How an AR Studio Made Nearly $4 Million From Snapchat Lenses in a Year

Frank Shi and Xuan Buddhavong cofounded Paper Triangles in 2016 to create VR games and experiences. Shi and Buddhavong pivoted away from VR in early 2018 to develop Snapchat AR lenses for brands.  Paper Triangles made nearly $4 million in 2021, designing for brands from Adidas to Spotify.  When Frank Shi and Xuan Buddhavong cofounded the Los Angeles-based studio Paper Triangles in 2016, they originally set out to create immersive virtual reality games and experiences. But despite promising projects like their VR game for “The Conjuring 2″, the pair quickly realized VR presented several unique challenges, including lengthy development times and a relatively small market.”The challenges quickly became really obvious,” Buddhavong said, adding that VR could be expensive to develop and cumbersome for users to try. “It wasn’t financially viable because there was such a high barrier to entry. The only people willing to pay for [VR] were really big movie studios.”Shi, however, saw potential for the business on Snapchat. A longtime Snapchat user, Shi suggested Paper Triangles experiment with the platform’s Lens Studio, a set of software tools released in 2017 enabling Snapchat creators to make augmented reality lenses for the app.With hundreds of millions of Snapchat users, Shi…
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