February 6; Adventures in universes real and not so much 🥽
Sharing thoughts on VC and playing around with the Metaverse... this was my week
Happy Sunday,
It’s been another whirlwind week on my end, with lots of work, and also lots of good moments of fun with Ellie.
On the work side, I got the chance to share some of my more abstract ideas on venture investing on two occasions. One was thanks to Forbes Bulgaria, who published the video of the talk, in Bulgarian, that I gave at their DNA of Success conference last November. I shared some thoughts back then, on how good it was to attend a proper industry event at national level again, seeing many fellow fund managers and entrepreneurs in person, for the first time since the pandemic hit. And then on stage I got the chance to talk a bit about our vision with Vitosha, and hopefully stress the point that we’re all in the entrepreneurship effort together as a community. Here’s the full video of my talk:
Another occasion was the publication of an insightful venture capital guide, by the folks that run the SeedBlink crowd-investing platform. They interviewed over 50 active angel- and VC investors throughout the CEE region, and a few of my quotes made it to the book as well. I was particularly happy the editors selected one of them, on the “slow” character of venture capital:
You can download the entire ebook for free if you register with SeedBlink, it’s probably a nice read if you’re fundraising or if you’re from outside the region, and are trying to understand what’s going on in this part of Europe in terms of venture funding. Plus, it’s a nice who-is-who of the currently active funds and individuals.
Outside work, Ellie and I discovered a nice mineral spa right on the outskirts of Sofia, on Pancharevo lake, called Infinity Spa. It’s quite small, but the water in the pool comes directly from a local hot spring, and the tiny sauna, steam bath, and especially the gorgeous mountain and lakeside views make it a pleasant retreat for a few hours, only 12km from downtown Sofia:
Last week I already announced it, and this weekend we finally got around to playing with our newest toy; the Meta Quest 2 Virtual Reality system. It’s the latest version of the Oculus product that Meta (Facebook) acquired a few years ago.
After two or so hours in the headset, I can start accepting that this is some part of the future that lies ahead of us. I remember well my first encounter with the World Wide Web, spending endless Sundays on my dad’s Unix workstation at his office back in 1994, looking up the few available websites through the XMosaic browser and AltaVista search. It was clunky, far from useful, and yet terribly exciting and very clearly something from the future.
The experience in the Quest headset is very similar to that 1994 internet. The UX is loosely based on the windows and frames we know from our computers and phones, and most of the apps are showcases of what the tech can do, where you either take scenic rollercoaster rides or get immersed in picturesque 360-degree virtual skylines of cities or mountain ranges.
I think it’s pretty plausible that the next (or one-after-next) generation of the device can be used as an alternative to desktop Zoom meetings, or as a tool for hosting virtual property viewings when selling your house. Games too, of course have a big future on these. I personally still fail to understand why any of the massive amounts of data in VR needs some kind of decentralized processing. All the apps I tried out were around 1GB each, and to imagine that even a part of what such an app does has, for some reason, to be validated through a public blockchain, is just mind-boggling.
Yet, all the talk of Web 3.0 is somehow inseparably connected to blockchain and decentralized ledgers, so we’ll see. I think a big part of this is marketing hype, and will wither away as this technology becomes more common, and governments start properly cracking down on everything blockchain and crypto, which seems to be the trend lately.
One internet business friend of mine recently told me in a private conversation, that he believes the Metaverse will be about building a parallel reality for the have-nots, where you can work, relax, and travel, without ever leaving your house (or actually headset), while the wealthy class gets exclusive rights on the ever more scarce physical experiences. I genuinely hope that’s not the case, and I believe capitalism and democratically accountable regulation are our best safeguards against such a dystopian future. Like any technology, it will bring out the best and the worst in us, and it’s up to ourselves to create and enforce rules and codes of conduct for the good to prevail.
So overall, it’s good fun and early days. If you own a Meta Quest as well, let me know, would be great to hang out there and see if the interaction is close to real-life. For now, back to the real world…
Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇
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