How do you onboard two new hires who live in different states and will never set foot in your office — and still make them feel like part of the team from day one?

That was the problem facing Top of Mind PR, a 7-person PR agency in Florida led by founder Paola Iuspa-Abbott. Fully remote since the pandemic, the team's default plan for onboarding was bleak: "I guess I'm just gonna stay on Google Meet eight hours a day, and if they need something they can unmute." Then a LinkedIn post surfaced Cosmos — and the whole team, in their words, got "giddy."

In this conversation with Simon from Cosmos, the team walks through how they rebuilt their office online: three main tables where everyone claims a spot, a kitchen corner for the teammate who doesn't want to be bothered, a locking two-person table, and a Christmas tree that doubles as a status signal (when the boss parks her avatar there, she's walking the dog — and nobody's allowed to take it down).

Hear how a 9-to-5 actually runs in a virtual office — walk in at nine, find your seat, disperse through the day, exit at five — why "listening mode" lets everyone set their own comfort level, and how walking over to a colleague's table quietly replaced picking up the phone. What started as an onboarding experiment became the company's default office, with the owner now logged in and "available" all day, just like she would be in person.

What you'll hear:

- Why "Google Meet eight hours a day" is no way to onboard remote hires

- How a 7-person team claims spots and runs a 9-to-5 in a virtual office

- The Christmas-tree-as-status-signal trick (and other small culture hacks)

- Why "listening mode" beats always-on for people wary of being watched

- How walking over replaced phone calls and scheduled meetings

- Using a virtual office even on the days some of the team is co-working in person

About Top of Mind PR:

7-person PR agency based in Florida, fully remote (with an occasional South Florida co-working space). Founder: Paola Iuspa-Abbott. Uses Cosmos as its everyday office.

Read the full case study → https://cosmos.video/case-studies/top-of-mind-pr

Try Cosmos free → https://cosmos.video

(00:00) A tour of the Top of Mind office

(00:45) Everyone's favourite spot (and the table that locks)

(02:25) Why they started: onboarding two remote hires

(03:30) The LinkedIn post & the "giddy" first day

(04:53) Beyond onboarding: access without feeling invasive

(06:32) What the team feels — decorating your own desk

(08:10) How to describe Cosmos to someone new

(09:00) A 9-to-5 in the virtual office

(10:07) Do they still have a physical office?

(11:47) The honest downsides

What happens when a design agency that poured its identity into a physical studio suddenly can't use it — and realises it doesn't want to go back?

Adam Telford, founder of Maya, joins Rahul from Cosmos to tell the story of going fully virtual. Maya is a 9-person UK design agency that built its small studio into something that felt like the brand — clients walked in and instantly "got" Maya. Then the pandemic emptied it for nine months, and the team was left juggling meeting links and missing the vibe.

Adam names the three pains exactly: tool fatigue (too many links, too many apps, everyone needing a different download), lost identity (the studio felt like Maya, but Zoom just looks like Zoom), and the diary problem (five-minute conversations booked as hour-long meetings). A client recommended Cosmos — and Maya rebuilt their studio as a space, not a video tool: design team around a table, dev team in the corner, a conference room tagged "welcome to my TED talk," and lockable client meeting rooms upstairs.

Hear how the Maya day runs (10am stand-up with a funny question, then everyone scatters — some behind a tree, some on a rug — in listening mode all day), why they cancelled the lease for good, and the outcome nobody expected: at least three of Maya's clients have since built Cosmos studios of their own.

What you'll hear:

- The three reasons a design agency ditched Zoom, Teams and Meet

- How to make a virtual space feel like your brand, not a meeting room

- Why "listening mode" beats always-on video for a small team

- Running client meetings — and client breakout rooms — in a virtual studio

- What it actually takes to cancel the office lease and not look back

- Why clients started building their own Cosmos spaces

About Maya:

9-person design agency based in the United Kingdom. Cancelled its physical studio lease and now runs fully remotely in a custom Cosmos space. Founder: Adam Telford.

