Rashid Ajami - Metropolis: Redefining The Future Of Commerce, Culture & Entertainment

Full transcript: Rashid Ajami on London Real

3:42 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Rashid Ajami, the former music producer, entrepreneur and Web3 pioneer. You are the co-founder and CEO of Metropolis, a cutting-edge digital platform where commerce, gaming, social fight, art and culture converge into a 360 degree immersive experience. Metropolis is redefining the way we engage with digital worlds through AI, VR and AR, creating personalized interactions and true ownership of digital assets.

4:22 Your goal is to bridge the gap between the virtual and physical worlds to create a next-generation cultural destination that not only democratizes access to the metaverse but seamlessly integrates commerce, culture and entertainment. Ultimately, you believe the metaverse is blurring the boundaries of the physical and digital world and will dramatically transform how we communicate, conduct business and consume entertainment. Rashid, welcome to London Real.

4:49 Great to be here. Thank you for having me. It’s great to have you here. I want to start by saying that Metropolis is one of our portfolio companies here at London Real Ventures. The world’s first media-powered investment firm.

4:58 Where our mission is to transform the world by investing in cutting-edge Web3 and AI companies while giving our partners marketing exposure across the London Real media platforms and academies. We heighten awareness, create customers and build communities by leveraging our global audience and extensive network. Rashid, we’re super excited to be part of this journey with you. So let’s jump in. Awesome.

5:19 What is Metropolis? Thank you for having me, really excited and for the support, the investment, all of that. Yeah, so Metropolis is a virtual world that’s blending gaming, commerce, culture and creator economy and one vibrant ecosystem. We have two core products at the moment. Metropolis X, Metropolis World.

5:37 Metropolis X is an avatar builder meets marketplace where you can essentially shop using your digital identity. So your avatar will actually unlock real-world products, content, experiences from amazing brands and creators. We have 400 plus already on the platform. And then Metropolis World is the ecosystem where you engage with these creators and brands. Quest, commerce, gaming, immersive experiences.

6:00 So it’s like a virtual city that allows you to engage with creator-led and creator-fueled quests. What’s amazing and different for us, compared to what’s out there right now, is we’re focused on digi-physical. This is bringing the digital and the physical together. We believe that your tangible experiences need to link with your virtual experiences. And the other piece is we’re building a brand for Metropolis.

6:22 So we have characters, stories, lore, IP. It’s about actually creating this soul into the metaverse, essentially, with that. We have our characters. When you look at Star Wars, Harry Potter, these are story-led worlds. And so we believe that’s very important for the success of this new virtual age.

6:41 The first question I have is, yeah, what makes you different from a bunch of people that have tried to do this? Because a lot of people tried, and they gave up, or they tried, and they failed. You guys have had some success. And so I’m kind of curious, I’m sure a lot of people are, is how you’ve had that success. And you think it’s because probably the things you just said, first of all, you don’t just have this generic metaverse that people can plug into.

7:04 It actually is a specific place with a specific story, right? A pretty cool futuristic story with six meteors and things like that happening, which I want to hear about. But also, you have real partnerships where things are happening with the digital and the physical world as well. Maybe we start there, because I think a lot of people still don’t understand the metaverse or understand how they’re going to play in there. What’s a good example of somebody who can have that digital-physical interaction in Metropolis?

7:36 Totally. So because our background very much was this web2 background, we’re creators, we wanted to think about what would a creator want from this virtual environment. So as an example, we have a young sunglass designer that’s done these incredible limited edition sunglasses in Japan. And he’s had a hard time selling them in stores, like going to the stores trying to get them out. It’s a difficult job to do.

8:01 So with us, imagine you get the avatar, you buy the sunglasses for your avatar, and that then unlocks the real one that gets delivered to your home. So now you’ve purchased your glasses, they’re delivered to you, but then that avatar can be used in different environments, whether that’s a game, a social media filter on Instagram or TikTok, VR, AR. So now there’s a dual functionality to this creation of the creator, basically. That, to us, is something that actually makes sense, especially for the younger generation, because you buy those sunglasses, you wear them down the street, and then you have your filter on TikTok, you take them into the Fortnite game.

8:37 That’s the vision we see, how this thing really blends seamlessly. And that’s actually working on your platform. That’s coming very soon. So that’s what’s been under the hood, that everyone talks about this interoperability. But we’ve actually found a way to really structure this, that it’s seamless.

8:52 Because right now, with the blockchain side, it’s quite complicated for a lot of people. For us, we believe in creating an Apple-focused product, where it’s simple, it’s easy, it’s usable. And that’s how everything we’ve done to date has been, very seamless product interface, essentially. Okay. Well, let’s talk about that.

9:10 Because people have gone back and forth between this Web 2 interface, this Web 3 interface. Yeah. And you’ve been working on this for years. And so I think in the beginning days, and the bullish markets of 2020 and 2021, I think the crypto world said, guess what? Everyone’s going to come into Web 3, they’re going to get a wallet on MetaMask, and they’re going to plug it in, and they’re going to do this and do that, and away we go.

9:34 And then maybe because the bull market cooled down, but not enough people learned about Web 3, and that ended up being a barrier to people entering this world, right? And so people rethought things, I’m sure you did as well, and thought, well, wait a second. Maybe we don’t have to force them to learn Web 3, but they can still get the benefits of Web 3. That’s exactly how we see it. For us, the Web 3 aspects are the technology behind the experience.

9:59 But the experience should lead the technology. So we started with the content, the creators, the stories, the IP, ultimately. And then from that, we learned what is the technology that can support and empower this. I felt a lot of people in the space have initially focused on what’s the blockchain, what’s the technology. And for an everyday consumer, that’s not in their interest.

10:20 You know, when you go into an Apple store and you buy your phone, you just care about how it looks, how can I use it. You’re not so concerned what’s the specific metal or the data chip that’s within it, right? It’s just what is the experience and utility of this product. So also by chance at the time, we hired a guy that was one of the early engineers at Squarespace and just built unbelievably beautiful products. So we had this advantage where we could build products where you don’t need to have blockchain experience, you sign in with your email, the wallet, the NFTs, the blockchain stuff’s all happening in the background.

10:53 And your experience is that with just a tangible product that you would understand how to use. I think that’s so critical with this whole space. Has anyone got that right in Web3? Or did they struggle a little bit to have that so seamlessly? I found that that’s the biggest thing right now that prevents adoption in the space.

11:15 And for us, we just felt that’s why we almost just 180 our approach and started with what is actually tangible, the content, the front end, and then how do you plug in the technology to just work, essentially. That I think is critical and that’s where I see there’s a lot of barriers in the space. Okay. So say I’m walking along cruising through my life and I’m not aware of Metropolis and then I become aware of Metropolis. How do I initially interact with what you guys are doing?

11:44 First of all, how do I become aware of you? Yeah. And then what would you say is my first interaction from that Web2 standpoint? And then where do I go from there? What do you think is that customer journey in the future?

11:53 Absolutely. So we have quite an interesting acquisition strategy that has really worked for us and allowed us to scale, which is it starts with the creator or the brand. Let’s take an example of Steve Ioki. We create a Steve Ioki wearable line, an avatar line, and it ties to some exclusive stuff that you can unlock, like a Steve Ioki record or a piece of merchandise. Steve Ioki then goes and promotes that to his fans, to his community, to his user base.

12:19 They discover Metropolis. They then come to our site. They have this experience of creating this avatar, learning that it will unlock something tangible. So they say, oh, hoodie, your music, this is stuff I understand. And from there, you started by getting them on the tangible aspect and then you bring them into the world.

12:38 You say, okay, now you’ve got your exclusive hoodie or your record. You’ve engaged. Let’s now show you what you can do in the world. Come and play a Quest, Steve Ioki game. Engage.

12:50 Learn more about other products we may have. So we took that approach and it’s worked well because you’re starting with the affinity of the consumer to that creator or brand. You’re starting with tangible products in the real world and then you’re bringing them into a digital environment versus saying, go get a wallet, come onto this chain. Do you have to then switch to this and it becomes… Yeah, or give them some digital good that isn’t really going to get them pulled into the ecosystem.

13:16 Exactly. At the end of the day, people still respond to tangibles and that’s the best way to anchor them as a customer. Tangibles and then storytelling. Because one side of it is people want tangible goods, experiences, they want to engage with creators and brands that they already love. So that’s one.

13:35 The second is storytelling. People love these worlds like Star Wars and Harry Potter. They’ve become meta-versus in their own right. They started as like a book or a film, but then they’ve expanded into these entire worlds, games and so on and experiences and museums. But that’s all started at the heart of that as an emotional tie to a story.

13:55 And that’s actually the reason metropolis was started, was me as a musician, I was looking at the space, looking at how I can create NFTs for my music, do audio visual stuff. And in diving into these communities, I felt there’s no real depth to the storytelling. So I brought my sister on board, Rania, who’s just a master storyteller and we realized there’s an opportunity to really build a world here that has a story around it and that’s essentially how it was born.

14:25 Okay, so if you kick us back to 21 and a lot of these NFT collections that were dropping here and there, you had 10,000 versions. Exactly. But there was no story, right? I mean, Boredade kind of had a story, but it didn’t really have a well-developed story. I found out later that the Boredape Yacht Club was a bunch of Boredapes that had made so much money in crypto, they didn’t know what to do.

