Interview with Maurice Op de Beek, KIIROO’s Chief Technology Officer.

 Amsterdam-based KIIROO is an award-winning sex tech company that has been a leader in the teledildonics (internet connected sex toys) industry since 2014. Working at the intersection of technology and human interest, KIIROO developed a unique technology that enables users to be intimate from a distance.

We spend our days pushing the boundaries of sex and technology, striving to be the leaders in all things that we do. 

Today, we would like to introduce Maurice Op de Beek, KIIROO’s CTO. Maurice is responsible for technology and product development for all KIIROO devices and applications. He is also the person who created the first prototypes for KIIROO’s line of interactive sex toys back in 2013/2014 

Bender – Please tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the adult industry?

 Maurice – I was a derivatives trader for 14 years until 2012 when I decided to do something else. I didn’t like trading anymore, it was a very stressful career. 3D printing was going strong in 2012 and it was really on the rise at the time. So I made the switch and followed MIT’s prototyping course at the FAC Academy in 2013 and after a year, I knew how to make working prototypes for various products. 

I was approached by a man named Reno Voet, who was a creative genius. He asked me if I could help him make the first prototype of his ideas. His idea was to add touch to the internet and make it possible for couples that live far apart to feel as if they are close together. 

It took us another 6 months before we had our first working prototype for the first KIIROO products. We opted for crowdfunding and went live on Indiegogo in January 2014. We received a huge amount of media attention and public awareness; it was a great success. KIIROO started off a couple of toys, but soon we were approached by different companies in the industry, like webcam, video, and VR, wanting to make their content interactive. By interactive, we mean that KIIROO devices respond to the movements you see on screen, making your masturbatory experience truly immersive.  

We released our first commercial product one year later in March 2015. By then we had a fully working app, a couple of hundred videos encoded to be interactive and were looking at making the interactive VR experience, which proved to be our biggest success. KIIROO partnered with some amazing companies like Flirt4free, VirtualRealPorn and Badoink that helped us get the first interactive content online.  

At the same time, in 2015 we partnered with Fleshlight. They worked with us to make the sleeve that goes inside the Onyx and later in 2017 we would make their Fleshlight’s interactive. During 2016, we worked hard on FeelMe.com which is our marketplace for interactive content, that we released in 2017 together with the release of the Fleshlight Launch.

 Bender –  Can you tell us a bit about your products?”  Maurice –  All KIIROO toys are interactive, which means that they can be controlled by someone else, through an app or by interactive content. We have three products suited for penis’s of a variety of sizes; Onyx2, Launch, and Titan. These three products have their own unique experience. Onyx2 squeezes and strokes the penis using 10 contracting rings. The Launch is a stroker; it goes up and down and different lengths and strokes. And, the Titan creates a pleasurable feeling by controlling multiple vibration motors simultaneously while the user strokes at their own pace.

We then have 4 vibrators; Pearl2, Fuse, and Esca (Esca2 will be released in February 2019) and Cliona.

The Pearl2 is an interactive vibrator, which can sense speed and depth in movement, which can be translated to another KIIROO device. Together with OhMiBod, we created Fuse and Esca that are very stylish products. Both are meant for the webcam industry as they are equipped with one or more LED lights.

Cliona is our latest release (8th January 2018) it is a clit-stimulating vibrator, that is compact and of course, interactive.

Bender – What webcam sites is your technology and products currently implemented on? 

 Maurice – We work with the several big webcam sites such as Flirt4Free, Cam4, Xcams, SkyPrivate, Streamate, ImLive and Twero. We have more sites in the pipelines that we hope to integrate our technology soon too. Flirt4free was our earliest supporter and is one of the webcam companies that wholly believe in interactivity. They have integrated tipping(1-way interactive) and 2-way interactive, meaning that for performers using KIIROO devices, they can control customers’ KIIROO devices in private sessions. 

We hope to integrate with more powerhouses in the webcam industry this year. We believe that technology can be applied to various sites, adult and non-adult. We want to add touch and intimacy to content to make our experiences online more rich and intimate. 

Bender – KIIROO is constantly coming out with new, innovative solutions in the webcam industry. What inspires you to create the technology that you do?”  Maurice – We are on a mission to make the internet a more intimate place, bringing together people that are separated over distances, letting people feel new and exciting interactive experiences. Our aim is to make these experiences as realistic as possible, and as a result, we are constantly looking for motor technologies to enable more subtle movements, and to bring movements and visuals more in sync, making these e experiences more visual and immersive. 

Livestream VR will be one of these experiences to make everything feel more real. What we particularly like about Livestream VR for the webcam is that it enables many people to experience a very intimate moment with the performer at the same time. The ability to look around the room will make the entire room a theater and will set the stage and mood before they actually perform, whether it is a dungeon, a girl’s room, a public place etc. The setting will add to the experience and the closeness will create an unrivaled intimacy.  

User feedback from our customers and webcam performers aid the development of future products and apps that we create. Our customers are our pride, and we love to innovate to keep our customers happy. 

Bender – How would you rate the current state of VR Technology?”  

Maurice – The problem with VR is that you need to see it before you believe it. And, when you see it for the first time, it needs to be a good experience or else you may not watch it again VR has made a huge leap forward with more budget-friendly headset options, and it is now moving more and more mainstream because people are aware of what VR has to offer. 

In the past, VR webcams have not been affordable or good enough to use for the mainstream webcam. Terpon, for instance, has brought down the cost of webcams for performers that want to Livestream in VR. This helps performers create more live and exciting content to attract more people to watch their rooms. Terpon is also giving away over 1,000 free VR cameras to top performers and studios from a wide range of webcam sites. Because of this initiative, we can expect the VR webcam industry to gradually start growing more towards VR.

We, KIIROO have also recently integrated with XVR.CHAT. We know that immersive VR is the next frontier in adult entertainment, so this partnership will be a fruitful one. 

However, there are some setbacks for the technology, which can be overcome as the technology becomes better and smaller. VR headsets are still relatively big and heavy, and they are sometimes uncomfortable to wear for a long period of time. Alongside this, setting up a VR experience with interactive toys takes time the first few times you do it. As an industry, we are working hard to make this experience as fluent as possible.