Ep 54: Hrish Lotlikar, CEO of SuperWorld on the Metaverse, XR and NFTs

James Thomason: 0:04

It's The Next Wave Podcast, episode 54. This week I'm here with my co host, Dean Nelson and Brad Kirby, and we're joined by Hrish Lotlikar. He's the co founder and CEO of super world and has recently been named one of the top 30 Most Influential People in the metaverse. He's been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, the Business Times, entrepreneur.com and more. Hrish is also Co Founder and Chief Business Development Officer of the rogue Initiative, a Los Angeles based entertainment company, and advisor of singularity net founding Managing Partner of East labs a seed stage venture fund. Based in Kiev, Ukraine, the Super World virtual real estate platform is mapped over the entire surface of the globe, allowing users to purchase virtually any piece of earth. From skyscrapers and stadiums to historical monuments and iconic structures, including wonders of the natural world. Everyone has a favorite place that they would love to own in this virtual world where each plot of land is 100 meter by 100 meter rectangle, which is about the size of a city block. Recently, Barbados became the first sovereign nation to announce that we'll be building an embassy in the metaverse on Super world. Hrish, welcome to the show.

Hrish Lotlikar: 1:03

Thanks. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for being here.

Dean Nelson: 1:08

Yeah, no kidding. And thanks for coming back. Because I know you had an interruption in the last time we're gonna do this, but you had a really good reason for it. You might have gone to Necker Island. So I got to hear a little bit more first before we jump into the metaverse here in the Super world. So tell us about why you went over to hang out with Richard Branson?

Hrish Lotlikar: 1:25

Well, you know, I, you know, I've really one always loved and been a fan of Richard since I was a very young child. So it was amazing as an honor to be there with him, he's always been an inspiration to me, super world's mission is to build a better world to enhance people's lives to utilize technology to improve the real world. And that's a cause that's very important to Richard. And conscious capitalism is also a big part of that. I'd met John Mackey several times in the past. And that's also an area of interest of mine in terms of how we run our business. And so that was kind of the impetus there to visit Richard. And, you know, it's very honored to be part of that group there that got to hang out and get to know him and just again, just a wonderful, amazing person.

Dean Nelson: 2:14

I think you're you're literally the only person that I've met that on the show or outside that's been to Necker Island. So the group that I went with, right, I've stayed in touch with them. They're awesome, but it is quite a magical place. And Richard is quite a guy.

Hrish Lotlikar: 2:26

Yeah, yeah. He's amazing. And, yeah, it was, it was a magical place. It's totally unreal, you know, felt like, like a paradise. Yeah.

James Thomason: 2:38

I guess it is paradise, right. I mean, I don't know. I mean, Brad, and I never get to go to Necker Island, everyone else is always going to hang out with Branson. But yeah, we just sit here editing podcasts, building companies,

Brad Kirby: 2:50

we don't ask them to give us their secrets.

Dean Nelson: 2:54

We can't do that, Brad. So

James Thomason: 2:56

what happens on Necker islands,

Brad Kirby: 2:58

public forum. So it's fun.

James Thomason: 3:00

So you get to meet John Mackey. I'm thrilled to hear that he also had a big influence on you, I got to meet John Mackey as well. And he really changed my way of thinking, you know, on a few things, particularly about the notion of why you know, why we build companies and building companies around a broad purpose that people can adopt and sort of internalize as opposed to you being the source of all ideas and creation and Genesis within the company. And, yeah, he told me all about the early days, and when, when they picked a big warehouse for Whole Foods in the middle of 100 year floodplain and 100 years was that year. And, you know, everybody came down and shoveled out the place, got in the mud, people's families, you know, children, everybody, the whole, the whole company, and their whole, extended families, friends, got in and literally shoveled out mud to save the company, or that would have been the end of Whole Foods. So he's, he's got a lot of great stories like and it just seems like a really great and genuine guy that the guy who influenced me and my way of thinking about building companies as well. So

Hrish Lotlikar: 3:52

yeah, great story. And again, inspiration for what he's done with whole foods.

James Thomason: 3:59

I wonder how he's feeling he'll never tell us how he's really feeling now that he's part of part of the giant squid.

Dean Nelson: 4:07

By the way, as you can tell, James likes to bash all the other bigger players. So

Brad Kirby: 4:13

we're talking about the decentralized world here, so that's okay. Okay,

James Thomason: 4:18

yeah, Hrish is doing the antithesis of big tech. He's decentralizing. So I wonder, have the owners of real land become upset that anyone has purchased their virtual land before they got a chance to yet is that something that's happened so far?

Hrish Lotlikar: 4:32

I did go on a trip to Italy recently, and I was on this island off of Venice, and the owner of the island was having lunch with me. And he'd heard about Super world. And so literally, he went and grabbed his computer and he was like, Hey, you got to show me how to buy the island. And someone had already bought the so, but I think that island itself that he owned was worth about 300 million, so I wasn't worried. worried that he could, you know, buy the island on the secondary market?

James Thomason: 5:04

So probably negotiate something I'm thinking yeah, I'm sure he could

Hrish Lotlikar: 5:07

he could have bought it. So I'm probably

Brad Kirby: 5:11

I was in Italy when you agreed to come on the show with us and I was looking around Rome and I was in Rome last month and I saw that the Vatican had been scooped up in a hurry, mostly. But yeah, there's still still a number of plots available. Yeah, maybe maybe we could step back and just just for our listeners, because I've had a lot of people ask us, non tech people's you know, what is the metaverse really before we get into what is super world? Really, broadly speaking? What is the metaverse?

Hrish Lotlikar: 5:35

Yeah, the metaverse is a online offline environment that is persistent is you know, kind of relates to I would say your real life and the physical world, your life in the digital world, and kind of brings together all of the quote unquote, virtual worlds together. It's kind of the next stage of the internet, as some people like to describe. There is one Metaverse so you know, that's one thing to dispel is it's not like super world is not a Metaverse, it is part of the metaverse, everything is part of the metaverse. So yeah, it's kind of a combination of all of the virtual worlds online offline activity.

