So many of my friends here at MIT, Harvard, and elsewhere have started and even sold
very successful startups working on VR AR XR the metaverse NFTs and web3
and yet somehow I still feel like I don't fully understand what the hype is all about
I personally don't really care about playing video
games or doing virtual fitness nor do I care about having some kind of virtual
meetings with weird looking avatars floating through space with no legs
And I also don't really care about owning a digital art collection
But I do care about three things
First of all, as an entrepreneur,
I want to know if there exists some kind of startup opportunities in this whole space
secondly, as someone who is really busy I want to know if there is just something
related to VR or ar that can actually make me more productive on a day-to-day basis
And thirdly as someone who is separated by his family by a whole ocean I want
to know if there exists some more real feeling or good alternative to zoom calls
In this video I'm going to answer all of these questions, but before that I'm gonna get you
up to speed with determinology as well well as by the current state-of-the-art technology is
First off there is VR or virtual reality
that's a complete immersion into a virtual world that is you put on your headset such
as the Meta Quest 2 and your outside world is completely replaced by a virtual one
and then you run into a wall I guess
next up there is AR or augmented reality
here virtual elements are placed on top of the real world
Google attempted to do this long before it
was technologically and socially feasible but it's Google Glasses
I think nowadays one of the most serious devices going in this direction is Meta Quest Pro
it's actually a mix of virtual reality and augmented reality
although it's most useful as a VR device
the Meta Quest Pro is really cool but I think the $1500 price tag is hard to
justify for a device that's going to be obsolete just two years from now
one of the really interesting applications of AR devices for
productivity in my case very important is the ability to add multiple displays that
are virtual onto your desktop without having to have physical devices there
I think that's going going to be pretty cool in
the future but at the moment it's not good enough so very few people use it
next up there is XR or extended reality this is really just an
umbrella term for VR AR and mixed reality
and then we have the Metaverse
The Metaverse is essentially just a 3D World which is nothing new
we've had it for many decades already in terms of video games
The new thing about it is the immersion into Virtual Reality
In the future VR headsets will become so good that they will be practically
indistinguishable from reality, making it a potentially great tool for social connections
By the way there exist many metaverses many
of which aren't even controlled by the company meta formerly Facebook
Just go to opensea.io and check out their activity ranking for all the different worlds
I myself tried the central land for about
15 minutes and it's nothing like this show in a trailer
I felt like I'm in some kind of lame early 2000s video game played from a CD on Windows XP
While most commercially available products which allow you to transfer yourself
self into a metaverse aren't really impressive some of my
fellow YouTubers have done an amazing job at creating their own setups for doing so
And as you can see in this example their custom hardware and software allows their alter egos
to mimic their movements and even facial expressions in real time and it looks pretty cool
And lastly, I'm sure you've all heard of NFTs or non-fungible tokens
it's essentially a blockchain-based proof that
shows that you are the owner of a certain digital asset
it can be a photo but it could also be your character's look in the metaverse
despite all the controversy VR, AR, and the Metaverse are going to happen in some form
And there's huge potential for investment for startup opportunities and I myself am
currently exploring the space very actively
if this is something that you're interested in you could check out
some really good classes on creating developing and investing in the metaverse on Skillshare
they kindly agreed to my very last-moment request for a sponsorship so you can get a
full month of unlimited courses on their platform by using my affiliate Link in the description
And since I'm not yet an expert in all of these
topics I'm going to talk to my friend who last year successfully sold this
startup in VR and consequently made it into the Forbes 30 under 30 list
he's been working in VR and AR for over a decade and with that let's go to Miami!
This was weird
There we go!
Welcome to Miami!
This is my Miami Beach outfit in case you're wondering
I'm here with Traveler Meta and I even have the Meta Quest 2?
Exactly, yeah, yeah!
Yeah, we're gonna try it out later
because right now I want to ask you a whole bunch of questions
well, the first question is: what happened to your face?
