This week's incredible guest is Ashley Crowder, Founder and CEO of VNTANA. VNTANA democratizes the use of 3D models to create AR/VR experiences using patented technology to standardize shape files of all kinds, opening up the world of 3D to many different industries. From partnerships with luxury fashion brands to collaborations with Meta (Facebook), VNTANA is doing it all. Ashley tells me about her journey into 3D modeling, her love of STEM, and the time she cold emailed Mark Cuban for investment.

Episode Resources:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/04/mark-cuban-and-former-oculus-ceo-back-3d-e-commerce-startup-vntana/ 

https://www.reuters.com/technology/3d-ads-come-facebook-instagram-step-toward-metaverse-2022-03-24/ 

https://www.voguebusiness.com/companies/women-still-struggle-to-access-vc-funds-what-needs-to-change

Welcome to the meadow woman podcast. We address the

issues, opportunities and challenges facing women in the

development of the metaverse the biggest revolution since the

internet itself. Every week we bring you conversations with top

female talent and business executives operating in the

gaming and crypto industries. Here's your host Lindsey the

boss POS, the meta woman podcast starts now.

Hello, and welcome to the meta woman podcast part

of the holodeck media Podcast Network. I'm your host Lindsay

The Boss Boss and from struggle to success. We're covering it

all. For returning listeners. Thank you so much for supporting

the show. Thank you for sending me feedback. Messages truly

warmed my heart. And for all the new listeners. Welcome. I hope

you enjoy and I hope you'll come back. This week's guest is going

to be so much fun because we're going to do a deep dive into the

metaverse, which is something that I've touched on but I

haven't haven't really like fully gotten into yet. So I'm

excited for that. For all of you that have been following the

evolution of the show. You know that I've started with gaming

and wound up in this crazy crossover between gaming merging

tech Metaverse, all that stuff. And I'm just excited to be able

to do more of the metaverse side this week. It's gonna be fun. So

without further ado, I want to introduce Ashley Crowder, CEO

and co founder of Ventana, Ashley, I would love for you to

introduce yourself and Fontana because I think you'll just

explain it better and do it more justice than I can.

Awesome. Yeah, it's great to be here. I'm Ashley

Crowder, I'm the co founder and CEO of Ventana. We are a 3d

commerce platform that makes it incredibly easy to manage and

distribute 3d and augmented reality at scale. We work with a

lot of fashion brands. So VF Corp Hugo Boss, diesel, helping

streamline 3d from design and manufacturing, helping people

with b2b sales to replace physical samples and create

amazing e commerce experiences and social media. And then of

course, you can also use that same 3d model in the metaverse

or different virtual worlds. So yeah,

because that was so cool. And I know that we're

going to be talking about it more. But let's kind of start at

the beginning because Ventana has been working in the 3d slash

AR slash VR space for almost 10 years, which is super exciting.

I know you're coming up on your anniversary here. And obviously,

the emerging tech landscape looks a lot different than what

it did 10 years ago. And so I would love to hear about the

evolution of the company, how you moved from kind of more

entertainment based services to more platform based services,

how you evolved into the software as a service company

that you are today.

Yeah, so my background is engineering, I did

engineering at USC, got my Bachelor's and Master's there,

you know, always loved building things. And the USC engineering

school has a partnership with a military called ICT, where they

funded research and 3d AR VR graphics and tech. And so that's

where I first got exposed to all this stuff, like, almost 15

years ago now, which is crazy. And I was like, this is gonna

change the world. This is awesome. But you know, there

were no career paths for that back then. So I ended up, you

know, founding Montana. And it was really around how do we

create these, you know, immersive experiences to engage

consumers. And at the time, web didn't support 3d phones could

do ar so we did location based mixed reality experiences for

brands like Adidas, Nike, Lexus, and it was usually in retail

stores or at sports stadiums or events like South by Southwest.

And we built a profitable company doing that. But no one

ever had the right 3d files to create this type of content. So

we were creating interactive 3d content in game engines like

Unity and Unreal, to play on our hardware at these different

events. And we would get, just like these manufacturing design

files from these brands that were way too big and not in the

right format and required all this manual work. So we started

writing software to help automate this. So that is really

what led us to where we are today. So in 2019, we said you

know what, we wrote all this software to make it easy to

manage and optimize 3d models. Now, every web browser can

support 3d and phone everyone has a phone that can do some

pretty decent augmented reality. So we decided to raise around a

funding and launch our software as a standalone service. We

launched it February 2020, which is very good timing to then get

out of events. So that was like crazy. And so you know, the plan

had been to like have our events business kind of continue, but

open up this new division and COVID obviously, we're like, you

know what, I'm glad that we wrote All this software and have

this product and we are 100% focus on our software now. And

yeah, and it really grew from there because obviously with

COVID, no one could get physical samples from from China, where,

you know, 99%, German manufactured, no one was going

into retail stores, people really started adopting 3d so

much faster, because there's really no option. So even people

who were afraid of new tech, we're kind of forced into it.

