Asad J. Malik - Founder of Judu AR on Building the Future of AR Gaming

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today we are joined by Asad J. Malik, the founder of jadu. Thank you so much for coming to the show.

Absolutely. I'm glad we finally made it happen.

I know it's been quite some time and it's been so incredible just watching your journey and what you guys have done. And for the people that may not know what you've built at jadu, I would love for you to give a high level overview of what it is before we dive into it.

Sure, yeah. So Jadu is fundamentally an AR company. We've been building augmented reality from an entertainment perspective for a long time that involved building narrative experiences that we would take to film festivals like Sundance and Tribeca. And throughout this journey, roughly two years ago, we got really into the NFT crypto space and we're really active there. And out of that has basically emerged the position we are in right now, which is we are a reasonably well funded, large AR company, essentially trying to build a new form of AR game.

So cool. And when I think about ar, it's something that truly excites me. Right. I think there's a lot of people that you think about virtual reality and AR augmented reality there. It's, it's a different, different landscape. Right. And when you think about AR and where it is today, what, like what is your consensus of where AR is today and what direction is it moving in in terms of the use case for people watching and listening that may not be utilizing it today?

I think honestly the best way to look at the landscape is by breaking down the companies that are operating in IT at the moment. So on one hand you have enterprise ar, which we're just going to put aside for now because it's a thing on its own. People use it in warehouses and architecture firms and design reference material, things along those lines. But if you look at the entertainment or consumer ar, which is the category we're active in, you have Niantic, right? Niantic build, Pokemon Go. And Pokemon Go is amazing map based ar, you know, that's what it does well, it puts things on the map, you go find them. So it's a very specific, focused genre of ar. Then you have Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. And they do a very different type of augmented reality, which is filters, you know, so their ar, the primary purpose of their AR is to record a more interesting 2D video. But it's not about the 3D, it is about the 2D video at the end of the day. And once again, if you look at the landscape, that's where it ends. There really isn't anything else when it comes to consumer AR that's really being used. And what we do is we do augmented reality that is about your immediate location. So wherever you are, we augment that reality. So we're building gameplay that uses your walls and your plans and your immediate location to give you an immersive gameplay experience in the application.

Yeah. And, you know, for the people watching or listening, you were showing me something before we, before we hopped in the podcast and like, seeing it. Right. It's such a different feeling than just hearing it like we're talking about right now. How do you describe what you've built in terms of, you know, utilizing AR in your room and the walls? Like, for people that might not understand that concept? I'd love for you to just break down sort of what you showed me in terms of what you've built in a way that people could understand without necessarily seeing it yet.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there are a couple of fundamental pieces to the way we're doing things. One of those pieces is that our gameplay revolves around a playable character. So this is a pretty fundamental shift from how people think about ar. Because AR has always been thought of as a first person medium. You are the player, you're looking at your surroundings, you're interacting with your surroundings, but you don't need a character because you are the character. We are treating it as a third person medium where we're giving you a character and you're moving the character around and the character is actually engaging with the world. And that fundamentally changes a bunch of things. First of all, it gives you a lot more mobility. You know, if you're sitting on a seat, you can't really do much if something's behind you, but if there's an avatar, you could get it to run behind you. Or, you know, you got two degrees of mobility rather than just the one camera that you're holding. Another thing it does is it makes the content and the experience much more rich because you have something there that's interacting. And if you post a video of that on social media, people kind of know what's happening there. The character is going around. It's not just from a first person perspective. So that's one thing. The next thing that we're doing is what I was just showing you, which is this idea of remote multiplayer augmented.

Reality, which is very fascinating, by the way.

Yeah, it's just one of those things which we pinch ourselves. Like, no one's Done this before. It's just kind of obvious. But ar, from a multiplayer perspective, whenever you say multiplayer ar, people think of two people in the same room looking at the same content at the same time, which makes sense. You're augmenting reality for two players. So it's multiplayer arc. But what people have never really considered is what if you could do remote multiplayer in which you have two different people in two different locations looking at the same AR content together, in which case two different realities are being augmented at the same time. So what that means in our case is I can have my character in my room, and if you're in a different room, I can see your character in my room too, and you can see both of our characters in your room, respectively. So both realities are being augmented with the same content.