14:43 But no one ever articulated that to me. So I didn’t really know the story there. So you’re saying it was really light on storytelling and really heavy on probably Bull Market, Web 3, and then the fact it was the first time you could, I guess, own a piece of digital property and show provenance and stuff. Exactly. But they could have taken it further with the storytelling.

15:05 Yeah, storytelling in the aesthetic. And that’s why we endured on ourselves to basically the whole first city that we have. Every property is unique. It’s totally non-generative. And some people say, is that AI?

15:18 And like, how did you create that? But we had an artist single-handedly create every single property in that city. Then our storytelling team essentially created the narratives for every single property as well as just the world. And we just wanted us to take it to the next level. And that’s just something that we’ve always believed in, which is just take everything we do to the next level.

15:40 Let the product be next level. Let the visuals be next level. Because ultimately, that quality over time will shine through. And yes, there may be times when the markets are bad and things change and you have to adapt. But if everything you do has that highest quality and output, which is just genuine and authentic, I believe that leads to success ultimately.

16:00 And one of the biggest things we talk about as a company just through the ups and downs in the crypto market is brick by brick. As long as you go brick by brick and then have the agility to find opportunities, you will eventually reach the end point. There’s no end point, but the goal and the north star and that success, and that’s how we basically approached it. That’s a good philosophy, especially in the crypto world. They say if you never quit, you’ll always win.

16:27 Yeah, exactly. I actually believe that’s true. There’s some people that might argue, but I believe that’s true. So then, can we talk a little bit about the story of Metropolis? What is the storytelling there?

16:38 What’s happening there? What draws people into this world? Yeah, so I think for Rania, who’s really the powerhouse on the creative side, she wanted to find a way to create a city that had elements of reality but then takes you into a surreal environment. So you have your donut shop, but then it has this interesting character that’s kind of otherworldly that runs the donut shop, you know, for example. So it’s this blending of things that are tangible to people, like a real city, you know, different districts and you have the lower-depth district that’s maybe a bit more seedy and in the futuristic high-rise area.

17:12 So we kind of pulled out of like real world cities and then added this fantastical element around it, basically. And the idea is that every city we release will have a different scene based on elements, even potentially based on sectors. So it becomes quite ever-expanding in terms of how we evolve the product, basically. Okay. Why Metropolis?

17:34 Why is it city-based? I’m kind of curious. For us, I think it’s because cities are like the melting pots of the world where collaboration, connectivity occur. Commerce, that’s another just big piece of what we’re doing. Creators, art, music.

17:50 You typically find that cities can be melting pots for these types of things and there’s energy in certain cities, right? So we just wanted to play on that. We wanted to create these melting pots like the real world cities of London, New York, whatever it might be, and virtualize that. But still without losing the soul of tying it back to the real world, of course. And so what is Metropolis mostly like?

18:12 London, New York, Dubai, Blade Runner? I would say Japan. Okay. Because it’s Miyazaki-style art. It’s very much this animation.

18:21 This initial city is very anime-based. When we first started, actually, we were thinking this could be displayed in an art gallery. One of our investors is actually the chairman of the Tate, Roland Rod, amazing guy. He took to the art. We have this guy, Roger Bevin, who’s a leading art advisor.

18:38 He came into the project. We were showing it to all the galleries. So there is an art play. I mean, for us, we want to do pop-ups in cities. We come in.

18:46 You can see these immersive experiences. We want to get into art galleries. The idea is to eventually expand across these verticals, but it’s all leading back to one centralized city and environment that’s a collective of amazing people coming together. Okay. What have we learned about metaverses in the last couple of years?

19:05 Also, we both just got back from Singapore. And what did you feel is the current vibe of the market? And what are people ready for, do you think, over the next couple of years? I feel that there’s always this fight in the web-story space around the speculative nature of the market and then the actual product development of the market. And as a founder, you have to navigate both of these things because you have 50% of the people looking at your project saying, is this a project that will have multiple Xs on its token?

19:35 And then you have other people saying, will this project essentially change the way people engage with technology? And these are very different strategies. And we have to learn to kind of play both strategies, ultimately, as a founder and web-story. But to answer your question, I think the metaverse narrative, it can’t really die because it’s just happening, right? Like AI and the way games are developing, the way kids are spending time in environments like Roblox and Fortnite.

20:07 You know, I know from Rania’s kids, like their social life, a lot of it is in environments like Roblox, which is like a metaverse, right? So it’s inevitable that this is the move that’s happening. Apple’s doing stuff like Apple Vision Pro and so on. So it goes back to the brick by brick, which is you have to run a marathon and not a sprint, but then still be agile to the trends in the short term as well. And that’s how we approach metropolis, right?

20:36 It’s just systematically seeing this direction and trend and building it, starting from the tangible, these real-world products, to the content, to the IP, to then the interoperability that I was mentioning to you. It’s just systematically building these layers that will tip at one point. That’s how I see it. Every single tip and then it will just spread very, very aggressively. Yeah, look, you make a great point about the metaverse.

20:57 I mean, a lot of our teaching environments and even our investing environments, I do on Zoom. And I always used to tell everybody there, I’m like, this is a metaverse. Like, what do you think we’re doing here? This is a metaverse. And my boys are seven and eight.

21:10 And they’re definitely into the Roblox metaverse. And like they were here last night, and I finished up one of my calls, and I come out, and I’m like, I’m starting to tell, okay, we got to get ready to go. And I’m like, is Daniel listening to us? Because that’s their friend who’s on FaceTime while they play Roblox. Right? So they’re hanging out with him.

21:26 And I don’t remember who I’m talking to, you know, what I’m talking to them. And so that’s their world. They are fully immersed in the digital world. The person I know that owns the most digital assets in the world is my seven-year-old son. Right?

21:38 And he’s so comfortable with it. And I’m slowly starting to teach him a little bit about crypto. When he gets that under his head, then he’ll be a beast. But he is so comfortable with that. That’s just a huge part of his world.

21:49 That’s how he learns. That’s how he negotiates. It’s everything. But we saw some of the earlier metaverses like Sandbox. Okay, we’re going to build a sandbox.

21:59 Everyone’s going to come out and hang out and play. And it didn’t happen. Agreed. The way that they said it was going to happen. So I guess you’re right.

22:06 We’re in these kind of two places where it’s, first of all, we’re all in the metaverse to a certain extent. Yes. But the metaverse, as it was initially laid out, didn’t happen that way. So we’re at this weird place, right? You kind of feel that, I’m sure.

22:20 I feel that. And in a way, it’s a blessing for us that we came after the initial metaverses like Sandbox because we were able to look at them and start to learn what might not be working. We kind of came in that second phase. And this idea of these environments where there was maybe limited content. They’re clunky.

22:43 They’re harder to get into. You have to go on a website to get into them. People, today, expect very quick gratification when it comes to accessing their products, right? Instagram, you know, you’re swiping. It’s immediate.

22:54 Amazon, it’s one click. If it’s not like no one’s now even putting their credit cards, just check out immediately. That’s expected from a user at this point. So when you apply that to a virtual environment or a metaverse, it needs to have that similar structure in terms of how people can get in and engage with these products. That’s why we went almost Web 2.5.

23:14 We said, look, let’s ease our way. We didn’t go and rush to build a big virtual world. And a lot of our community, they actually pushed back on that in the early days and said, well, where’s the world? Where’s the world? And I had to really explain.

23:25 Well, look, if we just go now and spend all our capital building out another just virtual room type world, we’re just going to end up without the traction. We have to do this in the right way, which is starting with the tangible, starting with the content, shaping the product based on that. And when you see what’s coming out, I mean, the teasers we have of how that’s coming about, I do feel this will have that scalability and that possibility. Okay. How do I interact with your world?

23:55 Is it mobile? So right now it’s web, but highly mobile friendly. But we’re moving mobile. The idea would be that, let’s say, let’s say you have for London Real an environment in our city, that on your Instagram in one click, someone can enter that environment. And it’s now just a deeper experience than the Instagram page.

24:17 It’s an experience where someone may play a game that’s linked to what you’re doing, or there’s some sort of meditation that will guide you, that you want people to go through, or whatever it might be. It’s a deeper experience, but it’s not an experience that’s miles away. You’re getting to it in one click. And we’re taking that approach, right? It goes to brick by brick.

24:35 It’s just step by step. You need to bring people in. And then eventually, yeah, you could create a grand theft auto type world, build a hundred million dollar game, and that might be the approach, but it might not be the approach. And that’s how we see it. How hard is it to do like one click from Instagram to go into a world?

24:51 We’re building in a way that’s doable. Because it’s like these, we call them property hubs, and these property hubs, we call them the square space of the metaverse. It’s this environment where you can come in and add your music, you can add your feeds, you can have a commerce shop integrated. It’s easy and seamless. Like what square space did to building websites, we want to do it to the metaverse basically.

25:14 And that’s the transformation that I feel is necessary. And you have people building games, building virtual world that’s all great and it will evolve. But to us, it’s this plug and play seamless way to create these environments, to create quests, to create games that are fun, easy, and tie back to tangible products. And that is the winning formula around how this could work. At least we think it’s the winning formula.

25:38 OK. And commerce is really important to you. Yes. Always has been. Yes.

25:43 Why? Because we feel that creators are struggling to monetize across multiple industries. Like I know as a musician, I make music and have signed it to some amazing record labels like Ministry of Sound and Unity. These are like top labels. But I get my royalty statement, and it’s maybe $50 a quarter.

