A fascinating guest in Eze Vidra - Managing Partner of Remagine Ventures - as we explore his life journey so far. Learn how Eze founded an an amazing charity supporting reading for girls in the developing world, his investments in the media space, use of ongoing consumer insight, working his way through Google...and so so much more.
This episode is brought to you by Vault AI. Check them out at info.vault-ai.com to understand how ML can unlock the power of your content.
In this episode we cover:
Book recommendations:
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA - Ernest Hemingway
THE 5 TEMPTATIONS OF A CEO - Patrick Lencioni
THE PURSUIT OF PERFECT - Tal Ben-Shahar
All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/
Follow FutureView on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FutureView7
A fascinating guest in Eze Vidra - Managing Partner of Remagine Ventures - as we explore his life journey so far. Learn how Eze founded an an amazing charity supporting reading for girls in the developing world, his investments in the media space, use of ongoing consumer insight, working his way through Google...and so so much more.
This episode is brought to you by Vault AI. Check them out at info.vault-ai.com to understand how ML can unlock the power of your content.
In this episode we cover:
Book recommendations:
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA - Ernest Hemingway
THE 5 TEMPTATIONS OF A CEO - Patrick Lencioni
THE PURSUIT OF PERFECT - Tal Ben-Shahar
All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/
Follow FutureView on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FutureView7
Eze Vidra: When the markets are mature enough, we invest in the consumer level. So if Roblox today touches almost nearly every US household, we believe that there are large companies that are going to get built on the back of this Roblox platform and we go and invest in the consumer....in the case of Toya....but in AR/VR, for example, I think it's still too early to bet on a specific application that will be a winner.
Henry Piney: Welcome to Future View. Just a quick request...if you'd like the podcast or want to support more, please hit Follow and rate on the platform you're listening on...it helps keep the whole thing going and bring on more guests.
Now onto the show, I opened with…a short clip from the brilliant Eze Vidra. Eze has done so many amazing things to list just a few….he's former general partner at Google Ventures Europe, founder of Remagine Ventures and Tech Bikers, an amazing charity you'll hear more about. This is a special episode diving deep into the world of video games, the metaverse, the consumer experience companies are trying to achieve, and the funding behind these initiatives. I learnt a ton and I genuinely think it's one of the most interesting conversations I've had so far.
I also want to take just a moment to tell you about Vault AI at info. Vault ai.com. Now, Vaults are a really innovative company, delivering AI powered consumer insights for leading streamers TV networks and film studios. Their analysis is driven by a powerful machine learning engine, so they use consumption data sets and content DNA from over 60,000 titles globally. That in turn drives sophisticated predictions of how a title will perform, whether in the US or internationally, who the audience will be, and what marketing will drive them to tune in. It's all based on actual behavioral data, rather than surveys of focus groups, enabling entertainment clients to make better content decisions across key junctures, such as production, development and marketing. To find out how you can use AI-I powered consumer insights, go to info. Vault ai.com. And now on to the interview.
Henry Piney: So Eze, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast and thanks for making the time.
Eze Vidra: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Henry Piney: Brilliant, brilliant. Well, I'm excited about the interview, too. I know I'm going to learn a lot about the world of venture capital and web 3 in particular that we're going to dive into. But first up, just a little bit of an icebreaker. What's one thing most people wouldn't know about you or might find surprising? So something they couldn't just find on the internet?
Eze Vidra: That's a good question. So I created, ten years ago, a nonprofit called Tech Bikers that brings together the startup ecosystem around long distance cycling challenges to build schools and libraries in the developing world. And maybe if you Google me, you would find that. But what most people don't know is that I actually don't own a bike. I cycled from Paris to London, Vienna to Budapest, Copenhagen to Berlin, to name a few. But until over a year ago, I was living in a flat and I didn't have a place to park a bike. So every time I would just rent a bicycle, like the best one I could for the actual rides. So here you go. Like founder of a nonprofit cycling charity that doesn't own a bike.
Henry Piney: Hope well, don't get that. Is surprising. And so a couple of things on that. So the charity is called it's Tech Bikers. How do people support that?