Yeah, it's very cool. And, you know, I have so many questions, and we'll go down there, but I want to take a step back and sort of dive into your journey as a. As an entrepreneur. And where did this idea and passion for creation and building come from when it comes to your journey as a founder?

I mean, we can go pretty. We can go far back with this, obviously, because, you know, when people are kids, they're, you know, playing with their toys and all that. I. I had a. I had a very rich relationship with my toys.

Okay. In what way?

Well, honestly, I was really into WWE and professional wrestling and all that. Just the theatrics of, you know, like, people playing these gimmicks and characters in a live setting and whatnot really fascinated me. So I had a pretty elaborate world with my toys where all of them had kind of a personality and a character and rivalries and relationships and, you know, things would just unfold over long periods of time. And when I was around 11, I got into making websites and just being on the Internet, making things on the Internet that other people were using, and, you know, that's a pretty familiar journey. I think a lot of people have gone through that and, yeah, honestly, lost, like, two decades. I've just been making things on the Internet and one thing after the other. You know, I landed in AR seven years ago, and since then it's been very much focused on ar.

And where did you grow up?

I grew up in Pakistan. So I'm from Pakistan. I lived there my entire life. I was there until I was 16. That's when I got a scholarship to go to a high school in the Netherlands.

Wow.

So I went to the Netherlands, and when I graduated from there, I took a year off and then, long story short, I ended up in this art school in Vermont.

Wow.

Yeah.

Art school in Vermont. What, what led you like, after Vermont? You know, we met just, I think just under two years ago here in L. A. When did you come out to LA and what brought you out here?

As soon as I graduated from college, I came to L. A. You know, the choices were really just San Francisco and LA because New York's too cold and San Francisco just wasn't as appealing. Honestly, like, as someone who came here with the Silicon Valley dream with the intention of, you know, being in tech, I just started finding it really homogeneous and, you know, I wanted a place that had more of a creative scene as well. And LA kind of fit that.

That's awesome. Coming from Pakistan, living in la. When did you get to la? How old were you when it comes to the company and the life cycle of building? Like, where were you in life when you moved out here? Because I think just over the years of now, seeing what you've built and the creative process, it's like this has been a phenomenal place in terms of the industry, the culture. But when you moved to la, was Jadu a thing or when did that start?

Jadu was a thing before I moved to LA in the sense that it was a thing on my notebook, you know, it wasn't a real thing.

Okay.

You know, we had lived in LA for short spans before, like three months for a project, you know, do something, take a do festival, go back to school. We had done that a couple times. So through doing that we knew we wanted to end up here. And so when we graduated and when I'm saying we, it's me and Jack, you know, who was my co founder and went to school with me. So when we moved to la, when we actually fully moved, we incorporated Jawd immediately. So, you know, it was always the idea for the long term sustainable project because we were tired of doing one off projects. We wanted to do something that we could really put ourselves into for a long period of time. And so Jodhu was incorporated at that time without exactly knowing what it would become. Know the point was to build consumer AR in a new way and reach a large audience. What shape it was going to take wasn't so clear. And it's evolved a lot since.

Yeah, and like getting into AR and you know, not necessarily knowing what direction it was the company was going to go in from the start, that passion for ar, you and your partner, what were some of the, the opportunities that you saw early on with ar. And what sparked that initial interest?

So, you know, the initial interest. If you don't mind, I'm going to put my hair back. Yeah, with the. With the.

Yeah, the headphones.

Let's see.

I'll react the question to.

Okay, that's it.

So when you were starting Jadu, what initially sparked your interest in AR and what opportunities did you see early on?

