In this episode, Nike purchases virtual shoe company RTFKT that makes NFTs and other products for the metaverse, NFTs launched by Adidas Originals after the company buys a plot of land in The Sandbox, the founder of The Sandbox says big technology companies are a threat to the metaverse, Gala Games and C² Ventures launch a $100M fund for blockchain gaming, and so much more!

From the boardroom to the metaverse, this is the meta business podcast. I Paul Dawalibi. The

master of the metaverse will lead you through the biggest business stories in the metaverse. Join us

as we break down the news and trends from the C suite lens, bringing you insights, analysis and

discussion that you can't find anywhere else. Every single week. Welcome to metta business.

Welcome to episode four of the metta business podcast. I am Paul master of the metaverse

Dawalibi. I'm joined today by my friend my co host, Jeff the juice Cohen. None other than Jeff

the juice Cohen I should say, Jeff, you're like you're famous. Now I have people telling me how

much they love the juice is everything I ever wanted.

For those of you guys who are new here, just a little reminder, because the podcast is new. What

we do here is we cover all the biggest stories that intersect the worlds of business and what

we're calling the metaverse or people are calling web three. So real focus on the business news and

stories coming from the metaverse and web three worlds and everything that intersects sort of

blockchain and gaming. So if this is what you're interested in, you're in the right place. And we

welcome you, Jeff, we've got a ton of news to cover this week, some some holdover themes from

last week. So there's, you know, similar players in the news this week. And and I think we should

start with maybe I don't know if this is the biggest news this week, but I thought it was the

most interesting. And the picture

here is definitely the most interesting. Let me let me share this screen here. For those who are

watching. If you're listening to this, I'm sorry, you don't get to see this. But, but this is Nike

in the news. And, and the headline here was Nike just bought a virtual shoe company that makes NF

T's and sneakers for the metaverse. The company is called. I'm gonna pronounce it. It's not the way

it's spelled. It's called artifact. Er, but it's spelled RT fkT. They make shoes too except they

only exist digitally. These are NF T's. They are digital shoes that are designed to be worn

digitally in the metaverse.

Jeff, what do you make of this acquisition? I guess what are some of the big thoughts? This is

Nikes. First, you know, we talked about Nike land last week. But this is the first acquisition I

think that they've done that touches the metaverse, right like they they have done some

things that are more web three. They're more Metaverse related.

But this is the first sort of acquisition Nike has made Is this a sign of the times that Nike is

making acquisitions in this space? I think yeah, I mean, it's it's it's very interesting. And you

know, who would have thought that when when sort of Metaverse kind of started becoming a big

buzzword that one of the kind of most forward leaning companies in this space of the non

endemics, I would say, has really been Nike. And they were pretty early with the roadblocks. Nike

landed now they're really taking a big step with this, this artifact acquisition. And it's

impressive the pace at which they've moved for such a large company to be innovative, and be

entering the space. And I do feel a bit vindicated. I think we talked about this actually,

on the last on the last podcast how, you know, I think I had made a comment, how what they were

doing with Nike land was very interesting, but I would get more excited when they started kind of

positioning it as Hey, rather than have it be a virtual space where we do brand advertisements and

try to sell physical shoes in the in the IRL world. Have it be Hey, we're just trying to sell

you digital shoes. I kind of thought that was where this was headed eventually. I didn't think

that it would be six days, kind of after I said that. So I guess kudos to me for calling out here.

Some of your prognostications skills are rubbing off on me, potentially. But yeah, I mean, I think

this is a really interesting acquisition, for sure.

Let me let me just I want to bring up sort of two things that were in this article that I want to

push a little bit. So first of all, it says that the company claimed in February, they did a

collaboration with teenage artists. Ferocious, not ferocious. Ferocious, to sell real sneakers paired

with virtual ones. And they managed to sell supposedly 600 pairs slash NF T's in just six

minutes, netting over 3.1 million, which is, you know, nothing to nothing to scoff at. Right.