Dean Nelson: 6:19

This really brings up a memory for me, just domain names. Remember, back in the day, everybody would go back and start to grab them gobble up all the different domain names. And then companies had to come in and say, I'm gonna fight for that one. And, and I see under site like the Taj Mahal is available. Nobody's bought the Taj Mahal yet, and how our rates set? And then what about claims unless I've started going into like, that aspect of it just, there's a parallel here where I just wonder that guy who owned that island, is he going to go back and grab it? Because he wants that? Because I can see a lot of potential in what your platform is doing?

Hrish Lotlikar: 6:53

Yeah, and, you know, to be clear, I think that Taj Mahal is long gone. So you know, it's a name, it's just showing you places that, you know, you can, yeah, so like, want to be interested in

Brad Kirby: 7:05

taking the entire surface of the planet, right and divided up by 100 meter by 100. meter? Lots effectively. Yeah, but 64 billion plots of, you know, virtual real estate effectively. That's right. Yeah. You're selling them for about point one. eath. Is that correct? Everyone? That's right. Yes. The price of Aetherium. Right now, is Lux 4200. So call it Yeah. Yeah, I actually extracted all the transactions this year, and you guys have sold, I think something like, I don't know, I want to say 150,000 plots this year, alone.

Dean Nelson: 7:37

This does, by the way, extracted all the data, numbers, got it.

Brad Kirby: 7:42

But then there's also a secondary market, right, like you can relist it on the website and sell it. So seen. If you go and buy it, you can then sell it. And there's a supply demand concept. Yep. And then you could also sell it on a marketplace like opens even right? Potentially, like I've seen some of those plots or there. Yeah, that's right, which is, which is an NFT. Platform. So at the risk of losing our listeners at this point, each plot of land is represented by a non fungible token. Is that correct? That's right. And so that's how the ownership is tracked on chain on Ethereum blockchain. And that's what I see.

Dean Nelson: 8:15

So reshoot, you basically have claimed the world carved up and allowed everybody to buy a chunk of it.

Hrish Lotlikar: 8:20

That's right. And then on top of that, is the ability to create, discover, and monetize anything anywhere. So we want to make it as simple as possible for anyone to then create their own virtual world, anywhere in the world. And then all of us have their own filter on the world. So I have a world. Brad has a world James, as a world Dean, you have a world got Coca Cola has a world, there's an infinite number of filters that can be built anywhere, right, and then you can own the world, you can own those plots of land, and you get a share of any of the monetization that happens there in the infinite number of filters that exist,

Brad Kirby: 9:00

right. So you could possibly even subdivide, you could see someone taking, like, buying an arena or something and subdividing that up and and then, you know, having people participate in that possibly, I know, it wouldn't necessarily happen on Super world, but you could have interaction in person at a Yeah, at a live sporting event or something like that.

Hrish Lotlikar: 9:21

Yeah. So you know, if you own the land that encompasses an arena, you know, ostensibly, there's going to be fans of the home team that are going to create lots of content and create monetization, there's fans of the opposing team, you know, the visiting team or whatever, they're creating content. There might be content that's happening at the car show next weekend, the weekend that the game's not being played where there's you know, monetization there and all this is happening at the same time, right? So you might be interested in looking at the car show content a week before the car shows actually physically happening at that stadium or convention center or whatever we're talking about.

Brad Kirby: 9:58

James naturally like I like Just trying to buy his own real estate here, as we, as we look, which was my first reaction. But I quickly changed for now like, no, no, no, you got to look for the valuable pieces of property, that your property is not valuable. I'm not to say that your property's not valuable, but there's there certainly some.

Dean Nelson: 10:17

For our listeners, we don't have video on this one. So James literally has the app up and he's looking at his address at his house. And he's trying to go back and figure out how much it cost to buy that property.

Brad Kirby: 10:27

Go to map dot Super World app.com. And you can access the map without any login, obviously, to buy it, you would need a wallet. But

James Thomason: 10:37

yeah, signing up is pretty easy, right? You just You just create a username and account and then very like your wallet. Is that all there is? Yeah, that's right.

Brad Kirby: 10:43

That's you're actually impressed at how easy and user friendly it was. It's very, very good product.

James Thomason: 10:47

Very cool. helped me understand further. So once I buy something, so I've got I've got the app open here. There's a square of highlighted serene, there's a purchase button. If I were if I were logged in, I get purchases once I own it, what can I do with it? And how do how do others know to like, check me out.

Hrish Lotlikar: 11:02

Yeah. So right now there's two ways to think of the product. So we'll start with the real estate side of it, as you explained very aptly, on the real estate side, you connect your wallet, you can search around the world, everyone has their own special places. Some people buy stadiums, historical places, downtown's, you know, find your favorite places in the world, you can buy a plot, you're buying 100 meter by 100 meter block on the surface of the earth. Once you buy that block, that's an NFT. So you're buying a digital asset, we're on Aetherium. So technically, it's an ERC 721 token, which means it's distinct. When you buy that you can reprice it to whatever you want. So again, if you've bought a place that you think has interests and value, and you can reprice it to resell, you can list it to whatever price you want. And then on top of that, we enable anyone to, as I said, create, discover and monetize anything anywhere. And if you own the land, you're getting a you know, a share of any of that income that happens on that plot. So a lot of people want to create digital assets and place them on their plot, they want to start creating content there. And as we're continuing with our product development, we're essentially enabling our users and what we call super citizens, to enable them to do all kinds of things, you know, high level, the world's a video game. So anything is possible. I mean, as you mentioned, you know, Barbados is building an embassy and super world, we have a lot of artists who want to do concerts. And so as we're building out product, there's a very prescriptive product plan. And we kind of are working on building that out.

James Thomason: 12:41

I mean, this interface is a very much kind of like a Google Maps type of experience, right? Where I can I can fly around on maps and look down from the sky towards the Earth. Is there is there also an immersive experience like AR VR style?

Hrish Lotlikar: 12:53

That's right. Yeah. So first of all, on the map itself, you can on the desktop map, which is what you're looking at, we have an AR view, so you can click on that. And currently, how it's set up is people place videos in augmented reality all over the world. And you can see those videos, if you zoom out or zoom in, you can see them kind of populate on the map.

Dean Nelson: 13:15

So if you go to like the the Eiffel Tower, on that, you would start to see whoever bought the Eiffel Tower plots. And then you can see if anybody's put some stuff on there, and for them to put things on those plots. They have to pay. They have to like if somebody owns that plot, how does it monetize I guess?