So, you know, it's a really. This is an important question because, you know, I've been doing this for the last seven years, and I foresee myself doing this for the rest of my life, just AR being the focus. And it goes back to kind of my teenage years of, you know, some level of existentialism, of being like, all right, like, I'm here. I'm here on this Earth. Like, what's. What's meaningful, what's valuable? What do I want to contribute to? And when I started asking that question, I was like, all right, is it humanity? Is it the Earth? Is it the environment? Is it our solar system? The further you go out, you realize, well, value is very hard to grasp. And so the conclusion I came to, which has stuck with me so far in terms of what value is, I thought that the fact that we exist as really complex observers of our universe and is really valuable, the fact that all this is happening around us and we are here to observe it in incredibly complex ways, more complex than anyone has in the past, in my opinion. Right. As far as we know, are there aliens out there that are more complex? We don't know. And with that perspective, I want to just contribute to humans being able to further, even with more degrees of complexity, be able to observe and comment on the universe. And if you think about that, what are the avenues at our disposal to do that? Really? There is AI, VR and ar. Those are really the big ones in our lifetime that are going to continue going. And AR was one that was really intriguing to me because it had a lot of creative potential. It was very visual in nature. It was different from VR in a few key ways. On one hand, wasn't removing you from reality, because reality is really quite interesting and we're barely scratched the surface of it.

Yeah.

So instead of going into completely going inwards, which what VR does, this is engaging, you know, the world. So to me, AR was the ultimate medium. It's a medium that brings the vastness of our existing reality and combines it with the vastness of our virtuality. And so with that, I was like, okay, I'm going to do AR my whole life, and then the Question was, okay, what makes sense right now? And in terms of the landscape that was existing at that time, it was really mostly like, architecture and references and things like that. So I wanted to start making more creative narrative work. And at this point, we are quite literally focused on gaming, which is where I think most of the potential lies.

That's fascinating to hear your perspective on VR, AR and understanding why, looking outward instead of inward. Where do you think of AR versus? Not versus, but just how they work together and how they're different. Where do you see VR? Right. You see all of this push with Meta and obviously Oculus. Where do you think that currently stands from the market? Right. I know, I saw Apple is coming out with their headset. That's. I don't know when exactly it may be coming out, but what do you think about VR in the context of what it's doing in a productive way versus AR overall? I'd just love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I think fundamentally, conceptually speaking, there are different mediums. One is about distracting you from your reality and giving you another reality to deal with, whereas the other is very much about getting you to focus more on your existing reality and look at it from different perspectives. So, you know, they're different, but they're also very close together because they're both on a similar trajectory in terms of hardware development and the type of people that fund the stuff. So Apple's headset or Meta's headsets, they're both, you know, AR and VR is both quite closely tied together. Both those headsets are going to have mixed reality views and, you know, like pass through AR and things like that. But if we're just talking about the differences between AR and VR, VR is going to serve more of a purpose of, you know, what television serves. You know, it's not with you at all times. But if you want to have an immersive experience and really go through something that's more than what your phone can offer, you can go do that. But I think that the market is going to be comparable to, let's say, like the console market. Got it.

That makes sense. I want to talk about Jadu. You guys raised a large Series A, and as you said, that you're well funded and you have an incredible product that you're building in the gaming space. What does that process been like when it comes to, you know, diving into NFTs and then raising a large round of funding and now having the ability to go do the things you guys want to do? I would love to Walk through that process on when NFTs came into the picture and what it's been like, you know, working with some of these partners that have invested into the company and you know, what the future beholds.

Yeah, no, it's been a pretty wild ride, honestly. So the way it started was I moved to LA and we incorporated drawdu and we got a million dollar check from Verizon to build them a bunch of, you know, air that was more education oriented, 5G use cases essentially. And so we took that money, used it to really hire our initial four or five people. So we had a small team and we were doing some contract work, but we were also building on product because the intention was build a product and the product we had identified was we wanted to build a mobile app that was really clear. We wanted to reach a large audience where they are. And the shape that the app was initially taking was we were doing these holograms of various musicians and it was very much along the lines of when TikTok was really blowing up and the pandemic was starting. So we would record these holograms, you could place the holograms in your room, record videos with them and post them on TikTok. That was, it was a pretty straightforward model. The limitations were that the holograms couldn't be very long because we, we would actually need someone to come to a studio. We would record them with 106 cameras, reproduce the image. It was a whole 106 cameras? Yeah, 106 cameras. We were capturing volumetric video. The department that built that technology at Microsoft got shut down last week. So everyone got fired.

