Dive into the world of NFTs with us as we speak to two trailblazers in the industry. Our host Sheila is joined today by non other than Zhuoxun (Zedd) Yin, Co-founder and COO of Magic Eden and Randi Zuckerberg, Producer, Investor, Performer, Entrepreneur & “Professional Mom to Startups”and Founder/CEO of Zuckerberg Media. One is a Web3/crypto-confident entrepreneur and CEO and the other is a global advocate and investor and much more! How do these two worlds meet in the Metaverse? Let’s find out. Host: Sheila Lirio Marcelo, Co-Founder & CEO of Proof of Learn and Founder of Care.com Guests: Zhuoxun (Zedd) Yin - Co-founder and COO of Magic Eden Randi Zuckerberg - Producer, Investor, Performer, Entrepreneur & “Professional Mom to Startups” and Founder/CEO of Zuckerberg Media
0:00
Welcome to the web podcast, the newest source for the crypto curious that unblocks the mystery of blockchain and teaches you the A to Z of NFT's. I'm your host, Sheila Lirio Marcelo, an entrepreneur, educators, founder of pure.com, and CEO of proof of learned my first venture disrupted web one and grew with web two. Now I'm out with another mission driven adventure of learning and growing in web three. Crypto is a big, exciting and to many of us, a bewildering world. Let's explore it together. We created this podcast to simplify and celebrate the ins and outs of the new economy, and decentralized Web. On each episode of Web, I'll guide a conversation between someone who's been to crypto land and someone interested in going there. You can think of me as your bridge to the metaverse. I know you'll enjoy the ride. And yes, we'll explain what the metaverse is to. Welcome to this episode of Web where we bring you insights and perspectives of the crypto curious in the crypto confidence. I'm your host, Sheila Lirio Marcelo, and I'm delighted to be joined by two special guests, who I'm so excited to speak with. Both are well known as innovators and leaders in the web three world and you could probably say they're both crypto confident, but we wanted to bring them together for a somewhat different episode to discuss what they are curious about when it comes to each other's work. One is web three, crypto confident entrepreneur and CEO and the other is a global advocate and investor and much more. How do these two worlds meet in the metaverse?
1:46
Let's find out.
1:48
My friend Zedd has many years of experience and has been trailblazing his way through the tech world. He's the co founder and CEO of magic Eden. Formerly he was the senior product manager at Coinbase and head of strategy and business operations at dydx. And before that, at nimble and Bain and Company, my dear friend, Randy is a real multi hyphenate and forced to be reckoned with. She is the founder CEO of Zuckerberg media, the founder of a hug web three community host of crypto cafe, podcasts investor, theater, producer, and more. I'm so happy to have you guys both here.
2:30
Thank you so much. It's gonna be great. What a powerful and
2:33
inspiring pairing for our web community to learn from I'd love to start with you, Randy, could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got where you are today. People call you a professional mom to entrepreneurs, and also my dear friend, and you always share how much joy it brings you to work closely with startups and founders, and especially female entrepreneurs. Tell us more about that and how you got to where you are today.
2:59
Well, thank you, Sheila. We're I got where I am today. Clearly, I didn't do something right. Because Zedd's in Hawaii. And I'm not sure I got to today. Worse than that. But, you know, I've had a bit of a crazy journey, actually, my dream in life was to perform on Broadway. And so naturally, I found myself on the front lines of web two in Silicon Valley about as far away from theater and Broadway as you could get. But I was always I always gravitated towards working with creators and helping artists and creators. So while I was at Facebook, I built and created Facebook Live, I was always like on the side building creator tools. And then a decade into my journey in web two, I got a call out of the blue offering me a leading role on Broadway. And so I moved back to New York after all that performed in an 80s rock musical Rock of Ages on Broadway, and thought, okay, here I am, like, I've landed finally. And then the pandemic shut the entire theatrical industry down. And for me, that was really my aha moment with web three was the frustration that with all these amazing tech tools we have, that an entire industry of artists could still be shut down by middlemen and physical locations and government lock downs was really what struck a chord in me and inspired me to to my next chapter, which is building the HUG creator community of web three. That's where I am today but I wish I was in Hawaii.
4:39
Me too, or in cold rain in New York. So just quickly, Randy, tell us about BFF. And why female founders?