Hrish Lotlikar: 13:31

Yeah, so again, there's a variety of ways for monetization to occur advertising, digital commerce, e commerce, gaming data analytics, I would say that what we've started with so far is digital commerce, which means you can create your own NF ts 3d 2d audio, all kinds of NF T's and put them in real world locations. So we were actually just featured in The New York Times two weeks ago for something we did it Miami Art week, where we had NF T's placed all over the convention center at Miami Beach Convention Center during Miami Art week. And you know, buyers could go and check out 3d art from artists all over the world that place their art in Miami.

Dean Nelson: 14:15

Oh, I see. Okay. So suddenly the world really is opened up that an artist sitting somewhere in Vegas could go back and landed in Paris. And somebody could buy that via and have an NFT for that, right?

Hrish Lotlikar: 14:28

Yeah, exactly. So they could be you know, walking around Miami, looking at Miami Art week are and pull out the phone and there's an artist in California that's placing art there. In augmented reality, you can click through and go to any website and buy it as an NFT.

Dean Nelson: 14:46

So this reminds me of two other things. Do you remember Ready Player One? The movie? Yes. Right. And just that whole experience out? That wasn't mapped directly to the world. They were creating brand new worlds on top of it like the metaverse, right? What Microsoft and meta and all those are doing. But what you're saying is you're mapping this to the real world, that there's a place and that place can be augmented with all different types of experience and all different overlays, I guess, in completely different views of that place. So it's still fixated or fixed in the real world, that this address is now part of super world. And in there, it's my experience or my thing happening at that place.

Hrish Lotlikar: 15:21

Yes. And so right now, I think James or whoever is sharing the screen there is looking at augmented reality added to a location. But to be clear, in Super world, you can also go totally virtual, okay, so you can go in a totally virtual environment, or you can do augmented reality. And back to James's original question, the mobile application is where you can see things immersively. And then again, we're hardware agnostic. So right now we're on mobile, and web. But we'll be on glasses, when there's enough headsets out there. In terms of AR glasses, we're also gonna be on VR glasses will be on audio haptic suits.

Brad Kirby: 15:59

So I want to touch on the glasses a little bit just because obviously, they've been around for a bit now. But seems like we're a bit early on the glasses front. But it does seem like the next generation, the next wave is coming in the next couple of years here. What's your view on this AR glass market place?

Hrish Lotlikar: 16:13

Yeah. So again, the mobile phone makers, Apple, Google, Android, all of these Samsung, you name it, they're all realizing that glasses is definitely the next form factor. A lot of us if we have the latest iPhone 12 Pro, we might not get the 13. Because the difference between the 12 and the 13 is, even if it improves a bit, there's not the strong demand to go out and buy more. And so one, they have a very strong incentive to really jump in on this new form factor. Secondly, you know, the technology with AR SDKs, whether it's AR kit from Apple or AR core from Android, those SDKs are improving quite a bit. You know, again, we're on mobile right now, because 3.7 billion mobile phones are AR enabled. And so the software that they have on the market is already, you know, enable that to happen on a mobile phone. And now it's really just kind of putting that mobile phone on your face, right? And doing that in a form factor that makes sense and thin and have you know, light and all that stuff. And so Facebook is definitely a player here. I mean, they did a partnership with Ray Ban lixada group, they have a pair of glasses that has cameras, and you know, the audio, so does snap. But you know, I think Apple is very much well positioned there with their AR kit software, and the developer ecosystem, they have on the AR side, to really come out with probably the game changing product, which I assume they will in the next couple of years, it's hard to know exactly when that products coming out. But when they do, it's going to be very interesting. Qualcomm created chip called the Snapdragon chip a couple of years ago. And that's really democratize the ability for hardware companies to come out with glasses.

Brad Kirby: 18:01

We actually talked about that when it came out a couple years ago. How about HTC? Vive? How are they doing in this world? Are they active? are they sticking more to the enterprise industrial realm?

Hrish Lotlikar: 18:10

Yeah, you know, I mean, HTC is doing a lot of very interesting things. Their products are very comparable to what you would find in with an Oculus quest. I think they have a very, I think, strong market share in Asia as well, very close to their team. And so again, I think that they definitely were a strong, early entrant to the market, especially back in 2014 2015. And they're developing an ecosystem. I think they're doing a lot of stuff on enterprise. So again, for us, it's less about any particular hardware platform. We're open to all of them. We're hardware agnostic. And so we you know, it's super world we'll build on on all of them. So they're all really good. And like I said, the ability for hardware maker to build a headset or AR glasses is definitely being democratized. So I think once you find a form factor and a brand out there that really kind of shows off what can be done. I think you're going to find a lot of entrants around the world reliance in India is also very big in this space.

James Thomason: 19:12

I have said previously that today's existing AR VR kit is kind of a prophylactic, right? No one is ever going to be able to mate successfully if we're have these things attached to our bodies. So for me, at least, I think a big part of this is getting kit that you wouldn't know as kit, right? So if people like me, I wear glasses, right? If this was a AR VR enabled set of glasses, like you shouldn't know, right? How long do you think it is going to be before we get to that level of maturity in the technology where someone sitting across from you might be using the technology and you wouldn't even be aware of it?

Hrish Lotlikar: 19:45

You know, I'd say we're maybe three to five years away from something like that. I don't know if I'm being ambitious here in that prediction, but you know, I wear the Ray Ban glasses quite a bit just on the audio and they have two cameras and They're pretty well concealed, like, no one knows that. I mean, they're not AR But at the same time, you know, they have the cameras right in front. So I would assume that that form factor, and the way that that is built and the way it looks, kind of fits in, people don't know it. And those who do I mean, just from my experience, they find it curious, but not like Google classes back in the day where people were just kind of prevented from going into bars and stuff like that. No one. No one has a real sense for that. I think we've all become a lot more open about cameras and things like that in the last 10 years.

Dean Nelson: 20:36

I think everyone just basically gave up. There was no,

Brad Kirby: 20:41

me for sure.

