Around had one of the sharpest product insights of the remote-work wave: video calls are exhausting because they take over your whole screen. Make them tiny circular bubbles that float in the corner, and suddenly you can work and talk at the same time. NEA backed them with $25M. Miro acquired them in 2022, and the core technology was folded into Miro's collaboration platform. Around never became a breakout consumer hit, but getting acquired by a $17B company after three years is not a failure.
Founded
2019
HQ
San Francisco, California
Total Raised
$29M raised
Founder
Dominik Zane, Pavel Serbajlo, Matt Zakutny
Status
Acquired by Miro (2022)
Website
www.around.coTHE ORIGIN STORY
Dominik Zane and Sagi Haberman were frustrated with video call fatigue in 2019 — before COVID made it everyone's problem. Traditional video calls demanded your full attention: they took over your screen, killed multitasking, and made four-hour workdays feel like exhaustion marathons.
Around's answer was to shrink the video interface to a row of floating circular bubbles that lived at the edge of your screen. When COVID hit in 2020, demand for a lighter video alternative exploded and Around found its moment.
WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO
THE PRODUCTS
HOW THEY GREW
Product-led growth through design and tech communities. Around's floating bubble UI was visually striking and shareable.
Early adopters posted screenshots and demos on Twitter. The product spread through remote-first startups and design agencies who appreciated aesthetics and resented Zoom's corporate-meeting energy.
No traditional outbound sales.
THE HARD PART
Distribution against entrenched incumbents. Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams had massive installation bases, IT department buy-in, and enterprise contracts.
Around had better UX but couldn't match that distribution. The free tiers from those platforms made it hard to justify switching costs for most teams.
MONEY TRAIL
Seed
2020 · Led by Undisclosed
$4M raised
Series A
2021 · Led by NEA
$25M raised
WHO BACKED THEM
NEA led the $25M Series A in 2021. Additional backing came from angel investors in the design and developer community.
Related Profiles
Companies
Notion
Around integrated directly with Notion, letting teams pull in Notion docs as context inside video calls. Both tools were staples in the remote-first startup stack of 2021-2022.
Zoom
Around was built explicitly as the anti-Zoom — smaller interface, less fatigue, designed for makers who need to stay in flow while communicating. Zoom was the dominant incumbent Around was positioning against.
Head-to-Head
Compare Around vs another company.