Eze Vidra: To be honest, I didn't register as a charity. I registered as a non for profit because we support a charity that's called Roomtoread.org. It's an incredible organization that is focused on children literacy in the developing world, especially girls, because, as you know, like, all opportunities in life start from education. And we've been very fortunate that since inception in 2012, we had now over 10 people participate in the various rides and we built eleven schools and 50 libraries.
Henry Piney: Amazing.
Eze Vidra: Thank you. Nepal, India, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Tanzania, south Africa and Vietnam. And I was very fortunate to go see a couple of the projects, one in Nepal and one in Vietnam. And just incredible kids that really don't have very much, in some cases, like not even enough money for shoes. And they have to travel very far to get to schools. And there's always the temptation from the parents to take them out of school and have them work with the family in the fields. But this charity not only provides the infrastructure, but also the scholarships, especially for girls, and books in the local language, and training programs for teachers. And I'm very excited about the long term impact of it.
Henry Piney: That sounds fantastic. And when are you doing the next event?
Eze Vidra: So, because of COVID we had to take a couple of years break. You can imagine traveling with 70 people across borders from different nationalities and covet passports, et cetera. But earlier this month, one of the previous participants in the Paris to London rides picked up the glove and organized Faroe to Lisbon. So that just took place earlier this month. And next year we're going to resume activities and probably do again, Paris to London, which is the flagship ride. But my dream, Henry, is if I can, is do an Israel ride, which would be I call it Tel Aviv to Petra, but it's really Acre to Eilat. So the north of Israel all the way down to the south with a stopover at Petra. In the back of my mind, I'm hoping that it will happen sometime next year, probably September or October next year.
Henry Piney: That would be awesome. I have a couple of candidates who might want to do that with you. And Petra is amazing. I've been there a couple of times.
Eze Vidra: Amazing. Yeah. Thank you.
Henry Piney: Now, Easy, I also have this vision of you, which you now are going to have to correct me on. So when you rent a bike, are you getting like one of those Boris bikes or whatever, a war going along?
Eze Vidra: No. Get the best road back in and I'm happy to pay for it. But Tech Bikers is an amazing, eclectic group of people. Like, they're all founders, VCs or tech executives. And over the years, we've had every type of bike you can think of, like, from Bromptons to Boris bikes to tandem bikes with Chris Mares, who is one of the top angel investosr and former founder, who's 70 and something years old and is completely blind. And he, of course, takes the back of the tandem. But, you know, even so, like, they smoked me up the hill. And I have a great story as well of one of the guys that broke his ankle a couple of weeks before the ride and he used to row for Cambridge. He's a very fit guy. And I told him, hey, Sam, I'm so sorry that you won't be able to join us because I saw a picture on Facebook of him with a cast and he said, like, no, no, I talked to my doctor and I'm going to do it on a hand bike. So he did 320.
Henry Piney: No way. No way. So for people who can't see, it so Eze. It's basically mimicking a rowing action on a hand bike.
Eze Vidra: That's crazy, right?
Henry Piney: Yeah, that is utterly crazy. But I could ask you questions about this stuff all day. We should probably move on to your career and some of the areas that we're going to COVID in the podcast. So going back to the beginning, you were in the Israeli Defense Forces, you went through multiple startups. I did an MBA, moved on to Google UK. General partner at Google Ventures Europe. Just amazing career and then so many different things I could kind of pick out there. But just a couple of them. In the army, you're a tank platoon commander. So can you tell me about that? What was that like and how has it influenced the way you've approached the rest of your career?
Eze Vidra: In Israel, it's a mandatory military service and when you turn 18, pretty much everyone joins the army. That's what you have to do, boys and girls. But it taught me a lot about leadership and it taught me a lot about perspective. When traditional 18 year olds should probably be traveling, drinking, maybe making a few bucks in the first jobs and getting experience, this was a different type of experience. It's not easy physically, but on the other end, I think you also learned a lot about being a team player and also keeping cool under pressure when you have to make decisions both as an individual contributor but definitely as a leader.
Henry Piney: I can very much see that and it's maybe quite a good segue into what you went on to do at Google in terms of heading up in Europe, the venture capital. So how did that happen and why did you progress in that direction?