26:02 So making money from music and from the arts and from film is getting harder and harder. So we identified that creators need a way to monetize. They need a way to monetize the market. So the commerce aspect to us is integral to support these creators and brands, to find new ways to monetize and to have new ways to engage audiences. So that’s where this hub concept comes in, where as a creator I can create a merchandise.

26:29 It’s digital. It’s physical. It supports what I’m doing. It unlocks a record. That’s what we’re trying to do.

26:36 Also, like people always forget commerce is a form of human communication in a big way. That’s why peer-to-peer transactions and payments is so important. I mean, you could even argue that all human interaction is commerce. I mean, also as humans, we’re very transactional. People don’t want to admit that they are super transactional.

26:56 Every relationship is based on transactions. Exactly. Some subtle, some unsaid, but it’s all transactional somehow, right? A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

27:06 Now you’ve had some big numbers that you racked up recently, and these are probably grown, but like, you know, one and a half million in revenue, 250,000 users on the platform, 150 plus KOLs, 400 plus signed partnerships. Those are big numbers. Yeah. The way we did it was when we first started, we focused on getting a few really amazing names on board, and we went for the cool creators, not the big brands, but the individual creators that we feel are really cool, like the musicians like Diplo or Steve Ioki and these types, you know, fashion designers like Christian Cohen, people that are individual but have, you know, a strong community.

27:44 Once we got them on board, we started to just build the momentum. You know, the first five are the hardest. That was the hardest. How do you close them? Does your music background help?

27:54 It helped. We had some luck that we, you know, the aesthetic of the project drew in some great people that had this good network, and so it was just like three, four months of just pitching and pitching to the managers of each of these artists and then eventually to the artists, and the first few were very difficult, but I could feel they sensed a good energy around metropolis. They sensed the aesthetic was nice. It was unique. It was high quality.

28:18 So it just gets easier and easier. Once you have the first 10, the next 20 become easier, and now it’s just evolved it. Because we have so many great creators and brands in the ecosystem, we’ve established ourselves, and because we’ve been consistent and we’ve not gone with this whole, like, hype and then we go down and hype, which you see a lot in Web 3, we’ve just built more systematically, and it doesn’t mean that we won’t, let’s say, when we launch a token, as I, you know, bring the KOLs and do that.

28:46 We understand it’s part of it, and it’s kind of a part of what you need to do, but it doesn’t mean that, you know, just ultimately we’re still building this, you know, systematic approach to the business. Okay. Yeah, it’s a great model. It’s actually kind of how we built London Real, because we would get a famous guest on, we’d publish their episode, their fans would watch it, oh, what’s London Real? And so we built our fan base.

29:10 It’s just one collaboration after the other. And there’s no cost to this. It’s just, it’s harder work. You have to just, you know, initially, there’s just more of this convincing a few initial people, but then I don’t believe in this, you know, going and spending huge sums on marketing, because I feel you ultimately won’t get the authentic users. I’d rather just grow that systematically, tap into the communities of all these creators, have them come together and nurture that, and that just grows itself.

29:38 What’s in it for us, Steve Ioki or a Diplo? Why would they want to have this exclusive piece of merchandise on Metropolis? So for us, there’s two elements here. The first is that if you’re Steve Ioki and you want to, let’s say, get your stuff across multiple digital environments, this is like one way to do it, because you come in with us, you create your wearable, and it’s going to ultimately end up in all these different places, right? So it’s just way easier than Steve Ioki having to go and set up his own collection or figure out how to build, you know, his own world or whatever it might be.

30:12 We make it as easy as possible for the creator to kind of come in, give us their ideas, we create all the art for them, we take their feedback. So that’s the way we’ve been doing it. It’s just we want them to feel like they’re just part of the creative process and we take care of all the nitty-gritty. Nice. All right, so they just have an idea and you kind of incubate that project and see what happens.

30:30 Some are super hands-on. I remember we had Mike Shinoda of Lincoln Park basically sketch out exactly what he wanted. He was super hands-on about it, and it was so cool. He was sketching out the guitar and giving us all this amazing feedback. And then you have others that are just like, you know what, this is the general idea and run with it.

30:49 Right. So it’s been a mix. The sketches are probably good little bonus NFTs later. Yeah, absolutely. Right?

30:55 Okay. Definitely. Nice. All right, so you have that. Those people are coming in and now you’re growing kind of brick by brick.

31:01 You mentioned the token. Yeah. So I think it’s coming in the future, this clay token. Why is a token necessary? And for maybe the people that don’t understand Web3, like why do you need it inside of this entire ecosystem?

31:14 Because a lot of times it can be like the fluid, the gas that just runs the whole engine. Definitely, definitely. With us, a token just made total sense because it’s a city. The city needs a currency. It’s a marketplace.

31:27 A marketplace, again, needs a currency. There’s this creator economy that’s brewing. So we just felt the token will be that glue across the whole ecosystem. It will unlock discounts, exclusive access. It allows you to transact within the ecosystem.

31:42 It’s almost like Robux and Roblox, right? Very integral part of just the whole, I’m sure you know, probably again. When my son turned seven, all he wanted for his birthday was Robux. Yes. Nothing else, no bike, no clothes, none of Robux.

32:01 That’s it. And more Robux. That’s all he wanted. Exactly. So yes, I understand.

32:06 Exactly. So for us, it just made total sense. It’s this final piece. And we were very cautious about when to launch it. I mean, we could have gone token first, but we wanted to have substance initially, right?

32:16 You want to have the creators actually there, the brands there, the community in place, the users. And then you bring the token out and then you can evolve it from there, basically. You only get one launch, right? You only get one launch. Right.

32:27 And what are the thoughts on the launch? Are you kind of waiting for this market to just get a little more bullish? Is it a real timing issue? How do you launch a token right? I mean, it’s got to be one of the biggest decisions you make ever as a company.

32:40 No pressure. No, no, it really is. And I mean, we’ve been preparing now for months and have all the docs in the row. So from what we can control, everything’s in place. We have the top KOLs.

32:52 We have all the brands and partners supporting. We have interesting airdrop mechanics. We have media. So we’re actually also backed by Cointelegraph. They’re helping us on the media.

33:03 We have the top incubators supporting that understand the liquidity side and how to just be successful there. The only thing right now is timing, market timing, because the markets are very volatile and we’re just trying to be as data-driven as possible, trying to not go with the emotional thing. It’s about being patient here and just saying, just find the right time. Everything’s in place and do everything in our power to execute correctly and then we’ll not hope for the best because we’ll make sure it’s in the good markets, but then it’s about just how the market picks up.

33:35 Do you have to make a decision, say 30 days before you launch or 14 days before you launch? Because that’s the thing. You can have your timing all perfect, but these days, that could change in three days or a week. And all of a sudden, you’re like, oh, everyone’s like, these markets feel great. Q4 is going to be amazing.

33:53 And then, all right, I got it all scheduled with Bybit. It’s going to happen in two weeks. And then all of a sudden, it’s not good. So what do you do about that? Can you adjust that on the fly or can you not do that when you’re dealing with exchanges that want fixed dates and things like that?

34:08 We’ve structured it so we can adjust, and I’ve given myself a 20-day, ideally 20 days. It could be shorter if we see the opportunity to launch. It needs to happen sooner we would, but it’s around 20 days that we’d want to make the decision, start to ramp up on the marketing and go for the launch. The problem with the market now is it’s going up and down and up and down, and it’s not really set in any certain direction. So that’s the problem.

34:36 It’s the uncertainty at the moment. But things may change. In November, people think November’s going to be a really interesting time. So I’ve just got everything ready, and it’s just waiting for that moment. And so while we’re here, what do you make of the markets?

34:52 Obviously, we both just got back from Singapore where you went to a 20,000 person sold out token 2049 conference. Asia has been strong for at least a year and a half, and it’s really exciting being around that. We got a lot of great things happening right now. We’ve got the Fed rate cut. We got Chinese quantitative easing.

35:12 We got two ETFs. We got one presidential candidate that’s super pro-crypto who’s even launched his own DeFi project. Maybe he should wait, but he’s doing it anyways. But he’s clearly all in on crypto, and his VP is as well, and his transition team is super pro-crypto. So I believe they will follow through on that.

35:32 We got another candidate that is trying to give it some lip service, but you just don’t know. How do you feel about the market? What do you think is going to happen? Right now, it’s not great. The market is still…

35:47 I feel people are scared on the retail side. You’re seeing even now, token launches are not going so well. It’s still a little bit sideways. It’s a sideways market. But I do feel that around elections will be a pivotal time, and that there could be a potentially big surge.

36:03 Where that surge goes and how long it lasts, that I have no idea. But I do think there’s going to be a window in November where things go upward. That’s my instinct at least. I think you’re right. I think there’s just uncertainty until then, and I think some certainty, even if it’s maybe not what you want, is probably good for the market.

36:21 Yes. And you’re right, it’s ultimately about retail. We have not seen retail coming back, really. We’ve seen little hints of it, but we haven’t really seen it come back, and we’re still here, which is impressive. Exactly.

36:31 But we ultimately need that, and that will happen. Yes. It’s a bit like the meta-versus, like you said. In the course of time, we’re going there. In the course of time, of course retail will come in because this is exciting, this is interesting.

36:42 They’re going to be using products like yours. Web 2 users will become Web 3 users. Absolutely. The question is, I guess, more of the timing. Absolutely.