That's a substantial amount of revenue in six minutes of time. What's interesting, though, is

that in this article, they mentioned that I'll read you precisely what they say. He says it's not

clear if any of these digital items are worth as much

Now, looking on open sea and nifty gateway, I see a number of them are either listed for or have

recently sold for less than their original prices. And so sort of interesting data point here that

the NF T's that were sold as part of that February sort of drop,

have not appreciated in value. Now, that's not, you know, that's obviously hasn't been the case

with the entire market, there's plenty that have appreciated in value substantially. But I also

find it interesting that it doesn't mention what the value of the physical sneakers have done.

Because if you look at the physical sneaker market, right, just about anything limited edition

has shot through the roof in terms of price over the last couple of years, right? The sneaker

markets, maybe the only other market, other than NF Ts and crypto. But as seen, and maybe luxury

watches that have seen such a massive, you know, appreciation in value. I guess I have a question

here. Is this the perfect intersection of physical and digital Right? Like are sneakers, the holy

grail for NF T's in your mind because of the hype around the physical product also? Or does that not

matter? And is the proof that the NFT the NFT versions of the physical shoes have not

appreciated in value? Right? It is? I don't see what I'm saying. They're the perfect, I don't

think they're perfect. I mean, I think for me, the most interesting digital goods are ones that have

use like in games, like I'm not sure cosmetics, you know, cosmetics clearly have value in games

that's been proven time and time out with with cosmetic economies and games. However, I think,

you know, digital items like swords or guns that have actual power within games and can can kind of

help you win, I think will always be potentially more interesting and hold more value. However, I

do think you may bring up a great point just in terms of the sneaker culture. Like I think it is

one of the few items where you have like baseball cards, watch it, like it's one of the things that

people actually collect, just to collect. So I think that that's why the the fact that the value

of these initial drops have, you know, the ones that came out in February dropped off, it doesn't

concern me that much. Because these can fluctuate in prices. And there are probably people that are

buying these as collector items, not necessarily a speculation that kind of a speculative hype mania.

So I do think that the fact that they're it's a it's a sneaker

collaborate collaboration probably actually does add a little bit of value there.

How much one sort of one final thought on this? How much do you think

the investors in artifact play into this exit here? Right? Like, again, I'm trying to what I'm

trying to do a separate hype, from underlying sort of interesting businesses from you know, any other

factors that maybe we're considering, right? Because I think part of our job with this show is,

in the time we're living in now is separating the hype from the genuinely interesting and good

businesses and opportunities. So that people can think critically about what they're reading about

and listening to right. Like, fundamentally, I think that's one of our jobs. And

when you look at the list of investors in artifact, right, Andreessen is the first investor.

Yeah. And recent, maybe the best venture investors on the planet like other than, like, you know, I

would put Sequoia and sort of them in, in a, in a very small group at the very top. And Andreessen

probably more active in the gaming space than just about anyone else. So far from the big the big

VCs, I, you know, not the pure, not counting the pure play,

you know, VCs? Is it? Is this exit a function of, it's a it's an Andreessen company, and they're

just really good at manufacturing exits, or do you think this is truly Nike?

Internally having a very clear vision around where they want to go with the metaverse with digital

goods within fts. And this is just part of their roadmap, and we're probably going to see two or

three sort of big plays from Nike going forward. Yes, this is sort of an interesting kind of bigger

question about about venture capital. I mean, did Are you are you asking did Andreessen pick a good

company that did well, and then had an exit because entries, it's good to pick companies or

get Andreessen, like hype up and trick Nike into buying this company that they invest in? I think I

didn't use that former, you know, rather than the latter, but that's, that's, I guess, a venture. A

bigger broader question. I'm venture capital.

No, but my

meaning is Andreessen the signal that led to this, like, it's an Andreessen company, so, you know,

it's got to be good, or something. Yeah. I think that's always the case. There's some validation

and they have a network and network of, you know, strategics and bankers that they work, so it is

very if you're an Andreessen backed company,

You're going to get certain opportunities that maybe a smaller company or someone with smaller,

less known backers are afforded the opportunity to to be involved with. What What I'm interested to

see, I didn't really see where, you know talked about they're developing virtual shoes, but didn't

talk about what platforms it was developing for. Is it just Roblox? Is it any game? Because it gets

back to what we talked about last episode with interoperability? And it's not clear to me yet

exactly. Where you can wear these shoes. You know, it's not as though is it only a Nike land on

Roblox is it? Hey, at some point, they want to be able to put shoes in any video game, anything

developed on unity, like, I'd like to understand a little bit more about the strategy of where you

can actually buy and wear the shoes. Well, that that brings up a whole other interesting sort of

conversation, because from my understanding, and from what I read,

you can't actually wear these digital shoes anywhere yet, right? They are supposedly

developing for these platforms. But today, all you can do is sort of have it in your wallet.