And then the benefits have just been so huge from, you know, 10s

of 1000s of dollars of cost savings to reducing carbon

footprint by not making samples, increasing speed to market, you

know, increased conversion rate because of better consumer

experience online. So COVID force people to try it, and then

the results spoke for themselves for them to keep going. So

I want to pick apart this sample portion, just

because the that interests me a lot. I mean, I'm by no means a

fashion person, we recently had the Met Gala. And I love that,

but I'm not you know, I am not my sister in law actually has a

degree in fashion design and merchandising. So I would love

to know more about what the sample process previously was,

and how you've used Ventana to, like you said, reduce the carbon

footprint of that process. That's fascinating. So can you

describe a little bit more from start to finish? Yeah, so

we typically work with brands who design and

manufacture their products. So whether that is you know, Hugo

Boss or diesel, so like they design they manufacture, they

might sell direct to consumer, but they also sell within retail

stores. And so the typical process is you design, you make

a sample, you ship that sample out to your various teams to

review, you make changes, you go make another sample, you come

back, you know, to finalize that maybe and then maybe the design

is final. And then you order more samples, because they need

to go to Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's showrooms for

people to view and purchase. So it was this very time consuming.

physical product process, right. Whereas once COVID hit, you

know, all the factories in Asia were shut down. And logistics

are still a problem right now. I mean, I moved into this new

house, I have no furniture because I ordered furniture in

November, and it's still not here in May. So

just as an interlude, there's a good tweet

that said, due to supply chain issues, I'm fully out of

serotonin

in this empty my room, but that's why. So, you know,

it's still a problem. And so people, you know, we're like,

why are we doing this physically, we'd have a true

interactive 3d model, you want to make changes, you make

changes instantly, and then you upload and share that link. And

you can collaborate in real time on the 3d. So we had clients who

had a six month sales cycle with where they were selling these

moved down to three weeks, with 3d. And then on average, you

know, making one shirt is about five kilograms of carbon of what

it takes to make that one shirt. We had a client, they moved

their whole collection to 3d. So they had almost 900 pieces that

they used to make samples of that now is purely 3d, and

they're using Ventana just sell to Nordstroms Bloomingdale's

using 3d instead of physical. So 900 times five kilograms is

like, over 4.4 tons of carbon saved. So that's equivalent of

driving like 130,000 miles in a gasoline car, which is amazing.

And then on top of that, like samples cost money samples, on

average can be $100 per creation. So you know, 100 times

900, you're saving $90,000 per season on not making those

samples. So it's better for the environment. It's saving you

money. It's increasing your speed to market. There's no

reason you should not be using 3d.

So cool. I wonder so that's, that is like you

said, you're a b2b SaaS company to I know there has been a b2c

Particularly I remember reading about how Snapchat was allowing

you to try on clothes in basically, I think it was more

so augmented reality using your own camera to sort of put

clothes on your body. Do you see yourself moving into a b2c space

as I mean, you just you've just reached two years, so I'm not a

that would be the pinnacle. But yeah, what does that look like

for you? Yeah, so

our client ants are always going to be businesses,

but they are creating these experiences for consumers as

well. So that same 3d model they use for that, to sell to

Nordstroms. And that b2b sale, they can also put on their

website with with our software, so they can, they can have it on

their e commerce sites, you can see it interacts in 3d, gonna

hold up your phone and place it in your environment with

augmented reality, we are working with the social media

platforms. So whether it's Snapchat or meta to do to put a

3d model into those platforms, it has to meet their

specifications. And so this is again coming into what ventanas

real secret sauces and the core value we provide is we can take

these big manufacturing files and instantly convert them to

meet these various specs. So you, you know, you can take that

manufacturing file, upload to Ventana, and then you can

instantly publish to Facebook or Instagram or to Snapchat. So

we're just saving people a bunch of time there. Whereas before,

they'd have to do manual work. Snapchats definitely the

furthest along including Tryon, it's still not perfect, but

they're definitely like, far out ahead. They've been acquiring a

lot of companies in this space. Super excited about everything

they're building. It's just not quite there yet. So, but it's

coming.