Eze Vidra: Google was something that I always wanted to do. When I was in college, my nickname was Hazug. I used to be very good at using Google and was very passionate about the company. So when I started my career, I started actually initially in shopping.com and then from shopping.com I was very fortunate that the cofounded a startup, the startup eventually didn't succeed, but I learned a lot and from there I moved to New York and yada yada.. I spent years as a product manager and later on managing product teams. But when I finished my MBA at London Business School, I was very fortunate that I had a few options and one of them was Google. And I felt like, you know what, I've done enough product, I want to do business. So initially I moved to Google to do strategic partnerships and helped launch a number of products for Google in Europe. Google Shopping, Google Wallets and data delivery. All the reviews, partnerships. But my passion was startups and venture capital. So I kept searching is there anything I can do with startups or venture capital in Europe? And one day Eric Schmidt gave a speech and said google is going to build an innovation center in London. This was around 2011 and at the time London had come out of the financial crisis. We have a new financial crisis, the previous one in 2008, where a lot of the people in finance had lost their jobs and there was a need to create, if you will, another leg for the British economy to stand on that is not financial services and tech, was it? And I was very fortunate to be chosen to lead Google Campus, which was Google's first physical hub for startups. And to give you an idea of scale, we did 1000 events in the first year alone and then Campus had become very successful and it was the first time Google has done anything like this globally. So I was asked to join a newly created team called Google for Entrepreneurs and write the blueprint for expansion for Campus and then received permission or the blessing from the CFO at Google to launch six new campuses and 30 partner hubs. And I became the head of Google for entrepreneurs, for Europe. That team sat under Google Ventures, but was a non investing arm of Google Ventures. It was more sort of like ecosystem development. So after a couple of years in the role of Google for entrepreneurs, the head of founder of Google Ventures at the time, Bill Maris, came to visit in London and he had a great time, I hope organized a schedule for him. And at the end of the visit he just said like, how would you like to work for Google Ventures? And I said that would be great.
Henry Piney: Fantastic. And just so digging into that a little bit was the idea, is the idea around Google mainly to investing companies that can then operate as part of the Google ecosystem, or is it broader than that, this is just a good idea. Maybe it's got potential for Google further down the line or alphabet further down the line, but it's not a sort of criteria necessarily of investment.
Eze Vidra: The latter. So you're right, Henry, that most corporate venture capital funds invest for what they call strategic value. And I think it can create a lot of misalignment down the road. First of all, how do you measure strategic value and then strategic value investments, good investments financially. And Google Ventures, which I think today it's more common, but at the time it wasn't actually stood out in the sense that Google Ventures invest independently for financial returns, but they have a single limited partner, which is Google, and the investments they don't necessarily have to do with Google. If they can benefit from the relationship with Google, then Google Ventures knows how to make that happen. Of course, they cannot guarantee it because it was literally an independent entity.
Henry Piney: So to some extent it was around supporting entrepreneurs, helping the British economy, to some extent within London diversifying. For Google it makes a lot of sense because I imagine that if you look at strategic venture, it must be tricky if the business needs to go in a different direction away from the sort of the imperatives of the strategic owner. It's like, guys, we need to pivot in this direction and then your strategic venture backers, like that's no interest to us.
Eze Vidra: That can happen. There's also a bunch of other limitations of strategic investment. It can be limiting in terms of exit scenarios. So if you have a strategic investor that's not purely financial, they might not want your company to be sold to the competitor, even though it's the best thing for the company. Right. So there's many different pros and cons in taking strategic money, but I would say that Google Ventures understood quickly that actually the decision making should be financial returns and then the strategic value is actually how do we maximize financial returns? By providing strategic value to the portfolio, which in many ways it's what inspired me to start Remagine Ventures.
Henry Piney: I think it'd be great to go on to that in just a moment or two. Could you maybe just give a quick primer on venture capital as a whole before we get on to Remagine? What's venture capital looking for in terms of just sort of maybe a quick kind of two minutes overview and then we could move on to what you specifically would be looking for?