Right? It goes directly in your meta masks wallet or whatever.

What that tells me and also the fact that the company was founded in 2020 is, you know, this is

a really fast acquisition, right from startup to acquisition, in essentially a year

is incredibly quick. And then the products not fully fleshed out, which, again, I come back to

sort of, does Nike. Is Nike strategy really fully fleshed out here? Or is this like, Oh, my God, we

need to make a play. Everyone's doing stuff here. Right? Let's let's make a big splash. Let's

they're doing shoes. It makes sense for us, even though, you know, although, again, they had 3

million in revenue from that one drop. So, you know, the company's new, but I guess the third

option, the third potential option is that it's a little bit of an aqua hire. I don't think he's

feeling panicked. If anything, Nike has been very early to this. So I don't think this is a scenario

where we're sitting two years now. And everyone has a metaphor strategy. And everyone's on third

base, and you know, someone like pick a different company, and McDonald's, for example, just comes

out. It's like, Oh, my God, we need to, like we're three years behind. We need a metaphor strategies,

like go by whoever will take our money. That's not this because Nike is we just talked about at the

very beginning. I mean, they are incredibly early to this. So it's possible given how early stage

this is. This could be an aqua hire, could be Hey, we like this team. We want to bring them in and

kind of help they can help shape our Metaverse strategy. So if I had to guess, you know, it is

probably a bit of that. Jeff, can we contrast this with sort of the second story here, but I really

want to lump it in sort of with the first story and and that is Nikes major competitor, right. So

we've got Adidas here with a with a story of their own with a play of their own and the headline here

was adidas Originals launches NF T's and buys a plot in the sandbox metaverse. The article goes on

to say that adidas Originals will launch their first NF T's as they dive into web three in the

metaverse.

That's going to be a commercial part of the metaverse. They're going to market their digital

and physical products. And they're going to be inspired by this collection is going to be

inspired by and presented in partnership with NFT leaders, such as board a yacht club G money, and

the team behind the punks comic. All the NF T's are on sale. As of today, actually, the day we're

recording the 15th. And buyers will receive exclusive access to adidas Originals experiences

and products. So I see a distinct difference here in approach and strategy. Right? Adidas

not acquiring a company, right? Launching a collection with an existing platform with sandbox.

And also partnering with other sort of creators and artists. And if the creators and artists in

the space, right so very much it seems a more community and sort of I'll call it a less

aggressive approach and that they're, you know, working with the existing players. They're Nike

seems to have a clear vision in terms of like, we want to buy and do something. I don't know if you

see it that way. Or if you don't see a difference between the two approaches here. And which one do

you think is the right one, I guess? Yeah, no, I think you you summed up the differences decently

well. It feels like Nike has sort of taken the first they're a little maybe a base or two

ahead of Adidas. I'm not sure I necessarily understand the why by the sandbox land. Like I you

know, I

Still and again maybe it's

you know my naivete towards sandbox and kind of I just feels to me like there's a little bit of if

you build it they will come strategy and sandbox where I if I'm, if I'm a brand right now I'm going

to the platform, Roblox where I know there's 50 million users daily active users rather than going

to sandbox which, you know, I am not sure if we have an up to date daily active user account, but

I'm sure it's, you know, a fraction of what of what robots is. So I'm not sure the concept of why

go pay to buy this land, which we know actually isn't really that cheap. Clearly, for someone like