It's so cool, though. And I want to talk more

about the partnership that you announced with meta. K Facebook,

which I also always make this joke, but I promise this podcast

was announced before they changed their name. It's about a

whole thing. But can you tell me about that partnership? And I

know you talked a little bit about snap but just how you see

Ventana working with social media companies. And that's a

much different client than say diesel Jones or Hugo Boss.

Right. So So what is it?

Usual diesel is the is our client who's using us for

b2b sales, their e commerce site and publishing on meta? Does

that make sense? So like, what you're doing? Yeah, so we're

enabling our brand. So the partnership, we set up with a

meta kind of same thing like they were they wanted to launch

3d and air ads. In order to do that they needed 3d models that

met certain standards. So just kind of take a step back, like a

typical manufacturing design file is 200 megabytes in size or

bigger. If you want to use 3d on Facebook, it needs to be under

six megabytes in size. So that's like 5% of the original size. So

they were struggling with the fact that they were asking

brands to manually fix all these files, which they're like, you

know, Hugo Boss launches 40,000 products a year, it's like

writing a file for each one.

So with our integration, you can upload

these designs to Ventana, we instantly get them to meet

Facebook and Instagram specs. And then you can publish it's a

click of a button publish a 3d and AR ad unit. And so it's

fully automated. So your social media manager can log in to

Facebook or Instagram and create an ad the same way they create a

2d ad today, because we're packaging up that 3d model and

3d AR ad unit for you. So you don't have to know anything

about 3d, which is great. Right? That's

what I was going to say is I know that one of the

key points of the product is that no coding is required,

which is a little crazy to think about.

Yeah, exactly. Like our whole mission is to democratize

3d and make it easy. That's how we're going to see more

adoption. Because we know 3d has huge benefits. It's a better

experience, you can increase conversion rates, save money,

all the things we've been talking about the barrier has

really been it's difficult and time consuming and I don't have

the right staff you know, that's what we're trying to fix.

So cool. What kind of files get uploaded to turn

into 3d ads? I'm trying to get technical brains trying to catch

up with what you're saying. Yeah, so

like just like the car industry designs and AutoCAD

programs in 3d fashion has their 3d design programs so for

apparel, it's it's browse wearing clothes are typically

the apparel 3d design programs for footwear, they're generally

designing in KeyShot or Moto and so you know, there's all these

different 3d design programs which are great for design and

manufacturing. But again, the files too big and not in the

right format. So Fontana has plugins to a lot of these

software's so designers can work the way they work today and then

just upload directly and we do the rest for you so you

instantly get this you know web viewer you can embed on your

website. You To publish to meta, or wherever else that you want.

Okay, that makes

a lot more sense. And yes, I have worked with

AutoCAD. And yeah, those files are a nightmare, basically. Can

you do with the metaverse coming in companies like yours, that

are leading the charge in terms of making these experience

mainstream? Can you just tell me what excites you about kind of

staying at the forefront of future tech? And what made you

passionate, I mean, from 15 years ago, as a student at USC,

all the way up until now, and adapting and pivoting and 2020,

kind of in a major way, like what drives you to keep making

these experiences available to people?

Yeah, I mean, I just love the medium. I think, in

general, I, you know, I love building things. I love math and

sciences. Why did engineering but like I also like to be

creative. And with the metaverse, it's this combination

of engineering and art and creativity, that is so much fun

for me. And I just think it has so much potential. You know, the

metaverse, to me, it's just a spatial internet, or just going

from the flat to the websites to like, it can now be interactive

and 3d and spatial, whether that's still on my laptop

browser and walking around a virtual space or fully putting

on a headset. And you know, you know, immersing myself in VR.

It's just so much fun. And you know, I'm part of a group we

meet in VR on Wednesday nights. And it's really fun. And like,

we were doing that pre pandemic, and then the, the pandemic, it

was amazing, because I actually felt like I was seeing friends,

you know, I just like love it and love everything about it.

And I want to help make it faster to adopt for everyone.

And step one to create any of these types of experiences is

you need digital twins or 3d models of your products or items

that can work within these different platforms. And so

that's really what we're trying to solve for people. And then

I'm excited to see all the amazing experiences that they

create with them.

What is your VR platform of choice that you meet

people on? So I just use

the Oculus, and that got it right over here.

streaming of bucks is cheaper than an iPhone? You know, I

think that's pretty amazing. True.