I am, what you call an NFT, right?
so I am part of this series of 20,000 Clinics
so, basically, it's a Nike NFT
and it's, you know, a huge community now
there is quite a lot of stuff you can do with it
and what you see is the first version of this avatar
it's going to continue to evolve it's going to be super realistic in the coming years
I'm definitely looking to be using unreal super realistic avatars
There is, quite a few are already doing it
so that's what I am really excited about
it's like more about the vision that the existing technology
I see, yeah, because for someone like me who isn't in the web 3 space NFTs and all of that it always
seems a bit weird to see, well, not real people or people have their, like, faces that disappeared
but I guess there's a lot of influencers out there
right now who are like that and I think it's something to stay with us
and I think the point is not so much, again, about judging what you see right now but
more the notion of merging worlds between the physical world and the digital world, right?
so we've got to ask you, I mean, I'm not really an old-school guy
but I'm not like fully immersed into this whole space
so from my perspective, you know, I don't really play video games
I don't really care about owning an NFT art collection
unless maybe one day you know I get convinced about it
so I'm really curious is there something that can actually make my life more productive
Yeah, so there is
obviously, there is quite a lot that still is going to continue to improve
right now there is few productivity apps that exist out there
that allow you to, instead of using for example one screen and limited
by the existing hardware, to have multiple screen around you
So I'm thinking specifically of an app called Immersed
it was actually presented and highlighted in the Meta keynote
and I think we are gonna hear a lot about them
there is quite few headset coming up,
including Apple who is going to release one actually and present it in early 2023
so probably around our time right now
and are you using that already
with this thing?
Yeah, so typically Immersed exists on the Quest 2
and so basically you can connect it and stream the headset to your computer
and it's just that you stay hyper-focus, compared to when maybe you are in front of your desk
where you always are gonna have your phone so you're
gonna want to you know take it to look at it
and when you are in the headset there is actually some data from
Immerse that shows that people are more productive by staying
more focused by having bigger screens in front of them you can have multiple ones
and by also allowing you to collaborate more easily
I mean there is quite a few applications
and features but this is definitely the most concrete one that you can use today
because it's something that I would consider
I mean the Meta Quest, this is the 2, the Pro I thing costs $1,500
but if you can save let's say every day or get the next 15 to 20 minutes of work done per day
multiply that by an hourly rate and then like
I don't know you work 300 days per year or something like that
at some point it may pay off
I'm not sure if we're quite there yet
yeah, I mean, the honest answer will be typically for the Quest 2
you know after 30 minutes you get tired to have this on your head
the Quest Pro it might be a bit longer but then you have also the issue with the battery , right?
The resolution is better but the price point is quite high
do you think we can actually get to the point where we can have virtual meetings
where I actually feel like I'm sitting across someone and not some weird avatar?
yeah, so there is different points here, right?
first the technological aspect
yes, the avatar looks kind of creepy, right?
we are not quite there
it's still gonna take you know a decade to have something that's super realistic where
each of us have enough power from a current $3,000 dollar computer to see the emotions for the avatar
I know that right now
I wish I could transmit even more emotions from my face, right?
compared to my real face
But we are gonna get there
and I think what's going to be interesting is to
see people getting used more and more to this type of technology
starting with the younger generations who have been used to, you know, user experiences and games
of course, Fortnite is one of them which comes as well with the notion of the digital economy,
you know buying skins buying assets for your avatar, and being able to bring them
from one experience to another including the work the workspace
What are the big opportunities at the moment for entrepreneurs for
business for any kind of startup opportunities?
So there is there is quite few opportunities today business-wise and of course it's going
to continue to increase with the adoption of VR AR and the Improvement of the hardware
but right now based on the existing adoption I will tend to go more into
B2B businesses because there is needs in education training simulations
think about for example allowing potential pilots
to be able to learn how to to fly directly from a headset, right?
so it's like a flight simulator but like this size literally, right?
the issue is maybe the current flight simulator is
that you are going to use a mouse a keyboard so you are not creating the
right gesture and movement and you want these same for you know medical right?
if you are a surgeon you want to practice the right movements and
in VR you can do this hundreds and thousands of times, right?