Wow.

Yeah, it's crazy. So we were on that wave, but that wave has now pretty much, I wouldn't say ended, but a big part of it has. So we were doing that for a while and we raised a pre seed kind of around over the course of a year. So the first we took a couple to $50,000 checks from a couple of professors that knew me from college and they were just really excited about what we were doing. And you know, and then we raised a bit more a year later from some Pakistani investors in New York who'd gotten really excited about what I was building and the fact that I was a Pakistani, that was a factor for them. And so we got like, I'd say a million and a half worth of pre seed at that time and we'd built a small team and the app was, you know, starting to be a thing. We worked with Lil Nas X for his Call Me by Your name song, you know, that was like a big moment for us. And along around the same time, the NFT stuff was starting to happen and we were dipping our toes in it personally. Like me and a bunch of other people in our team were, you know, we, I, I put out, I directed a music video for Pussy Riot that sold as an nft. It's the most expensive music video ever sold as an NFT still. Yeah. Wow. So that was like my first nft. And when that happened we, we realized that there's a lot of potential here because a lot of the, the concepts that were coming out of the crypto space around interoperability and this idea of the metaverse, they didn't directly apply to us, but they applied to us in a really interesting AR kind of format. So with that we started building these accessory items, jetpacks and hoverboards that were NFTs, but they were interoperable. You could use them in AR, you could use them with your character. This is how we got into the third party character as an avatar model, which I'm really happy we stumbled upon that because of this. And the way it happened was we released jetpacks.

I remember, I remember this. I continue. You guys sold out. And it was such a moment.

Yeah, that, that, you know, I tell the story always like it was our first month. So I was pretty worried. It was a custom contract and everything. And you know, when the sale went live, I went to the website and try to get one just to see if it's working before I make the announcement. And I, you know, submitted the transaction, made the announcement, came back and my transaction had failed because we had sold out before my test transaction.

Oh my gosh.

That's how quickly Jetbox sold out, which was ridiculous.

And why. And just for context of the audience listening, you know, what was this? 2021. Yeah, 2021. NFTs and the market now.

Right.

It's obviously way different from 2021, 2022, and there's been a lot of changes. Where do you see the market now as a company that you're not just an NFT company by any means, but you had this idea and you executed on it in the market that at the time was, you know, growing very, very quickly. Still is, but it's been, it's changed a lot. Where do you see NFTs right now? And, and then I want to talk about, you know, some of the, the experiences that you've Learned through the NFTs and over the course of the last two years.

Yeah, so it's in a very different place right now. It's not nearly in as much of an optimistic place as it was at that time. And what was happening that time was definitely mania level, you know, know, and like, we all, like, you know, you got a sense of that.

Yeah.

And so that's actually why we, after Jetpacks, we raised a seed round that General Catalyst led and the NFTs were, you know, like I had a call with Nico, who is the, our main investor from General Catalyst, and him and I have a really, you know, great relationship. I learned a lot from him and, you know, he was like, look, like we think what you're doing is really interesting. It's really novel. It has this obvious use case right now. We don't know if this will be the use case in the long term, but we trust your team and what you're building. But it's really about the ar. That's why we're investing in you. And so we went ahead and released hoverboards straight after because there was so much momentum. And hoverboards, you know, did really well. We made 4 or 5 million dollars on the pre sale. So just with the second sale, we had basically made the money that we had raised on the seed round a month ago, know. So because there was so much momentum and we were finding so much progress with hiring and we had attracted a lot of great talent. That's why we went ahead with the Series A. And the Series A was, you know, in retrospect, at least right now, I think a great decision because the markets got really bad, you know, they got really bad really quickly. Yeah, we were one of the last rounds that was at a 200 million plus valuation for, you know, a company that's at our stage.

Wow.