Eze Vidra: Yeah, sure. So first of all, venture capital is basically money that's invested or available for investment, typically in a startup, ideally technology startups that involves risk. Right. Meaning it's a fledgling new company, typically in the software space, but not exclusively. That involves some risks and this type of company can't just go to the bank and say can I please have a loan because the bank wouldn't do it. Not every business is right for venture capital, but the businesses that are basically see venture capital as an ideal type of funding because it's the opposite of a passive investment. Right? So you receive capital plus the expertise and knowledge on how to build a company in order to get to the next milestones that will enable you to sort of like continue scaling up the company and later on ideally exit. Typically it can be an IPO, initial public offering in the stock market or a trade sale acquisition by another larger company. So venture capital is the type of investment, type of money that I joke, that is basically rocket fuel. So if you're trying to get to the moon you're going to need rocket fuel. So the way that venture capital works just very briefly is you have limited partners, they invest in funds and then they're called LPs and then those funds are run by general partners or GPS. Typically with a specific strategy you can be focused on a certain geo sector stage or even type of technology. It can be a thematic fund and then they in turn invest in startups. When they invest, they are buying equity or a piece of the company that they're investing in. Typically, as I mentioned, it's money plus benefits. So just the idea is to at least triple or quadruple the money.
Henry Piney: So basically limited partners can be individuals, high net worth individuals. They could be institutions who are interested and then they're giving the money to a general partner who's basically going, I've got this thesis, I've got this idea I'm going to invest in a certain sector. It might be the UK or Israel or India or wherever it happens to be in certain sectors and then you're accepting this relatively high risk but looking for a few big hits and we'll get on to that in a moment. But why do you invest or not invest? Does it sort of boil down to three or four things? I'd imagine you look in detail at a business plan but what are the kind of key characteristics that influence your decision making?
Eze Vidra: Sure. So I think typically there's things that have to do with the strategy of the funds and then there's things that have to do with a specific company. So give or take, traditionally venture capital funds invest in about 1% of the companies they review in a given year. Now some of the reason for filtering might do with the fund strategy. So it can be the company is not in the right geography that the fund focuses on, not in the right sector, not in the right state, you know, it might be too early, too late, etc. But then there are elements that have to do with the company itself and with the company's strategy and that's at the early stage, the different factors vary according to the stage of the company. But at the earliest stage you're typically looking at the team and products, technology and the market. So you know, some reasons for not investing can be that the market is not big enough to sustain the venture returns. If you assume that most companies, 90% of companies fail within the first three years of their existence, then you're looking for companies that can potentially drive huge outcomes. Not just like nice and modest gains, but actually huge outcomes. So the market is very important, but in order to succeed in a very competitive, huge market, the team needs to be exceptional, right? So everything at the end of the day connects together.
Henry Piney: I think it's a great, great summary. And in terms of those three key factors in founding kind of team or management team, marketing, product. One of the ways in which I've been thinking about it.... if I'm thinking about the right way or if you would agree, is that the earlier the stage of the company, it's almost like the order goes founding team, market and then product. And then as the company develops, then I'm not sure if it reverses necessarily, but maybe that the product becomes more important. Would you agree with that?
Eze Vidra: Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think at the earliest stage, team is everything and in reality the idea and the market might change, but it's very important to get the team right and I think it's very important for the team to have ambitions or to target a market that is already large and ideally growing. And then you right at the product. Sometimes in the earliest stage you don't have the privilege of even looking at a product. But even though venture capital is risk capital, what we try to do as VCs is actually eliminate as much risk as possible from the equation, right? So if the team is very experienced, then it basically helps you reduce the execution risk because you are aware that this team can execute and they can build a product, etc. You know, if the, if the market is already large and proven, then it means that you're not creating a new market, you're not taking the timing risk of is this going to work? Because it's already working and there's proof of that, et cetera, et cetera. So we're trying to build this proof points that help us create sort of like a thesis of why this is going to be a huge company.
Henry Piney: I promise I will move on to Remagine in a moment, but I'll let you join as I wound you. I might digress a little bit. So not picking on you or Remagine or anything you've done in the past, but in some areas venture capital has quite a bad name. And I think it gets down to this idea of, well, they're investing in 10-20 companies, they only really want the big hits. All the money is made out of two of them and you can be doing okay as a company, but then they don't support you anymore because they just want to double down on their big hits. Is that a fair criticism?
