadcast studios. But the software? It was still just Zoom, Meet, and Teams. Our frustration with existing tools was the catalyst for Boom,” they say.
Boom's co-founders emphasized that the product is meant to make video calling across different apps more fun and engaging.
The startup has been testing the product for over a year and launched it publicly in April. The company previously offered a paid-only product, but tweaked its pricing model this summer to become a freemium service.
Users can use the virtual camera, themes, and reactions for free, but advanced camera controls, premium themes, custom branding, and screen sharing features like presenter overlay and cursor highlight magnifier will cost $7 per month, $70 per year, or $199 for a lifetime license.
Later this month, the startup plans to launch a timeboxing feature to limit certain discussion topics.
In the next release cycle, Boom is working on features such as an agenda tracker, dynamic polls, and quizzes.
Boom's co-founders believe they can grow the product organically without venture backing.
“We've decided not to go down the venture capital route, but rather take a more independent path. Our goal is to make Boom so useful that it continues to grow organically and be profitable for 10+ years. If we can do that while remaining indie, that would be the dream,” they said.