I never thought about it that way. But yes.

And then I personally love VR chat, because it's like

weird and wild and everyone, like, you never know what world

you're gonna go into. So that's my favorite. But, you know, with

this group, it's a lot of industry people. And my friend,

Christina Heller, the founder of Medisave. She started it years

ago. And it was really like just to like, learn and explore. So

like we would, when rec room first came out, we met in rec

room, and like half the things didn't work. Like I could only

walk backwards. For some reason there was a bug and really fun.

We used it as this like fun social virtual meetup, but like

to learn new technology and test out new platforms. So

that's really cool. And how has it? I don't

know exactly how to ask this question, because obviously, we

know that we're way ahead of where we are 10 years from now,

but I guess are Are we where you expect to be? Or do you think

that like, what what do you think about the pace of growth,

I guess is what I'm trying to get at? Are we growing? You

know, if you think about 10 years ago, and where you

started, or 15 years ago? Are we growing at the rate you

expected? Or do you think like, we're kind of at the beginning

of a really fast pickup now or? Like what what does that pace

look like? For you? Who's someone who's been exploring in

the metaverse for long?

Yeah, I'd say you know, I obviously hoped it would the

adoption would have been faster, but I will say that pandemic

really sped things up. And on top of that, just the advent of

NF T's

so, you know, NF

T's have proven people are willing to pay real money

for digital goods, which you know, we talk with a lot of our,

our clients of, hey, yes, you should use 3d and all these

stages of your current process, but you could also be selling

digital assets, which is a whole new revenue stream, because I

want my avatar to look cool in fortnight or Roblox right. So I

think I think the pandemic has has sped up a lot of that. But

we're NF T's have also helped make it exciting. It's really

democratizes the ownership so right now if I'm in Roblox and I

you know, bye Nike hat. Well, I can only wear that 3d Nike hat

and robots. I can't take it out of that game with NF T's. I own

this 3d asset. And I can take that 3d file anywhere in the

metaverse. I want. And that's what's so exciting about the web

three platforms like decentraland and somnium space

that are open, because any 3d objects I buy there I own and I

can take it with me into these other virtual spaces. So I

think, you know, it's a matter of time until, you know, these

these walled gardens like fortnight and Robox open up to

allow that.

That just reminds me of when you go to friends

houses when you were little to play with their toys, because

you didn't have them. As if your parents actually bought you the

toy and brought it home. It was yours forever. Yeah. Which is a

silly, that's a very, like 90s Kid analogy right there. But

that's exactly what we think of.