36:50 And if you make a token that actually really genuinely has use within your product, then you almost transcend the speculation. That’s like what Roblox does so well, right? That’s the vision I have with this. The token is so integral to a really, really functional product and environment that people want to be part of. Then it doesn’t matter what the market’s doing because you’ve just transcended the entire market conditions, and that’s the end goal.

37:17 It’s great to get the market right, and that’s 100%. It would be wrong not to try and get it timed correctly, especially with all the hard work that goes into a token which I’ve now realized. It’s a lot of moving parts and as a perfectionist with this stuff, I just wanted to make sure everything is completely right. But in the longer term, it’s the product usage that will define the success. Yeah, you’re totally right.

37:44 I mean, Roblox, again, back to my anecdotes, as soon as my sons have it, they spend it all. And I was trying to have a discussion about saving, but then I was thinking about it. Why do they spend it all? Because there’s so many good stuff there, and they want it so bad. So there’s a real demand for that, and so you want that for your product.

38:04 Yes. If that’s true, it won’t matter what the speculators are doing. 100%. Because people will need to use it to be part of an ecosystem they love. Exactly.

38:13 And so, all right, that’s what you’re ultimately trying to do. Yeah. Okay. That building that is hard, and then also token launches are tricky. And these days, there’s all sorts of weird stuff going out there.

38:23 You’ve got market makers, you’ve got bots trying to mess with the markets. Absolutely. I mean, there’s a lot of people out there looking to mess things up. It’s a wild west out there in many ways. You mentioned Apple and this Vision Pro.

38:37 We’ve also seen Zuckerberg with his brand-new look lately, and his glasses that he’s doing. Ray Ban, is that the partnership, I think? I think it’s Ray Ban. Of course, they have the Oculus as well. And I’m just curious because that’s this AR world and maybe a little bit of VR world.

38:55 But it seems to be gaining serious traction. Mark made the decision of the low price point, which I think was really smart. The Vision Pro, I kind of get it, but it looks like an iMac on your face, which I’m sure is cool, but it’s a different market. What Mark’s doing, I mean, he’s going pretty hard on that. You can see, it looks cool.

39:13 I don’t think it’s consumer ready, but based on his videos, you can see why a consumer would want this. How does that play into what you’re doing? And then what would you tell people about the current state of AR and VR? Because I think we were promised it would be here, but a lot of people aren’t using it yet. That’s how I see it.

39:30 For me, it’s something that will be interesting to follow the trend, to see when adoption occurs. And there’s plenty of tools then to kind of jump right into that. But the most important thing is having the content that then makes sense. What is interesting is on Meta and WhatsApp, you have CreateAvatar now as one of the key things. On Instagram, for example, they’re pushing CreateAvatar.

39:53 That’s a really interesting thing to notice, that the biggest company, essentially, on the social media side of things, has that as one of the key call-to-actions on their platform. And so when we saw that, we’re like, okay, that makes a lot of sense for what we’re doing. And then I saw that Roblox is pushing the same concept of that brand advocacy will be fueled through avatars and that the Gen Z and Gen Alpha are much more concerned with their avatar look versus their real-world look.

40:23 So these are two major entities that have clocked onto this trend. And whilst maybe in Web 3, Metaverse avatars and stuff is not currently the narrative as it used to be, these are the biggest companies in the world pushing that narrative. And so it just shows that that’s the right path, in my opinion. And that’s what you’re investing in. Yes.

40:43 And providing people the opportunity to build these avatars in a Web 2 slash Web 3 environment. Exactly. Because the avatar builder on Meta, it’s a little bit. It’s not the coolest one, right? Like the characters aren’t that cool.

40:54 There’s no brand creator items. So imagine that type of integration. Snapchat’s the same thing. I’m looking at those partnerships. I’m already seeding those partnerships because that’s a way then that you get massive scale.

41:07 And we would have done the work to create the content, the amazing IP, bring the right brands and creators together, create that cool factor. I call it the supreme of Web 3 almost. And then you could plug that into these big communities. Yeah, that’s super strong. We also see Apple pushing this avatar.

41:24 In a couple ways. First of all, with the whole text messages, they tried to push avatars into your text in the last year or so. I saw that. And then of course with Vision Pro, it’s all about the avatar. Because when you have a video call with people, they’re not actually seeing you.

41:38 They’re seeing your avatar talk to them, which is something they kind of slid in there. But it shows another massive trillion-dollar tech company that’s pushing that narrative forward. 100%. And then of course Mark did rename the company Meta. So that’s where he wants to go with it.

41:52 Yeah. But I guess he probably realized, just like maybe we did in blockchain, that it’s going to take a little longer than he thought. Yeah. But they’re still doing some great numbers. Exactly.

42:05 And so it’s coming. And I always yet don’t talk about avatars on Roblox, because I don’t think they’re big yet. Yeah. But when they do, I can imagine. I mean, again, their individual game avatars are important because of all the skins and the things they play there.

42:18 Yeah. But right now, they’re not personally being represented on those platforms that I can see. Exactly. But when they do, it will be big. Yeah.

42:27 Because like you said, for Gen Alpha, I guess it’s called, I guess, are they Gen Alpha? If they’re 7 and 8? Or are they Gen Beta or something? I think Gen Alpha. But I mean, we already see for these kids, their digital identity is more important than their physical identity.

42:40 Exactly. And that’s wild. Exactly. Yeah. And that’s kind of the near future.

42:44 Yeah. Joining the Investment Club can bring you the opportunity for peace of mind, wealth, resources, community, and a more joyful time. It was a whole new world for me to hear about cryptocurrency and alternative to the traditional banking system that we have. The Investment Club gives us a chance to think about what wealth really is, to have the freedom to live your life that you want. In just one month that I’ve been part of the Investment Club, I have listened to so many visionaries with new ideas in the world of music, in the world of finance, in the world of artificial intelligence.

43:22 When I have questions, there’s members of the club willing to support and help and want to see one another go experience and knowledge. So you’re ready for it. And when it’s happening, people will be able to plug in and find the coolest stuff on your platform. Yeah. That trend was happening, and at the same time, we’re seeing this trend of personal brands being bigger than the non-personal brands, meaning Nike is going and getting Drake, let’s say, to be the forefront of the narrative for their campaign.

44:01 So these figures like Drake, it’s a personal brand, is where people have the most affinity. Consumers are moving towards that. So when you take that concept plus what we just discussed, we’ve tried to merge those two together. That’s why I’ve not gone after the big, big brands in terms of creating avatars for them in Metropolis X. I’ve gone after the artists, the digital artists, the musicians, the filmmakers, because I feel that’s really the sweet spot that’s missing.

44:29 Yeah, for sure. What does the next 12 months look like? So say you get the token done in the next quarter or two, I don’t know when you’re thinking, but then what do the next 12 months look like? What needs to happen? Maybe while the bull cycle continues, or maybe it doesn’t matter.

44:46 So for us, we’re launching this questing platform in the world. That’s like a really big piece for us, this idea that you can actually do creator-led quests, and it will be linked to the token, it’ll be linked to the avatars you’re building in the marketplace. We’re starting to like, shred everything together, basically. We spent some time building these two products, they’re very synergistic, but now it’s about linking everything perfectly. And that’s what we’re going to focus on.

45:11 We’re actually, it’s in development, nearly developed, and we’re saving that for post-token launch. Okay. Now, define quest, because this is a term I’m starting to hear a lot more in Web3. You’re hearing it kind of in the Telegram system too, and maybe we can talk about that. But the quest, from what I understand, is that if somebody takes this journey, they unlock certain rewards, physical or digital, and a quest implies that it’s more than just one thing, right?

45:38 It’s potentially a series of things that they do, and they unlock all these different rewards. Yes. And so you’re talking about that, and I guess that links your Metropolis world with your Metropolis X. Exactly. Because it’s literally a world meeting commerce or rewards.

45:52 Exactly. And we’re doing it with these quite immersive games that you can enter. And, you know, like, let’s say the Steve Ioki game, or the Brian Brinkman game, and we’ve templatized it in a really interesting way, and you bring the storytelling into that as well. So you would come, you’d engage with these different games, and it would unlock these real-world products, content, and experiences. So then it ties back.

46:13 And then the token, it helps you level up. The token gives you certain accesses, so it’s gluing it all together. And we’ve actually brought on board some really heavy-weight people from, like, the gaming industry, to start just really pressure-testing the mechanics of that. And that’s what we’ve spent a lot of time. One guy’s like, X-PlayStation, he launched PlayStation, Twitch Rivals, just understands that narrative and how to make those mechanics perfect.

46:39 And we’ve spent a lot of time. Because if we get that right, then it’s just, again, another layer that just will bring more and more users in. Okay. Now, you’ve done a capital raise recently. How do you make the right decisions on how to spend that capital?

46:53 Because this is one of the decisions, I guess, you made, is getting people to work on these quests. Yeah. But it’s really, you have to choose wisely. Very wisely. Very wisely.

47:04 And the reason you’re still here is because you ran a tight company for the last few years, and that’s why you’re still here. And that’s a huge testament. People are shocked at how lean we are when they see what we’ve built. Yeah, it’s impressive. They’re very shocked.

47:18 They think that we are a company that’s spent millions and millions to build these products. We just have a team where everyone is a beast in our team. Each person, like the guy that builds the site just single-handedly can build a world-class product, like Apple-level product. I mean, he’s just unbelievable. And then you have, you know, Randy on the storytelling just day and day, like day and night.