4:49
Yes, well, it's funny when I started my career, I actually started at an ad agency called Ogilvy and Mather, where the CEO was a woman a strong, powerful woman would worked her way up from a summer intern to a CEO. So it didn't even occur to me that there was still a glass ceiling. Like I remember having conversations with my mom, where she talked about being the first woman in her medical school class. And I was like, Mom, it's 1999. Like, there's no glass ceiling anymore. And then I got out to Silicon Valley and could count on one hand, the amount of of female executives that I saw out there, and I feel like we really made a lot of great progress in the last 20 years. And I was feeling really great about things. And then when I got into web three, it felt identical to those early days in web two, where there were no women in the room. There were no female, and women weren't getting funded. Like I felt like we got transported back in time. And that all the work we had done for 20 years was almost a erased. So for me, I know Sheila, it's a passion that we share that a lot of people, men, women, all gender share is just getting more diversity and more voices in the room as we're building web three from the ground up.
6:06
I love it. And as we know, with BFF, we're trying to educate people through NFTsZ because it's tangible. For consumers. They feel that they can access the beauty of art, which I think is where you both intersect the NFT world. Zedd you're the co founder of magic Eden, one of the leading NFT marketplaces, please tell our listeners about magic Eden. We're certainly proud to be on the platform for metacrafters. We've heard you say you want magic eating to be the biggest NFT marketplace in the world and the leading destination when it comes to NFTs. So tell us more about your goal and the motivation behind it.
6:48
Yeah, for sure. Firstly, Sheila's been awesome to to get to work together on a bunch of different things. So I'm super excited to be here. And and Randy, I love what you guys are doing. We've been really big fans. So yeah, first of all, just really just want to say that, I think, no, like magic Eden. You know, we've been working on this for 12 months. And when we first sort of conceived of the idea, the NFT market was kind of going through a really, really crazy period. But one of the things that we always said to ourselves in the early days was, what's the thing that we want to do that's going to be different? Or like how do we see the world? And how do we what do we want to bring as a as a company as magic Eden into that world. And obviously, there's many, many different sort of topics that we can get into. But I think fundamentally, the main thing that we care about at Magic Eden is a we really believe that NF T's will fundamentally change a lot of a lot of the ways that creators as well engage communities, right? And creators in the broadest sense of the town, whether it's influences, whether it's developers, whether it's brands, IP, that sort of so many different layers of this. But I think fundamentally, we really believe that NFT's will be a fundamental sort of technology. And then secondly, we thought to ourselves, what is the platform or marketplace that is going to be able to serve that kind of future. And one of our really, really strong beliefs is that marketplaces tomorrow will look really different to marketplaces today. And a lot of the marketplace infrastructure today is very, very focused around sort of the point of sale and, and sort of buy sell interaction, right. It's like a kind of the commerce side of things. And I think if if we are successful, and of NFTs that have been successful in the future, there should be actually many, many, many layers to this, there should be experiences that enable people to be immersed in different communities. And there should be ways to experience what it means to join a community be, you know, play this game, you know, whatever it is, listen to this, artists, music, all of these things can be powered by NFTs over time. And those experiences are very, very immersive and rich, and they should not just be a pure point of sale, commercial experience. And that's ultimately what we want to create. And if we are successful, I think that's something that we really, really aspired to do. But the motivation was really, really around that. It was, we felt that the platform to showcase creators and NFT's and allow users to engage with these creators is going to look really, really different to what marketplaces traditionally look like in web two. And that's sort of the genesis of how they got started with magic. And one of the really, really intentional decisions we first made was to actually do that on Solana because we felt that a lot of the new use cases would be proliferated in places where things that are cheaper to transact and easier to implement as a creator. But yeah, that's sort of the the original Genesis stories, many, many ways we can take this conversation down.
9:39
Well, I love that you are focused on the user and building community and overall improving the experience. And there's many in the audience that are consumers just curious getting in. And so what I love about what Randy's work is, is that it's she's passionate about the NFT's marketplace. You just talked about that. And, and operating in the world where she's got this hug community even love that name. And by connecting with the community on across all channels that she works on to improve educational content. Talk to us about that because I think it's a build on the same passion that is in Zedds heart around helping build communities through experiences.
