Onstage at Microsoft’s recent Build conference, the tech giant announced a handful of partners that would help it to create software for its newest and most exciting device, the HoloLens. Along with Autodesk, Disney, and NASA was a small New York startup called Sketchfab, a platform for publishing, discovering, and sharing three-dimensional renderings of objects, like the one of yours truly below.

"People were surprised to see us in this group of big, well-established brands," says Alban Denoyel, Sketchfab’s co-founder and CEO. The young company is hoping to ride the wave of interest in virtual and augmented reality to become a household name.

Microsoft isn’t the only company using Sketchfab’s technology to bring 3D to the masses. Facebook, which is laying the groundwork for its own virtual reality platform, integrated with Sketchfab two months ago, a partnership that until today had not been made public. It’s all part of a push toward augmented and virtual reality that Digi-Capital is forecasting to hit $150 billion by 2020.

Ben Popper from The Verge by 3D selfie on Sketchfab (admire that broken nose)

"When we started four year ago we couldn’t really see how the ecosystem would develop in terms of virtual reality and augmented reality. We were principally focused on 3D printing," says Denoyel. "Over the past year, with Facebook buying Oculus, Google investing in Magic Leap, and then Microsoft’s HoloLens, we realized there was this huge opportunity for us."

Every big brand in tech has a horse in this race

Last week Apple signaled it was joining the party with its acquisition of the augmented reality company, Metaio. "Every big brand in tech is figuring out how to get into this area," says Denoyel. "We are ideally positioned for this, because we have been working on optimizing 3D files so you can embed them anywhere." The company’s big vision is to enable seamless sharing across VR, AR, and the web, a bridge between today's computing and the platforms of the future.

Sketchfab has pivoted not just its focus, but its business model as well. "We’ve pretty recently shifted to be a content platform, not a tool. Originally it was going to be a software as a service business where we charged users to upload files. But as we grew, it became clear there was more value in helping to distribute this content than charging people to host it." The company removed the barriers to upload and no longer charges for storage, except on its pro version for private files. "We have doctors using Sketchfab to share scans of teeth and stuff like that, they want to keep confidential, and we can monetize a little."

Sketchfab's technology is perfectly suited to the HoloLens

When you see HoloLens demoed, it’s clear how Sketchfab would fit in. Microsoft imagines people will sculpt and shape objects and then share them with fellow designers. This is a direct extension of the what Sketchfab did with 3D printing, making it simple to upload, publish, and share everything from architectural models to dental scans.

As an example, Denoyel shows me a 3D-rendered model of a city in Nepal, shot by drones flying overhead. With a click, I can begin to navigate around the streets inside my web browser. What if I wanted to send it to a friend with a VR headset? "This is ready for you to strap on an Oculus and walk through, without even needing to download anything. It renders right in that viewer."

Creating technology to share seamlessly across VR, AR, and the web

In the last few months, big name brands like HTC and Activision Blizzard have begun using Sketchfab to share 3D models of their new phones and game characters on Facebook. In the future, AR is expected to be a hotbed for commerce, with people browsing through holographic items in their own living room instead of heading for the mall.

"After AR hardware itself, aCommerce (an augmented cousin of eCommerce and mCommerce) and AR data could be the next largest revenue streams," says Digi-Capital Managing Director Tim Merel. "3D-streamed content will be a major factor, so best-in-class solutions could thrive as the market grows." This is also a sector where affiliate fees could add major revenue for companies that aren't themselves the merchant.

Hardware makers will be hungry for content

"You want to own the workflow around these objects," said Alexander Taussig, an investor with Highland Capital Partners who has backed companies like Leap Motion and Jaunt. "The big question for VR and AR is not the technology, it’s where will the content come from? Companies that can help to produce and distribute content for these new platforms will move the industry forward and potentially reap a major reward."

Along with helping to host and create content, the early days of these new industries will require cross-platform compatibility with older formats like web browsers. I might want to grab a 3D model of a phone from a link in my browser and send it to someone on an Oculus or HoloLens without missing a beat. The files could also flow in the other direction. "The pipeline we have built over the last three years is taking all these 3D file formats and making them ready for the web," says Denoyel. "But that also makes them ready for VR and AR."

What will user-generated VR content look like?

Denoyel believes there will be a big market for simple, user-generated 3D content — objects and landscapes that aren’t interactive. "There will be some studio quality stuff in the world of film and games. But the average person won’t be able to make that. They will be creating much simpler, more static stuff, at least at first." The camera debuted by Google and GoPro last week is operating on that same thesis, that a world of amateur content, like YouTube, will help to fill in the gaps while professional media for this medium is still scarce.

There will likely be one major competitor trying to leverage the user-generated approach: Google. At its recent I/O developer conference, the search giant showed off a camera that would allow anyone to shoot VR-ready content, and announced that YouTube will be a compatible player.

Sketchfab has a big dream, this technology that can bridge the gap between the web we use today and the various realities that are in the near future. "It’s not going to be as easy as they make it sound," says Taussig. "But the long-term vision makes a lot of sense."