The Exchanges

Q Are those the world ownership people that you said there's thousands of paying nine bucks a month?

A No, they're, in some cases they are, but, uh, often they're actually like event production companies. They are, uh, a team of illustrators, um, and, and, uh, you know, they have a lot of different, uh, capabilities. Sometimes they can hire paid actors, you know, so you can have these live interactive events. So think of like Sleep No More in New York, if you're familiar with that, um, you can, you can have a corporate event that's kind of like your own customized Sleep No More, which is like interactive theater, um, And these service partners will build the world. They'll customize it, you know, put in your, uh, your company product videos or inside jokes, scavenger hunts, you can, you know, where you can win things. And then during the event, they'll actually run the event. They'll have the paid actors, those kinds of things.

AI assessment note: “No, they're, in some cases they are, but, uh, often they're actually like event production companies.”

Q And, and Daniel, how are people paying you? What's your revenue model?

A Yeah, we have a few different revenue models. Um, and you know, we really have two different types of users. We have, uh, first of all, we sort of have a whole creator ecosystem. Uh, and so creators are creating assets. They're creating art. They're creating programmable experiences, putting those in the marketplace. Curators are creating templates, which people can then use to really easily customize their worlds. Uh, and then we have confluencers, which are actually bringing people together, uh, inside of worlds and earning money by doing that. And so people are paying us both for world ownership. Um, and that's nine dollars a month. Uh, and we have, you know, a couple thousand people that are doing that. And then we have, uh, also on the B to B side, like you mentioned, uh, people are throwing one-off events and, uh, and they're also subscribing to have, uh, persistent monthly spaces where they can have all hands and, and happy hours and, um, and, uh, check-ins and those sorts of things. So there's a few different things. We also have, uh, uh, community subscriptions and ticketing coming very soon. So we're adding new revenue models as we go.

AI assessment note: “people are paying us both for world ownership. Um, and that's nine dollars a month.”

Q Uh, and so it was, and when you say let, when you say let people subscribe, like, does that mean they're, they're trying to buy worlds at nine bucks a month? They're world builders taking 30%. Like what are the models where you, did you open up?

A Yeah. So the first one was, uh, was world ownership essentially. So that these are, these are unique URLs. It's kind of like real estate. So if you want topia.io slash Nathan, then you pay nine bucks a month to have that. And you have unlimited people that you can bring in there. We have huge amount of scalability. Um, so we don't like cap the number of people at a time. We've had people bring thousands of people at once into one of these worlds. Uh, and that's just nine bucks. And so that, that's what we opened up first. Uh, and you know, we have thousands of people paying To have worlds that they own and all of these commissions.

AI assessment note: “the first one was, uh, was world ownership essentially. So that these are, these are unique URLs.”

Q Facebook's now meta. They're betting on the metaverse. You're like the B to B version of meta, huh?

A Well, you know, we're, we've actually, we've been doing metaverse stuff for the, for a couple of years now. Um, and I wouldn't even say that we are entirely, uh, or even focused on B to B, uh, for example, Burning Man, which is a big festival that happens annually, uh, actually happened on Topia, um, happened last year on Topia, this year on Topia. Um, and so we're very much a community platform. Businesses are communities, you know, in a community of employees. So they're using Topia, but we also have thousands of Uh, different people that are not business oriented using Topia really just as a way to evolve how they socialize online, to come together for real time experiences, um, and to make friends.

AI assessment note: “I wouldn't even say that we are entirely, uh, or even focused on B to B”

Q of sense. Okay. So, um, so, uh, how, I guess the main thing you're tracking in are what is it, how many confluencers contribute at one, at least one illustration or at least one template per month? Like what's that metric for you that you really care? I know you're not a metric site. You're like an energy guy, but you have to have some metrics, right? What's the metric?

A Yeah, we definitely, we have metrics. So, you know, we are looking at how many people are having conversations a week. Um, and you know, importantly, we're not saying how, how, you know, um, what is like session duration? How long are people having conversations? Cause we're not trying to build an attention economy. We're not an ad based model, right? We're never going to be. So, uh, the length of time isn't nearly as important as actually coming on frequently and having at least a You know, one human connection with people. So we track, uh, we track that. We, uh, look at how many events are happening on platform each week. And then we look at how much we are paying out to our creator ecosystem.

AI assessment note: “we are looking at how many people are having conversations a week.”

Q On the B to B side, what's the average B to B company paying you per month or per year to use the tech?

A You know, it ranges. Uh, the largest one-off event we've, uh, we've charged is 40,000 dollars. Uh, small ones can be a hundred dollars. Uh, and then on the recurring side, you know, that also ranges. We basically charge based on venue size. So if you want to have a venue size, a capacity of a hundred people, we charge four dollars per person of capacity. So that's 400 dollars a month. Um, I would say that's probably, you know, for a small company, smallish company, that's where people are paying. Uh, and then you can have unlimited number of people on unlimited number of events, but never more than a hundred people at a time. But we have, you know, we have people that are, uh, have a 25 person capacity, a hundred person capacity, a thousand person capacity. So it kind of ranges.

AI assessment note: “for a small company, smallish company, that's where people are paying.”

Q And Daniel, when did you start building the business? What year?