And then the kids today like my friend's kid, she asked

for her allowance and robots not in American dollars, because she

just wants to buy things for her avatar in Roblox because that's

where she meets her friends. Right. So like, this whole

generation is growing up, comfortable and used to buying

digital goods. And, you know, with digital currency,

which is fascinating. That is a really

big change. Yeah, I mean, definitely a big change. I know

I was thinking about it, like I have Beyblades. Actually, I

didn't have Beyblades I wanted Beyblades much different than

robots. I want to pivot and shift gears a little bit because

I do want to talk about what it's been like for you to build

this company over 10 years as a female founder. We both I'm sure

know that securing VC funding for women can be difficult to

just kind of a different process. So just finished a

great book called bro topia by Emily Chang all about Silicon

Valley and the season stuff super fascinating. According to

an article invoke Business Research has found that

historically, less than 5% of VC funding has gone to women owned

or women led businesses. In some cases, there is a backward

shift. According to software and data provider PitchBook. This

figure has shrank to 2.2% in 2021 Despite the creation of

women's centric funds, such as female Founders Fund, which

narrows women's shot at our small shot of funding, or just

narrows it. So I would love to talk about your experience

building your business because Ben Tonto has the backing of

some heavy hitters from the partnership with metta and I

know Mark Cuban and the formula former Oculus CEO Brendan Uribe

hope I'm pronouncing arrived they arrived. Okay. ism is among

you know, among many others have have backed Ventana, and we

don't necessarily have to look fully through the lens of

gender. But can you just walk me through what the growth and

funding experience has been like for you? Yeah, look, I

think no matter who you are funding, it's hard to start

to grow a business but you need funding. And as the CEO, my job

is to make sure we're bringing in the right partners and

investors to grow the business. And it was something I had to

learn. You know, I studied engineering and I wanted to

start this company. I knew no one did not know anything about

VC funding when I started, had to figure a lot of it out. And

really started by just going to networking events and trying to

learn and asking people to coffee. And, you know, Shimon

Walsh was one of our very first backers. She's like a female

partner at at a fund who's amazing, and has invested in

some incredible companies like sweet green all the way to other

tech companies. And having her as a mentor was so helpful to

like learn the process. I would also say a really great book is

venture deals. So it was written by a guy who, what he was an

entrepreneur who grew, raised money, sold his company, and now

he's a VC. So he writes it from kind of the entrepreneur and the

VC perspective. I wish I had read that book before I raised

any money a couple years ago, it just it's so helpful. And it's

not that long. So read it, I suggest it. But so much of of

raising money is it's about trust, right? It's showing, yes,

I have I have this company with real Tech and a real business.

And I'm going to take it from A to B, and this is the money I

need to get there. And this is how I'm going to spend the

money. And, you know, investors want to need to be able to trust

that you're going to do that. Hey, that's what it comes down

to. And I think part of the issue with wise Many women and

minorities don't have as much funding is they just don't have

those networks, right? Like I didn't know, anyone. I had to do

tons of networking and reaching out and asking for introductions

and building those relationships over time. To get to the point

that said, I cold emailed Mark Cuban, and he responded and

invested a couple of days later. So that was wild. And you know,

I read an article about how he's investing in NF T's and the

metaverse and I just was like, He's gonna love what we're

doing. And so I just, like found his email and emailed him. So

like, that can also happen. But yeah, so I think, you know, part

of it is, and that's why it is good that we have these networks

in organizations trying to help women and minorities meet more

VCs. Again, because I just think it's a matter of, I think so

much of it is not malicious. It's just like, who do you know,

I've watched them build this before. I know they can do it.

Oh, I've never met you before. So

my one, yeah, there's definitely reasons why

women and minorities don't have those networks built in right

away. But there's also ways around that, which I think is

good. So that's completely cold email MerKiVa. That's great. I'm

a big proponent of that, as someone who used to work in

communications, and I always had to email reporters and reporters

are notorious for never responding, which makes sense,

they get a billion emails, it's not a problem. But I remember I

have like a 13 follow ups rule where I'll follow up 13 times

and you can't take it personally, because everyone

knows that everyone else is busy. You just kind of have to,

like, Hey, it's me again. How's it going? I'm a big fan. I'm a

multiple texter, multiple emailer. You gotta try to not be

too pushy. But also, keep in mind that everyone else is busy

and in their own world, in order to get into their world, you

kind of have to make sure you're always top of mind. Some big fan

of cold emails do, I wouldn't have thought to cold email, Mark

Cuban, but you know,

he's gonna, like, kill me, because all these people are

going to email him now. But

hopefully, he has a good army of, you know,

executive assistants and whatnot to filter through and find the

really cool opportunities, which I'm sure he does. And kind of on

that note, there's, there's definitely a place for lodging

complaints about this process. Thankful that social media has

given many people a voice to express in justices that happen

in Silicon Valley and in the venture funding world. But I

would love to focus on some of the positive things you've had,

in your experience getting funding, and potential solutions

to make it a more inviting environment for women. So could

you tell me what some of and I know, you've mentioned certain

relationships, specifically, but what were some of the positive

ways you were able to interact with potential VCs? And what are

some of the ways you think the VC environment or just the

funding process itself could improve? Yeah, I

mean, I've had the benefit of some really great

mentors, you know, another investors, Jamie Montgomery, the

founder of March capital, I think I met him because I gave a

pitch at USC that he was attending and spoke. And then

he's done a lot for female founders, he has an event every

year, he gives, like a certain number of female founders free

tickets, and, you know, tries to help with that. I think just

building those allies and mentors within your network is

so helpful to give you advice and help make introductions. And

then how to make it better. I mean, so much, there's like so

much to do. Right. So I think, you know, funds can make sure

that they're at least seeing a variety of deals, you know, if

you're looking at your deal pipeline, and your deal pipeline

is 90%. White man. Okay, what can you do to get more diverse

founders in your deal pipeline, right? Like, if you're not even

having the pipeline of the diverse deals, there's no way

you're going to actually fund diverse deals, right? So whether

that's partnering with a women or minority network or school or

you know, there's a lot of different ways to do it. I think

that could really, really help and then setting up frameworks

for investing. So you know, so many and then the earlier the

stage, that stage of your company, the more they're just

investing in you, right? If you're Doing a seed round, you

don't necessarily have revenue or a business to look at yet.

