About  PROTO™

Proto Inc. Beam There.

Proto is the first device that lets people beam themselves to a location thousands of miles away and interact with people there. You can call it telepresence, or even holoportation, but it’s real right now. PROTO was founded by David Nussbaum in Los Angeles in 2019 and is already shipping its human-sized machines worldwide.

Nussbaum was joined in 2020 by Co-Founder/COO, Doug Barry, a successful tech/media executive (Electronic Arts & Turner Broadcasting) and venture investor (Founding Pandora VC). Together, they raised a $3 million round of venture financing led by VC Tim Draper (Tesla, Skype, Twitch) which has allowed the company to build a world class technology and creative team, develop a global cloud based streaming & content management platform and accelerate new product & customer growth.

Proto’s devices have already appeared at Comic-Con, the Saturn Awards, the televised iHeartMusic Festival, and the 2020 Emmys Red Carpet. PROTO has representatives in Barcelona, Dubai, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York. and has been named one of the top tech stories of 2020 by Forbes and other media outlets.

Founder and CEO, David Nussbaum

David is an award-winning writer and producer who founded Proto after 20 years in the entertainment industry, having spent time in sports radio, television, podcasting and live events. His work was crucial in advancing hologram technology including benchmark moments that advanced the industry such as Jimmy Kimmel’s live appearances via hologram at the CMA Awards, the digital resurrection of Latin Music legends Juan Gabriel and Jenni Rivera, Julian Assange’s digital breakout of the Ecuadorian Embassy, the first hologram fashion show with Christian Dior, and the Ronald Reagan hologram at his Presidential Library. He has also completed projects with Jack Black, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, NBC’s The Voice, Amercia’s Got Talent, the National Comedy Center and others.

A natural spokesman and performer, David has appeared representing his hologram projects on Good Morning America, BBC World News, CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, Univision, Telemundo, the Discovery Channel, USA Today, the Daily Mail TV, Cheddar, Page Six TV and in a Netflix documentary. He’s been heard on NPR and the Howard Stern show and interviewed by Reuters, TechCrunch, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and The New York Post.

Before David became a hologram entrepreneur, David was a podcaster with over 250 celebrity long form interviews to his credit, founded Podville Media, the world’s first all podcast advertising agency in 2010 which had partnerships with top podcast personalities including Kevin Smith, Adam Carolla, Jim Jefferies, and Marc Maron. Previously, he thrived for over a decade in the sports (Yankees, Dodgers, Lakers, etc) news (WCBS880AM, WFAN660AM, KNX1070, KFWB980, etc) and talk divisions of CBS and Sirius XM Radio.

David’s vision for Proto is to facilitate communication of all kinds that adds the emotional element that previous virtual methods lack. He wants to see a PROTO in every home streaming world class interactive hologram content and connecting people across every kind of divide.