Eze Vidra: I think investors vary like anything out there. There's a curve of how helpful your investors are. And that's why I always recommend not just to think about the firm or who you want to work with, but actually about the individual partner. And as the same way that VCs do references on founders before investing, founders should do references on VCs before taking their money. Right? So if someone has been in the business long enough, they would have left a trail of either happy customers or very unhappy customers. And yeah, I don't like the terminology, but some call sort of like taking money from a venture capital fund. It's like a marriage, right? Or they call it a Catholic marriage because there's no possibility for divorce. And if you treat it that way, then really choose your investors carefully and align on what is success. I think that setting up early expectations is very important. So typically when everything goes well, there are no problems, but you measure the strength or the help or the investor when things don't go well. And for us, we understand that building companies is hard. It's a rollercoaster, it takes time to get the results and there's going to be a lot of trials and tribulations along the way and this is what we're in for. And we also position ourselves in that way that we're going to be with the founders in the good days and also the bad days.
Henry Piney: So, moving on to Remagine, what's your sector focus, what's your approach around this sector?
Eze Vidra: Yeah, so I spent five years in the States, three in New York and two in San Francisco, and then I moved to London 14 years ago. But my passion was always sort of like Israeli startups. And when Kevin and I teamed up to start Reimagining Ventures, we wanted to have a very good answer to the question of how you're different. Because if you agree that the best companies are going to receive multiple offers, the question is, why should they take your money? Right? And we created Remagine Ventures in a way as a multi corporate Google Ventures, where we invest independently for financial returns. But we managed to line up a number of strategies all across the value chain of media and entertainment broadcasters, publishers, telcos agencies, investment banks that are focused on the sector in addition to family offices, high net worth individuals, etc. And then we started with this focus on media and entertainment and we said, when the markets are mature enough, we're going to invest in the consumer. And I get in a minute what it means. And when the markets are not mature enough, but we believe that they will grow we will invest in infrastructure or the tech enablers. And we've been pretty much executing on that strategy from inception in 2018. And we've essentially focused on gaming, metaverse and consumer tech, both content and infrastructure. And when I say, you know, markets are mature enough, I mainly mean gaming, which is the most popular form of entertainment for anyone under 50. And metaverse etc. Is still in its infancy, but it has huge potential and there's more infrastructure investments and understanding what are the pillars of this metaverse, what technologies are going to be necessary in order for this to succeed. But I'm happy to talk about sort of like what we've invested in and how we're different. I'll just say, like the parameters. We're currently investing out of Fund One, which is a 35 million fund and focus only on Israel or Israel related companies. And we're in the process of launching fund to target 70 million where we invest in Israel and Europe at the earliest stage. See them precede.
Henry Piney: Got you. Yeah. If I can divide up those categories into two and maybe just a couple of examples to give listeners a little bit of a flavor. So when you say you're focusing on the consumer proposition as opposed to the tech enabled side of things, what are some examples of the consumer facing propositions, if that's the right terminology that you've invested in the video game sector.
Eze Vidra: Yeah, so we've done a number of gaming investments. We tend to look for teams and products that have something different or unique about them versus yet another one in the genre. So one example is we invested in a company called Rebel Bots, which is the first crypto gaming studio coming out of Israel. It's a very experienced team in terms of their ability to build games and they've been extremely successful in creating a very strong community even before launching the game. So that's an example where we coinvested with Makers Fund, which is a great gaming fund from Asia and then we brought Ubisoft and Overwatch to invest and later when the startup no longer needed to sell equity and they were selling Tokens and Virtual Land, etc. So that's an example. The first one in genre coming out of Israel has been very successful. We invested in Toya, which is the studio for creating experiences for girls on Roblox, partnering with IP owners to create virtual worlds and roleplay models for girls on roblox. And their first game, Miraculous Ladybug attracted over 350,000,000 plays with zero spent on marketing. So we were very intrigued by these different models of gaming. I'm happy to talk about some others, but those are two examples.
Henry Piney: Yeah, those are really good examples and actually pulling it towards the data insights and consumer insights type of direction. So the second example that you described where you're creating experiences for girls on roadblocks, how does the development process and the sort of consumer feedback process work within that type of sector or that type of process?