Read the full case study → https://cosmos.video/case-studies/maya

Try Cosmos free → https://cosmos.video

(00:00) Meet Adam & Maya

(01:41) Switching from Zoom & Teams: the three problems

(02:39) Losing the studio's identity

(03:28) Five-minute chats booked as hour meetings

(04:43) How the team feels about Cosmos

(06:01) Describing Cosmos & the client "surprise factor"

(08:04) A day in Maya's virtual studio

(09:43) Clients dropping in & breakout rooms

(11:40) Cancelling the lease

(12:57) Flexibility, culture & still meeting in real life

How does a 15-person edtech studio — half in a Singapore office, half remote across Indonesia, India and Cambodia — stop its remote teammates from feeling cut off from everything happening in the room?

Codomo co-founders Jia and Aditya join Karan (Founder of Cosmos) to talk through the honest middle of hybrid work. They run two products under one roof — Potato Pirates (a board game) and Rojak (a SaaS product) — and after lockdowns scattered the team, "engagement" kept showing up as the lowest score on every employee survey, especially from the remote half.

They'd run the standard playbook first: more Zoom socials, Jackbox games, a Discord channel for casual voice. It helped a little — but as Aditya puts it, "when you hear engagement is low, the knee-jerk reaction is to organise more Zoom socials… the learning was that's not it." The real step up was a virtual office with an avatar you can actually control — walk across a room, tap someone on the shoulder, ask a question.

Hear how Codomo rebuilt the little things: morning stand-ups both teams drop into, a "focusing" status that replaces "let's meet at the end of the day" with a quick walk-over, all-day sprint-planning sessions — and the snowball fights Aditya literally requested, including the one that broke a creative block and cracked a stuck project in hours.

What you'll hear:

- Why "more Zoom socials" doesn't fix a remote engagement gap

- How to bridge in-house and remote staff when half your team is abroad

- Why an avatar you control changes remote interaction

- Running two product teams (Potato Pirates + Rojak) in one virtual office

- The "focusing" status as a lightweight, always-on workflow

- Why keeping a physical office still makes sense (playtesting board games needs bodies in a room)

About Codomo:

Singapore-based EdTech studio building Potato Pirates (educational board games) and Rojak (SaaS). ~15-person team across Singapore, Indonesia, India and Cambodia. Working with Cosmos since late 2021.

Read the full case study → https://cosmos.video/case-studies/codomo

Visit Codomo → https://codomo.com.sg

Try Cosmos free → https://cosmos.video

(00:00) How Codomo found Cosmos

(01:55) Meet the team: 15 people across 4 countries

(03:36) The problem: remote teammates felt disengaged

(05:08) Beyond Zoom games — why engagement stayed low

(06:33) The step up: avatars, walking over, no links

(08:02) How Codomo actually uses Cosmos (stand-ups & "focusing")

(10:04) What the team feels about it

(11:58) Driving adoption across two teams

(14:42) Back in the office — but still on Cosmos

(17:36) So why keep the office at all?

(19:16) Is fully-remote the future of work?

How does a WordPress plugin team spread across China, South Africa, Mexico, Canada, India and the UK stop forgetting meeting links and start feeling like a real team?

Peter Wilkinson, Founder of Divi Engine, walks Karan (Founder of Cosmos) through how his 7-person globally-distributed team built genuine connection in Cosmos — daily scrums, snowball fights mid-meeting, Pong championships, Battleship tournaments, and the kind of casual moments that make people on opposite sides of the planet feel like colleagues, not contractors.

What you'll hear:

- Why a team across 6 continents needed something beyond Appear.in, Jitsi and Zoom

- How proximity chat replaces "where's the meeting link?" with "just walk over"

- Why team games matter when you can't meet in person

- How Divi Engine runs daily scrums (Marketing, Dev, Documentation) in meeting room B

- The honest test — would you explain Cosmos to a friend over a pint? (Peter calls it "a virtual office that looks like Pokemon")

- How a team under 10 people uses every corner of their virtual office

About Divi Engine:

Essex-founded (2018), 7-person global WordPress plugin studio. Team spans China, South Africa, Mexico, Canada, India and the UK. 10,000+ customers across 7 premium Divi plugins. Working with Cosmos since September 2021.

