The Ledger
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Steve Zhao invested 95% of his life savings into Sandbox VR
“So that's when I decided to basically take my life saving and put it into you know, Sandbox. And I remember the moment I did that was at the bank. Even the bank executive was like, are you sure you want to do that? That's like, 95% of your savings. I'm like, y…”
Sandbox VR lost 110% of revenue during COVID pandemic closures
“For us, we lost a 110% of our revenue, because not only did people, we couldn't open any of our stores, so there was no sales, but we also had to refund everyone that booked.”
Sandbox VR laid off 80% of staff with three months runway
“We were trying to raise that Series B during the early 2020, and we had about three, three months of runway left. So we had to let go most of the folks. We let go about 80% of our team.”
Steve Zhao: Handing customers highlight videos before exit boosts sharing tenfold
“If you were able to hand them the video before they leave they have a tenx chance of just talking about it, sharing it going about it”
Steve Zhao: Sandbox VR convinced landlords to fully fund new buildouts
“We were able to convince landlord to fund our project entirely.”
Sandbox VR titles hit average US theatrical movie box office revenues
“We're starting to have experiences that are starting to hit box office numbers. Our titles are starting to hit, like, theatrical releases, the average US theatrical domestic box office release revenue.”
Sandbox VR is rebuilding its OS for third-party white-label development
“So one of the things we're doing is actually, we're creating, we're rebuilding our operating system so that it's white labeled, that other developers can actually build on top of our system.”
Steve Zhao: Out-of-home entertainment must be 10x better than at-home options
“And whatever you have that's out of home must be 10 X of what you can get at home. Otherwise, people will just do this at home.”
Steve Zhao: Sandbox VR locations reach profitability within two months
“Every location that we open up in about within two months of operations are profitable. There are some locations that the profit margin is comparable to a software company.”
Zhao: Sandbox VR will expand from 14 to 50 rooms by year-end
“And soon, by the end of summer, the end of this year, we will go from, we have 14 rooms now, to over 50 rooms.”
Zhao: VR holoplexes will become as ubiquitous as movie theaters
“So we envision that one day these holoplexes, which could be 20 to 40,000 square feet in space, can attract hundreds of users, will be as ubiquitous as movie theaters.”
Steve Zhao: Build for what users will want in two years
“One of the biggest lesson I learned from mobile games is you don't create what's popular today. Because by the time you're done, it's going to be 10 months too late. So our job is to figure out what do people want in a year or two.”
Steve Zhao: Multiplayer gaming is about social interaction, not environments
“You know, great thing about games, it's really about playing a game with each other, right? The game object isn't the environment. It is your friends.”
Sandbox VR achieved 100% occupancy for 100 consecutive days initially
“So what happened was, pretty soon, we booked out our space, you know, a hundred percent a hundred days in a row.”
Steve Zhao: Wireless streaming transforms VR like sound transformed silent films
“I think an analogy that we would use is what sound is to silent films? It's what the wireless streaming is to our VR platform. Because once you add a sound, there's a genres that wasn't possible before that you can utilize now.”
Sandbox VR partnered with Netflix for a Squid Game VR experience
“And that is why we decided to partner with Netflix on Squid Game.”
Steve Zhao: Half of Sandbox VR's first title audience was female
“When we launched that, we were surprised that half the audience were female.”
Steve Zhao: Shared-space VR requires environmental tracking over headset tracking
“In a shared space, it needs to be tracked from the environment rather than from the headset, which is inside our technology, which is tracking, you know, from a single, like cameras within a headset.”
Steve Zhao: Sandbox VR will double down on deep immersion over accessibility
“For us, we're gonna double down on immersion. We're gonna make it as real as we can, and just do a lot of tricks in our bags, We haven't used yet.”
Zhao: Winning the location-based entertainment market requires owning the content
“In order to win the market, you have to own the content, right?”
Sandbox VR launched with under $300k and six months of runway
“What we had back then was just 200,000 dollars, 300,000 dollars with six people with a lifeline of six months left.”
Sandbox VR's first venue was a 16th-floor unit with broken pipes
“We ended up getting a location in Hong Kong. Even though Hong Kong has seven million people, we were able to find a building with zero foot traffic, and the rent was insanely cheap. You know, the water pipes were broken, and we were on a 16th floor. There was …”
Steve Zhao: 100% of Sandbox VR Chicago customers booked online
“We're able to open in our Chicago location. And during that time, we were in a mall that had zero foot traffic. But a hundred percent of our customer booked ahead online.”
Steve Zhao: Sandbox VR players replay zombie game over 12 times
“There is a very small subgroup that would chase a high score, and we've seen people play our zombie experience over, like, 12 times just to get a certain outcome.”
Steve Zhao: Sandbox VR takes 12 months to develop a title
“So generally, it takes about 12 months to build a title. Internally, three months of pre-production nine months of production work, but we also work post-production to make sure things look goes according to plan or any changes that we make while it's live to …”
Early New York Sandbox VR location forced 5 PM closure from screaming
“In the early days we worked with IMAX to bring a sandbox in the New York space. It was right next to the theater. And we found out that we had to shut our store by five PM. I was like, why? And they said, well, because people were screaming so loud that all th…”
Sandbox VR built proprietary motion prediction algorithms and wireless data batching
“We're able to create this prediction algorithm, which actually allows people to be able to move and, Being VR, even if they're being blocked. So that was one component to it. And the other component was we're able to batch the data, how, how we send wirelessly…”
Steve Zhao: Sandbox VR guest TikTok clips reach up to 15M views
“Nowadays, people are splicing our videos and putting it on TikTok, and we're getting like, ten million views, fifteen million views, and it turns out that what we created was sort of an expression that they can use to, you know, to showcase themselves and the …”
Steve Zhao: Sandbox VR scaled ticket pricing from $30 to $50-$60
“We started at 30 dollars, and then during the weekend, it was booked out two, three weeks in advance, so we try to, like, control the volume, and then we adjust it, and it kind of peaked around 38, 40 dollars, and then the pandemic happened, and then we made a…”
Steve Zhao: Sandbox VR lost 90% on a top-selling Steam game
“Based on Steam data, we were at the top 20% selling game, but we lost over 90% on that title.”