Dean Nelson: 20:43

So my second question on that one was, there's Ready Player One, and that whole experience, right. And then back in the day, there was second life. And I remember 2008, I was at Sun Microsystems, and we created a second life world. And in that we had build data centers with hardware like, and this is the stuff I was doing at that time. And so a great Papadopoulos, CTO was in there, and we had a launch event and all those things, but that was 2008. And if you think about it now, all this stuff that's coming back out, whether it's Microsoft, or whether it's meta, it just seems like now it's going mainstream and big.

Brad Kirby: 21:19

Back when it was still Facebook. Yeah, yeah.

Hrish Lotlikar: 21:23

Yeah. And I went to your office there at Sun Microsystems, I think that was pretty amazing. I was on Second Life back in Oh, seven. And, you know, I'm friends with Phil Rosedale. And he built an amazing product. So

Dean Nelson: 21:37

yeah, and but that whole experience at that point with your avatar and things was, you know, 13 plus years ago, and But now Now we get to the point where there's so many people engaged in that. I'm fascinated with now, the modernization aspect, because even in Second Life, they were selling you Gucci jackets, and you know, people would create that. So there was, there were goods all over a second life. And same thing happens with gaming and stuff that we've seen. And out with this, this is a little bit different. Where again, it goes to that physical world. And I understand you can do virtual just like other things, too. But there's just something about, hey, I'm going to go visit the Eiffel Tower and at the Eiffel Tower, I have an experience that I've created, that advertisers you can go back and jump into my experience. So you think of Twitch and all the people that are doing stuff on there, and these big influencers that are actually getting tons and tons of people and endorsers and all that I can see this just kind of blowing up with lots and lots of people engaged.

Brad Kirby: 22:31

I'm actually reading the books real crash right now as well. I never saw reading Snow Crash, which I believe Neil Stevenson was the first to coin. The term metaverse. Is that correct?

James Thomason: 22:41

I think that's accurate. Yeah. So I wasn't halfway through that was a dystopian novel. Very dystopian.

Brad Kirby: 22:46

Yes.

Dean Nelson: 22:47

So So I guess the question of this is, am I getting this, right? Because I'm just trying to see what the potential is. And I just remember when I had gotten secured Dean nelson.com. And then my credit card didn't do it. And I lost it. And then I had to pay money to get it back, like a decade later, right? Which really annoyed the hell out of me. And I paid a good chunk of money because I wanted my damn domain, but it was like my domain, you know. And so I look at this going, well, I own that property and that thing, and I just wonder, you take a Walmart store, some if you go buy a Walmart stores plot of property, and then suddenly, what happens there? What's the, like,

Brad Kirby: 23:24

squatting potentially, right? You know, you know, the act of squatting? But well, I guess in this world, it's a different type of asset, right?

Hrish Lotlikar: 23:33

Yeah, so the way I describe it, just to be clear, is in a super world, you're buying virtual land on top of the real world, it's divided into 100 meter blocks, those blocks are divided by longitude and latitude. And so when you buy a plot of land, you're buying a longitudinal latitudinal bounded area within the Super World platform that covers the surface of the earth. If you buy the land that covers the Buckingham Palace, you're not going to be the queen of England, right? Oh, man, you're gonna, you're gonna you're gonna own the land that covers the surface of the Earth bounded by those coordinates. And you're essentially going to get a share of any of the income generated on that property that happens on the Super Bowl platform online, and potentially what's happening offline as well, depending on the activity and you know, who's connected to the Superbowl platform. But you know, the idea is that similar Do you can walk into a Walmart right now and watch a YouTube video? And there's an advertiser probably paying the creator of that video ad revenue for an ad that played as a pre roll on the video, and there's a transaction going on inside of the Walmart on the YouTube platform, you know, essentially what's happening here is the same kind of thing where, you know, we've created a virtual world that's accessible on hardware. And it's really just data going in and out. And it's happening anywhere all over the world. And we're designating the revenue share based on where owners own the land and super world. That makes sense.

James Thomason: 25:22

So interesting in the DNS comparison, DNS is an internet standard, right? So that one thing that helped DNS domain names become valuable was that the entire internet use the same standard to interoperate? Do you see standards emerging for interoperating? With virtual worlds like this, where your virtual real estate and super roll can plug into or be navigated to through other spaces? Is that something you guys are working on?

Hrish Lotlikar: 25:50

Yeah. So you know, it's funny is how we think of super world, by the way is, you know, we're often called the gateway to the metaverse because we again, focus on the real world focused on people's real lives. I think that's a big differentiation between us and others in the marketplace, is it sounds ironic, but we're building a virtual world that enhances people's real lives and enhances the physical world. But that being said, we're also creating a world that's very open. So we're building in again, part of the open Metaverse, and, you know, part of that is being built on web three, right, utilizing blockchain and FTS other structures here, which are interoperable by definition, which allow owners to own these immutable assets, to have transparency, to have a lot of benefits that allow them to take those assets outside of the platform and potentially use them in different ways. And so again, that's very important to us. And to your question, it's pretty interesting, because a lot of the other virtual world founders and I are very good friends. So we talk and we get together, and we have kind of alliances in different ways, because we're all about building a virtual world and building a Metaverse that's open, and really catering to the customers that want that, you know, customers want to be able to have that interoperability of assets, want to be able to, to spend the time and resources and have the ability to have that ownership stake in places that they're spending so much time in. So it's very important to us,

James Thomason: 27:25

you know, in the in the DNS world, or domain, world the.com namespace became the most prized and valued for long, I think, probably right now still com domains they trade in the secondary market much higher than other domains, you know, dot XYZ or dot info or, or what have you in there's, there's a lot of top level domains now. But for whatever reason, historical reasons people, people, it's hard to change people's minds, maybe people default to going to calm and so is there a first mover advantage like that in this for Super world where people will default to thinking of super well before they go other places?