10:22
Absolutely in Zedd. I mean you can you can feel your passion radiating through the audio waves it just like it was making me smile so much listening to you describe what you're building and, and you're clear passion and vision for the future. are also I love the name magic Eden. It's such a great name. We, we chose the name hug, because I quite purposely wanted to choose the friendliest, most welcoming name that I could possibly think of, because I think a lot of women and diverse creators, they don't find a friendly welcoming space and web three when they first enter. So we just wanted to like blast it from the rooftops like we embrace creators, and we want to help. It's funny when I first got into the space, about a year ago now, I was kind of just casually advising a bunch of NFT founders on the side. And then like Broadway producing during the day is my day job. And it finally got to the point where I was I think I was advising like 20 Different NFT creators. And so I'd like finish my regular work. And then from 9pm till 2am, like get on calls with NFT founders in every single one was facing the identical challenges in the space, like every phone call was the same. And so that was what really sparked my interest to launch, I launched an incubator was the first thing we launched through hugs. So we now have about 40 Different NFT founders and collections across many different blockchains that are currently or have graduated through our incubator, we have a community now we just launched a reviews platform where we're empowering our community to curate, and, and help all of these amazing creators get discovered so that people can go purchase them on magic Eden and amazing marketplaces. So it's been really exciting. I feel like I'm back to working with artists every day, which is has always been my passion. But there are some really real challenges for artists and creators in the web three space that we definitely have to tackle if we're going to help people be successful.
12:29
I love how you're blending art and tech, which is your background and your passion. Super cool. So, Randy, I know when I called you last week, and you're one of my dearest friends, and I said, and you and I have been planning podcast for a while. And I said, Hey, would you want to do a podcast paired up with Zedd of magic eat? And you're like, absolutely. So now you've got him here? What are you curious about? From magic Eden? Like, what were you so excited about? What do you want to ask him?
13:04
Gosh, there's so many things that I'm curious about. But as I said, You just talked a lot about the future and how in the future people, you know, may or might not make decisions just purely based on commerce, or they don't want the buying decision. And I think that's a vision you and I share. Because we we really think a lot and hug about the role of curators and influencers, influencing buying decisions. But I'm curious, what do you think that future looks like? Like, what do you what are we missing right now from the commerce experience?
13:37
Yeah, for sure. No, I think what actually one little anecdote that I'll just share, which I think is related to this, because because I think he brought it up with the magic eden name, also to say a little bit about like what we had in mind when we kind of came up with that. And it actually wasn't even our first name. So we ended up changing the name to that, because we thought it sort of matched the vision so well. But the idea behind it is that we wanted people to effectively think of or we wanted to conjure up sort of this, this notion of like a world to explore, right? Sort of a very, very magical, interesting, world, that, you know, Garden of Eden sort of conjures up this image of a really interesting things that are that, that requires some discovery. Right? And that that I think that's what we really like about the name. And hopefully that's what gets conjured up. And when people think about or see the name magic Eden? So what do I think that world's going to look like? I think our our kind of thinking on this is that it's going to look pretty different depending on the category of NFTs that end up being created or the type of creator that ends up doing things with NFTs. And for us. You know, one very, very simple example is when creator or in our case, like a game developer that's building a game and in web three, what is the right way for user to actually discover that it's actually not through individual, you know, items, whether they're weapons or characters or something like that. It's actually through playing the game. And I think a lot of what happens with NFTs is they get mixed around with kind of crypto native concepts. And it doesn't actually need to be that way, it should sort of be a very organic discovery experience. And that's going to be different for different things. But that could be as simple as playing the game. For community based things, it should be about discovering what that community is talking about interested about, versus, you know, going directly to the buying experience. And that's sort of the world that we want to help create. And today, that's a very, very disparate kind of experience and very disparate journey, right? It's a user, or someone who's discovering this stuff for the first time. There's maybe 10, places they need to be, right. It's sort of a, I always joke that MCS is almost like, you're either in it 100%, or you're not in it at all. Because there's no there's no middle ground for like someone who's trying to discover it for the first time. I don't know, if you felt that way, Randy, I really felt that way, when I first got started with this stuff, you had to be all in, otherwise, you just couldn't follow the stuff. And that if that's true, then it's going to be very, very hard for us to all of us to effectively, you know, grow the audience and grow the number of people that are interested. And that's something that we think a lot about magic eden, even sort of like that, that end to end user journey. What are the different ways that we can make it simpler for all of our users to come and discover the different types of content that's being created, with entities being just a vessel? Right?
16:36
Sheila, do I get to ask a follow on?
16:38
Oh, my gosh, absolutely. Love that. Just listening to the two of you.
