This is the latest in a series of innovative moves by Mindgrub, all focused on creating a culture of inclusion for its fully-distributed workforce.

Born in a basement in 2002, Mindgrub has operated from its current headquarters in Baltimore’s Locust Point neighborhood since 2014. When the pandemic hit, Mindgrub was one of the first to make the transition to fully-remote, encouraging employees to work from anywhere in early March 2020. The company launched an intranet, a marketplace, and several culture-building events–in addition to policy and benefit changes–to support both veteran and new employees as they adjusted to being fully remote.

Mindgrub redoubled this commitment in March 2021, announcing all future operations would be remote-first, and expanding Mindhub, the area of coworking spaces available for sublease within Mindgrub’s headquarters.

Mindgrub Founder and CEO Todd Marks sees entering the metaverse as the logical next phase for the 20-year old company.

“In-person collaboration is the foundation for what we have today,” says Marks. “It’s easy to forget the tremendous value of stopping by a colleague’s desk for a quick chat instead of booking yet another meeting. With the metaverse, we can reestablish that sense of community.”

The metaverse offers coworkers the opportunity to connect in ways they cannot currently do through channels like Zoom and Slack–which fall short compared to the powerful tool that is in-person collaboration. The metaverse removes the challenges of physical distance and gives people a virtual place to connect that is much closer to the watercooler chats of in-office days.

To create this new office, Mindgrub has established an internal Metaverse Committee. The Committee is responsible for multiple pilot programs researching and testing VR meeting platforms such as Spatial.io and Horizon Workrooms, and prototyping with builder frameworks such as Minecraft VR, VR Chat, and Mozilla Hubs.

“This is an exciting and aggressive concept for sure,” Marks says. “But given the creativity and skills we [Mindgrubbers] demonstrate on a daily basis, I know we will build something revolutionary and continue to position ourselves in the marketplace as thought leaders and innovators.”

With this move, Mindgrub reinforces its commitment to a culture of inclusion, and aims to build a new kind of workplace where camaraderie and socialization are as natural as they are when working from the same office.

“Rest assured, our support for the Baltimore community will never waver. Baltimore will always be our home, but by building a new headquarters in the metaverse, our commitment to working remotely will be carved in stone,” says Marks.

Keep up with Mindgrub as they chronicle their journey to the metaverse by following the company on LinkedIn.