Adidas, it's, it's it's kind of pennies on the dollar, but it's in the millions of dollars, like

why go buy land there, when you could kind of do what Nike did, and create something in robots

where I think there's just more people in the environment. So to me, I take Nike strategy also,

you know, I like the idea of selling the actual virtual goods, you can you can, you could wear in

different games, eventually. I'm not sure what the deal is, it seemed more like they're, they're

selling NF T's like digital art versus, you know, actual things you can play in video games. This

brings up an interesting business model question I've got for you, Jeff, which is,

do you how critical Do you think it is? So we talked about Nike, we talked about Adidas, how

critical in your mind, is it to pair a physical good with the digital good? Like, is this? Is this

something that do you see this as sort of a short term trend that eventually goes away? When people

recognize the value the pure value of the digital goods and you don't need? Like? Is the physical

good a crutch? Or is it brilliant sort of marketing? Is it like, how do you see the

connection between those two things? And do you feel it's necessary for success? It's definitely

an early stage thing. I think you'll hate my answer a little bit, because it sort of depends on

where we are in sort of the entrance into the metaverse, right? If you take the the sort of

where we're all headed is we're going to spend most of our time in some sort of digital

Metaverse, and our digital avatar will become kind of that representation of ourselves will become as

important, if not more important than our physical in real life representation of ourselves, you'll

start to see less and less of the physical being tied to the digital because the digital will be

all that sort of matters or be more important. However, right now, I think we are a long way from

that. So I do think you know, with a lot of this, there is some element with with any sort of luxury

goods and I will say NF T's they function right now kind of as luxury goods, a lot of people are

buying these things. So they can make it their Twitter profile, or they can tell people about it

or be part of a club. So there is a lot of this conspicuous consumption when you're dealing with

these things. So I think tying a physical good to it saying like, hey, look, you have those cool

shoes, like, oh, wow, you bought that NFT. And like, you're one of those people that bought that.

It's a conversation starter. You know, like I bet Jimmy, you know, our mutual friend and colleague,

Jimmy from the live stream on in the podcast. He's the kind of guy that I could see buying, you know,

something like that and wearing those shoes. I don't know if you, you agree on that, or my whole

point. But yeah,

yeah, I, you know, a big part of me, wants to believe that it's, it's sort of a transitory kind

of crutch, right like that. There's some concern that people won't. And I don't mean, like a lot of

the people listening to this and watching this, all understand the value the future importance of

NF Ts and crypto and blockchain and all these technologies and how, you know, I think everyone,

for the most part, who listens to this has really bought into a certain vision of the future. But

for the mass for the, for the masses, right for the mainstream, who are still somewhat skeptical,

who maybe don't understand the value of, of, you know, ones and zeros of a totally virtual product.

Like it's most definitely an in an interesting crutch slash marketing tool, right? To say, look,

you're gonna buy the NFT, but you're gonna get a physical pair of shoes. So the $1,000 or $2,000

that you paid. There's not so bad, right? Like you could in your mind as someone who's maybe not knee

deep in the space justify it. And so I do see it as kind of clever marketing. But I think for the,

for the metaverse to truly be as transformational and revolutionary is I think you believe it will

be an I believe it will be

the physical, we can't be tethered to the physical in any way. Right? Like, we can't have the

physical be part of that equation. You can't have the trappings of the physical world for the

metaverse I think to be truly successful long term. We have to be able to digitize everything.

Everything we do everything we wear everything we like the all the

facets of humanity needs to be able to be virtualized, I think for this to work, and so

that's fair, but you need to people need to adopt that. So if this is a way that gets people to

start adopting that, I think, you know, we're so early in the game that it's, it is a good way to

onboard people into this world of understanding these things.

Um, oh, yeah. It's just does it teach the right thing? Right, does it? Is it the right message,

which is like, it's, it shouldn't feel like just an add on. Right? It shouldn't feel like a bonus.

Like the like the toy in the Happy Meal, right? Like, people need to believe this is the Happy

Meal, not the toy in the Happy Meal.

And so, you know, part of me loves it. Because I'm a I'm also a fan of, you know, we're the records

is always better than the happy meal. So your analogy was a good one, but just backwards.

Everyone bought the happy meal for the toy, not a toy.