so it's just much closer to the real experience
and work than reading a book or being inside just a normal screen
because right now many of my friends who start study medicine all of their practice was basically
on some corpses which are extremely expensive to get and you have it only one time you do the
surgery and that's it I mean for sure we'll still have to do that from time to time but
if you can as you just said do a surgery many hundreds of times before you actually do it
for the first time on like something real you can become so much better as a doctor
and I think that this is much more valuable and not just the value for
the users but also business-wise because you when you build such a
learning experience or simulation you can go sell it to schools to training programs
and make much more money actually, than if you try to build another video game
even so those actually are not the most used experiences in VR
It adds actual value because this is something that actually helps people
so that means you would say software startups at the moment that utilize
hardware that currently exists or will exist from all the different companies
yeah definitely
with the existing hardware,
this is the best uh the best place to start to build a business around VR
and actually even more virtual reality right now than augmented reality
what about the NFT space? is there something or some domains where
you still think that we can make startups other than just you know
creating some images and hoping that they will sell for a hundred thousand dollars?
Yeah, and I think that's also a misconception that of course there
was a lot of people who created just images and not having like popular utilities behind
if I think about Artifact, for example, this is not just about having a profile picture
there are tools that are provided to the community
there are events a lot of collaborations there is popular platforms there is drops
and they are actually creating an IP that they want to compete with Marvel
they literally mentioned it creating their own Marvel Universe they just released uh what they
call the project animus which is going to be a series of animals similar to Pokemon
we all are gonna get a companion so that might sound a bit up there
right now but just to say this is a starting point
and this is seen as a way to also raise money to build software
typically we had a recent drop from Valhalla
this is an NFT collection where you also have those profile pictures
but they are building a web 3 Twitch
that's a pure software company
they end up using the NFT space to raise capital basically
we just saw Trump releasing
Yeah, we can show these images
it's a bit silly!
I also wanted to ask you, for the young viewers
of this audience who really want to go into this space what should they learn?
Should they become Software Engineers, Hardware Engineers, what should they do?
The best way to create a virtuality experience is to use Unreal Engine or Unity
so those are game engines that are pretty popular, right?
but are not just to create video games so you can create any type of experiences
so that's the best place to start
but if you are a designer for example you can use any software such as you know
Figma illustrator whatever that you can also integrate within those game engines
Yeah, so you don't have to be like a you know complete software engineering expert?
Yeah!
I think it's going to be interesting to see in the
next six months with the release of all those headsets where this is gonna go
how people are gonna react to it
it's not just about when is the hardware ready
it's also when those people are willing to access this in their daily life
but of course, it's about which value and how it's going to help us on our daily basis
well thank you so much for having me here
thanks a lot!
Yeah I love being here in Miami
all right and with that let's go back to Cambridge!
So we're back in Cambridge, Massachusetts
And as hard as it may be to wrap our heads around all these new technologies,
especially the weird-looking avatars
I think in one form or another it's going to stick with us on the long term and it's going
to be really practically useful at some point so if this video sparked your interest and you
would like to learn how to invest create and potentially restart your own company in VR,
AR, or the metaverse you could sign up for a free month of unlimited skillshare classes for
those who don't know skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes
on all sorts of topics not just limited to this video and if you want to learn any kind of a new
skill it's a really great place to get started I personally use it so many times in the past
for getting started with YouTube for learning about interior design and so many other topics
they have anything from web development coding finance and all the way up to graphic design
and even to prepare for this video I took several short courses talking about VR, AR, and NFTs one
of the courses that I took was about turning art into NFTs taught by Benji Wilson and it taught
me all the basics and the fundamentals that I need to know and took just one hour to complete
you can also check out all the reviews and projects which were completed by other students
the first 1000 people to use my affiliate Link in the description will get a one-month free trial
and as always if you enjoyed this video and you learn something new you can thank me by
giving it a thumbs up subscribing to my channel and turning on the notifications
if you would like to check out some other videos for example my video about Quantum artificial
intelligence which is my PhD research at MIT you can check it out over here
and my video about understanding math intuitively over here
As always thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you soon!