Hrish Lotlikar: 28:01

Well, I think that the metaverse is is going to be a very big place, I think that the business models of web two are definitely going to be evolving and web three to become again, more interoperable, more open in general. And so the way we're, again, positioning super world is and we see this in our user behavior and user activity, is we're getting a lot of customers who are new to web three, who are new to blockchain, who are new to gaming, who are new to AR and VR, who are their first movers, by definition at this stage still, but there are those that are excited about the future want to use this as a jumping point, to get further into these technologies. And the way they're doing it is they're saying, hey, you know, I want to buy the place that I go to, for the holidays every summer Christmas, or wherever, you know, wherever it is, or I want to buy the place that I live in, or I want to buy that stadium that I love for my football team plays in and, and so they're thinking about their real life. And they're thinking about what's relevant to them in the real world, because they're not necessarily gamers or crypto guys, or any of that stuff. And so what we're finding is yes, in fact, they're coming into super rural, they're buying land, they're getting a steak, they're getting a wallet and web three, they're getting some ether for the first time. And then they're very interested in going further whether that's technology like AR and VR, whether that's getting into decentralized finance and starting to trade crypto. And so that's the reason we have so much interest for partners in the industry, whether it's crypto whether it's a rvr blockchain AI, you know, we kind of touch a lot of different spaces and super world. So that's kind of what we're seeing which is very, which is great. You know,

Dean Nelson: 29:59

this is interesting because I just watched this clip of Bill Gates. And he was being interviewed by David Letterman back in 1995. Yeah, if you saw that, right? I did. I saw that. And he starts talking about the internet. And you know what this thing is all about. And David Letterman's like, so what can I do with this thing back then? And he goes, Oh, well, you know, you can, you can get your radio stream to that. And he goes, Well, have you heard of FM I just turn on the radio, guess. Oh, okay. And he goes, well, then you could get a movie. And you could watch that. And he goes, have you heard of a VCR? Like, he just he had all these things. But if you look at it, the way we were bound in our world, and the way things were and the people that are actually looking at it differently, I look at where you are the founders of this virtual environment, right? I love the fact that you guys get together. But what are we missing? Like that conversation? We're very bound with blinders on about the way things work today. What are we missing in this experience right now? Because I personally see a whole different way the world works. And a lot of challenges that come with it, too. But it tell us what else we should be thinking about for the future? Around how this will, I guess, manifest or mature over time? Yeah, that's

Hrish Lotlikar: 31:11

a great question. You know, I think that it's very natural to think of environments or routines or things that we're all kind of used to using or interacting with in our real lives as being kind of limiters for breaking out of of those things. And I think the best way to think about this space visa VT, your question is that, you know, we're moving into this age of immersive computing, spatial computing, where instead of looking at a computer screen or mobile phone screen, you are now able to do computing in the real world around you in augmented reality, or virtual reality and spatial immersive environments. And so as we start doing that, we kind of break through that wall of the hardware and start understanding that literally, everything around us is a computing platform or a device or, you know, IoT becomes a lot more real. And I think that's one thing that a lot of people are missing is the fact that, you know, the miniaturization of computing, the ability to utilize AR and VR and immersive technologies, as well as when you add blockchain to that and web three to that. Now, all of us, all of us collectively are able to be stakeholders in these environments that we're building. And so the one way I describe it is we're moving to the internet of places. And now you can own those places, too. And everyone can, and everyone can create in those places, and everyone can discover in those places, whether they're there or if they're around the world, and we can all monetize those places as well.

James Thomason: 32:58

I wanted to ask about a topic we've brought up on the show quite a few times, we we invariably end up talking kind of the intersections of technology and business and technology and law, technology and government. And one of those areas that's been a hot button issue recently is section 230. Here in the United States, which is the area of law that exempts providers such as Super world from having to bear legal liability for the content that is created by third parties, right. So it's sometimes quoted as the little law that gave birth to the internet. And there's, there's a lot of huffing and puffing in government circles about restructuring section 230, especially following the last administration in office and sort of the social media nightmare we've all been living in with everything from bots, creating content and propaganda to some of the nastier artifacts we all know of that have emerged from social media, this seems like it might be a pretty big problem for Super world, right? Because users can create content, and they can whatever that content is, wherever they want it to be. I know from having started a previous startup that didn't work out too well, that's trying to build machine learning another technology to control speech or to filter speech is a ridiculously complicated thing to do. And I know that that is even more difficult when you're talking about different types of content video are three 3d artifacts that are getting imported into the virtual space. So have you yet faced the problem where people are creating horrible things inside of super world that you have to then go remove? How are you going to handle that problem? And how do you see the government? Could the government ruin that for you if they bastardize section 230?

Hrish Lotlikar: 34:36

Well, you know, again, we are building a platform where anyone can create, discover and monetize anything anywhere. And just to be clear, you know, in any location in the world. There's an infinite number of filters and so again, I use the stadium analogy, you know, if I'm going to the stadium and I'm interested in what my home team is doing or content that the home teams fans are creating there. I might only see that I might not see what the opposing team is doing, or the fans of the opposing team, or what's happening, you know, next week at the Auto Show, as I described. So the point is, is that every user has their own interest in what they're interested in seeing. And so first and foremost, we're building a platform where, again, you're really allowing yourself to have a permissioned view of what you're seeing. So you want to see the content, you want to engage with things that you're again, following or your opt in and being shown, yeah, you're opting in to content. And then again, there's likely content that could be created again, and on any platform that doesn't really fit within the terms and conditions or the community standards that are created, those pieces of content are typically not going to be as curated in a way just naturally, they're they're going to be flagged by the community, and in many cases, as well. And then again, we'll have to, again, utilize machine learning and other manual type screening resources as well to make sure that we're again conforming to the community that we're building. And, you know, again, making sure that the terms and conditions of the company itself are being done within those requirements. So that's kind of how we see it. If that situation changes, as you mentioned, you know, I think that every platform is going to have to be a lot more vigilant. And I don't know exactly whether that that is going to be a good thing, because it's hard for platforms to be able to get to that level of curation of content. So those are some of the challenges and I think, you know, this bigger social networks deal with that I think they spent a lot of resources on on doing that. I think over time, it's going to become more and more of something that we have to consider. If I

James Thomason: 36:51

buy a plot of virtual land in Super world, is there any way that super well, the organization or someone else can take it away from me? Or is it cryptographically mined on the blockchain irreversible transfer? Until I decide to let it go? How does that work?

Hrish Lotlikar: 37:06

Yeah, so again, we're decentralized. So when you own a plot of land and super world, it is yours, you're buying an ERC 721 token. That's an NFT. And you know, a characteristic of that is that it's yours, it's decentralized, it's in your wallet. And again, that gives you the right to resell that to keep it to get a share of the economics that happen there on the platform.

Brad Kirby: 37:31

And that NFT would contain the latitude and longitude of that plot. That's right, where you would identify it effectively.