Eze Vidra: It's a great question. I have to say the team is completely customer obsessed, so they practically code developed the products with their community. They have, I think, daily or weekly play sessions where the team plays together and they also solicit feedback from the community on discord and offers different perks for players to give them feedback. These players are typically teenage girls, right? So it's creating that trust that essentially they are there to serve the user and to give them a great play experience that's entertaining and fun, but also educational. So they really feed from the community. And the way that it works on Roblox is traditional gaming. Typically in a traditional gaming investment, you have to spend a lot on marketing, and in Roblox it's different because if the game is engaging, then the recommendation algorithms of Roblox will drive a lot of traffic to you. So everything lies on actually creating that engaging gaming session. And that's where what Toya focuses on and it's a lot of back and forth, sort of like sharing what they're going to do, getting the feedback from the community and then feeding back the feedback into the product development.
Henry Piney: That's so interesting because, as you say, part of the reason for their success is they've been obsessed with consumer feedback and then they're getting it in novel ways. But what I really like is that they're also combining the actual, almost like telemetric data, if that's the right sort of phrase around it. They can see what's happening, but then you're using social media and you're building our communities to sort of codevelop in terms of the crypto bit of it. We'll move on to that in a second and then you can explain to me what earth is going on within that sort of world. So imagine that gaming has been very much at the leading edge of that world and particularly around ideas of it's almost the opposite of pay to play, isn't it? If you play and you earn at the same time, kind of through crypto, how is that working? Are you seeing that as a kind of a big developing trend?
Eze Vidra: Yes, absolutely. So I think in the past couple of years, just in crypto alone of 2022, there's over two and a half billion invested into this category of crypto gaming. And that's compared to like 4 billion invested in 2021. And the reason it's such a growing trend, even though we're at the infancy of it, and I'll explain in a minute why, is because I think it has the potential to solve a lot of the inherent challenges in gaming investments as a category. So, as I started saying, when you invest in gaming, typically a third of the budget goes for product development and another third goes for sort of like advertising and marketing, sometimes more. And it has become especially in free to play mobile gaming. It has become almost like a science. Like you're going to put this amount into marketing and you're going to get this amount ad out in revenue, typically with aggressive ad monetization. And that aggressive ad monetization really hurts the user experience, right, because you play a little bit and then you get shoved some ads. And the whole sole purpose of the game, once they've sort of put the money out to develop the product, is to recuperate the cost of acquiring the user. And the only way that they have to do it is to push in app purchases or advertising to you. Crypto gaming actually has the potential to change some of those paradigms on their head, right, because with crypto gaming, in many cases they build a community before even launching the game. And that community buys into the project by purchasing NFTs. So you can think about it as I'm purchasing my future character in the game that I will play, and then those future characters or NFDS have the potential to go up or down in value. And then once you own an NFD in a game, it typically comes with additional perks so you're eligible for additional drops, you can get accessories for the character, you can be eligible to participate in other types of investments in virtual goods before even the game launch, like virtual land, etc. So that enables you to multiply the characters. And if you compare it to, let's say, a closed game like Fortnite, which is owned by Epic Games, players spent four to $5 billion on virtual clothing on Fortnite in 2021. They spent four to $5 billion on a single game in buying virtual clothing for their character on the game. Why? Because we spend more time online and money follows attention. And when you spend your social time online, you want to look good in front of your friends. You don't want to look like a noob and wear, you know, I think, unfortunately, PUBG, at least you start semi naked or, you know, wearing underwear. You don't want to be the person that wears default clothing in web three. Or in crypto gaming, you also are purchasing stuff for your character, you also are improving your character. But in Fortnite, when you stop playing, that character belongs to Epic Games. That's it. It goes to the you stop playing, the character disappears. In crypto gaming, that character and those virtual goods belong to you and they might increase in value. So when you stop playing, you can actually decide, I'm going to sell my character and make money, or when you play the game, in some cases that you have a play to earn mechanisms that you suggested. You can earn money by playing or earn crypto, earn tokens that can then be redeemed and whatnot so people, the most challenging thing in gaming is retention and keeping people engaged. And crypto gaming not only has the potential to sort of like reduce the reliance on marketing but also to increase retention because people stay and continue to play because they can earn money, because their assets appreciate in value. So that's the hypothesis at least. The biggest problem or the biggest challenge in these spaces is what they call onboarding which is which means sort of like getting more players to play Web Three games by having the infrastructure like a crypto wallet, etc. And there are several initiatives under way to simplify the process and have people just do it simply with a credit card and whatnot. So there's already a few success cases that have emerged and I think there's a lot of promise of what's coming next and a lot of smart money flowing into that sector.