But let me just sort of it's a good sort of segue to this other article, also was sandbox article,

where I'll just bring it up here, the co founder of the sandbox, Sebastian Borg, it Borg it

basically threatened. He says big tech threatens open blockchain based metaverse. He says the

decentralized Metaverse is his biggest consideration, and must be defended against big

tech. The blockchain based video game platform is gaining widespread attention for its NFT virtual

land sales, with some plots going for millions of dollars. So

you know, in this, obviously, they name the meta, which is Facebook. Now they name Tencent, they

NetEase right. Some of these very big tech companies that are building their own sort of

Metaverse plays. I find it somewhat ironic that the sandbox, which is its own closed ecosystem,

for the most part

is sort of, you know,

crying about about big tech.

Is very Tim Sweeney. Right? Like cry Oh, no, these people are bad come to my version, which is like,

pretty similar, but not owned by me, not them, so it's better.

But

the reason why I Liked this article is he's right, right? He's absolutely correct. The problem is,

none of these players not meta not NetEase, not Tencent, not sandbox, not decentraland. Not like

no one can make that argument with any legitimacy for the reason you just described. Right. Like,

so. So who becomes?

And there's an interesting philosophical business question here. Right? The internet had Defense

Department beginnings, right. And being government word, were not necessarily driven by profit. And

that sort of helped the adoption of certain standards.

Why is there a regulatory body in your mind that solves this problem? Do you think the big tech

firms get together and solve it? Jeff, do you think you get guys? Sebastian here? I'm not sure

the big tech firms getting together and solving it would would satisfy what he's saying. I do think

at the core of this is his I think his premise is is a bit flawed. Like if you just pull up the

headline, you know, he is the argument that he makes is almost impossible to dispute. The

question that I guess I have for you is, does the eventual Metaverse as you envision it, or kind of

the if we go call it nirvana? Metaverse, whatever the perfect Metaverse is, does it have to be open

blockchain based like, it feels like there's a lot of people who are trying to push blockchain into

the metaverse when to me it's like, they don't have to necessarily be related at all. You know,

it's kind of the same thing where like, people would talk about cloud gaming, and always talk

about subscription because it's like, well, that's how Netflix did it with Cloud street with with

streaming like, just because something like for the metaverse, we don't necessarily need

blockchain. I understand that having ownership of items of digital goods is important but like, I

don't necessarily think that needs to be on an open decentralized ledger. I can have ownership of

a good if it's in a database that's owned by Facebook, like I you know.

Yeah. for all intensive purposes, for the artist. My is my point correct or or my off base there in

your mind. I was with you right till the very end. So I think for the ownership of assets. Blockchain

makes total sense, right? Because it's

Like, if you buy a piece of land in Florida, right? That land sale gets recorded in a public

ledger. That's, you know, the government here doesn't have to be on the blockchain. No, but

meaning it's accessible by anyone, you know, the government's not gonna go out of business.

You know, they're not going to disappear tomorrow. So there's certain safety and comfort that comes

with a record being stored into decentralized way. If you're talking about the ownership of an asset.

I think for the metaverse, capital M to happen in the way Sebastian, from the Sandbox is describing

here, you really only need like open technology standards, right, agreed upon protocols and

standards so that one can communicate with the other. And I don't think that necessarily at all

has to be blockchain based at all right? Like that, to me is, if anything, I don't think

eventually will be blockchain based. I think the the solutions there will just be agreed, agreed

upon protocols, API Standards, whatever, right so that all of these meta different platforms can

talk to each other and interact with each other. The bigger question I have from this article for

you is, and I think no one's talking about it for whatever reason is, what is the business model

that wins in Sebastian's vision of the metaverse here, right? So in this perfectly open,

sort of standard, standardized Metaverse, right where big tech is not dominant. How does anyone

make money other than through

NFT? purchases? Right, like other than sale of cosmetics? Do we see new business models? Is it

subscriptions is it I don't cosmetics? I mean, it could be it could be a you're the company and

there's there's a whole rabbit hole we can go down with like Dows, and kind of how the lot of these

Metaverse kind of blockchain plays are creating decentralized autonomous organizations and sort of

giving power back to the people and like, maybe that is where all this heads to me that

I'm not sure that that that we get that far. But but that is a rabbit hole, we can go down now or a

different time. But potentially the way the way these companies make money is that just because

they're here so early, they own so much the land they own so much of the stuff they own so much,

they literally made the money that it's like, they just basically

either rent the land to people, sell them more stuff, sell them things. So it's just like

creating things within that. Because they were there early, they have all the stuff to begin

with. And then you start parceling it out and you, you know, effectively get Fiat for giving them

goods. But I'm not sure that it has to be a completely different business. Like I don't think

it's a subscription model or anything like that.