And now is that a good thing or a bad thing? Time will tell. But the bottom line is we raised money at a bull market valuation and are now spending it in the bear market. In bear market terms, we're being very careful where our Runway is quite extended. We have money till late 2025, you know, and we can sustain a good sized team till then. And we have a lot of plans in the meantime. So coming back to your question about the NFT space, our strategy right now is that we're not making new NFTs. That's not a great way to reach a large audience at the moment. And so we're keeping it to the collections we have because we have those holders and we're really treating those holders as early supporters. They're not our final audience. I think that's a mistake. If we only start building for the people that hold our assets, we don't grow, we need to grow to a large audience. That's how it's going to be best for our holders as well. So that's kind of how we are treating it.

It's so fascinating and I, I love the way you think about it and you know, that's a use case and that's, that's a representation of the early adopters to what you're doing. I'd love to learn about your experience fundraising. Right. Like the markets, as you said, were very different. And to go raise a round that you did, as you said, a 200 plus million dollar valuation. Was that your first time raising capital for a company?

I had raised a seed round before that, yeah.

But this is the first time like you're, you're on this journey raising capital. I think, you know, I'd love to ask you, if you were to now reflect on your journey of raising capital, what advice would you have for founders, not only in this different market, but you, you know, I'm sure you have conversations with your investors and their change of thinking in this market, like, where do you see it and you know, what advice would you give yourself if you were now fundraising today?

I, you know, I'd say bootstrap as much as possible. At the end of the day, you know, like, I think you can get a lot of validation in really cheap ways. Sometimes even you have a product idea, like make a TikTok ad for the product and just run it on a bunch of demographics and see if you even have any interest, you know what I mean? Like, a lot of people make the mistake of just doubling down on something that they think would work, but they don't really have any way of validating till a lot of money has been sunk into it. And, you know, so it's a tricky one. I think we are in a pretty unique position because we have a product that is the result of seven years worth of work in a very specific niche industry that we know inside and out and see a lot of potential in and have a really unique take on. And at the end of the day, that's the core thing that was able to get us through these steps. If you just look at my fundraising journey, it looks like, oh, you came out of college and before, in a couple months you had 200 million plus valuation round. But there were a lot of steps before that which were build a small project, take it to a festival, get some press, put it out in the world, help it find an audience, go try to get it sold to a platform that will publish it. Like, there are a lot of those steps that allowed us to see what was working in that space and what wasn't working in order to have a unique perspective on, you know, something that was. And, you know, the reason the. The round also made sense was because we were bringing in pretty ridiculous amounts of revenue through NFTs. And that was an opportunistic kind of setup. But. But regardless, we did execute it really nicely, and there was clearly a lot of market validation and demand that made it easy. So I think it's just important to stay on it. You know, Nico, who led our seed, I basically first pitched to him, like, probably two and a half years before he wrote the check.

Wow.

And every three months, I'd send him an update and he would say, awesome job, great updates. Still a no. You know, until it was a yes. And it was, you know, there was a long process behind it. Still totally no.

That's. It's so cool to hear, like, the. The opportunistic perspective, but also the timing. Right. Like, you guys not only timed it great, but you put yourself in a position to have the Runway to go execute on what you want. I'd love to talk about team, because what you guys are building, as you said, is so specific. What does the team look like when it comes to building ar, and where do you spend your time as a founder?