It's a little it's like the beginning. But it's you like, do

we trust that you can build this? And so that can get very

subjective quickly, right. And so I think funds building

frameworks of, of analysis of how they're evaluating founders

and their companies, and keeping that consistent, will help also

make it a more fair playing field, right across gender and

ethnicity and everything else.

It's yeah, all those studies of when you remove

the name of a resume and who gets hired. Yeah, I essentially

feel that same vibe from what you just said. But I do think

that it's accurate. It's, it's, I mean, we live in a world where

there's a lot of unconscious biases. And it's hard to even if

you think you're a person who doesn't hold them in some way,

shape, or form you probably do so I can see what you're saying

and trying to make that process more consistent to limit the

impact of those at least is one way of getting different people

in the room. So that does make sense to me. Um, and switching

over to you for a second because we've talked all about Ventana

we've talked all about Vc, Vc funding and what it's like to be

a female founder. But I want to know about you know, you and how

you got to where you are. I know that you mentioned that you

started engineering at USC. But it's it's pretty, you know, it

takes a lot of gumption to be run a tech and specifically

Metaverse focus 3d technology company for 10 years. So tell me

a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, I'm one of those people where I get an idea and I

just nothing I have crazy, like blindsided focus on this to a

fault. And I'm going to do it. So my poor parents growing up.

You know, if I wanted to do something, I was going to do it.

But, but yeah, I mean, growing up, I loved math and science, I

hated writing with passion. So I would do everything to like,

take more math and science classes, and I love building

stuff. My dad was an electrician. And he, he, the

company he worked for went out of business. And I was in first

grade. So he decided to just, you know, start his own company.

So it was him and a friend doing like it started as like house

calls. I'd like ride around in the truck on the weekends to

construction sites. So I'm gonna have a break. So I think that's

where I got interested in, in engineering. And I watched him

you know, it was it was really hard. It was full on startup,

you know, when I was in elementary school, but I watched

him grow it to a couple 100 person company that did jobs

around the world. And it was really cool to watch that. And

really inspiring. And I was like, you know, I want to build

my own company someday like that. That was awesome. And so,

yeah, but my dad, you know, he never got the chance to go to

college. She was like, you know, you're gonna go to college. It's

like, sounds good. I put engineering and got in and, you

know, ended up like, again, I could avoid as much writing as

possible. I liked it. And yeah, I knew I wanted to start my own

company. Wasn't sure what, you know, I worked at British

Petroleum for a while actually, after I graduated, I worked at

an oil refinery. I learned a lot, not my passion at all. I

was like, what kind of like, like, I'm still friends with

some of the people. I mean, refineries are intense, like,

literal fires happen, and you got to work together and figure

it out. So I'm still friends with the people there. It just

was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And so I

ended up leaving. I took a leave of absence and didn't go back. I

got a job programming light shows for DJs on the weekends.

And that was super fun. So it was like finally combining like

engineering and art. It was one of the most fun jobs I ever had.

And that's kind of where I was like, Alright, how do we take

these light shows to the next level? How do we create more

interactive experiences? And that's really what led me to to

co founded Ventana. So midlife crisis or quarterlife crisis to

working at a nightclub and starting a company

now I was actually kind of picturing while you're

saying that you know what I enjoy a lot about music and

lightness or a lot of it is that I mean I can actually see the

the crossover into kind of 3d models and stuff because it's a

very like yeah, I don't know I think of like, it's it is kind

of an immersive thing, right? Like it's It makes everything

feel more alive when you have really cool lighting. That's

something that I actually really value. I went to college at a

place where we had a very good theater program, and I met a

lighting major my first year. And then after a while, she

totally convinced me she actually switched to sound too.

But she totally convincing the importance of lighting. And I

feel like ever since then. Yeah. That actually transitions pretty

well into the kind of 3d hands on things I think. And yeah.

Live.

Yeah, it's another way to put how do we put the digital

in the real environment? How do we, you know, take these visuals

to that next level and augmented reality and virtual reality?

You know how to do that. Yeah. Well, it's such a

funny way. Yeah. So next time, you're at a big club, everyone

listening.

You know, like, like the, I mean, the lights are

incredible. Everything that's happening with like, the drone

light shows are amazing. Every year now Coachella has augmented

reality experiences overlaid on top of the show, you know, so it

still?

Yeah, super cool. Actually, one of my favorite

shows that I saw was MGMT, and they had horrible stage

presence. But what they did have was an incredible, like, it was,

it was it definitely felt like augmented reality. But it was

not but an incredible life display during the whole show.