47:38 It’s relentlessly pushing that, me on the business side and just the strategy. We’re just relentless. And I just make sure, I’ve learned this in the past. If someone’s not relentless and a total beast in their specific sector, I’m just, I just don’t want them on the team. I know that sounds like there’s movement to some sort of balance, but for us, it’s just, we call it the seven samurai.

47:56 You know, it’s like, it’s just everyone is hardcore and just 100% on this. Because I feel that’s the only way, and especially when you’re in these innovative startups where it’s a new industry. It’s not like, you know, you’re starting a shop and there’s certain rules, and you can kind of look at other blueprints. We’re almost creating new types of experiences here. So you have to be very lean and agile.

48:18 Just, you know, if you go and bet $10 million on one product, it doesn’t work, then it’s a big loss. I wouldn’t want to take that approach. Yeah, it is impressive what you guys have built. And it’s great to have a team like that. And, you know, I think when we saw like what Elon did with Twitter and sometimes when you cut out all the fluff and are left with only the hardcore samurai, the whole organization gets better.

48:42 Because everyone’s like, wow, everybody here is on fire. We’re all on fire. Let’s go. Sometimes when you have people that aren’t performing that organization, it dulls down everything. It really does.

48:53 And it’s led to Metropolis being quite a flat organization. It’s just because everyone, I mean, I’ve never, when it comes to the product build, for example, there’s not even a bug. Like I don’t, you know, in other companies, you know, I’ve seen you have to get the product and then tell the developer, oh, this isn’t working. This UI is not great. This guy, for example, he will just deliver a perfect product.

49:15 It’s like very hard to say, give him any feedback because he’ll just nail it. And it’s the same on like every aspect. It’s just we assume, that’s the level we assume. And it’s allowed us to be super lean because we’re, you know, six, seven people. We believe, you know, a lot of them, they’re there for the equity, for like it’s not just about coming and taking some big salary.

49:36 Like everyone’s lean on that side. Like me and Randy’s co-founders, we don’t even take any salaries. Like we just are here to keep, run a tight ship. And it’s led us to kind of survive in these bear markets where there wasn’t much investment. You know, we had some hard times where it was very hard to raise and it was very frustrating because we had a great product, but a lot of capital had been deployed prior into these types of projects that just disappeared.

50:00 And so, you know, investors were understandably wary, but we just fought through and it’s just brick by brick, goes back to brick by brick. What the London Real Investment Club actually does for you, it gives you the keys to open that door to the inside deals. In the last three weeks, I’ve participated in three incredible deals, a layer two Bitcoin protocol, an incredible AI protocol. The deal flow is beyond what I expected. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a model like this that just gives average folks the opportunity to be behind the deals.

50:32 And that’s exactly what we’ve done. Not only that, you get to hang out with Brian Rose every week. And for me, that was huge because I look at Brian as somebody who’s not only an expert in the space and I think is on the leading edge, but just the leading edge of thought with London Real and the work he’s doing there. To anyone who’s taking a serious look at this, I know it’s a big decision. It was a big decision for me and my family and it is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

50:57 So I wish you all the best and hope you come join us. Yeah, that’s what you have to do. And that now sets you apart from a lot of people in the ecosystem that maybe started a year ago or a year and a half ago because you guys have been through it. And 22 was brutal and 23 wasn’t much better for raising capital because people had just been melted by FTX and all that and they didn’t want to touch anything even if it was okay. But now, when they look at your product, you can see your product comes with years and years and years of experience.

51:32 So the people that made it now, you guys punch above the rest because it feels different. You guys have much more depth to what you’re doing. And post token, I’ve learned as well that the idea to have a very successful token launch and then run straight into a series A because when we launched initially and had this huge amount of revenue coming in and everything was on top, at that point I made a mistake. I basically said, I’m not going to raise now like all this revenue is coming in.

52:01 We’re still lean, plenty of runway. No need to raise. Had I raised then, it would have been the best time. When you’re on a high and there’s a momentum. The FTX happened and I had a deal on the table for us.

52:12 It was like a 5 to 10 million ticket that just disappeared because of FTX. Then it became, we had a bit of a hard period and we had to stay super lean. So this time when we have a successful token launch and we’re having a lot of momentum and a lot of media’s coming out, the new product gets launched and all these things are happening, then I’ll go for a very strong series A to the top investors. We’ll go aggressively on that. Smart. Always raise when you don’t need it.

52:37 Definitely. I learned that the hard way now. What are you going to do with music on the site because you have a huge background in music. I guess it’s a huge integral part of everything you’re building in here. What are your plans for that?

52:50 Because I come from a music production background where DJing and DJ mixes this type of stuff, the initial thing I saw an opportunity with was, right now it’s very hard to monetize a DJ mix. People love these DJ mixes and people put them on SoundCloud and they have huge numbers of views. But what if you could have a way that, let’s say the wearable or the Quest unlocks this exclusive DJ mix. So let’s take Blondish, amazing DJ also. And Crypto, one of our partners, she could create this exclusive metropolis mix.

53:23 You have to get the Avatar, Blondish, you have to go do the Blondish Quest, then it unlocks this amazing thing. And there’s only a hundred of them. There’s only a hundred people will ever get to hear this mix. That’s monetizable now. So to me, this could solve how you monetize something that’s never really been monetized before, right?

53:41 So it’s these types of little pockets that I want to try and figure out because just solving that alone, you could onboard pretty much every DJ on the planet if it works and it gives them more exposure, it gives their fans a way to engage and immerse through the gaming and it monetizes. Well, I’d be able to remix music on your site or do anything like that or play around. Is that also something? We want to have like the way we see the properties with the Squarespace concept.

54:09 The big vision is it’s like an app store where you could come in and put like a record player into that property. And then now you’re doing a DJ mix in there or you want to put like your Spotify playlist and plug that in. And then eventually other developers create applications that can be put into the hubs. That to me is how it becomes really epic and scalable. Let’s say you want to have a poker game with your buddies in one of the environments.

54:35 There’s a poker application. Bring that in, now you’re engaging. But it’s still not clunky. It’s still one click away and that’s the fine balance. Nice.

54:45 What ecosystem or blockchain are you dropping on and then what are your thoughts on kind of what we’re seeing happen with Telegram and Tund and this 900 million users and the quests and the games and just curious, I’m sure you have your eye on that. Yeah, I mean we’re on Polygon just because we chose that from like just an optimization perspective. It works very well for the marketplace but I want to go multi-chain because we have some chains investing in us and they’re chains basically, we think of them as highways but they need the cars.

55:15 They need the cool content. They need the creators. They need the brands. That’s what’s going to define a successful chain versus a non-successful chain. So I want it to be multi-chain but not in a way that convolutes the user experience.

55:31 It just becomes that there’s multiple avenues how you access the product. Like there may be a Metropolis X that’s sitting on Tund or on Avalanche and it links back to like a centralized product but if I’m just a regular web-to-consumer I don’t have to worry about all of that. Okay, all right. And are you impressed with what’s happening on Tund and Telegram? I mean, I am.

55:53 I’m just curious to see if it’s another, like if it’s a fad cycle or if there’s stickiness to it. Yeah, it’s going to be interesting. Yeah. Again, like there’s definitely users there. There’s definitely bots there too but there’s definitely users there and I was talking to somebody a couple of days ago and they said, Brian, Tund’s the, Telegram’s the opposite of everything we’ve seen in blockchain.

56:15 Blockchain, you got the brand new layer one. It comes out and now they’re trying to get people to use it. Yeah. And then Telegram’s the opposite. You got 900 million people using it and now we’re going to give them wallets and see where it goes to the next level.

56:27 It’s still early days but there’s a ton of potential and the users are there. Exactly. So something’s going to happen. It’s a bit like Metaverse. It’s like it’s happening.

56:35 It’s just how long is it going to take and what it’s going to look like but it’s going to happen. Totally. And so the same with Tund, like you got 900 million people, they got access to wallets. We’re moving into the future with digital assets. Something’s going to happen there.

56:46 Something’s going to happen. It just depends on how big. Yeah. We’ll see. But it’s still a really underdeveloped ecosystem.

56:52 Yes. We have, dare I say, a meme dropping on Tund next week and it’s going to be fascinating because there’s no DEXs. There’s no nothing. And so it’ll be interesting to see what that will be like. Absolutely.

57:06 Yeah. Someone wanted to ask you about, when we were in Singapore, a very famous hip-hop artist named Iggy Azalea came out to have a cowboy party and she brought 32 girls with her and I didn’t go to the party. I will say that until I die. I kind of wish I were at the party but I’m a little old to go to parties. But she’s created a meme coin around herself.

57:26 It’s called Mother, or Iggy Mother Iggy. Yeah. And I’ve been watching her because I was a fan of her music as a kid. Me and my stepdaughter used to love her tracks and it’s been fascinating to watch her kind of build this and she got a lot of credibility when she showed up at Singapore. She came on stage at Token, I think.

57:43 I went to that presentation. She finally made it on stage and then the party and the token rallied on the back of it. And I think a lot of people, including OG’s and crypto, crypto banter guys, I know the guys at Swissborg and they all said, hey, they were not sure if a celebrity could pull off a meme coin but maybe they were wrong because Iggy is all in. She’s super smart. She understands the ecosystem.

