I doodle a quick sketch on my iPhone. I hit a button, and it’s floating in front of me as a bright pink Post-it. I grab the note, then toss it 15 feet where it sticks to the wall next to a giant mood board of images and notes. My colleagues–one real, one a hologram beaming here from 2,000 miles away–nod in approval, as I’ve taken them both by surprise.

“I didn’t even tell you how to do that!” says Jinha Lee, from underneath his Microsoft Hololens headset. I’d just spoiled one of the best bits of Lee’s demo all by myself. But that’s how good Spatial, the new augmented reality conference room app he’s developing, is. You stop thinking that you’re wearing bulky AR hardware, you stop considering the things you can or can’t do–and you just do what comes naturally.

Spatial should be the worst kind of startup. It’s just coming out of two years of stealth development (check one). It’s developing an augmented reality app (check two) that wants to change the way we work (check three). And it’s raised a lot of money on that premise–$8 million from an all-star list of investors: iNovia Capital and Samsung Next. Garrett Camp, the cofounder of Uber. Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga. Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original designers on the Mac. And Joi Ito, the director of MIT Media Lab.

What sets Spatial apart is that it’s being led by some of the most talented user interface designers working today.

Lee made his name with an insane system that used levitating orbs to control a computer. Then he spent a few years at Samsung to fulfill Korea’s mandatory military service, building highly experimental AR-like social experiences through the TV. He met up with Anand Agarawala, creator of the desktop interface BumpTop, which he sold to Google in 2010 before beginning work on the Android team. (The premise of BumpTop was that each icon behaved like a real, physical object, and it’s easy to imagine how it influenced Google’s Material Design guidelines to come.) Along the way, the team recruited VP of design Peter Ng, who worked on both Material Design at Google and motion graphics and 3D films at Dreamworks.

Spatial is an experience designed for conference rooms–and an impressive articulation of how AR can help teams work remotely, in real time.

So what’s it like to have an augmented meeting? Participants–wherever they are–all see one another as waist-up, photorealistic avatars, complete with real height that drops if they’re sitting, and articulated arms and hands. It sounds futuristic, but it actually starts to feel normal, fast. Photos, websites, Post-its, and even webcam feeds can be placed onto the shared virtual walls while you work. You can also pull in large 3D models, which can be placed on tables and resized.