So this has been a big thing, right? It's been a big learning process. We hired 50 people last week. Sorry, sorry, my bad. Last year, which was a ridiculous journey, you know, going through. You know, you're constantly hiring. There was a time where I wasn't even talking to every single person that was being brought on. And I think we made a lot of mistakes and, you know, we learned from them really quickly. We. This is actually something I've not spoken about publicly. We didn't really make a public announcement out of it or anything, but we did let go of people as well. Late last year, we let go of 10, 10 people, which was a significant chunk of the company. And, you know, we've been a lot more careful with hiring and, you know, have just made things a lot tighter. Yeah, but that's just how you learn, you know what I mean? Like, at the end of the day, if you're going to scale something really quickly, they're going to be, you know, moments that you. You made certain decisions based on things where that made sense at the time that over time have not made sense. So I think we are at a place right now that I'm feeling very strong about. This year we started off fresh with a new setup. Our head of design is now our VP of product and really the way that we're working is him and I have a pretty much three hour long working session every evening and we open Figma. You know, we like have a very design first kind of approach. We got in Figma together, the CEO and the head of product, him and I update each other on things that have happened throughout the day. He's based in London, so you know, we meet at 10pm every evening and in those three hours we have a list of features we're looking at and we grab one of them and we make a bunch of decisions, we try to get to a bunch of conclusions and whatever raw material we need for those decisions has been already gathered. And then those decisions go through a cycle, a process that is cyclical, where he takes them to the design team, I take them to other people in the leadership. Next day we get thumbs ups all across the board like, this is great, this is great. This needs to be adjusted. It goes to design, it gets converted to wireframes or flows. It comes back to us next week because we're doing this every day. There are multiple streams of work that are happening at the same time. They come back, we finalize the flow and it becomes UI and gets specked out and starts being implemented. So that's been a flow this year that's been working really well where we are making decisions on a high level about everything. But once those decisions are made, they go to their respective departments and there's enough autonomy for the designers and developers that are working on the specific features to make their own decisions within the framework that has been set up. Yeah, if that makes sense.

Yeah, no, that's very cool and totally understand that. When you think about the future of productizing what you've built and the use cases into the future, I'd love to dive into the, you know, the AR gaming aspect of the business and you know, where you see it going, where you see, you know, main adoption happening into not only this year, but years to come.

Yeah. So, you know, I think really we're on mobile and we're a game. So really we're looking at the mobile gaming market. And the mobile gaming market is pretty interesting. It's something that I've been learning a lot about more recently because obviously we got to tackle that now. And the opportunity at hand is really quite compelling because first of all, it's the largest segment in gaming, right? It's bigger than mobile. Sorry, it's bigger than console and PC combined. And a lot of the existing players in those kind of markets, like even Microsoft, right, they're trying to acquire Activision with the intention of getting exposure to mobile gaming. So everyone's trying to figure out mobile gaming and it's such a large thing. But it sucks. If you think about mobile gaming, it sucks. It's really bad. Most mobile games are clones that people are just churning out, overly monetized. They're slot machine type in app purchasing. You're constantly buying something to basically bypass the gameplay. Either it's that kind of a setup or it's ports of console games that are working on mobile. But when it comes to mobile gaming, the next generation of mobile gaming that can truly utilize the fact that this device is very powerful. Mobile phones are quite strong now in terms of the sensors they have available. And it's a different beast. It's not console gaming, it's not PC gaming. You have cameras, you have lidar, you have, you know, like good compute power. Everyone has it. Your friends have this phone, like the potential to create something new that truly utilizes its sensors and, you know, to create a new form of gameplay that, you know, is ubiquitous, that a lot of the world engages in and your friends play in. I think that's a really, really large opportunity that if someone can come and make something that's not purely exploitative with, you know, the shelf life of like a day and like is actually good, I think that would be really significant. So that's what we're focused on right now is how do you build, you know, this new type of mobile game that people just love and they have, you know, experiences with their phone that they've never had before, you know, and where does that go from here? There are many places that could go. You know, the game itself could, could become a social hub where you have friendships and all the things that emerge out of it. I think we've seen this happen with Fortnite and things like that, where you can have live concerts and this and that. The app itself can grow into that space. If we're thinking aspirationally about where this could go, another scenario could be that this becomes a genre of mobile games. We do this, but then we go form partnerships with other people's IPs and build them AR games as well that work with their IP, that use a lot of the things that we're building. So I think there are various scenarios. The thing about running a startup is you can't move forward with too many presumptions. You have to take it a day at a time and really follow through what becomes the optimal path. Because at the end of the day, a lot of these are, you know, correct parts. I think people get obsessed with, you know, a vision or one specific path for themselves, and we don't think like that. We just, you know, do the best thing we can at any given moment.

That's so cool to hear. And, you know, I think it just, it becomes more clear as we have this conversation about this idea of accepting change and pivoting, right? Like from. From inception of starting the company to working with different festivals, to then NFTs and just not only following the market, but just being open to change. I would love to hear some of your ideologies as a founder when it comes to the lessons that you've learned over the years of building and growing a startup. Outside of pivots and change, what are some of the lessons that you've learned throughout this journey as a founder that you'd want to tell young founders today? That may be just getting started?