Henry Piney: In terms of this idea of the metaverse, however one wants to define it and I know that's controversial but let's call it some form of persistent kind of virtual world and I know there are other characteristics around it. This other side of the fund is, as I understand it, investing more in enablement kind of technology. How far away do you think we are in terms of a really sort of persistent world that can mimic what we're doing in the real world or sit alongside it?
Eze Vidra: It starts with sort of like defining the work is the metaverse. What's the vision for the metaverse? And I think there we're talking about social immersive experiences where we interact together in sort of like a virtual way and we can converse, we can transact, we can play together, we can learn. So really the potential of the metaverse as this 3D social medium that we can create and engage in shared experiences is huge and it has the potential to disrupt actually or touch many industries, not just gaming. Gaming is just a fantastic entry point because it's a place where this behavior, this 3D personalization of avatars, etc. Are is already happening today we are defining sort of like separating two main segments like the closed meta verses which are tend to be like games that are virtual words that are closed. It can be like Roblox or Fortnite and open metaverse which is more decentralized, which is sort of like where you have the overlap with the Web Three blockchain ownership economy, et cetera. So I define metaverse somewhere between gaming AR VR blockchain and the creator economy which is like a layer to empower people to build content into these virtual worlds. How far are we from making it ubiquitous? I think it could be even a decade away. But in some cases, a lot of it is already here. And a lot of those behaviors we see already today also in new ways to empower people to own part of the internet like Web Three, like NFDS and the smart contracts that come with it. Now what I think needs to happen is there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to get built in order to enable those experiences. And this is where we spend a lot of our efforts at rematching ventures. And that infrastructure ranges from sort of like devices, operating systems, accessories to enablers like security, privacy, identity payments and monetization, then all the way from outside the sort of like ground floor infrastructure to content applications and then virtual worlds themselves. So we put the consumer in the middle. We actually developed a bit of a framework of how we invest in the space. And as I mentioned at the beginning, when the markets are mature enough, we invest in the consumer level. So if Roblox today touches almost nearly every US household, we believe that there are large companies that are going to get built on the back of this Roblox platform and we go and invest in the consumer. In the case of Toyota, but in ARVR, for example, I think it's still too early to bet on a specific application that will be a winner. There are some examples of huge success stories like Beat Saber, which is a single game that made already over $180,000,000 in sales. But there we prefer to invest in infrastructure and we believe that, like a rising tide raises all boats. So we invested, for example, in Echo 3D, which is a company that's doing a CDN content delivery network and CMS content management system for 3D content. So if you're a developer and you want to work with 3D content, the traditional file sharing systems or CDNs don't really work for echo 3D provides a seamless experience that enables you to stream these 3D models across platforms, devices, et cetera, and give you model level analytics. It was also the first investment out of Qualcomm's 100 million new Metaverse fund. Another example is our one, which is a company that creates synthetic video using human avatars or actually animated characters or metahumans. So you're able to generate video with text without the need of a camera. This is one level above of being able to animate characters and have them speak in any language, in any accent just using text. And today it's already advanced enough that they're able to produce in real time or near real time. Three D new studio with a presenter that can speak any language and show a video within a video of the news of the day, you know, the sports results of the day, the personalized or localized weather forecast. It's incredible. And we're going to need those types of technologies or pillars of the metaverse in order to be able to populate these virtual worlds. So that's where we focus a lot of our effort.
Henry Piney: I really like it as an investment thesis. I think it makes a lot of sense around the idea that if the technology is sufficiently developed and that the consumer marketplaces there, then invest in a consumer facing proposition. If it's not sufficiently developed, then invest in the companies that are moving the technology to the point whereby it can become a mass market proposition. I think it makes an enormous amount of sense. So you think we should probably move on? I'm conscious we're coming up to the allotted time and I want to do a quick fire round, if that's all right with you.