So you think business models just sort of translate over? You don't think we've seen

completely new ways of thinking about how these how completely open meta versus make money?

Why does that? Why would it be? I guess different because it's completely open. Like someone still

has to, I guess the openness doesn't necessarily to me mean anything besides Hey, everyone like

that ownership rather than being in a database owned by a company. It's in a database, or a

blockchain not owned by anyone.

But I think like the the sort of basic economic tenets of like, buying and selling goods would

still apply. I yeah, I mean, I've heard theory, I've heard a lot of people believe that it's still

going to be like ad driven like most of the internet, right? But fundamentally,

all the talk about NF T's and everything else is going to be dwarfed by the amount of advertising

dollars, you know, that are going to be, you know, pumped into these new these new worlds. And I, you

know, I could, I could make all of those arguments. I'm just curious. Everything, if we get

to a world where everything digital, it's almost like, Who are you selling the at? You're selling

ads to buy digital goods? Right? Yeah. Are you selling the ads to the owner of the platform,

they're still someone's gonna buy the digital goods. So you have digital, you'll effectively

have companies selling digital goods that I guess are advertising to, you know, whoever owns the

platform. But in order for that, in order for it to be worth it for them to buy the digital ad,

that would also have to be a digital economy based on buying and selling digital goods. You know?

Yeah, no question. Right. But but the I also believe in this, we just talked about it, right.

There's this sort of in between period, where no one's plugging in yet and spending seven days a

week in a virtual world and living and working and operating in there, right. There's no reason why.

If we believe a lot of attention is moving there that you can't your advertisers won't want to hear

you're saying I 100% agree in the early days, you're right average

will probably be a bigger driver. But if we get to this capital and Metaverse by definition,

advertising couldn't be bigger than the, you know, the GDP of goods being sold like it just fair.

Fair to make sense.

Let's talk about one last story. One sort of another big story this week. And I feel like this

is going to become a recurring theme. And I look, I think it's our duty to cover it also. And, and

this is from VentureBeat and the headline here gala games and see two ventures c squared ventures

launch $100 million fund for blockchain games. They've launched this 100 million dollar fund

according failure called to accelerate the development of blockchain gaming. It's an alliance

between gala games, the blockchain game company headed by Zynga co founder, Eric share Meyer, and

a new crypto investment led by Charice sun, former head of blockchain investments for huobi.

This is it says the fun comes after a whirlwind gala vers event over the weekend in Las Vegas,

where gala Games announced game deals with will right, Peter Mullenix, Ember games, AMC and

certain affinity.

And so a lot of big names in here. I mean, Jeff, is this more of the same? Do you see anything

unique here?

I think you hit it with sort of the last sentence you threw in there in terms of a lot of big names.

And that's that's kind of why I picked pick this story for us to talk about. Because frankly, like

you said, there are, as we had predicted there, every week, there's three or four of these, hey,

XYZ raises 100 million $200 million fund to invest in blockchain games, which great, that's awesome

for the ecosystem. The interesting thing here was was the names of the people that are getting

invested. I think we've talked a lot about this. It's been a recurring theme, how, you know, for

blockchain gaming ecosystem to really grow and take off, you need more people who have experience

building great games to actually come build great games that use blockchain as a mechanic, rather

than as a crutch and kind of the whole point of the game. So the fact you see well, right, who,

you know, correct me if I'm wrong, was created as a Sims very famous game designer. And the other

guy forgot his name, but I think he was the watermelon guy behind fable.

So, you know, these are kind of royalty items, you know, folks in the industry, I think that is a

great sign.