I think it's really important. It's really important to be at least somewhat technical. I think it depends on the thing you're doing. But if you are trying to start a technology company, I think foundries that have some background or at least are willing to get into it, right? Like, I think that's. You can better communicate with your engineers, your designers. Like, it's. This is something that a lot of people say I'm not. This is not something new that I'm saying, but I think even design, we are a generation that grew up with apps. If you're a founder, I'm assuming, especially if you're working in software and technology, I'm assuming you have a pretty good grasp of just apps and UI and interactions because you live with them. If you're thinking about those things, you're constantly noticing those things in the apps that you're using. So if you have that, you have to, you know, listen to that intuition. At the end of the day, you are the founder and like, I think that you should guide through your intuition how those things emerge, because that's what's different between a startup and a large company. In a large, large company, you can get together, you know, in a conference room and make some committee decisions and have some researchers go out in the field and ab test something and that's how you get to conclusions. But in order to create something from zero, you know, to go from zero to something, there is not a formula to it. I think there is a certain, like, sprinkle of magic and intuition that, you know, needs to be applied from the founder themselves.

I agree. You know, one thing for, for us at Media Kids, one of our, like, the hurdles was my co founder and I, we were actually, we were both non technical.

Right.

Like, and finding that initial CTO is such an important part of our journey. And it was, I think the day, it was a struggle, it was something that we had to overcome. And when initially fundraising, right, like, it's, it's not the most optimal environment and we learned that very quickly. Where on your end, it's, it's quite different. And being technical and having really technical founders is. Puts you at such an advantage, especially in tech, obviously. And we heard that over and over again. If it wasn't architect, like, what other industries do you find exciting and do you look at as something that you just keep your, you know, you keep your head on the pulse there.

Outside of ar, you know, when I chose ar, it's like, it's like, you know, I got married. You know what I mean? Like, I don't have eyes for anything else at that point. And the only time I did flirt with something was crypto. You know, like when, two years ago when all that stuff was happening, I did find the fundamentals really quite compelling. You know, the idea of interoperability, having a standard of assets that, you know, are interchangeable, having more control with the, you know, player or the user, where they either own or have control over what happens with asset, they have somewhat of a pull in how the decision making gets put together. Those things were all really compelling. That's why I started kind of questioning. I'm like, wow, AR is my foundational thing. And we are doing a consumer mobile app right now that has a lot of potential. But I am excited about these concepts. Should I follow through with them or not? And whenever I get that feeling, usually the answer is yes. Do it right now, don't wait for it. This is not, oh, one day I'll sell Jadu and then I'll start something. In crypto, I don't think like that you give everything to the thing you have in front of you right now. There's no future aspirations almost. So, yeah, we decided to kind of merge those two things together and made it work the way that it did. And right now we're trying to be careful with our steps, focusing on things that are working and making sure that the things that are not working, if they have future potential, we remain open to them and are pretty clinical with our strategy around them. But that's pretty much what I would say.

What about AI? Do you see that impacting in a positive way of what you're building or what's your overall consensus of AI where it currently is? Because not only are the technical background, but just how do you see it impacting your business?

I think AI is just going to impact everything and is already impacting everything and that's fine by me. You know what I mean? I don't think it's some insane differentiator for us. I think we will have to use a lot of AI. I think all our competitors and other people in all of these spaces will also have to use a lot of AI. AI is being used first of all on an individual basis by all our teams and developers. We encourage that. There are developers in our teams that are solving bugs with ChatGPT and things like that today. And that's great. I have no complaints about that whatsoever. You're not in school, you're not trying to prove anything. We're just trying to make the most progress possible. And when it comes to incorporating in the process project, our approach has been to not force it in. You know, just because AI is a buzzword that right now and there's a lot of activity around it doesn't mean we're going to slap on a bunch of AI features. You know, it needs, it needs to exist for a reason. So a lot of AI already exists and like we're recognizing planes and we're doing all this stuff that is already like, you know, you're cross referencing libraries of data in order to determine if this is a table, that's a window, whatever. There's a lot of like visual oriented AI that we are going to be utilizing. Are we also going to be utilizing a lot of natural language processing kind of stuff? Most likely, but nothing immediate. Yeah, got it.

