A Melbourne-based virtual reality company has secured nearly $1million in seed funding from investors.

Lithodomos which means stonemason in Ancient Greek develops virtual reality content that re-creates ancient architecture, allowing people to see what archaeological sites once looked like.

The idea for the company was born out of PhD research by its founders, Simon Young and Dr M.Hamdi Kan,at the University of Melbourne.

"As part of my research I was implementing 3D visualisation software packages. Then a couple of years ago I got hold of a virtual reality headset," Young says.

"I spent a few weeks working out how that all worked and imported one of my models,and 'hey presto' there I was, standing in an ancient city."

Young saysthe technology could have applications in tourism and education, and Lithodomos has been working with potential clients to find out how it can best be utilised. "We spent the last six months talking to tourism operators, museum directors and site excavation directors in Europe to get an idea of what they would like to see in virtual reality."

Lithodomos'first commercial project will be working with Spain's University of Cordoba and the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness to re-create part of the Roman settlement of Mellaria in the Guadiato Valley, in the country's north.

With both founders coming from an academic background, historical accuracy is what sets Lithodomos apart from its competition, Young says.

"We take archaeological plans that have been collected and published over the last century and use those models to create accurate, to-scale virtual reality environments.

"We take great pains to ensure that what our audience is viewing is rigorously researched in every detail;it's carefully thought out so that you can feel confident that what you're seeing is real."

The $900,000 in seed funding represents a rapid rise for a company that started upin September last year.

The funding was secured through a pitch to an investor cohort after working with start-up incubator Mktplace Ventures.

I was quite reticent at the beginning, I'd heard about these incubators, 'they take your idea and they steal your money', but the reality is that I couldn't have done it on my own.

"They are private investors, and I can say that most of it is Australian money," Young says.

Despite Lithomodos's early success, smaller tech companies like itface a challenge in moving past the seed-funding stage, says Melbourne Innovation Centre chief executive David WIlliamson.

"There's always been an issue for small tech firms getting beyond that seed-funding stage. Venture capital sort of kicks in around $10 million;they're not really looking at any deals smaller than that."

Most seed funding for Australian tech companies is coming from angelinvestors or business accelerator programs, but this situation mightmake it more difficult for companies to move beyond the seed stage, Williamson says.

"The growth of that market is significant, but I think that this is only going to further exacerbate the problem that we'll have a huge number of these start-ups where pre-revenue, they may raise 20 to 50 thousand [dollars] and then they're going to have a lot of trouble beyond that."

He says the business culture of accelerators gives them an edge over universities.

"Incubators and accelerators that are run as self-sustaining enterprises have their own entrepreneurial agenda, so generally the culture that permeates these spaces is significantly more dynamic.

"Universities and larger research facilities are significantly larger bureaucracies, so they can't move in a lean fashion and get things done quickly.So that's the advantage that [accelerators] have."

Amid calls for Australian universities to get better at commercialising research, both Young and Williamson say accelerator programs and private investment areareas young academics should be looking towards.

"Universities have a tendency to instil in their students 'commercialise your PhD', which is fine if you're an aerospace engineer. But if you're a humanities student it's a little bit tricky;how do you sell history?," Young says.

"I was quite reticent at the beginning.I'd heard about these incubators, 'they take your idea and they steal your money', but the reality is that I couldn't have done it on my own."

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Archaeology turns to virtual reality with Lithodomos start-up - The Sydney Morning Herald