Codomo is a 15-person EdTech team based in Singapore, with people in Indonesia, India, and Cambodia. Co-founders Jia and Aditya run two products inside the company: Potato Pirates (a board game) and Rojak (a SaaS product). Half the team is in the Singapore office, the other half is remote, working two to three hours either side of Singapore time.
"Before Cosmos, there was a definite disconnect within our team. Tools like Zoom and Slack? Sure, they did the job for meetings. But the immeasurable little things: those quick chats by your desk, the sudden team huddles that spark the best ideas. We missed all that. We were missing out on the essence of collaboration."
Their first move was the standard playbook: more Zoom socials, Jackbox games, a Discord channel for casual voice. It helped a bit, but the engagement gap kept showing up in employee feedback, especially from the remote half.
"For me, my main pain was having a mix of remote and in-house staff. With staff in-house, you are always interacting. But the remote team is so disengaged with whatever's going on in the office, and there's no way to bridge that gap."
Jia became the search committee. She wanted a video conferencing tool with an office layer to it: a space where people could use proximity audio to walk up to each other and talk, the virtual equivalent of a shoulder tap. She found Cosmos.
"The avatar you can control changes everything. You're actually a person walking up to someone. If I'm in another room, I'll just go over and ask her a question. It's a very close emulation of how you would interact in an actual workspace."
Codomo took the medium-sized office template and customised it with their company logo, some local Singapore touches on the floor, and a pet cat the team picked because it looked like their actual office cat.
"When we first came in, the emotion the team felt was that it really feels like being in the office. We were really not in the office for a few months. The team became more bonded. They could just talk to one another freely, and at least see the person."
Codomo runs two teams inside one virtual office: Jia's Potato Pirates and Aditya's Rojak. Both meet in Cosmos every morning for stand-ups.
"With Cosmos, it's like we've all finally found a place not just to work but actually connect and be productive. Our mornings kick off with stand-ups in our virtual office space, and these aren't your run-of-the-mill meetings. They set the stage for the entire day, encouraging spontaneous discussions and easy collaboration across projects. It's like we're all in an office without actually being in one. And productivity-wise, we've seen a genuine boost; there's a tangible difference when you know your team's right there with you, ready to dive into work together or throw a snowball or two when things get too tense."
Sprint planning is the other workhorse. A recent session ran three hours in the morning and another three in the afternoon, with the team spending the whole day in the virtual office. Between sessions, the focusing status does the heavy lifting.
"Stay on focusing. When I need you to see something I'll let you know. We use that a lot, and we've also gotten to know each other a bit better through that."
The snowballs in Cosmos exist partly because Codomo asked for them. Aditya wanted a way to poke or annoy colleagues mid-meeting, the kind of small interruption that happens in an actual office. The feature became part of the team's daily ritual, alongside the rest of the team games.
"Here's a story that sticks out: there was this project we were stuck on, ideas just weren't flowing. On a whim, we started a snowball fight in Cosmos. It was ridiculous, it was fun, and it was exactly what we needed. We came back to the project, rejuvenated, and cracked it within hours. Cosmos has given us that space not only to work but to unwind and connect on a human level, and that's been a game changer for us."
"It's not just a virtual office; it's the heart of our team's creativity and productivity."
Jia and Aditya at Codomo
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