No, that's super great perspective. A couple more questions before we wrap up. I know we talked about it a little bit briefly. Just looking into the future, what excites you this year with what you're building? And for those that are hearing what we're talking about today, mobile gaming and actually utilizing a product, what should they.

Look forward to moving into 2023 from our perspective? Multiplayer AR. I think if we can show gaming work in this format where it's multiplayer and it's changing your Space and you're taking a character and throwing it across the room and it's hitting your wall. And I think that's really going to be really compelling. From our side, we have a strategy on how all that's going to come together. We have a build that we're planning to release that's going to be more of a test build in March. And based on how that goes, we will plan for a public release. But before the end of this year if we can create a narrative as a company. The narrative that I'm looking for is along the lines of, you know, Gen Alpha, which is the next generation after Gen Z, believe it or not, they're already 13. Like you know, 13 to 16 year olds are getting into AR gaming in this format. It's different from what the generations before them did. Yeah, it's unique to them. You know, like when I was 13, 14, that's like, it's super defining kind of time in your life.

Absolutely.

The games you find, the games you play and you know, right now everything you find has been done before. It's very homogenous. It's like very comparable. Something new and exciting needs to happen for the next generation, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. It's so cool to even hear that because I'm 22, right. It's. And it's such a different time of like being that age of those defining years of. And you hear all these different things, whether that's crypto or gaming. I find it very cool for the people that are 13, 16 right now, that younger generation that are, you know, they're whole life is being defined by these new technologies that are changing so quickly.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, last question would be if you could go back and give your piece, give yourself a piece of advice, business, entrepreneurship, life advice in general. What would that advice be and why?

I would say, well look like knowing everything I know now, obviously I would just go back three years ago and try to, you know, build way more like how we're building now. But I think, I think one thing that I really try to lean in on the older I get is my identity as, you know, as a Pakistani. You know, I grew up there my whole life and I think I've been really lucky to travel a bunch and live in a lot of places and I think that just gives you a really wholesome perspective over things and how you build. And I'd say the advice I would give is to just lean in on that even more even at an earlier age because I feel really lucky, honestly as a Pakistani, because on one hand, you think, oh, like, there is so much terrorism 2007, 2009. It's the worst passport to have. You can't really get into any country. There are a lot of disadvantages to being a Pakistani, but the older I get, I realize all the advantages. They're pretty significant because the thing is, like, if you're from Pakistan, you, you know, probably grew up Muslim, which means you've had a lot of exposure to the Arab world and the Muslim, like, legacy, which is a pretty compelling, you know, like, part of the world and pretty compelling history that a lot of stuff today is based on, like, all the Al Jabra. Jabra and algorithms and everything comes from that. But at the same time, you're also very closely linked to the Indian history, you know, which is a very different, completely different lineage. You know, there's so much richness out of that. And then whether you like it or not, the British also ruled over you for 200 years. So there is a lot of exposure to just the west through, you know, I grew up learning English. My dad's an English teacher. Like, there is a lot of richness in terms of, like, where I grew up. And I think that that's the case for a lot of people in a lot of parts of the world. And just leaning in on that and making that part of your work, I think is good.

I love to hear that. Well, thank you so much for, for taking the time to come on the show today. Where is the best place for everyone watching or listening to follow you to learn more about Jadu and to just follow along with the journey?

Yeah. So for me, I'd say Instagram, Asa J Malik Asa D J M A L I K. And for Jadu, Jadu Avas J A D U A V A S on Twitter. I think those are the best places.

Perfect. Well, I will make sure to link all that down below. Assad, thank you so much for again coming on the show today. It's been such a pleasure having you. And for everyone listening, make sure you go subscribe and I will put everything that we spoke about today in the description. Thank you so much.