Eze Vidra: Sure, let's do it.
Henry Piney: So the first question I'm going to start, I know what my answer would be because it's actually the metaverse from probably about 18 months or so ago, but what have you changed your mind about recently?
Eze Vidra: Good question. I think the importance of nutrition and personal health. I thought that I could do whatever I want, and that age is starting to give his signals. And I'm basically completely changed my diet, move to exercising every day. So something I had to change very drastically very quickly recently.
Henry Piney: Well, you're looking very well on it, I have to say.
Eze Vidra: Thank you so much. Work in progress.
Henry Piney: Who have your mentors been, and what did you learn from them?
Eze Vidra: Good question. Mentorship is something I crave, but I never actually had an official mentor that I could say, like, you know, this person is my mentor. But I was very fortunate to learn from different people along in my career. And I want to give a lot of credit to Willard Ahdritz, the founder of Kobalt Music Group that recently sold to Francisco Partners. I was very fortunate to be able to invest in Kobalt Music Group and sit on the board and Willard is an an example of the tenacity grit and longevity that you need in order to be successful with a startup when you're disrupting a whole industry. So someone I learned a lot from, whether it's from our conversations or from just watching him operate.
Henry Piney: Fantastic. Yes. And those three characteristics, I guess, are incredibly good advice for entrepreneurs of tenacity grit perseverance. It doesn't happen quickly, whatever people think.
Eze Vidra: It comes with the job description.
Henry Piney: Absolutely. So if you could be the CEO of any company in the world, what company would that be and why?
Eze Vidra: It's a hard question, but I would have to say Nintendo, because it's small enough that you can still grow it and make an impact. I think it has incredible assets and consumers love the brand. There's so few companies that were able to transcend generations. I played Nintendo when I was a kid, and I think my kids really enjoyed playing Nintendo today. And the characters that they created 30 years ago are still relevant. So I could see myself having a lot of fun with something that touches media, gaming, consumer, but also tech and innovation.
Henry Piney: Yes, as you said, it's a great answer. They have an amazing corporate brand with incredible longevity, but also supported by incredible IP as well.
Eze Vidra: They do. And you never hear controversial stuff about them. They're just very solid. They always want to do right by the consumer, which I admire.
Henry Piney: Final question, what's your favorite book or recent books that you've absorbed or listened to? They don't have to be business books, by the way. It could be novels or whatever.
Eze Vidra: You know, it's funny. So in a very timely way, I would say I just restarted reading The Old Band and the Sea. I typically don't read novels or fiction. I only read and very boring, either startup books or startups venture capital or happiness books. But The Old Man in the Sea is this tiny book by Hemingway and it just takes you back to sort of like simpler times and human interaction. And I really appreciate sort of like the non-pretentiousness of it. It's very deep in its message, but it's told us a story. And on the same note, I would say a book that I recommend to a lot of CEOs. It's called the five temptations of a CEO. And the book is basically told as a fable. It's told us a story and it's very easy digest the lessons from it. So if you pick it up, will finish it in 24 hours, especially if you're a CEO. Trust me on this one.
Henry Piney: That sounds like an amazing recommendation. Actually, there's another one. I can't remember the name now, but I picked it up from you in the past. The guy who was the Israeli squash champion who's now gone.
Eze Vidra: Yes. That's awesome. It's called the pursuit of perfect.
Henry Piney: Yes, brilliant.
Eze Vidra: Tal Ben-Shahar is fantastic, especially if you suffer from perfectionism that I think too many of us suffer from. It's almost like therapy. This book that I recommended, yeah, it's very, very good.
Henry Piney: Eze, thank you so much. It's been fascinating and really, really appreciate the time and hopefully we can do it again some other time soon.
Eze Vidra: Thank you, Henry. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for listening.
Henry Piney: Now, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty much in awe of Eze. Not only does he have a cool name, he's done so much. He's accomplished, he's thoughtful, and he's such a lovely guy to boot. I'll get the transcript up as soon as possible so you can dig in further.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the show, if you want to support, please follow and rate on the platform you're listening to. Thank you so much and thanks again to Vault AI for sponsoring. Check them out at info vault.com. It's also on the website. See you next week.