A Uh, so this Topia, uh, formally started in 2020, but I've been building platforms like this since 2015. Uh, and so it's been, it's been a long journey. I've been actually the same technology that we're using in Topia, which is web real time communication. Uh, we basically have peer to peer encrypted tunnels for our audio and video. So there's like an encrypted tunnel between two browsers. I was building stuff, uh, using that technology back in 2015. Uh, and so, you know, it's been It's been kind of a journey, but this particular iteration started in twenty-twenty. We raised a little bit over five million, uh, in May of this year from, uh, seven, seven, six and bonfire ventures, uh, and, and a few others. Um, and, uh, seven, seven, six is Alexa Hanian, uh, who's founder of Reddit, uh, just as a, as an aside. Um, so, you know, in some ways the evolution of how we socialize evolution of Reddit community building, those kinds of things.

AI assessment note: “Topia, uh, formally started in 2020, but I've been building platforms like this since 2015.”

Q So what talk to me, take me earlier. So before the five million, when did you raise the 800 grand?

A Uh, we did that. So we hosted Burning Man, uh, in 2020, uh, basically, you know, Burning Man, uh, was trying to figure out how to deal with COVID and they're shutting down. They were trying to throw their own event. We were kind of advising them on how to build a virtual world, essentially how to build a, you know, metaverse experience for Burning Man. Uh, they wound up deciding that they were going to, uh, outsource this. So we were one of the co-hosts of it in 2020. We had over 25,000 people come to the event. Uh, and this was like five months after we actually Uh, wrote the first line of code. So, you know, the, the whole platform is pretty new. Uh, but we had over 20,000 people come to, uh, to burning, to what we call build a burn, which is the virtual burning man. Uh, and then right after that, you know, we had a lot of people interested trying to invest in Topia. And so we did a friends and family round essentially then.

AI assessment note: “right after that... we did a friends and family round essentially then.”

Q Wow. This is like, so like how much of your time is spent towards like building the next Disney, right? Don't you need like amazing illustrators and cartoonists like create these virtual worlds? Isn't that the key here? Like Activision X, World of Warcraft builder people.

A Yeah. I mean, we, so one of the crazy things is that we have a huge marketplace full of assets. Uh, we have, we have both Topia assets. We also have, uh, community built assets and then scenes, which are collections of objects or cloud collections of assets. Um, so there's a ton of stuff that you can actually just pull in. And then if you want to upload your own content, you can, you also very soon will be able to import, uh, your NFTs, verified NFTs, uh, and, you know, use those kinds of things. So, you know, just tying into this sort of interoperable Public database of content makes it so you don't really have to generate your own from scratch anymore as part of this whole creator ecosystem that is emerging around us. You know, people have been talking about creator economies for a long time, um, but now it's actually coming to fruition and you don't need to be an artist yourself in order to have access to really high quality art that creators have made.

AI assessment note: “you don't really have to generate your own from scratch anymore”

Q Yeah, interesting. Do you see that being the future? Obviously, everyone wants recurring revenue, because then you can, you know, determine who to hire and rely on future revenue to cover their salaries and stuff. But not everything is meant to be a B to B SaaS recurring model. I mean, you're having success with one off events. Are you comfortable with that? How do you plan?

A Yeah. You know, we, we very much actually want to be the evolution of how people socialize. We're not really focused on the B to B side per se. Um, I think a lot of businesses have found Topia to be really engaging in a great way to bring people together. Um, we also, we're very focused on our creators, right? On the people that are actually creating these experiences that are curating experiences that are bringing people together in worlds, which we call confluencers. Um, and so we're actually paying From the B to B side to our creator ecosystem. Um, and that's one of the reasons that we're really stoked about all the different businesses that are paying. But I think as we think about the longterm of Topia, you know, we're very much a creator ecosystem, um, and very focused on how can people, uh, have communities in these really unique social experiences and these curated and customized social experiences. And so that's, that's kind of like our focal point, things like Burning Man, you know, very much in our wheelhouse, um, festivals, gatherings, those kinds of things.

AI assessment note: “We're not really focused on the B to B side per se.”

Q Yeah. Super interesting. Okay. Very cool. You know, I think that the most, I would argue the hardest thing about this really is finding like a mousetrap to get like the common person understanding this, right? Like I get it, but I would say I'm even early, right? Like, what do you think a mousetrap is going to be where you get millions of people having a conversation each week?

A Yeah. Well, one of the funny things that's happening is we've been a metaverse company for years now without actually using the word metaverse, right? And so, uh, it's really hard to describe Topia without bringing people into it. I think that's actually getting a lot easier because now people are exploring what is this idea of real time social interaction online? What is the synchronous internet? What is the metaverse? Uh, and so that's actually making things much, much easier for us. Um, but you know, I think that the, the ultimate Um, explosion in people actually having conversations is likely going to come from people just being more comfortable with, uh, with these kinds of platforms, actually using them, having it integrated into their daily way of, uh, of life and, and part of how they actually interact and have community with people all over the world, right? In many ways, we're actually bringing, uh, the accessibility to communities. We're tearing down location-based physical constraints, uh, economic constraints to, to be a member of Different groups. And so, uh, you know, it's, it's my belief. And I think what we're seeing actually happen around us real time is that people are, are getting more and more excited about, uh, the ability to actually interact online and not just in a meeting, right. But in sort of a social free to move, you have your own agency, safe, con…

AI assessment note: “explosion in people actually having conversations is likely going to come from people just being more comfortable”