And I was just like, fascinated, we all had glow sticks going

along with it. It was amazing. So yes, I think that music is

one of the best ways to get into 3d experiences. For sure. That's

my own personal opinion. So I really enjoyed listening to

music. But you know, I'm, so I love that whole story. And thank

you, thank you for telling me about your childhood stuff. And

really cool that your dad was able to build such a huge

business. And that takes so much work. And you mentioned just

from a very young age, dating, writing, loving math and

science. I think that's the thing that a lot of women

experience. But we do see really low retention rates by the time

women start to get into their late 30s ish in STEM and tech

fields. What do you think we can do? And particularly we I'm

talking more so probably about small to midsize companies who

have a lot of flexibility in their practice, not like society

as a whole and enormous institutions. But what can

people who are in positions of leadership within a business do

to better recruit and retain women in STEM positions? Yeah, I

think, you know, I do a lot of volunteering.

I think it starts with teachers, right

and encouraging that the from a young age, I had no

credible third grade teacher who like let me do extra science

experiments in the back of the room. I still remember this

Mackenzie's she was awesome. So it kind of starts there. And

then you know, I do lots of volunteering at USC, which, you

know, I think 2020 was the first year we had like a 45%, woman

engineering freshman class, which is amazing, because when I

graduated, like the graduating engineering class was like, 19%

women, so that so the schools are doing a lot to help recruit

and promote and retain more diverse students. So don't tell

me it's pipeline problem, you know, hiring. You know, like,

we're fixing that problem, right. And so then as a

business, making sure that there's those entry level

positions that have like training and support to grow

into those next roles. And that's just good for your

business in general, right? You want to be building a pipeline

of students to mid mid managers.

But I think, and

this isn't like a gender or minority thing, but

just humans, every human in general learns differently. And,

you know, I think making sure you build a program, like a

training program within your company that can help people get

to that next level. And I'm not saying to like, do special

things for women. I'm just saying in general, like you

should have a clear pass for promotion within your company.

Which is good for like growth and retention in general. But I

think

just as a little side plug, yes, that is

basically the number one reason people cite for resigning from

cushy jobs is no growth potential.

Exactly. Yeah. So So I think doing that and I think

you'll end up just being more attractive and more attractive

to more people, which will give you a more diverse pool of

candidates. And then of course, in your interview process. I

think Airbnb did a study, they realized that they weren't

hiring enough women or minorities, and they realized

like all the interviewers were men, and they're like, oh, we

should To throw in and make sure the interviewers are diverse,

and lo and behold, when they switched up the interviewers,

all of a sudden they were hiring more diverse people. And I think

it's a combination of so many factors of the, you know, if

you're a minority coming in and you see another minority, that

company, maybe you're more comfortable and confident in

that interview, you know, like, I think there's a lot of factors

at play. But that's like a very easy thing that you could do.

Just make sure your people are doing the interviews are diverse

themselves some. So

yeah, the Rooney rule. But for everyone. We have

any NFL fans out there. We don't google the Rooney Rule. It's a

good rule. Well, actually, I before we get into our last

segment, I want to quickly just summarize everything we've

talked about so far. We started with you giving me basically a

whole primer on what Ventana does, which was super cool. And

I, I truly mean that I really enjoyed getting to learn about

the technology. And what Fontana does do is streamline 3d from

for design, the manufacturing processes. The it's a, I'm gonna

say all of this, and then you interject if I'm wrong, but it's

a b2b software as a solution service that basically takes

shape files from any 3d type of program that designers might use

across industries, and converts them into a much smaller, much

more ready to use customer facing type of file for use and

advertisements for use in collaboration. One really cool

example that you gave was use in samples within the fashion

industry. So allowing people to easily share those rather than

creating a physical sample should not only reduce costs,

but severely or severely sorry, word impactfully reduced carbon

footprint quite a bit. One thing that I thought was super cool is

that by using 3d models, and going through the design process

that ways one of your clients was able to go from a six month

design time to a three week design time, which is a huge

savings in so many ways. And so this is a b2b service with b2c

impacts, meaning that clients can create better experience for

their customers using the optimized files that come from

fatahna. So I get that right.

Yeah, exactly. And the easiest analogy is just like

Vimeo and YouTube make it easy for you to upload embed into

your video. And Tonya makes it easy for you to upload, embed

and share 3d and

AR which is so cool. It also democratizes AR

and VR for all audiences because it removes difficulty and

converting files to all kinds of different platforms for the

person who created the file so then be able to use and share

them. And then we after discussing Ventana, you just did

a great job of explaining to me how you've interacted with the

metaverse, which was so fun. I haven't had anyone on quite yet.