You know,

it's this, this was an interesting story for me, and I didn't expect to see, I think we said on the

last podcast, and everyone should go listen to previous episodes if you haven't caught up yet.

But I think I mentioned on a previous episode, that we were gonna see at least three or four of

these in the next few months, right like the the it was inevitable that I think we agreed that more

and more of these were going to pop up what I find, and this is sort of my take on these

blockchain based gaming Metaverse slash Metaverse fund slash slash Metaverse slash web three funds

venture funds, is you end up with what happened to venture capital in Canada in like the mid 2000s.

And let me explain what happened in Canada in the mid 2000s. With venture was you had the government

that essentially seeded a half dozen private venture capital funds, right. And that went and

raised money. So you had you ended up having six funds in in a certain area and a certain geography

in Canada, that we're all doing tech, and that we're all managing 50 to $150 million, right. And

the result of that was for the next 10 years, or the next five years, every single half decent tech

company that came out of Canada would raise a round, and have every single one of these funds

invested in their round, right? Like, because to put together you know, 5 million or $6 million

round, you would need a million from this guy and a million from that guy. And, you know, always

three to four out of the six funds would be in every single deal. decent deal, right? And I feel

like the gaming funds went down that path. Now the blockchain based gaming and Metaverse funds are

going down this path where they're still as for all the excitement and hype and my conviction that

this is the future, there's still a limited number of good deals. And every single one of these

funds, they're all going to be in the exact same deals, right? And so if you're an LP, and you're

looking at the space like

that none of them start to feel or look any different is my concern, right? Like, but if the

question I have, I guess, Paul, then if you're an LP, if it's it sounds like then the answer is you

can go to any of them or none of them. But like wouldn't it still be better if you want exposure

to go to any of them? So I guess I don't understand from an LPS perspective, why is that

bad? But how do you make

How do you make that decision? Right? When they all look the same feel the same for the most part,

are invested in the same deals, or just betting on the space right?

In or not. I mean, I get your I see your point that you'd like someone to be differentiated and

better. But I guess if it's such a niche where it's like they're all the same, then the answer is

zero or one question like, then you can make a choice if you want in or out. But your overarching

point is you'd rather like bigger funds come in and kind of have, you know, just more players like

is that is that kind of what you're doing? More players, players of varying size, right? Not just

all 100 million dollar funds, but some 50 and some 500, right, so that you can see companies through

their lifecycle, but also just like innovation, because I think with Metaverse, web three, all the

themes we discuss, there's a lot of opportunity, I think, to think different about how venture is

done, whether it's more of a venture studio model, whether it's, you know, part of 10% of your fund

is direct investments in, you know, crypto assets themselves or something, you know, something

that's anything that's different or innovative, I would love to be able to, to I would love a story

that comes out and talks about that, even if it's just part of the storytelling because all of them

are starting to feel way too similar to me. And

again, I don't know if that's just because there's so much hype that

everyone jumps in without sort of thinking through completely the model, right? If you can go raise

100 million and just by saying your blockchain based gaming venture fund, right, like, why make

the extra effort? Yeah.

But I do think I do think it's something to watch like if we start seeing for more funds like this

all exactly the same.

I think we need to have a sort of a serious discussion as an industry to say, what does that

mean for the companies in this space? So I was gonna say then we should start a blockchain gaming

company.

That's true. That is the lesson here.

Man that went fast that flew by Jeff we. That's that's all we have for this week. Guys. Just two

reminders. These episodes come out every single week they drop every Monday or Tuesday. Right now

is the schedule we're going with. Also, if you love like Metaverse themed content, make sure to

check out our sister podcast met a woman hosted by Lindsey poss who

is a co host on the business of esports which is maybe how you found this podcast. If you didn't

find this podcast or business of esports definitely go check out business of esports Jeff

and I make some great content there especially the Wednesday night 8:30pm live stream 8:30pm Eastern

Time Live Stream, but we're gonna continue to put out meta business podcasts every single week,

Jeff, thank you as always, everyone loves the juice. Everyone. Thanks everyone here in the juice

every single week. And feedback. Yeah, love. We'd love feedback on how you guys are liking the show.

And we will see you next week.

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