58:06 She’s a crazy hustler. Yeah. And she seems to really understand how to take this to the next level. It’s got like a 110, $120 million market cap. What do you see there and how would you potentially integrate Iggy, her token, into Metropolis?

58:22 Yeah, totally. I mean, something like that is a really good way to get mass adoption. As you said, some creators and artists are genuine and you can see they’re really interested to stick with it. Others are looking for that quick buck. So, you know, if you differentiate that and clearly she’s actually really behind it and adopting this and showing up at Singapore.

58:43 So, that’s fantastic. You can only do positive things for the industry. If I had to sit in front of her now and just pitch coming into Metropolis, I’d say, listen, we’d love to create a property for you, an amazing wearable line. It’ll be crazy based on your style, based on what you, you know, all those things that you love. It’ll be something that your fans can, we can make it free.

59:03 All your fans can come and basically pick this up. They’ll get a wallet off the back of that so we’ll be adopting new users. We’ll tell a story around it, drive people to your token, do mini games and quests. Maybe they can then win some of your token through that. So, it’ll just be this easy, fun, immersive activation for her.

59:20 But all she has to do is give her input in terms of what she loves and we’ll make that happen. That’s the pitch and people like that because it’s like, you know, I’m not asking them to pay us huge sums of money, invest their time. It’s like, no, like just let’s make this really fun and it’s going to be something that your fans will really like and engage with. Yeah, well, if Iggy’s listening and I hear she watches the program, then she should listen because she’s got a bunch of web two fans or web one fans or whatever, no web fans.

59:49 And for them to buy Iggy is hard because they got to go find some Solana and then swap it out on a DAX or it’s not easy. So, what she’d love to do is give a link that would take them into Metropolis where they can just engage, email address, sign up, something cool, bam, bam, bam, unlock all this stuff and then maybe they set up a wallet or get around to buying the token. That’s really what she wants because her fans right now, unless they’re blockchain enabled, they have probably no idea how to get there.

1:00:19 100%. And that’s exactly how our interface is built. Like you just have a profile and there’s a wallet behind that profile but you’re just dealing with a really nice interface where it will say, oh, here’s my token, here’s my exclusive DJ mix, here’s my claimable hoodie that I can add my shipping address, deliver it to me. We’ve just made it recognizable. And so, that’s the critical piece, absolutely.

1:00:41 Nice. And what do you think about a celebrity branded mean coin? It’s really interesting. I mean, think about, you know, you remember being a musician where you have to think about your brand and your production but imagine having an entire market cap of a coin when you wake up one morning and like, it’s really you. It’s the market cap of you and if you decide you want to take 20 days off and not post any content, you might come back and it could be at zero.

1:01:08 That’s, I mean, I think I work hard but imagine a token that’s tracking you 24-7. Like, that’s quite an endeavor to go on because it’s not like you can ever, you know, there’s no exit scenario there, is there? No. It’s like that thing will track you the rest of your life potentially. It’s also very exciting in that sense, right?

1:01:26 It takes guts actually in that sense because that’s the thing with tokens. You can’t, once it’s live, once you’ve done it, you’re accountable for it. Yeah. And, you know, that’s something that I have to say like, because I always want to do things really well, right? This is one of those things, it’s similar to like when you do an NFT drop.

1:01:44 You have a shot, you have a moment. When we did our first NFT drop for the passports, I mean, we were having some problems like two hours before the smart contract. We had all these brands and creators basically like, it took us six months to prepare them to basically tweet all at the same time and push. We had this whole plan and it was a technical issue that was just, you know, a countdown. I think it was three minutes before the drop that we like, we solved it and then released the drop.

1:02:13 That was the most intense but riveting few hours of my life. I mean, I just remember it till now and it was so stressful but I just, but I still loved it. You know, it was really exciting. Yeah, but it’s so important. You’re right.

1:02:26 You have to have everything timed and you’re judged by that and that can make or break you. It’s actually one of the few industries where you have it like that. It’s like by the seconds. You have to time things and execute them so on time. A token launches that first hour is extremely critical, right?

1:02:43 Now, I have some friends that have great companies. They launch tokens as an error like on the exchange where the token wasn’t showing up and then because of that, I mean, the momentum was gone. The moment the momentum is gone in crypto, it can be a downward spiral. So that’s one of the things that’s very unique to the industry, I have to say. Also, like you can have a bad day in the rest of the world.

1:03:05 You could have a bad moment on stage. You could have a bad movie, but that will get forgotten. Your lousy token that’s still down at .00001 is something people will continue to bring up for the next decade. Exactly. And again, if they had money in it, even if it was a little bit, they’ll remind you every time they see you.

1:03:22 100%. No pressure on you guys. Right. And so, well, look, I think this Iggy thing is interesting and we’ll see if any other celebrities can pull something like that off. But I think it’s really positive for the industry and it shows how much more we have to go and how we don’t really understand the human interaction with digital assets.

1:03:43 Again, this digital physical, there’s so much we don’t know and we learn that with NFTs. Like, wow, all of a sudden, people may see all this value there and they want a digital experience and now you understand people also want the physical with the digital. And now there’s a meme coin around a person. What the hell does that mean? And people want to buy it and it’s just, it’s wild.

1:04:01 It is wild. It’s wild. And we’ve even seen it like with Trump and his true social, it’s like a meme coin stock. And people are buying it to support a presidential candidate. You know, it’s really weird.

1:04:12 In a weird way, it’s almost like maybe a fundraising thing for him. It’s keeping him liquid. Yeah. And the thing has no revenues. And before GameStop and that whole meme stop thing, you wouldn’t have thought that would happen.

1:04:23 I worked on Wall Street for a long time. Never would have thought that would happen and now we’re seeing it happen in many ways. Absolutely. And we’re learning about people, aren’t we? We’re learning that people love communities.

1:04:33 They want to belong. They want people to, they want to show people who they are. I think Yatsu of Animoco Brands, who’s been my guest many times, he always says, he said, Brian, culture is one of the biggest industries on the planet. Yes. And he describes it really well.

1:04:49 And you must understand this because you’re in the music industry, fashion industry. But he said like, look at what you’re wearing, look what I’m wearing. He’s like, we could choose the generic version of jeans, of a suit, of everything that’s just purely functional. It would cost one tenth or less, but all of us choose to buy things that express who we are or how we feel. It’s all a communication.

1:05:13 And there’s so much money in there, billions and billions and hundreds of billions. And that’s the way we kind of enact with other humans, isn’t it? Completely. And we’re seeing this collide in the digital world to where people don’t get it. First NFTs, that doesn’t make any sense.

1:05:30 Well, it clearly does. Meme coins, that’s just stupid. It’s just a bunch of DJEN’s gambling. Well, okay, last time I checked, Dogecoin and Shiba are still in the top 12 and they never moved in three, four years of bull and bear. So guess what?

1:05:45 They’re here to stay, right? And they do mean something. They do. To someone. I know that myself, I’m not like a Bitcoin pro in terms.

1:05:53 You know, sometimes people, you see all these anti-Bitcoin sentiments. For me, the one thing that I would argue on Bitcoin is that’s a culturist thing as well. Very much. Right? And that one’s getting so ingrained that the store of value, all of that’s one part of it.

1:06:13 But also culturally, Bitcoin now, you know, it’s clear, it’s there, it’s ingrained, right? On a cultural level, the younger generation, people feeling empowered by Bitcoin, like holding it, hoping to make some more from it, the value exchange. So same thing, I feel. I know a lot of Bitcoin maxis and they hate on, you know, everything, not Bitcoin, you know. So that usually means Ethereum, DeFi, you name it, GameFi, Metaverse.

1:06:39 And then Meme coin, don’t get them started. They’ll double hate on that. And then I always remind them, I’m like, Bitcoin, it was a meme coin. It started off as a meme coin, a bunch of dorks, internet nerds with their magic money. And it had no value for a few years.

1:06:53 And then it had like some tiny little amount of value. And it was like you said, a club. It was a little club, a community. They were punting around this thing that had no value except for what they said it was. Now, no Bitcoin or whatever.

1:07:04 No, that’s not true. But it is. And so you’re right, it is culture, too, somehow. And all these things are. 100%.

1:07:11 Yeah, we’re going to express it more as we go forward. Yeah. Are you ever going to get a break? You don’t seem like a guy who needs one, even though I feel like you’ve been working nonstop for four years. How do you make sure that this doesn’t consume you?

1:07:27 Because it’s hard. Yeah. And you can’t take your eye off the ball, even for a week or it’s over. No, I think I’ve been joking that I’ve been trying to get one week off. I think now 400 days or something was like the last time.

1:07:40 Yeah, like I just, I’m like, I want to take one week off and something else happens and there’s something new. And I’m like, not yet, not yet. So I’m definitely guilty of not having the right maybe work-life balance. But do you need that? No, at this point, no.

1:07:56 I feel it’s just, that’s just something that people, it’s like some rule that I just don’t believe in it. At the end of the day, I’ve always been quite extreme with things that I do in the sense, like I want to go all in if I’m going to do something. And it’s going to be on my mind all the time. I have ways, of course, to deal with that meditation, mindfulness, certain things like that, practices like that. And I think one of the biggest ones, especially in business, is not looking at problems as problems.

1:08:28 Because business is just a set of problems. When you’re running a company, every day I wake up and there’s going to be X number of issues to deal with. And when I first started in this whole startup game, I would get quite stressed about each one of these things. Oh, we have to fix this. We have to figure.

1:08:43 And I realize this is just part of the process. The more of these problems we fix, the more we’re going to move forward. And you start to enjoy that and just not take it too seriously in the sense you don’t let it consume your emotion. This is part of the process. It’s very normal.

1:08:57 And even the biggest players in the world, the biggest companies, are all having that same thing, ultimately under the hood, right? It’s just challenges and different things. So it’s a mentality shift that I felt was really important. And I’ve evolved as a person a lot through that. That’s a great way to look at it.

1:09:14 Yeah. Really good way to look at it. And you’re right. I mean, we’ve been sold, especially in Britain, this concept that you need your annual leave or your two weeks holiday and this is where you take a break. But as one of my mentors once said, when he was screaming at somebody, he said, the reason you take vacation is because you don’t love what you do.

1:09:32 Absolutely. That’s what he said. And so for me, I love what I do. So I get to talk to cool people like you. We get to make investments.

1:09:41 We’re in blockchain, for God’s sakes. We get to make movies. We get to teach people. This is a dream. I used to work in banking.

1:09:47 That was not a dream. I hated it. I just hated it. And there was a lot more money to be made there, but I just hated it. And I remember that.

1:09:58 And so I don’t need to get away from this. I like this. But you said something really important. I can only do it with my daily practices. So you have to have something that keeps you cool, right?

1:10:10 And for you, that’s meditation. What else? Meditation, like I’ll go, at least I’ll try in the day to go have a walk like around the park, on the Hyde Park, for example, mindfully, like being present, just, you know, just getting to that calm state. And it’s more, it’s not even just the practices at this point. It’s like the attitude towards the work.

1:10:35 This is where the thing that we were talking about before, about the Nvidia founder, about having the low expectations. I was confused by that initially. He’s saying you should have low expectations to succeed in business. But I understand what he means by that. It means don’t be so focused on the outcome.

1:10:49 Just do what needs to be done with the utmost, you know, respect towards it. Give your whole effort to what you’re doing. Of course, you have a north star vision, and it’s clear where you need to go. But if you do the work trying to force an outcome, it’s never going to be great. If you do the work with love and compassion, and you do it in the right way, and you just try and make that present situation, you come to that in the present moment.

1:11:16 I feel that is like the way that you succeed and you don’t get burnt out. Because then your mind is not just worrying about what the outcome is. Especially if you’re like waiting for a deal, or you’re waiting for like someone to come back to you or an investor to come back to you. It can then just eat you up if you’re constantly stressing about the outcome. It’s better just make sure the interaction is good and you’re doing your best in every moment.

1:11:36 You can’t go wrong if you do that. There’s no way to go wrong if you approach it like that. So I’m having flashbacks of like their earlier or mid days of London Real where it was like five years in, six years in, seven years in, and it’s like, oh, it’s not big enough. We don’t have enough views. We don’t have a million subscribers.

1:11:53 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was just like, I think I had a realization that was just like, no, it’s like you don’t have to do London Real. You get to do London Real. And like every conversation is amazing. And let’s make the most beautiful episode.

1:12:05 Let’s teach the greatest course. Like, let’s just make the most out of these interactions. And when you do that and put your heart and soul and quality every day, that’s when things happen. That’s exactly. And then I find that when you do that, your energy is more positive and then you just attract positive opportunities.

1:12:23 Versus like this, like to me desire is the other side of the coin of lack, right? When you’re desiring something really badly, it means you lack that thing. Whereas if you just feel like I have this anyway right now and I’m wholesome in the moment, things just seem to just move in the right direction. And on the views thing, I remember seeing Mr. Beast talk about like the history of his channel.

1:12:46 And it was years and years. I mean, 10 views, 20 views, 100 views, 100. For years, 1000 views. I mean, that guy is a very good example. People look at him and say, oh wow, this guy’s huge. Mr. Beast.

1:12:59 He’s like, he’s a beast. But commitment, consistency. And he enjoyed and loved what he did. He just put his heart into every video. Gave it, you know, gave it what he wanted to give it.

1:13:11 And the rest took care of itself. Yeah, and then analyzed the hell out of every video and tried to make it better each time. Yeah, exactly. No, he’s got a fascinating story. That’s true.

1:13:20 And I’ve been going deep lately on this law of attraction thing after kind of denying its existence for many years. And I believe it’s there. I believe it’s there. How you show up every day. And people are attracted to energy.

1:13:31 And that’s one of the reasons we were attracted to you. Our whole group really felt your vibe on these Zoom calls. And they’re like, we really like this guy. And I can’t control that. I can’t tell these people what to do.

1:13:41 And they felt something different about you. And you also knew your stuff. So like you knew the details. You knew exactly what was going on. You were aware enough to say, yeah, OK.

1:13:52 Metaversus thought we thought they were going to be this. And that didn’t happen. And that’s why we’re doing this. And we’re doing this. And that came across.

1:13:59 Because I do believe in blockchain and a lot of startups, you do invest in people. Yeah, totally. And I felt that on the call to your group, they were interested in the story and the vision and us. And that’s really refreshing. Because in this space, when you talk to a lot of funds and investors, they’re very much focused on your numbers and they’re skeptical.

1:14:18 And that you come on the call, there’s this attitude. And then finally, I understand it. Because they’re seeing all these deals. And they have to kind of cut through to find out what works for their mandate. But pitching to your group was very refreshing and brings out the best, I feel, from a founder perspective.

1:14:35 It brought out the best of the pitch. And I felt comfortable. Because you were looking at who we are as a team. What do we stand for? Where are we going?

1:14:43 In a very ever-evolving landscape, right? Sometimes when investors say, well, they want you to have it all figured out today, it’s impossible with these types of startups to have it figured out. But as long as you’re consistent and you make the right decisions as much as you can and you take that day by day and you will inevitably steer in the right direction. Yeah, and this market changes every single week. Every week.

1:15:09 And I’ve had a few founders in here. I had someone on Wednesday and he said, Brian, this market changes every single week. You might get a phone call from a new L1 that’s got a big grant. They want to give us. And we want to take the product in that direction, or at least part of the product.

1:15:22 And I’ve got a whole team of engineers who don’t want to be told that we’re going to change things. But they have to be the kind of team that can all be on the same page and say, is this the right thing for the company? Let’s go. Exactly. Only in Web 3.

1:15:33 It’s not going to happen anywhere else. And we see things here. It’s there. It’s there. I mean, a celebrity meme coin was not even a thing to consider six months ago.

1:15:40 And now it is. And what the hell is coming in the next six months? So you need a team that’s going to be able to do that. Totally. But it is exciting that the way that like even with token launches, because I’m talking to these guys that are helping us that have had like a really strong track record.

1:15:54 They’ve launched a lot of tokens and they’re supporting us. And actually seven out of 10 of the highest performing tokens in 2023, like they supported like those launches. So they just know their stuff, the formula. But you know, the guy there was basically saying in this current market right now, formula is slightly changing. And so I took that back to my team and we’re like, well, look, memes are clearly working, right?

1:16:13 So what if some of the characters in Metropolis have some meme aspect to them? We play on that. We create some form of narrative around that that ties back to like the world. We do what you kind of mentioned actually on the Izzy token. We hide a few other partner tokens in our world and run interesting quests around it.

1:16:31 You have the ability to make your own rules with the space, which is also quite cool. It’s a little bit more unknown sometimes. But I like that because we like to be outliers and how we kind of find our way to market. That’s super smart. It’s great you’re working with that team because there’s nothing written in stone in this business.

1:16:48 I mean, I was at this Satoshi Roundtable conference in Dubai in February. It’s amazing. It’s kind of this invite only kind of OGs and there’s no media allowed and there’s no Instagram there. And everybody talks real. And there was a talk out by the pool this one last day and it was all about tokenomics, investing schedules.

1:17:05 And it was like the most heated conference, the most heated chat I’d seen. Yeah, it was there. Man, I’m okay with all these people. And you had founders, you had VCs, and you had investors all arguing, you know, should there ever be vesting? How come there’s any vesting?

1:17:19 How come founders have to be locked up more than the KOLs? That doesn’t make any sense. And everyone’s really having this heated argument. And I’m like, wow, this is such a new industry. We actually don’t know the answer here.

1:17:30 We used to think it was this, the longer, the better. But now we see that can really drain a token over time. And then it’s like, oh, just get it out there. It’s just fall where they may. Well, that’s not always the best thing to do.

1:17:41 So it’s still new. And then like you said, you have these meme themes. I mean, you could argue, we’ve invested in quite a few blockchain companies on AI. You could argue those are memes. They got AI at the end of the name of the token.

1:17:52 That’s a meme. Let’s be honest. It’s got meme-ish things to it. Exactly. So yeah, maybe you need to embrace that.

1:17:57 No, totally. I honestly have like, I mean, this is something new, like in the last week that we sat with our team and basically looking at all the meme launches and the narratives and what are they doing differently to, let’s say, your business token launches. And trying to, because we’re creative, we’re storytellers. So we could pull out some interesting characters, embrace that, let it help us ultimately, right? You have to be adaptive like that in a space for sure.

1:18:27 Such a creative space. It is. Are you going to be in blockchain the rest of your life? We’ll see. What do you think Metropolis looks like in five years?

1:18:37 What do you think it actually looks like? Do you think you’ll still have it? Do you think it’ll be acquired by, I don’t know, LVMH or something? I don’t know. Or Nike or Drake?

1:18:47 I don’t know. What do you think it looks like and what do you think happens to it? I think we’ll get many acquisition offers. I feel we’ll have that success and that will happen, which is great. Ultimately, of course, I want the business to be sustainable, have a strong business model and grow and scale and have those legs and those revenues.

1:19:05 So that for sure. Users, retention, all of that. What would be super cool from the product standpoint is it’s a self-sustaining environment where creators can come, plug and play, launch amazing experience, monetize. I want creators to be able to monetize. I know how hard it is.

1:19:21 I love doing music, but can I make a living out of music unless I’m DJing somewhere at 6 a.m. in Berlin, which I don’t have the energy for? No, it’s very hard to make money, right? So solving those types of problems and then creating an ecosystem where that’s self-sustaining to me would be amazing. And then also, I think, just from a very North Star perspective, I want Metropolis to be like one of those.

1:19:47 It’s like a given. Just like Amazon’s a given, right? You go to Amazon for commerce. You go to WhatsApp to text your friends. I want it to be that.

1:19:54 Metropolis is the place you go to engage with amazing brands, creators. This is the ecosystem to launch these types of experiences and it’s fully interoperable. Eventually, you can use it in the Apple headset or you can use it on a Snapchat filter. I call it Build With Us Take Anywhere. That’s just one of the pillars of the business.

1:20:16 Longer-term view of that one, but it’s exactly that. So those are the things that drive us, I think. I love that. People are spending money on luxury goods. Then, of course, they’ll spend money on luxury avatars in the future.

1:20:30 It just makes sense. We have some crazy price stuff, by the way. Those glasses, for example, they’re not crazily priced, but there’s only 300 of them in the world made in Japan in some factory, like a super cool story. And it’s just you buy it. They come delivered to you in this beautiful box.

1:20:46 The creator’s written this note, which comes from Metropolis himself. It’s a way for him to now sell these glasses without having to go through the whole pain of finding his way into these stores and talking to suppliers. That was a dead end for him, but he put his heart and soul into this product. So we have the opportunity to take that, show it to the world, then have a digital counterpart that can be running around in Fortnite. That’s really cool to me.

1:21:12 And that shows people that you have this exclusive piece and also physically as well. Exactly, the clout, which the young generation, they love that stuff. And so does the old generation. Yeah. And again, you look at, you know, ladies and high-end luxury bags.

1:21:27 I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a peek into that world, but it’s crazy. It’s crazy. The luxury brands and the Hermes, how they get people competing for this limited supply and the favoritism and all that. I mean, if that gets transferred to digital, it’s just going to be massive. Completely.

1:21:42 So token launch probably in the next quarter, maybe, and then series A in the next six months after that, and just build that momentum and grow this thing. Yeah. Just nonstop momentum, consistency. You know, we have a lot of, I’d say we have probably, you know, two, three, like, core fundamental products coming out that we really believe in. We have two, three other things that are, wrap around that, that are quite unique as well.

1:22:08 We’re just lean, focused on kind of just delivering these things. And token imminent, followed by like a strong series A off the back of that. Hopefully, look, the token’s a great success that already gives us a lot of runway and potential because we’re operating so lean. That’s the thing. It’s like we have the output of a team of like 60 people with seven people.

1:22:28 That’s amazing. It’s just I have a guy that can literally build, like, for anyone, you know, that wants to check it out, if you go to metropolisworld.io, like, you’ll see, people say this is like Apple built this. I mean, as a website, right? We have the ability to build these products and make the content rich and have the partnerships there and so it’s all there, the ingredients, you know. And running lean is the ultimate superpower.

1:22:51 It’s the best. And it’s also much less stressful. Right. It’s very nice to see like a very lean, outgoing monthly. And, you know, it’s like you have this core team, their family, I can trust everyone on the team.

1:23:03 Another thing I always say is, I don’t want to have to ask anyone twice on anything, like anyone on the team. If I say, look, this is what we need to do here. Like, this is something, please, can you look at it? It will be done 10X better. Like, they’ll just, it just, that I really believe in.

1:23:16 Because this is my, it’s my personality and it’s like my co-founder Randy’s personality. Like, we are relentless with this stuff. And, you know, it’s just how we are, right? Especially like I’m one of those people, if I have investors on board, like, I’m going to make sure my investors are happy, like, no matter what. Like, it doesn’t matter.

1:23:33 It’s not like my well-being first. I know I need my holiday. Like, you’ve seen that. I agree. That culture is prevalent.

1:23:40 I’ve seen it with some of the agencies we work with, for example. It’s like clock off at 5 p.m. on Friday. I’m not going to get, I’m not going to hear from them until Monday morning. Like, that, for me, it just doesn’t, it won’t work for this type of thing.

1:23:54 There’s all these founders out there that are getting all jealous right now. Because they’re like, I can never, I always have to ask twice, right? Yeah, yeah. No, that’s a rare thing. Yeah.

1:24:04 I was going to ask, how can people dip their toe in and check out Metropolis World? What’s the easiest way? And then what’s the next couple of iterations from there? So MetropolisWorld.io is a great place to see what you’re doing there. That’s the hub.

1:24:17 That front page is pretty sick. Because as you scroll down, it’s like bam, bam, bam, bam. Exactly. You can really get a feel for it. I mean, it really is, it’s kind of in your face.

1:24:27 I mean, it’s like, it’s really, it just is like, okay, wow, I’m in a world. And some big things are happening here. Yes, absolutely. That’s one. I’ll give you a small alpha of something we’re interested to experiment.

1:24:40 This is a side thing that again, we’ve managed to do of actually spending their capital through sponsors, which is we’re going to consider doing a pop-up in both New York and London, where you come in and you see like the world. There’ll be this really like exclusive like partner merchandise with all these cool collaborations. You’ll be able to like see, to utilize the token and get certain discounts if you utilize the token. So we’re going to see if this is a way to go culture-first, very web-to-brand-focused first, like those pop-ups you see with the big lines in New York and you see them on Instagram all the time.

1:25:12 We’re going to try and do that and see if people will resonate and come into the world and adopt the blockchain element through that. And that’s a test we’re going to try out in the next six months too. Very cool. I think that’s super smart. Yeah.

1:25:25 Super smart. And you just get sponsors for that. It’s great. We have like cool sponsors we’re bringing on board. It’s easy to do.

1:25:30 Rania’s experience on building like real-world immersive experiences. She did like the biggest one in Times Square. So to do a few pop-ups, do them amazingly. Nice. It’ll be good.

1:25:39 And then that is a great media event because you show the line out in front of your pop-up. It becomes pop-up. And you mentioned Supreme. I mean Supreme is this kind of this fashion company, right? That brings out these very limited number of amazing pieces of apparel.

1:25:52 And whenever it happens, well here in London, whatever I walk by the store is always a line. Exactly. You know, or two lines across the street, across the other street. And people love their stuff because it’s beautiful. It’s amazing.

1:26:03 It’s super exclusive. There’s a limited lot size. Yes. And you kind of want to be that for that three and ten person. Yes.

1:26:11 We modeled a lot of what we did with Metropolis X on Supreme and this collaborative approach, like collabing with really cool creators and brands. Another brand that does that in a really interesting way is Popmart. I don’t know if you’ve seen these Popmart stores. They’re like these little toys and there’s a bunch of collaborations. You see them like Soho here in London.

1:26:30 Just very little plastic toys and they’re all collaborations. It’s a seven billion dollar business. Just that. And what have they done there? It’s not like they have some fancy technology and they’re doing…

1:26:40 It’s cultural. It’s like collaboration. People like to engage with a story, engage with something that’s… There’s an emotional attachment to it. If you can get that right, then you build the technology around.

1:26:52 That’s the bit that is easier really. It’s the magic sauce. It’s the difficult piece. Yeah. So we’re trying to focus on the magic sauce and we build around the magic sauce.

1:27:01 Well, that makes you really unique because so many people in Web3 forget that. And they go build the blockchain and they build the tech. And then you see them trying to build a brand out of it and it’s very difficult to do that. Yeah, they put the cart before the horse and it never comes around. That’s been probably the biggest valid criticism of Web3 in the past few years is they build the tech first and say, look at this amazing thing and then they have to plug in some cultural pain point into that tech.

1:27:27 It doesn’t work that way. So look, it sounds like you guys have an amazing background between you and your sister and your team to understand how to build something that really matters and to build a brand people can engage with. And I’m really pumped. I’m so glad that there’s someone like you that is not throwing away that metaverse narrative and says, no, this is going to work and this is how we’re going to make it work. And as it grows, this is how we’re going to make it work until it goes to where it needs to be.

1:27:53 Exactly. And I think you’re totally right. You’re totally right. So, yeah, I just want to say thank you. Thank you.

1:27:59 Excited to be on this journey with you just beginning right now. And it’s going to be very cool. I’d love to come by the pop up in London and see where you guys take this token event. We’ll be coming up soon. Yeah.

1:28:10 Metropolisworld.io there. They got social links where they can follow you. That’s the best place. On all the other places as well. Yeah, that’s cool.

1:28:16 So get in there, engage. They can jump in the world there as well. Yes. Sign up for an account and just start playing with everything. Absolutely.

1:28:23 She’s super excited, man. Thanks so much. Thanks for the support. So good to have you on board and excited for this journey. It’s going to be a good one.

1:28:30 Me too, man. And great to meet you as well. You too. All right, brother. Let’s do this.

1:28:37 Thanks so much. Thank you.