Hrish Lotlikar: 37:37

Yeah, that's right.

Brad Kirby: 37:39

I can certainly see, I guess another points of James's question around crypto and platforms, you know, the recent US legislation that came in around withholding around digital assets. I have to think you've probably talked about that a little bit around NF T's and taxation. Have you been approached at all by anyone? Or is it still fairly theoretical?

Hrish Lotlikar: 38:00

Nf T's is definitely something that we have to basically provide our customers with an understanding of what are some of the tax implications of buying and selling those NF T's, whether they do it themselves, or platforms kind of utilize software that customers can access, so they can easily do their taxes based on their user activity of buying and selling the assets on the platform. And so those are definitely considerations during tax time. And as you know, the IRS is definitely making sure that the platforms and exchanges are reporting the assets and the transactions that are occurring on especially in the US.

Dean Nelson: 38:42

So my big question is, yeah, totally. When are you going to start offering Mars? Yeah,

Hrish Lotlikar: 38:48

a lot of people ask me that. And I think that the literal answer is, you know, again, the way we've structured the platform, is, again, super world gives you a share of the monetization that happens anywhere on Earth, where there's user activity. And you know, once we have enough people on Mars, it would make sense to start selling off Mars. But in the meantime, again, since we're creating a virtual platform, anywhere on Earth, you can go totally virtual. And so I think that there's many people that likely will create virtual worlds where you can go into the solar system and potentially buy planets or do other things. So gaming is a big part of this, and that will happen. But remember, anything that does happen is kind of linked to a place on on Earth on Earth. Yeah,

James Thomason: 39:37

Suresh, I heard that you just moved to Miami. Is that true? That's right.

Hrish Lotlikar: 39:40

I'm globally nomadic. So every year, every six months, I live in different parts of the world.

James Thomason: 39:46

Oh, that's awesome. I am super jealous of that. I've wanted to move to Miami for some time to the Silicon Beach there and experience the joys I go to Miami several times a year I spent a good bit of time there. I have to just try to see If it was a place, I'd want to be that the answer is yes. resounding yes. So are you are you living in Miami Beach or? Okay? Yeah. Awesome. That is That is awesome. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. So what do you think so far about the tech scene? And the entrepreneurs? Yeah, I

Hrish Lotlikar: 40:14

did. So I'm globally nomadic, as I mentioned, and, you know, kind of lived all over the world. So I've lived in 10 cities in the US alone, and I've lived, you know, in Asia and Europe, South America. And you know, so this is the second kind of stint in in Miami, I've done and is world travelers, and I did the last into in 2017. So it's been about four years. And I would say in the last four years, specifically, because of COVID, where everyone could start living remotely. And you know, as you know, a few very prominent kind of VCs and tech guys started moving out to Miami, the Miami scene has really attracted a lot of people from New York, from San Francisco from all the other major markets, so is Austin. And I've lived there as well. But I think Miami has really transformed in the last four years in major ways, specifically, because of the types of people from specific industries and specific parts of the US that have moved here. And so it's definitely become a lot more interesting, especially on the tech side, in terms of finance, a lot of the you know, the financiers from Wall Street are now living in Miami. And you know, I used to do venture capital and my former boss lives in Miami now he's like, a few doors down. You know, I don't have to go to New York to see him. I see him here. Same for all the tech guys from San Francisco. It's

Brad Kirby: 41:35

really interesting. Yeah. Used to have a bit of a stigma about the on fly by night would be headquartered in Miami. And, yeah, it really feels like that's, that's dwindling, which is great. Good to see. Because there's a wonderful city, I think I went there like eight times in 2011. Because when I lived in, came in, it was right. There's the only city I can really go to the island there. So it is a great place. James, we should relocate there.

James Thomason: 41:59

Do you think we absolutely should? Well, I mean, my goal is to become truly nomadic, the way the Hrish is, but in a very specific way. I mean, it's been my ambition for a number of years to circumnavigate the planet on a sailboat. And so I have about a one and a half to two year plan to start making that happen. Finally, and you know, it's, it's kind of amazing, you can get high speed internet on the boat these days, that's almost as good as what you can get on the land, even in the middle of the ocean 1000s of miles away by yourself. And that opens up a lot of possibilities for entrepreneurs who, who want to do crazy things, because you know, risking it all in business isn't enough, you should also risk your life sailing around the world, you know, sort of maximize the risk take you could

Brad Kirby: 42:37

buy the Bermuda Triangle. That's true. Yeah. Just kind of popped in my head there.

James Thomason: 42:50

Rachel, you to go out of all the places you've lived. Have you thought about settling down anywhere? Is there anywhere that so far that you would say in hindsight, okay, maybe that's the place that can capture this Rolling Stone?

Hrish Lotlikar: 43:01

Yeah, yeah. What's interesting is that the reason I started living globally, and by the way, I'm married and have two kids. So we all travel around the world. My daughter, who's six is lived in 15 countries. Isn't the impetus for it was when I started a venture capital fund in Europe about 10 years ago, I lived in New York and did venture capital there. And I had this idea, would it be cool to start a venture capital fund somewhere in the emerging markets went out to Eastern Europe and ended up doing that. And after I'd lived there for a little while, we were kind of deciding, hey, so where's the next spot that we should live? You know, because we lived here? My wife is from Eastern Europe. And you know, so we were kind of in Eastern Europe at the time, but I kind of had an idea, which was, why is it that we have to live in one place and then travel to other places? What if you could just travel and live everywhere, like meaning you could live everywhere, natively in locations? And so, you know, effectively what we did was just zoom out. Right and zooming out, meaning you don't really think of in terms of 40 miles to conference on a city. So when people ask you like, where are you from? Most people answer a city. Some people answer a neighborhood, I'm from Brooklyn or something, right? But if you start zooming out, and you're like, you know what, I'm from a continent or I'm from the pole world, then it's a psychological kind of change that happens where the travel itself isn't necessarily like you're leaving, because some people have this thing where, you know, how are you going to leave? Like, aren't you gonna leave your friends are like, how do you you know, some people like kind of get stuck where they want to kind of locate in a certain place. And I think it's, in a way it's a psychological switch where I don't know if we really think about ever wanting to be in one place forever. It's not a pull anymore, because we've just been doing it so much. that we're always going to live globally. Why wouldn't you? I don't know. That's how I think about it.