16:43
I love that Zedd and I honestly, I lose sleep over the same thing, which is like, where did the hobbyist NFT tiers fall in? Like, let's just like you mentioned, you can't just like NFT as a sometimes hobby. You're either like 400% in or you're nothing. But I don't think that any of the creators in the hug community or any of us really can win, or build truly meaningful businesses for the future, if all we're doing is speaking to the small number of people that are already in NFT's? So how do we how do we get those hobbyist people? And how do we make it a welcoming space for them?
17:21
Yeah, it's that is the that is the question. And I think we we sort of, obviously, there's like two sides of the equation here. And, you know, for us, we think a lot about the creative side. Because ultimately, if if sort of you kind of go down the logic of NFT's being just a form of content, right, or a form of engagement, that's really, really community oriented, then there has to be enough creators that are going to be willing to try things, right. For this to kind of make sense. It's just sort of supply side before demand side of the marketplace. So we spent a lot of time actually building and, and building creative tools, and effectively making it easier for creators to experiment with different NFT models, whether it's just a community based profile, project, profile picture project, or if it's some community based utility project, or it's just a creative wanting to create a Dao that's based on NF Ts, whatever it is that they're willing to try. And honestly, there's probably hundreds more hesitations. Actually, we don't want to be in the business of defining what that is. We just want to kind of build some tooling, infrastructure, support from us being a platform that has helped a lot of creatives experiment with this in the past. And we want to continue to do that. So a lot of the mindshare that we spend around that particular question is, how do we get more creatives to try things and then, with more experimentation, like any industry, you end up finding a set of things that ends up working really, really well. And I think we're still very much in that experimentation phase, which I think is really, really cool. So for us, that's where we spend a lot of our mindset, the moment whether it's on either Solana or etherium. We want to work with different kinds of creators to figure out what are the different ways they can use NFT's that makes sense in an organic way with their audience.
19:13
Love that in given that we're talking about technology, even the definition of non fungible tokens. And NFTS is not very approachable to begin with. Right? It's hard for a creator to be like, how do I get excited about that? And you get into the platforms. And the reason you have to be all in is because it's hard to get anything done to even launch an NFT. How do you get going? And so you try and find a co founder, who's a techie who knows how to code a smart contract and an NFT. How do you do things in a fast way? I mean, for metacrafters, we were really fast using magic and because the tooling was so easy again, it's that overall experience. What I want to turn it now is really question for both of you, since you work with a lot of creators, give me some examples of projects that you're both excited about that are clever, innovative, creative, even though we call it an NFT. Again, a non fungible token. And most people associate it with a profile picture, that board ape yacht club, for example. Definitely a head scratcher for many, like, what are the things can NFT's be used for? What are the innovative projects out there to build community that you have both found? Let's start with Zed?
20:38
Yeah, for sure. There's a few, there's quite a few that are playing with different models, I'd say. So one of them that we launched recently was it's actually a one of the more exciting teams that's building a web three game called Astra, as our games, we launched the first NFT collection on it was actually on etherium. But one of the things I'm really excited about for them is that they actually come from a very traditional web two gaming background, they're very, yeah, for me, EA, they shipped a lot of really, really amazing games, that grossed a billion plus dollars, but that they're building this because they really believe in sort of ownership, the ownership model of, of, for players. And they recently did something that I think was actually quite cool and, and probably will be replicated with many other web three games in the future, which is, instead of doing a mint, that was some price for some supply, they just gave stuff out for free. And said, here's a play pass. So whenever we launch, kind of first versions of the game, you guys will be the first people to be in that sort of testing group, and be able to access that game for the first time. Yeah, an a second project that we're pretty excited about I have have been really excited about because it protocol D gods. That's one of the top collections on Solana. And one of the things that we really liked about them are teams like that, sort of the common denominator of successful NFT projects so far, is sort of this willingness to experiment in public. And they do an amazing job of that, where they're not afraid to try something, fail, fail fast, and then try something else. And now they have a couple of collections, they have a token called dusts. That is they use for a range of different things around community engagement and incentives. And they're also building a bunch of tooling and infrastructure to support the NFT community. So this is not like a one dimensional kind of thing. They're actually trying a lot of different things. And eventually, I think we're going to see what's the right sort of community model that really sticks. So we're really excited about teams like that, that have already native, but are also willing to experiment and build together with the public. And that I think, will be hopefully a really awesome case study for many other creators to come.