Who's it? Who's done it in the same way you have. I've

certainly had people who are super involved in Metaverse

design and building but you're someone who's been having

Metaverse meetups like before it was cool. You're like a

Metaverse hipster. So that was really, really fun to learn

about. I like that you called the metaverse, the spatial

internet, I think that's an easy way to define it without getting

lost in the hype. So it's just a new way of interacting with the

digital world. We actually talked about NF T's which I

wasn't necessarily expecting to come up, but they are the

buzzword of the moment. But I don't think that you use it in a

buzzword II type way. Because what you were teaching me about

is that have to show that people do value digital ownership and

assets and valuing. And they also value fully owning that

asset or thing anywhere in the metaverse so not just a single

platform item. we pivoted into discussion on funding and

building a company. You had said that you started by networking,

building relationships over time, which can be difficult for

women and minorities who don't traditionally kind of, there's

some people who kind of start off with that network just in

their circle. And some people have to work a little bit more

to get that network. And so you mentioned that you were a person

who had to work a little more to get that work. But that you

started with mentorship. You started with coffee dates, you

started with cold emails to even Mark Cuban. And any recommended

venture deals as a resource for folks looking for funding. When

it comes to how we might be able to improve the funding space.

One thing that you said that was really concrete was keeping

evaluations, companies and founders consistent across the

board, which can help bring more people into the room and remove

some of the barriers for women and minorities, which I think is

just a overall problem, not just funding society. valuations were

consistent for everybody. Definitely. And we ended with

recruiting and keeping women in STEM. You shared a great story

about how you grew up and became interested and shout out to Your

third grade science teacher for letting you do extra

experiments. But how it is important to nurture young woman

who showed interest in math and science, colleges are doing a

lot better to recruit and maintain diverse students. This

is not necessarily every college, but I know that a lot

of places are working really hard to make this top of mind,

which means that the pipeline problem can no longer be stated

on the business and hiring. And then there is a pipeline, you

have to go out and find the candidates. But one thing that

can help is by creating a path from entry level up and training

programs for those who are interested in actually moving up

that path. So actually having a vision for folks that start

working with the company and figuring out a way to move them

forward if they would like to do so is one of the best ways to

attract and maintain employees. And then we also discussed the

interview process and how making sure that the interviewers

diverse, are diverse means that you can help ensure that you get

more diversity within your candidates. So that was a wide

ranging discussion. But I like to end every podcast with what I

call the moment of reflection. And this is just a chance for

you to look back on your career. And the thing that I asked you

to answer is what is the one thing you would like to tell

your younger self about getting into the tech industry and being

successful?

Oh, man, I don't want to celebrate the wins. I think

as you as you grow, you know,

you're I have

so many I think any entrepreneurs like this, you're

always looking for that next thing that next level you want

to get to and sometimes you forget to celebrate the wins

along the way, and you don't realize how far you've come. And

so

that would be my advice.

I really liked

that I haven't had anyone give that sort of advice.

But yeah, I think that women should brag more. You can still

be humble and brag a little bit it's fine.

It's possible even just for your own self like enjoy way

the the winds when they happen and don't blow past and think

about the next thing you know too fast. So yeah,

take a second I get it. Thank you so much for

coming on. Where can people find you follow you read what you're

thinking about? Find Ventana contacting for sales.

I'm on LinkedIn, love LinkedIn. So just Ashley

Crowder, you can find me there. You can follow Ventana on

LinkedIn as well. Or go to our website. It's just the n t a n

a.com. So it's like window and Spanish and sauna without the so

I actually didn't put that together until you said

that. But that's great. For all the listeners out there. Be sure

to leave those five star ratings and reviews. Check out other

holodeck media podcasts, including metal business for all

the metaverse finance stories you could ever want. Business of

esports for interviews with industry leaders. I'm on

Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn and Lindsey pass and you can

catch me once you Nate's on the business of esports live after

show. You can catch this podcast and your feed every week. We'll

see you next week.

Thanks for joining us here on meta woman. Make sure to

subscribe to this podcast everywhere you get your

podcasts, leave a five star review and tell your friends,

family and colleagues all about us. Also, make sure to follow

metta TV on all socials to get more of the best Metaverse

content anywhere. Tune in every week for another episode of