James Thomason: 45:06

Yeah, I'm sure that COVID has put kind of a dent in the nomadism. Is that the correct thing to say? Nobody's anyway? How do you see that disrupting your future plans you're in Miami for now, Florida is the last free state and the country, everything is open. I was there in Texas as well. And it's like, you know, COVID never happens. So that's gonna be fine for you. But it's worth for the next six months and maybe COVID ilinden Start started, what are you doing about citizenship? Are you maintaining yourself as a US citizen or you're immigrating somewhere else? I mean, that's, that's another decision nomads have to make right is like, where do they plant the flag, because you're not really allowed to be stateless anymore, right? Like in the modern world, you have to belong to someone in case they need to ship you back where you came from. That's what they told me when I when I traveled, you have to have a return ticket back home. where you came from, you can't just stay here. Have you thought about that at all yet?

Hrish Lotlikar: 45:52

Yeah, for sure. So I'm American system. So again, I don't plan on changing that. However, at the same time to answer the COVID question, you know, I just moved to Miami from Ukraine. So just in Ukraine for the summer and prior to that was in California, prior to that was in Austin. So I've done four cities are in COVID. So hasn't necessarily slowed me down, per se. I just was, you know, on Necker Island, and BVI, and I was just going to go to Dhabi. So there's still traveling happening, I think it's, you know, with Omnicom, it's it is kind of slowing down a bit with travel restrictions. But I think that those that want to travel those that can get vaccinated and get boosters and want to be safe, you can you can still do that, in terms of citizenship. You know, I think there's a lot of different interesting models out there in terms of thinking about having multiple passports and being able to, again, have ways to build a residency in different countries and, and to be built businesses in different countries. You know, I've always thought of myself as a very global person, and kind of clearly have lived that lifestyle. And so, you know, I think that integrates in other parts of your life as well, whether that's, you know, again, having multiple passports or learning different languages or incorporating cultures. I love all that. And so again, back to Super world as an example, it's kind of a pure joy to be able to build a world where, you know, we talk about places in the world that people love, and I think about have I spent time there, should I go there and things like that. So, you know, it's funny how life works out that way.

James Thomason: 47:32

Yeah, that is that that really was the you know, the root of my thinking there, by the way, is just being a US citizen, as you will know, you know, there are certain peculiarities of that I'd like other countries, right. So wherever you are, as you add a citizen, you continue to pay as if you were in the United States from a tax perspective and other things, right. So you may be living on a boat anchored off of Bermuda or something, but you're still going to pay income tax in the United States. And that's a, you know, it's a growing concern to keep adding more taxes, right, they don't seem to be lowering them. There's a geopolitical battle going on to have sort of a uniform tax rate, a minimum tax rate, if you will, for for all corporations, little places, like the Cayman Islands, and Bahamas aren't too fond of that plan. But it's an interesting time, it seems to me like there are a lot of your friends of venture capitalists, finance yours, my friends, entrepreneurs, etc, who were considering moving to low tax jurisdictions just because of the extreme burden. So that's why I wanted to ask and just see what you were thinking about that actually living as a nomad? Because it is it is a burden, right? I mean, you're you're traveling, you may be living the United States, but you still have to do tax compliance. That takes a lot of as a business owner myself, owning multiple business that takes a lot of time for me personally, and money every year. And sometimes it takes months to sort things out. I've heard by the way, very popular online SAS for accounting, deleted all of our data during COVID on purpose, and then refuse to give it back so deleted three years or four years of financial data, which we then had to reconstruct manually from scanning bank statements which the bank wouldn't provide electronically. So we actually outsourced like a small army in the Philippines to manually enter all the transactions into a into a different SAS. I'm not saying their name, because I'll spare them the ridicule for the moment, but no to self. Yeah. Back up your SAS data. Yeah.

Dean Nelson: 49:18

I had a I had another question for you. You're involved with Rogan initiative. So it tell me a little bit more about that. It looks very interesting. Lots of creators in there.

Hrish Lotlikar: 49:28

Yeah. So I previously worked, as I mentioned to you in venture capital, started a couple of venture capital funds in Europe, and then was early team member at a company called Top towel, which is a talent marketplace, backed by Andreessen and then after that, I joined a company on the YouTube platform. And at that company is where I met both of my co founders. And I say both of my co founders, which is one for Rogue initiative, and one from super well, super. Yeah, yeah. And so one of my co founders for Rogan ish Have we worked together on the YouTube platform as well, he had previously worked at Amblin entertainment with Steven Spielberg, and also had gone on to produce the Call of Duty franchise, Modern Warfare series and ghosts. And so I and he and another partner, this was in 2015, when Oculus had just been bought, and you know, there was this real kind of boom, and in terms of immersive space with VR, and those technologies becoming really interesting and what had happened, as we all know, in Hollywood, over the last, I'd say, 20 years, is we've seen a lot of linear entertainment, Film and Television start incorporating a lot of CG. So if you look at a, you know, a Michael Bay movie, and you look at a Call of Duty game, those two products look a lot similar just because of the fact that there's a lot of, you know, CG, and both of them. And then there's a lot of like, you know, real actors, you know, I think Kevin Spacey was in a Call of Duty game, right. And so you start seeing the blending of linear Hollywood entertainment, and interactive entertainment. And when you add to that immersive entertainment, like VR, and AR, you really find that all of these mediums are really coming together. And so at that time, back in 2015, I got together with my co founder, and we decided to start the Road Initiative, which is a studio that creates new original content, franchises, Hollywood franchises, organically across feature film, television, interactive gaming, immersive content, all the way to amusement park rides, toys, and the way it works is we create our own IP. So we own the IP. And then we take that IP organically across those mediums from the ground up, meaning we know that we're going to create content, and each one of those mediums like a franchise, and you know, Michael Bay, who was also at DreamWorks and Amblin, joined as a production partner. And we're also working with another very well known Hollywood talent. And the idea is, if you can, from the very ground up, know that you're creating a globally marketable property across mediums. The ability to utilize engines, like Unreal Engine, as an example, to create assets might take those assets across mediums and now allows you to, you know, be very much more cost efficient, as well as you can take advantage of a very strategic kind of process there in terms of narrative story creation, as well as you know, all the other aspects of going across mediums that can help you orchestrate a franchise from the ground up where you own the IP, and that was kind of the, the progenitor for Rogue initiative studios. And also, by the way, how I started thinking more about cross platform, cross media and content, which again, that's what Superbowl is all about.