22:57
That's great. Randy, before you give us your favorite project, one of the things that I find that so interesting in web three, because you offer ownership early to users, there's a forgiveness of how you develop the product and the experience with everyone because their owners. And you know, when you're partly owning something like if you're a venture capitalists and you invest in a company, you assume the founders are going to go through experimentation and failure, right. And so there's a patience when you're owning something. Versus if you're a consumer, where you're going into a store and you expect the product to be perfect to have the perfect service in a hotel, do have the perfect manufactured drink that taste awesome. Like there's some times less of a patience of experimentation, whereas in web three, you're on the journey with the founders. And so that's so interesting about how you define what the d God's team is doing, which is, wow, come with me, join me in building this together. And with that, we will be on this journey of learning. And sometimes we make mistakes, which is totally cool. We'll get back up because you own this journey with me. So that's be the beauty of web three. Sorry, I had to mention that Randy, because it's been an eye opening for me. It's exciting,
24:27
and it's beautiful, but it also is very stressful for creators. I agree. It's stressful to build a company to build a startup like it's already a roller coaster ride. And now when you have to build it with like 10,000 people weighing in on every little thing because they spent like $70 on an NFT like that that's in credit, like I don't know, how would we have gotten anything done at Facebook? If like every customer had like an opinion on everything we were building, you know, so I think both wonderful and exciting, but also like, definitely adds a new challenge for entrepreneurs. And how are you
25:07
massive plus one? Sorry to segue into that, but how do you coach Randy NFT creators and founder entrepreneurs around managing that stress?
25:20
Yeah, we work with our craters a lot on just kind of setting boundaries. And I think, you know, because craters right now, I mean, they had a lot of jobs already. And now they're now they have 8 million jobs. Now, in addition to being an artist or creator, you need to be a community manager, you need to have talent there, you need to be a business manager, you need to like, know how to have technical skills or manage people with technical skills. And so it's, it's more exciting to be an artist than ever before. But it's also more challenging, I think, to be a creator than ever before. So we really, we try to take as much of the burden off of creators as possible by being like, maybe you don't need to set up your own discord, like, maybe just be part of ours, and we'll manage it. Or maybe you don't need a technical team, because there are all of these incredible no code, and smart contract products out there that we can help people connect with. So we really tried to take the that burden off, but I think a lot of it is about setting boundaries. And some of our creators love to be in discord and on Twitter, 24/7. And some of them, it really wears on their mental health and their ability to get stuff done. And so we really work with them on that. But it's kind of a new challenge that's just emerged out of web three.
26:42
So great opportunities for infrastructure builders, like magic Eden's vision, because to simplify supporting the millions and millions of creators that were trying to onboard in a web three means there's a lot of needs to help them scale, which is, yeah, the two of you should work together. Because obviously, Randy sees the inbound of what creators need.
27:09
I really anything that we can do to be supportive of that, I mean, not that you need our support, but that it is really fun to sit where we sit, where we're like, constantly talking to creators and seeing their, their changing needs in the space. So anything we can ever do to be helpful.
27:25
Okay, so tell us about projects you're excited about at a hug,
27:30
there are a few that immediately come to mind just as a few that I think are a pretty beginner friendly in the space and also resonate with people outside of the web three world. The first is a project called the Royals that I really love. And it was done in partnership with kind of the Ghana tourism board, to introduce more people to the culture of Ghana and see if they could get influential people to travel to Ghana and make that a destination. And so it was launched by this incredible creator named Dr. Hans who I highly encourage everyone to look up in this space. And anyone who holds this NFT is invited to this massive New Year's Eve gala in Ghana this year where they have just like, influencers and performers and the food. I mean, it's it looks like the most incredible party ever. Is
28:24
that what you're going to be New Year's?
28:26
Yeah, that's where I'm hoping.
28:29
All right, well, we're going to Ghana, from Hawaii to Ghana.