Read the full case study → https://cosmos.video/case-studies/divi

Visit Divi Engine → https://diviengine.com

Try Cosmos free → https://cosmos.video

(00:00) Divi Engine in Cosmos

(00:30) A global team, no office

(04:52) The team unity problem

(08:15) From meeting links to walking over

(10:09) Snowballs, Battleship and Pong championships

(12:51) Daily scrums in meeting room B

(14:05) Like Pokemon, but for work

(16:48) What we'd improve

(17:46) Performance & the "Forest of Silence"

(19:35) A day in the virtual office

How does an online university recreate the social campus experience — the moments before class, the visibility of office hours, the spontaneous conversations after — when students learn from anywhere in the world?

Christian Rebernik, Co-CEO of Tomorrow University and former CTO of N26, walks through how Tomorrow rebuilt their entire campus inside Cosmos: classrooms, academic offices, library, gardens, and the buzz that makes a university feel like a real community.

What you'll hear:

- Why traditional video conferencing felt "transactional" for live, challenge-based learning

- How office-hours visibility works when students can see who's actually waiting

- What changes when a platform supports clapping, whispering, and drop-in rooms

- How students who study from anywhere meet in person and already know each other

- Why partnerships with established universities trusted a Cosmos-based learning experience

About Tomorrow University:

German government-accredited online university for Global Impact. Master and Bachelor programs in sustainability, entrepreneurship and technology. Partnerships with WU Vienna Executive Academy and RWTH Aachen. Working with Cosmos since 2021.

Read the full case study → https://cosmos.video/case-studies/tomorrow-university

Visit Tomorrow University → https://tomorrow.university

Try Cosmos free → https://cosmos.video

(00:00) Tomorrow University in Cosmos

(03:40) When video calls felt transactional

(06:48) A social learning platform, finally

(08:51) A leap forward for conversations

(12:53) The impact on students

(14:55) From sceptics to advocates

(17:40) Wrap-up

When Frontier VFX grew from 10 people to 75 as a fully remote, Montreal-based visual effects studio, the "community feel" that made early days special started to slip. In this episode, Oliver "Oli" Nacey, Production Operations & Culture Coordinator at Frontier VFX, joins host Karan (Founder of Cosmos) to share exactly how they rebuilt it.

Oli breaks down the real problem behind remote culture — that it's about people, not industries — and why a virtual office turned out to fit a VFX studio surprisingly well. He gets candid about the messy parts: the "big brother" fears when the team first saw avatars and always-on presence, the friction of getting artists to treat a passive tool differently from a video app, and how a small focus-group rollout eventually became company-wide habit.

You'll hear how Frontier evaluated the space (they tried Gather, found Cosmos on Product Hunt), why the "middle ground" between too-simple and too-gamified won, how they measured something as soft as culture with surveys and lived experience, and how Cosmos quietly improved their onboarding process too. Plus the practical stuff: running 60+ person town halls, screen-share quality, and annotations.

A must-listen for anyone leading a remote team, heads of people, or studios rethinking how virtual work actually feels.

(00:00) Meet Oli & Frontier VFX (a fully remote Montreal studio)

(01:42) Scaling fast: from 10 to 75 people (and heading to 150)

(03:32) Why remote culture became top of mind

(04:50) The problem: losing the "community feel" as they grew

(05:25) Discovering virtual offices & choosing Cosmos

(06:47) How a virtual office actually ties into culture

(11:07) How Frontier uses Cosmos day-to-day (statuses & flexibility)

(13:43) Onboarding a "passive" tool (and why that's hard)

(17:46) Addressing the "big brother" fear head-on

(19:18) Two personas: production (meetings) vs artists (focus)

(22:07) What the virtual office gives artists

(24:54) Getting leadership buy-in

(27:52) A surprise win: better new-hire onboarding

(28:29) Measuring something as soft as culture

(31:35) Evaluating tools & building confidence in a new product

(36:37) Call stability at scale: 60+ person town halls, screen share

(38:40) Wrap-up

Try Cosmos for your team → https://cosmos.video