Dean Nelson: 53:07

How does this tie to super world? I mean, these is this tools or ability to go back and roll this back into something like that, or, because I mean, you got like people and Michael Bay and Kathy twig like these are, these are people that have done a lot of Hollywood work, right? I mean, Michael Bay transformers and people movies, I believe he did one of my favorite movies, the road Eldorado, right, the animated series and that, yeah, so how does this all tie together?

Hrish Lotlikar: 53:33

So simple roll, again, is a is a virtual world. So it's an immersive virtual world that incorporates 3d 2d audio content. And so again, super old is very expansive across any type of content, whether you're talking about 3d and MFTs. On the blockchain, are you talking about watching a movie with your VR headset on or watching a traditional movie with some glasses on that's in a linear format. And so again, with super roll, the idea is that we're working across all of the variety of aspects of how content is created and shared. And so with super well, you know, the Hollywood relationships that, you know, I've created and built from my experiences, working with rogue initiative and starting Road initiative, really can, you know, again, help us enable, you know, a lot of the content, the IP that comes from those relationships, there's, you know, a lot of these these franchises have big marketing budgets, which are very interesting. And you're talking about creating a virtual world that's, you know, again, immersive and, you know, anyone can create and share and discover content from anywhere. So, Hollywood and super world are very much linked together in many ways. So we'll see a lot of content coming into super world.

Dean Nelson: 54:53

Nice. Great.

Brad Kirby: 54:55

That's really good summary. Do you guys have any more questions at all? I'm sure I'm sure we do. But uh, Got that I got one more. Yeah, I

James Thomason: 55:02

got, we'll wrap it up here. So Hrish, as a founder, do you have any advice for other founders out there who are starting? If you've been part of a number of successful companies that you've started, you've raised a lot of money you've exited? Correct. So what could you tell founders about the startup process? What's the single most important thing that they could do when they're starting out? At zero?

Hrish Lotlikar: 55:23

Well, you know, I think it's really important to as you're thinking about what you want to do, really kind of find a problem or challenge or, you know, an area that really you're excited and passionate about. And I think that sounds pretty cliche to say, but you know, I think it's important is, there's a lot of problems out there, there's a lot of things that can be solved. And as you know, when you're working at a company, and you're working at building a company, I should say, there's a lot of things you're going to have to do over and over again, and especially telling the story of what you're doing, or even, you know, pitching to investors, when you're going to get 1000s of nodes, right? Oh, this is crazy. What are you talking about? Right, whatever it is, right. And so, you know, I think that to have the ability to wake up and go after it every day, with the intensity and the passion, the excitement, the energy that you need to be able to go after, and accomplish those daily, small little milestones, whatever they are, you have to love it, you have to be passionate about it. Because it is a challenging road, it is something that, you know, likely is going to take a lot of ups and downs. And I think you got to love the journey of doing it. Because that's what makes it all worthwhile, at least especially for me. I mean, I wake up every day, and I love building super world. I think it's so fun. I think it's cool. I love talking to you guys about real estate or places you want to create or content or movies or all kinds of stuff. So I think that's very important is to understand yourself, I think it all starts kind of internally for you as a founder. And really aligning yourself understanding who you are, what you want to do, what your goals are. And, again, finding something that you'll love and that you are passionate about that you understand that you know, you're going to be doing it for a long time. And so I think that's really important.

James Thomason: 57:25

That's really interesting advice. Because I know that you didn't say, start a company that you think is going to make the most money or is going to own the world. You said start a company that you're really passionate about because it's gonna become your life, and you're gonna be living it every day. There's no one else to pick up the slack for you when you're having a down day. Right. So you better love what you're doing. That's really great advice. Yeah. And have you in terms of funny? Have you guys raised outside funding yet? Or was this all internally funded so far?

Hrish Lotlikar: 57:52

Yeah, we've been fortunate we have a number of amazing investors involved Tim Draper's investor, Draper Goren home, we have sosv globally outlier ventures in London cadenza, and Singapore sosv. I think I mentioned altered ventures in South America, white paper, capital and Switzerland. So again, lots and lots of really awesome people. And we're doing around right now. So we're, you know, have more and more investment partners joining the movement, I call this a movement. And so super old, not just a technology company, we're a movement and the movement is how do we come together around the world to leverage these technologies to empower each of us, okay, as individuals, as well as how do we come together to improve the world. And so again, we're technology agnostic, and this technologies get incorporated into the super old, whether you're talking about brain computer interface, one day, maybe biotechnology, you know, all these things are all part of super world. And so I'm always very fortunate and excited about having new investment partners who can bring new insights, who can bring more domain expertise and from their domain, and how can we build a world that really incorporates all of those things?

Brad Kirby: 59:03

Actually, one last question just around. That's all great as it's awesome what you're doing. And you're built on Aetherium today, but you're looking at other chains as well.

Hrish Lotlikar: 59:12

Yeah, we're integrating with salon as well, as we sneak so very close with that team. And, again, our viewpoint on integrations is again, we're very long term oriented. So want to be focused on platforms that we think are also at that similar kind of mindset. We also want to be very customer focused, and try to understand where our customers are, where they're going and provide solutions in that manner as well. So we're looking at a lot of different integrations, layer two solutions, as well, as well as you know, decentralized finance and we're launching a token, which is a lot of stuff coming.

Brad Kirby: 59:47

Right? Obviously, that for sure.

James Thomason: 59:50

Hrish, thank you so much for being on the show. I was wonderful to have you. I mean, this is a fast moving area. I hope you'll come back and give us an update in a few months or more into the next into the new year. Let us know how things are going. Tell us how they're going to be really wonderful and insightful things. Thank you so much for being here.

Hrish Lotlikar: 1:00:05

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It's a real pleasure to talk to each of you and you know excited to be back. So thanks again for helping me to share my story here share our story. It's super cool.

Dean Nelson: 1:00:15

Thanks for the world.

James Thomason: 1:00:16

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