28:32
It's been really successful the project in get in introducing culture, fashion music of Ghana to more people. So I think that's that's a really exciting thing. There's also a collection called NaVi on world that I think is very beginner friendly, because you actually the image that you meant, she's wearing a piece of jewelry, and you actually get that jewelry in real life. So I feel like for a lot of people that are still stuck on the like, why is a JPEG worth any value, and they're kind of still still so stuck on that, that they can't get beyond that into the web three space, actually, combining physical and digital ownership, I think is a really interesting way to bring new people into the space. And they've been successful in bringing a lot of people into the space who love fashion and love jewelry and might not, you know, and then those people go on to get into gaming and get into all of the other facets of web three. So those are two projects that immediately come to mind. I think the other category of projects that I'm seeing a rise in is influencers who are kind of minting their own NFT's as almost a fan club that they own. So we're seeing a lot of the creators in our community are they just want to have a more direct connection that they're collectors and their audience or they have people who hang on every word that they say They about parenting or about some niche topic. And now they can actually mint an NFT collection and see real value from kind of a fan club, if you will. So, those are a few of the trends that I'm pretty excited about.
30:17
That's super cool, from gaming experiences, potentially giving it away for free experimentation, improving tourism to a country, trying out jewelry, you know, improving your fan club and your followers to hang on to everything that you do. So, gosh, I mean, there's so many applications with NF T's right? So just it's great sampling for the audience, just to better understand that there's not just a profile picture. Right? That is is a broader concept. So another big broad concept that I want to move from NFTS is the metaverse. Both of you have talked about experiences. We lump the metaverse, crypto blockchain web, three NFT's as if it was one one big thing when they're all sort of differently defined, because the show is W3B'd. And it's about crypto curious to crypto confident. How do each of you define the metaverse? Let's start with Zedd.
31:19
These are both extremely loaded terms. Sheilas just making like, like asking the hard questions. So
31:30
trying to define it for the audience so that they're not intimidated by it that?
31:40
Yeah, let me I'll take a stab. And I think Randy would probably do a way better job than me. But so I think, let me take the two independently. I think the way I think about web three is it's a bunch of technology and applications that's built on an open stack. Right? That's the main distinction. I actually compared to web two that. I would just want to make sure the audience is aware of its you're building things on an on a totally open infrastructure, which is these public blockchains right. Ethereum Solana, etc. Metaverse is I, I kind of feel like the way I describe them is, it's just fundamentally people doing things online together, and experiencing things socializing, all that stuff, just in online forums. And there's actually better verses that already exists today, right? That are not web three, that just want to call it metaversus I would even argue it goes to go as far as to say discords are kind of just some version of being an anatomist already, right. Everyone has the profile pictures you're talking to, you know, 0x Something something something something. Here's a real name, you don't know. And that is some form of it. It's some lightweight form, but it is definitely some form of it. Same with Roblox right that that's probably some form of it too. So those two these two things can can and do coexist, and are mutually exclusive. of each other. The world we are building towards is potentially the cross section of these two things where you have some open online world that is also built on public infrastructure and owned by many, many people versus just one centralized company. Right? That would be the in my view, the intersection of what's there and Metaverse and these things get conflated a lot but I think they are independent concepts that can be you know, can be can be intersect intersected.
33:36
That's a really great definition without all the mumbo jumbo Randy, how do you build on that?
33:40
Ya know, is that you did a great job being put on the spot like that? I know it's funny. I have to laugh. Like if listeners are feeling confused about the metaverse. Don't worry, we all are if you ask 100 people to define the metaverse, you'll get 100 different answers. And most people like don't they just use the word Metaverse to raise money in a pitch deck because it makes them sound innovative. Like they don't actually even know what's going on. I you know, I think if you ask purists, Metaverse purists they will say that the definition of a Metaverse is virtual reality, where kind of a three dimensional avatar explores a setting and interacts with with other people. I would say that I think that's changing over the past few years in some respects. We are in a Metaverse right now doing this podcast like we're in three different locations and images of the three of us are kind of interacting with one another on a screen. It's like kind of a boring Metaverse, but it is a metaverse. And so I think a lot of the people who are building in the space right now are realizing that instead of kind of forcing consumers to enter, a Metaverse through VR and through other things, you know, how can we bring the metaverse more easily to people in their everyday lives? And there's a lot of exciting innovation around augmented reality, audio metaverse. I mean, everyone has air pods. And you know, how can we you know, maybe mass adoption of the metaverse will be audio not visual. So I think there's a lot of people that are thinking about this in in really interesting ways that are much easier for the everyday consumer to interact with.
35:27
So what are these intersections, then they are mutually exclusive, but they're intersecting because we also have an older set audience that sitting here listening like all virtual worlds, like can you really live there? We're just here in real life. Why would we ever want to depict ourselves in this virtual reality? How do you guys both think of the intersection of web three and the metaverse? Randy, I'll start with you.
35:58
I could give one example. And I have to say, Sheila that I was very skeptical of the metaverse at first. I mean, when I did my first VR experience a decade ago, I spent three hours vomiting after I got sick, I had so much emotion. So it's like this is not a thing. And a lot of people in our hug community kept saying they really wanted to learn about the metaverse. So we decided to organize a field trip into decentraland. We're like, Come learn about the metaverse, we put out like a three page step by step of how to enter. And I was really skeptical. I was like this is this is gonna be weird. It took five minutes from setting up my avatar, to buying things for my avatar, like I was so skeptical. I was like, I was like I would never spend money in the metaverse. I was so disappointed by how basic my avatar looked. I was like, well, crap. I'm a boring mom in the real world and boring mom in the metaverse. And I was like, I can fix one of those things. I can't help in the real world. But I can pretty easily. And so it took me literally five minutes to start buying things from my avatar. And that was a real lightbulb moment for me and I think should be for all of our listeners today is that direct to Avatar, I think is going to be just like a multibillion dollar. I mean, it already is in a lot of games. But just from a consumer mindset. It's going to be just an astronomical industry.
37:00
Yeah. Plus one. I think it's I think most people start off as skeptics, to be honest, me as well. I'm like, my background is kind of in finance. So I was kind of like this is why people spending time doing this stuff. But once you're in it, it's actually it's quite fun. And this concept of you can kind of do anything, be anyone you can there's sort of a identity that is separate. What do you have in sort of day to day in real life, right? And you're free to explore. Oh, All these different types of communities or, you know, games or whatever it is that ends up being possible. And that to me is, yeah, you kind of realized that fairly fairly quickly. And once you do that light bulb moment is quick. But it is something that it's almost a it's a mindset shift, right? You have to, if you're not growing, at least for me, I didn't grow up really buying things online that you know that much. It's not really a thing. I mean, I was, when I first bought games, it was you buy it for $60. And it's a CD, and then you put it into the computer, right? And the concept of unit buying skins and things, it's just generally, these mental model shifts take a bunch of time. But if you see kids used to this stuff, it's already that tells you something. This is something that's very native.
38:49
It's the same reason I share with friends. And I know I'm dating myself that, you know, back 23 years ago or so we didn't think we would hire people online, God forbid. And that's all we do. Now. We go on LinkedIn. And I remember when monster first came out, like why would you ever hire online? Then dating followed? Why would you ever find a date online instead of going to the local bar, which by the way, from a statistical trying to run into someone as opposed to profile matching? Doesn't make sense logically? And even care.com, which is a company I've found it is like, why would you ever go for online for care? So I try and dispel this for people. And then of course, Facebook, putting your entire personal life online. And now, my son says, grandmas online. So it's not super cool to use Facebook anymore. That I mean, that's his perspective. But you see, I'm saying it's like, we have these like, beliefs. And if you look at the younger set, if you observe them, they're living in the virtual world. And so
39:57
go ahead. Oh, sorry. Sorry. No, I didn't mean to cut you off. I I spent, like almost two hours the other day trying to convince a roomful of adults that this was a thing and my 11 year old son, who had been like waiting patiently outside my room was like, Mom, can I like buy some Pokeyman coins in the game so that I can I can catch this special pokey mon. And I was like, that's exactly what I was just just trying to explain. And I realized I was like, You know what? You don't no matter how tech savvy any of us are, we speak Metaverse is a second language. And a lot of the real innovation in the space is going to be driven by by kids and young people who speak it as a first language and don't need to be convinced so sorry, Sheila to interrupt you. Oh,
40:44
I thank you for building on it, Randy, and you got to go try it, you got to go get in and figure out the virtual world, you got to figure out the power of this incredible community that you both support, which is the creator economy, for both of your platforms. And what I love that you both share is that discovery and organic, caring nature of making it easier for creators, right the words that you use, even in the brands of how you named it magic, Eden. And hug is truly what web three stands for, which is a sense of discovery, experimentation, welcoming the community doing it together, building together for a brighter future. So I just want to thank the two of you amazing conversation for our audience. And we want to just trying to influence more people to go try all these new technologies is here now and it will make a difference for the future generation. Thank you both very much.
Thank you. Thanks, guys. This podcast is being provided for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice.