Rich Robinson - How Tokenization Changes The World (Animoca)

Boom, boom. Boom.

Boom. Boom, Boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey, welcome back to Hustle and Flowchart. Today we've got a really exciting one. We're talking with Rich Robinson from Animoca Brands. And Rich is pretty high up over there at Animoca. Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about who we're talking to?

Yeah, Rich Robinson is the entrepreneur in residence at Animoca Brands and he'll tell the story. Yeah. So you're gonna get to Rich. I mean, the guy's got a crazy colorful background in terms of traveling the world, being worlds with an S, so Metaverse worlds as well as well. But he's been in all these crazy industries, backpacking, living under stairwells, stealing from buffets, but, you know, never been cad. But you'll hear the stories of how basically all of these experiences have led him to China for the last 25 years. And he's originally from Boston, so he'll tell you the whole scoop. But the whole, this whole, you know, kind of sums up into where he's at now with Animoca and Web3 and all his blockchain gaming technology just accelerating at a crazy pace, you know, and he's, he's heading up a key position in Animoca, which he'll describe in Animoca Brands, just so you know who they are. And a lot of the folks in the gaming space definitely know of Animoca. They're everywhere. And essentially they're a blockchain technology unicorn, blockchain company that has investments in so many games. I think he said something like 200 under their portfolio now or that was last year. They invested in two more, he said just yesterday or last week. They're, they're everywhere. So Animoca is one you want to follow as well. Animoca Brands and the games that they're publishing. We've covered some on the podcast already and also in our content, but Rich is infinitely interesting and I feel like we could have gone on for like three hours with him, but, you know, all good things have to endure.

Yeah. And we talk about, you know, the types of things that Animoca Brands looks for in investing. We talk about the state of play to earn games. I mean, it's a pretty wide ranging conversation. So we're not going to blabble on. We'll, we'll let you listen to the conversation, but blah, blah, blah. I can't even Say the word blabble. I don't even know if blabble is a word, but I'm not gonna blabble anymore. But I am gonna remind you, make sure that you are following us. I am Matt Rwolf on Twitter. He is Joe Fear on Twitter. We have Hardfork Gaming on Twitter. And also we got something really cool we're doing. If you go to Hardfork GG whitelist, we're gonna be dropping some NFTs. We're building this thing called the Hard Fork Gaming Alpha Club, where we're gonna be dropping alpha, we're gonna be dropping NFTs, we'll be hooking you up, so.

Be quick because we have something special for the first.

You want to be in that 1000 group?

The first 1000 are going to be.

OG hardfork GG whitelist. Yes.

Let's go talk to Richard.

All right, we have Rich Robinson from animoca and about 50 billion other industries and stuff before reaching Animoca Brands. And this is a conversation that Matt, I've been talking with you about for a while because I chatted with Rich maybe a month ago. He was under the weather then, and I was like, this guy's cool. He's got a lot of insights. He's not just play to earn in the trendy games and all this Stu and Animoca brands that everyone kind of knows about now in this space. But, you know, I was starting to hear the picture of, like, what is Rich? What are these crazy stories? So, you know, now, Rich, that we have you here, I'm going to bring in here is I want to dive into these stories of the last, I think, 25 years you've had in Asia and you're what, in Bali right now, I believe. Right. Beautiful background.

I am on the island of the gods. Indeed. Yes, Were my sins.

So, I mean, like, you've landed in a good spot. Just reading your background, you know, after we chatted the first time, I was like, all right, you're interesting. And then, like, read your bio and you sent it over and LinkedIn, I'm like, reads like a novel or an adventure novel almost of like, wow, you've been all over the country or all over the world that is doing everything, but it's accumulated now like fertilizer, like you said, into where you're at.

So just heaps and heaps of shit in which to grow the entrepreneurial fauna. Yes.

I mean, like, yeah. And you and I, I think our first chat, like, we shared, like, we're Just talking about how crazy entrepreneurship is anyway. Just mentally taxing. Like, you know, you brought your mental.

Illness if you're going to do it right. Who are these freaks that are going into this almost certain death? Like, we started the thing, you know, our chat up this morning of like, my favorite line, like the very first line from the Matrix, like, your men are already dead, right? It's like, I got this idea, I got a team, or I got product. Your men are already dead. The most likely outcome is you are going to fail and it's going to be pretty, you know, miserable. Many points along the way, but other than that. Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? Uh.

Oh, yeah, man.

Well, I feel like two wins, Web three and entrepreneurship specifically as well. It just adds all sorts of extra complexities that make it a little bit.

Less extra opportunity, extra scale, extra speed. But it's a risk multiplier, right? So it can just wobble into oblivion even. Even faster. Right? So. But yeah, but. Hey, Joe, Matt. Thank you. You know, Selamat Pagi, as they say here in Indonesia, where I became a refugee during COVID after 20, after a quarter of a century in China. So, yeah, you know, I in the greater Boston, and I took my wicked hash Boston accent after drinking cuddy sack in the park with an aardvark and Maggie Mac out to California and went to usc, and then they had an exchange program with Cambridge University. And my grandparents are from Ireland, Irish immigrants. You know, you can't spill a pint of Guinness without hitting a plastic patty like me in Boston. And so I have dual citizenship, so I was like, you know, connected to Europe, and I did a backpacking trip around Europe. I'm 55 this year, so it was 88. And it was magical. You know, all of the fairy tales that we grew up in are all set in Europe, right? So it's literally feels magical. And the whole backpacker mill when you're on a train and there's one cuisine this day and another language this day and another set of architecture is just intoxicating. And I met this Aussie guy who. He was eating. I still remember this so well. He was eating pasta out of a. Out of a pot that was, like, left behind by some people in a, you know, with like a. With like a wooden spoon, these big old clumpy, clumpy boots. And he was like. And I was kind of proud of myself. I've been on the road for four weeks, and he's like, me, mate. I don't know. Four. Four and a Half years. And I was like, that meme of that guy who's just like, his mind is blown, and, like, you know, it's like fireworks. And I was like. I was, like, speechless. And he told me two things, which first was that he was totally broke, so he was just working and traveling, and he'd been doing that for almost a half decade. And the second one was that he was really petrified of flying, so he had done it all by boat or land. And he said, you know, listen, mate, there's only. There's a four trips in the world. You just think of a world as a silhouette. North, South America, Europe, Asia. Third is Africa, fourth is Australia. So there's really only, like, four swaths of land. And he said, if you can just go overland on those four trips. And it really framed as me. I was like, wow, there's hundreds of countries. But, yeah, there really are only four major overland trips. Or a fifth if you're a psycho and want to go to Antarctica. But that's a. That's another story, right? But, you know, I actually have this one big, hairy, audacious goal. I've ran marathons on four continents. I've did Rome, Sydney, Beijing, and New York. And then I want to do one in Africa, South America, and Antarctica. But I figured Antarctica might be the easiest because you can run a bit and slide in your belly. Slide in your belly. Right? So. But thank you. Good night. I'll be here all week. So, yeah, but then he said something to me. He's like, mate, you can see the world. You can hear, you can feel the world, but you can smell it. You can smell the world, mate. And I was like, I want to smell the world, too. Like, that sounds amazing, right? So that, like, he, like, unscrewed the top of my skull and took a soldering iron into my medulla oblongata, or whatever. It was part of my brain. And I was like, I'm doing that. So I spent four years. Yes. There was no choice. I was completely reprogrammed. Like, I was in Westworld or something like that, right? And do I really have free will or not? Because I didn't after that point. And, yeah. So I just was like, I made a deal with my parents, and I'm just going to keep working and keep traveling until I can't. And then, worst case scenario. What's the worst case scenario? Besides, you know, some horrific injury? It's just like, okay, I'm broke, I'm stuck. Buy me a ticket back home, and I lick my Wounds back in my, my AC DC posters and my, you know, a track tape from the 80s, you know, still, still in my room. Right.

Yeah.

There are worse things. So. So I just, I was a bartender in the Virgin Islands. I just showed up there, St. Thomas, got a job, brought down some buddies. I was a ski bum in Switzerland. I taught English in Prague. After the revolution, I lived in a fishing village in Norway. I picked grapes in France. I lived in this naked city in the south of France. It's called Cap d', Ag, the world's largest nudist colony.

Naked City, wow.

Naked City. 15,000 people. Mini golf, driving, shopping, whatever. And I was, I was doing some work as a cook and I met this American woman and you know, it was a. Interesting side excursion. And then I did another ski season in Switzerland and then I moved to Germany, I'm a little embarrassed to admit, with the intention of becoming auf Deutsch, which means a guinea pig. So there's all these pharmaceutical companies and these pharmaceutical companies in Munich, they, they do human trials and you need the placebo group and you need the, you know, so there's, there's all this like backpacker mill of these like backpack packing bums mostly from like South Africa, you know, Kiwis, Aussies, some, some Brits who are just, you know, some Canadians that I just kind of met over the years. And I remember they had this thing and they even. This is how this dating me. They called it mimeographed. It was like a, it was like a two page like printout and it was called the, the bums Bible. And it talked about how people could be like, kind of like a modern hobo. Like you know, going around Europe, go around the world and like, here's some of the tips. You're stuck in a city, you don't have any money, you're in Berlin.

Every button in an apartment building, click the door, opens the stairs, elevator go under the stairs. Usually kind of dark. Set up your one man tent, crash for the night, go back out into society. Nobody, nobody's the wiser, right? Or there's maybe like a four star hotel. You kind of just don't make eye contact. Go up to the third floor, go into the ballroom. There's tables with long tablecloths. Just go underneath, going to the carpet and just crash, right? And maybe, or maybe not, like go into the handicapped bathroom and just take a full shower and destroy the place. And then do a drive by on the buffet. Do a drive by in the buffet and just go right at the back Door. And you know, like, like, you know, it was desperate Times. This is 1992, right? It was, it was a long time ago. And the statute of limitations is passed, by the way.

No one can use this for a community.

That's right.

Never convicted. Never convicted. And one of those, one of those things was, it was explaining about how to. Another one is you. You're hitchhiking. I did a lot of hitchhiking around back then. Like you do some sob story to the driver to get in the city, because that's the toughest part. You get dropped 6 kilomet the city and there's no public transport and it's raining and it's dark and you have to walk for like, you just be like, yeah, my aunt. I'm sorry, I'm gonna, I'm gonna break down here. My aunt is really sick and I just wanted to see her. I don't know if I'm gonna make it before. And I'll drop you off right there.

Right.

You gotta squeak at it.

Your aunt lives right downtown in a nice neighborhood. Yes, she does. Thank you. Good night. See you later.

Then you run away. Dark.

Yeah.

I don't know what the audience thought they were gonna get out of this episode, but they're learning how to, they're.

Learning how to travel. I, I haven't, I haven't spoken. I haven' that in a long time. But anyway, I went to Munich to become, to become that guinea pig. And then I met the. I knew this American woman with a German boyfriend and she's like, come over for dinner. And then the German family's like, no way. You're going to get this horrible injury. You're going to be stuck. So you're going to come work for my husband. So I got a job as a, as a scaffolder. And then I worked at the BMW factory after that. And then I took the train through Siberia, Mongolia, Beijing. I did that first overland trip. I hitchhiked from Switzerland to Prague. And then it was an 11 day train ride from the Ukraine to Hong Kong and five and a half days through Mongolia, through Siberia, and that was 93. And you know, the 80s when I really sort of, you know, I graduated college. 89. Russia was going to destroy the world if Japan didn't take it over. And 89 was, you know, a big seminal year. Apartheid ends, the wall falls. But, you know, China took three steps backwards with Tiananmen. So I had very low expectations of modern China. But as soon as I got there in 93, like game of Thrones Dragon just. Just dug her talents into me. And then the Dragon and I had two kids together. And now we're divorced, but we're still friends, but.

Amicably so. And. But I. But I knew that China is the biggest story of our lives, right? I mean, I know China gets a lot of, you know, bad press these days, and it's, you know, everything is much more, you know, nuanced. And there's, you know, you have to really humanize Chinese people who are amazing and the kind of insane dynamism and scale and growth there, you know. I'm writing my first book. It's called at the Speed of China, like at the speed of light. And I'm actually launching my podcast around that, which is coming out in the next few weeks. And the thesis is four years outside of China is a year inside China. And that certainly wasn't the case 30 years ago when I got there, but it's certainly the case now. So I knew China was the place. And I traveled around Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand. I came to Bali. I was so broke, I walked from the airport to Kuta beach to save, like, I don't even know, a buck or something, right? And I just knew. I knew China was the place. And I got my MBA in the Netherlands. I wanted a European MBA. This is back in 94. So I went to Erasmus. And that was when the predecessor of Netscape, it's called Mosaic, it was created by Mark Andreessen, the founder of Andreessen Horowitz. You know, so I did my first trip on the. On the Internet, and my mind was equally blown. So, you know, I'm five years out of college now, and I just kind of followed. You know, I didn't really follow my passion, but I was just like, I want to explore. And then I found something that really spoke to me, really moved me, which was China and then the Internet. So I was like, I'm going to put that together like chocolate peanut butter, your peanut butter, my chocolate. You got your Internet in my China, right? So I remember telling my fellow classmates that in 94, and they were like, yeah, wow. That was, you know, I wasn't any. I'm not saying I was a visionary. It was just something that the Internet didn't have a business model then, right? There wasn't. And it was, you know, China didn't like. I ended up going to China to be Internet guy in China, you know, two years later. And I forgot to check to see if the Internet got there yet. Like, there was. Like, there was no Internet in China.

Really.

It was like, it was dial up and there were more people online in Hong Kong with 6 million people population, a million people, and then all of the mainland. But, but I just, you know, you could just smell that it was going to be something big. So, so I graduated, I had no money, no job, broke as the Ten Commandments, as my dad would say, and I got a one way ticket to Africa. So I was like, what's the other swath of land? That's kind of nuts and that, you know, I got to do by land. And I should do that when I'm in my 20s, when, you know, Steve Martin has this great book called Born Standing up and he's got a picture with Linda Ronstadt and he's like, look at us, aren't we beautiful? And he goes, of course we're beautiful. We're Both in our 20s. Everybody's beautiful in their 20s, right? Like you can do anything, right? So I rode a bicycle through Africa. I spent it's, you know, from Nairobi to Cape Town, the equator to the southern tip in Africa. Because it's squeezed. Mercator projection, it's squeezed, you know, in the middle of the map, like Africa's gigantic, right? A billion people in Africa. And just from the, you know, the equator down to South Africa, that's the distance of LA to Boston, right? That's, that's, you know, 3,000 miles. So I did, I did 4,000 kilometers by bike through seven different countries. And, and what did I want to do? I wanted to kind of test myself, to kind of see my limits. And it was kind of like being an entrepreneur in a way where you're just like, this is going to be amazing and great. And then two weeks in, you're like, whose idea was this anyway? Was yours, you asshole?

In that? It's totally the height of the operator, man.

Everybody knows now. And now you can't. If you just kept your mouth shut and just started to ride a bicycle through Africa, you could have been like, I rode a thousand kilometers through Africa. People would have been like, wow. But you're like, shit, I have 4,000 to go, right? And so, but, but the other thing I really learned from there is that most of life is like, if this is like some sort of like, you know, a baseline, most of life you're kind of blipping up and down, up and down. Oh, there's a high high, there's a low low, but when you're traveling, it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom. High, high, low, low, high, High, low, low. Like, you know, in, in, in a week, right? And same thing with entrepreneurship where you're just like, I am pushed to the limits of my humanity and then like, this is really going to work. Oh, we're all going to die. This is. And that's like before lunch. And then, you know, so it's so, it's like, how, how can you be a, an entrepreneur? I, you know, I think there's, I think there's two ways. I tell some of my students I teach, you know, an entrepreneur course for whatever that's worth. You know, Frank Zappa said, you know, somebody asked him about a bad review of his song and he's like, I mean, writing about music is like dancing about architecture, right? And so like, I love entrepreneurship.

I took one and that's my, my favorite professor. But like, I know your point is that, right?

Okay, Yeah, I think 15 to 20% of it, you can really, here's the fundamentals, right? Ideation, you know, team building, product, you know, market, whatever. But then 80% of it is just, just jazz, whatever, you know, mindsets. And yeah. You know, and yeah. So I think, you know, if you can travel and travel in a way that's like, I am very comfortable with discomfort. Like, I don't even know where I'm gonna sleep tonight. I'm getting stuck in a train station in Prague, right? Pro scene pros. Or like every 30 seconds, you know, just like, what's going on, right? Or you take a long, hard seat, train to western China for 48 hours, or you're, you're doing whatever, Then you're like, you know what? I'm actually okay. Like, I just, I woke up and everything's fine. And that's why a lot of first generation or immigrants are such good entrepreneurs, because they're like, you don't know where the bar is for like shittiness and difficulty, right? You know, where I grew up, like, this is like, this is still like awesome, right, guys? It's like, it's okay, right? And like the guy who started Godaddy, I think his dad was in the Vietnam war and he was complaining to his dad and he was like, his dad's like, okay, are they going to kill you? And he's like, what? He goes, are they going to murder you?

Is there a gun?

Does this happen? And he goes, yeah. And he goes, no. Then he goes, all right, just keep going then. And he was like, wow, you're right.

Like, it's all about framing.

I'm not going to get summarily executed. So, yeah, just keep going. Right. And then I think the other way, of course, is to just start a company, right? Or, you know, maybe there's a third, which is to work inside a startup. But I think you really have to be like, hey, I want to be a board observer and I want to work, you know, triple the hours to basically, you know, see exactly what's going on and go in other meetings and just keep my mouth shut. Right. Like that's possible if you have the right kind of EQ IQ to be able to shadow somebody, then you can kind of learn a lot that way. But it's also tough, too, because you're as strong as your weakest link in a startup. And it's like, all right, what are you actually doing then? Are you really putting all your effort to pull the sled or are you just trying to observe and jump ship? Eventually. So I think it's a little bit of a balance. But anyway, that bike trip to Africa really kind of gave me a lot of grit and resilience and. And I ticked off that second continent. I still am going to do overland through Australia with my family next year or the year after, since I'm so close. And then I have to save north of South America as another trip. But I just. I really love that trip through Africa because all of those. I talk about the high highs and the low lows. It's kind of like Forrest Gump, where all the bad stuff just goes away. Right. And you just remember the peaks. And I think that's the beautiful part about entrepreneurship, too, is like, you're just getting the edges, you know, the bird, like, all smoothed off because you have to go down into the. To the paint, you know, the pain cage.

Yeah. And you're seeing that.

Yeah, indeed. You're seeing the edge of your own humanity. Right? Yeah, like. And like, I think that's. That's a number. Yeah, yeah. Yes, indeed. Indeed. And your co founders. And, like, that's why a lot of startups fail from suicide rather than murder because they just. The co founders can't get along because they're. It's 3:00am and like, oh, you have, you know, 32% of the company. And, you know, I only have 18. And like, you know, I'm working harder than you are and, you know, whatever. And like, we're gonna die. And like, mommy, make it stop. Mama, I want to go home. I want to go home. Like, I literally felt that way. Like, snot dripping from my nose. Like, I want to just go home. Mom. Right.

There's no mommy here.

There is no mommy. You're not, you're not finished when you're tired, you're finished when you're done.

If anyone is still with us, then you are a true entrepreneur and I congratulate you. Congratulation.

Scare them all away.

Yeah, well, but this is so damn valuable because I mean, it's real talk, you know, and I know we talked about that and like with web3 it's like this crazy time where there's just idea city, you know, I feel like there's probably more entrepreneurs in this space that have maybe not been entrepreneurs before, you know, either if it's in investing or maybe starting a game project. I mean, at Animoca, I'm sure you're seeing some of this, but like just because Matt and I have been.

Or people starting a guild.

All the above. Any project, really.

Micro guilds. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't know, like, what's your perspective there? Because I feel like there's like a whole new wave of entrepreneurs landing into this Web3 environment right now that are kind of figuring out in real time.

Yeah. So you know, Yat, the founder of Animoca, he asked me to join as an advisor last year and red pilled me into, you know, the whole blockchain gaming world. It was around the time, it was about a year ago, when Axie Infinity launched their Ronin sidechain. And I think for my money, that's the before and after for web 3. It wasn't like necessarily cryptokitties or punks or you know, NBA top shots like that. Ronin sidechain enabled people to break it in a way by adding scholars. And then that kind of after I got to China, I've done. In the 24 years I did eight startups, three as an exec in private companies and then five as a founder. And I exited three to publicly listed companies. And I've been involved with 50 others as an angel or board member, advisor and hundreds of others as a mentor. And I teach at entrepreneurship at the university. So I've known Yat 25 years and he said, hey, what are you working on right now? And I said, I'm a pandemic refugee in Bali and I'm writing this book and I'm doing a lot of CEO whispering. There's a lot of that kind of got buoyed up by Covid and he's like, can you, you know, I'd love to have you, you know, as an advisor. And I was like, you know, I'm Honored. That's great. And he's like, you know, you've been through the web one cycle, which was just about, you know, reading the Internet, and then web2, which is read and write, and then also the smartphone revolution, you know, all those apps, and then also set against China, which has this insane, you know, sort of trajectory and growth, right? I mean, 70% of China was in poverty, and now it's like zero, right? And, you know, the most billionaires in the world, it's not New York, not London, not Singapore, Tokyo, it's China, it's Beijing. Because of Internet, you know, the most valuable Internet startup In the world, TikTok, is in Beijing. So, you know, Beijing is the Silicon Valley, not just of China, but of Asia. And it's the only ecosystem that can rival Silicon Valley. And in some ways, it exceeds Silicon Valley in terms of, you know, the price of a rounds and the, you know, the number of users that sites have. So it was like, let's take some of those scabs and calluses and scar tissue that I've accumulated, like armor. And then like, let's help some of the other team members go into battle. And the agreement was 10 hours a month minimum. And I was like, I'm all in. And then I was doing 10 hours a week, and then 10 hours a day. And then after a few months, we checked in and he's like, how's it going? I'm like, it's like, it's web one, it's web two, it's smartphone, it's China, all compressed into a giant elastic band ball. And then you expand that three times, like, that's web three. And I was like, I quit. I quit. I don't want to be an advisor anymore.

I'm rich.

Put me in. Coach. Give me a jury, give me a jersey. I want to go in the game. So he asked me to be entrepreneur in residence. So now I'm on the investment committee and I run an accelerator around guilds and I work on some special projects. So I'm in. I'm like, I haven't had a job for 20 years or so, and.

I'm loving it. And I'm seeing so much deal flow and the speed of evolution and the incredible sort of opportunities in the space are blowing my mind every day.

What are some that just come top of mind right now because I told you who the audience is here, and I feel like we're so our mission, when we pivoted a lot of our talk and now all of our attention into this space it was to be the bridge is to show what web2 skills and folks who are really savvy over there, maybe with entrepreneurship, marketing and business can transfer over here or investing even. What are some mind blowing things right now that you've seen and maybe some ways that you're like, hey, this is a good way to at least start your journey over here as an entrepreneur.

Sure. Well, I mean, if you look, like I said, the Ronin sidechain, you know, Sky Mavis in Vietnam started Axie Infinity and we were, we raised the first round for them. It was 800k back in 2019 and it took six months. It was painful. Nobody wanted to invest. And as I understand it, over the two year period until they launched the Ronin sidechain, they did a million in reps over those two periods, you know, so 40 grand a month, whatever. And then one week a year ago in April, they did a million and a week week. And then by December of last year, they were doing a million dollars every 40 minutes. And so they did almost 3 billion in revenue last year. And of course it's overheated. And then they've since had their exploit as well too. But because I've been through these waves before, because I've been through these cycles and people are like, yahoo, what a bullshit company. I mean, Yahoo was eventually worth tens of billions of dollars. Of course it's shut down now. But back then they were like, they have no, no business model at all, right? Facebook, bullshit, even Amazon after they were public. People like Jeff Bezos is kind of like a geeky joke, right? And then let's look at some of these. I mean, Uber is when it started, people looked at that and were just like, that's a kind of like limos for the 1 percenter. And like, you know, it's easy to just look at things kind of through a toilet paper roll and just see that, that one sort of snapshot there, right? And you know, I think what Axie Infinity has shown is how broad and the entire potential market for this is, right? And broadly, our mission at Animoca is to create the open metaverse and to allow people to have digital assets that they yield. Right? I mean, the way that YAT and I talked. And please listen to some podcasts for your listeners out there with yat. Like, one is from Real Vision, talks about NFTs as a store of culture and he's become like a real thought leader and guru. But you know, he talked about these fiefdoms, like think about, you know, hundreds of years ago when you were a serf S E R F and you're working in the fields and you have a lord and he has an army that protects you. But like, you know, I have 500 kilos of sweet potatoes. Oh, you may keep 50. Oh, thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you for not killing my family and thank you for protecting us. Right? And that's the sort of deal that we have, right? You know, and those people, it's unimaginable in this sort of, you know, capitalist democracies that we live in. Like, oh, are you a lord? Because you have all your teeth and you have out of season fruit and you can fly. You can watch a 300 million dollar production on this magical screen. Like, how did this all come about? And it's like, well, because we gave people property rights and we created specialization in the economy and we funded people and we allowed, you can see it in China too, when they opened up Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and they allowed people to unlock that entrepreneurial capabilities. Right. It's kind of like a microcosm of what's happened in China as well too. Right. So I think, you know, the fiefdoms of, you know, Facebook and Google, you know, Lord Zuckerberg and the, you know, the kingdom of Google and Activision Blizzard or, you know, all of these platforms and walled gardens, right. I mean like we're literally Neo. We don't even know we're in bondage, right? But we're, you know, and it's like people are really, really resisting I think what's happening. And I think in general a lot of gamers are like, yeah, you know, they resist anything if there's any change. Right. But you know, I've, I'm seeing some stuff now with AAA games where it is just.

Do you think it's gonna get the gamers to actually convert over or at least like be a little.

No question. No question.

Thank God, no.

No question at all. Like, here's an example of just tip of the spear. Like we bought a company called Blowfish Studios and they're, they're dropping probably the first aaa game in Q3. It's called Phantom Galaxies. And the way that they've done it, I don't know if you ever had Ben on here. You probably should. He's a founder and CEO. A problem with a lot of blockchain games is let's sell some NFTs and then you get a whole bunch of whales and then you get a whole bunch of bots and then all of the community is like, hello, can we come in? Right. And just like, no, it's like it's all taken over by forces outside your control. So what they did is that they did really interesting. They gave all the NFTs away for free. They gave half million of them away for free. But to be able to whitelist, you had to play this mini game. So they have four little mini games. It's kind of like a captcha in a way. It shows that you're really, you know, human and it also gets people excited about the game. So 500,000 NFTs out there and then there's a secondary market and they take 10% of the sale and, you know, they're generating 150 ETH in commission. Right. So the company's got a half, you know, half million US in revs or so. Right.

Which is.

And then you burn five of those.

Yeah.

It's like, how could you? You couldn't even raise 500k to actually have revenue. Yeah. And you'd have to spend, you know, half million or more in marketing to get people excited. Right. So it's like upside down, crazy town. Like, I'm writing a blog post in the next few weeks about my epic year of unlearning about how I had to unlearn a bunch of stuff. Right. So, you know, you have to look at things like literally upside down, inside out from a different angle. So, okay, giving everything away for free. But we're going to make way more money than we normally would anyway. And we're creating this community. There's 100,000 strong in the Discord and then you burn five of the NFTs and then you get an even more special NFT as well too. So then that creates even more scarcity and excitement around that. So those kind of mechanisms, we're doing a lot of experimentation around that and it's super exciting, I think. And then there's another game that's going to be launching soon. It's console PC, full aaa, and it's from a team that made this game called Warhammer. And they're like, I'm super excited about that. But I'm also super excited about dozens and dozens of other mobile games and, you know, games that are sort of a blend of PC and mobile. And then I'm also really excited about taking some of those learnings about how quickly that's morphing and then taking it into other areas that are not games. Like as an example, there's a company called Goki Goqii, and the founder of that company is in India and he's a game guy. He's probably like the OG mobile game guy in India. Vishal Gondal started a company called the India Games, sold it to Disney for 100 million and found out at the end of his entrepreneurial journey that a lot of people find out is like my health is really compromised. Like I really, I compromised my, my, you know, self care for care of the company. So he started a healthcare company and you know, he had a thesis around doing wearables Fitbit. But then it morphed into something where a lot of preventative health is really, you know, very much needed. And there's incentives and alignment. Like insurance companies will pay for that, companies will pay for that. Companies will pay you to be healthier. Like why, why not? Right.

Keep your brain straight. Mental health too. Yes.

Right. And keep you in the chair and like, you know, reduce churn and everything. Everything else. Right. But how could they before. Right. They, they couldn't really. So he's created this company that's very, you know, very successful and we, we led the A round and now we're helping them to tokenize all of their companies. I think tokenization like is like that's, that's a fascinating, like I geek out on white papers and how things can be tokenized and like I think a lot of crypto will just go into the background like credit swaps or derivatives. Like they'll be important but they're not going to be like you're not going to be really even. Most people are not going to be, you know, that savvy about it. Just like most people aren't savvy about financial instruments. Yeah.

It's almost like they're used to UI to the whole blockchain thing.

And, and the, and the, and the UI is not like NFTs are powerful but it's like it's, you know, it's not, not, it's the fungible tokens that, you know, because it's fungible, there needs to be these, these you know, coins and tokens that are just completely, you know, liquid and that people get that, oh, I get poker chips or I get Monopoly money or I get loyalty points or flower points. Yeah. Ownership. Ownership. But then it's completely, you know, interoperable and fluid, you know, eventually. Right. And I think that kind of lubrication, like that's, that's the promise of Web3. Right. It's not necessarily about having a monkey JPEG. Right. Which, which I think, I think there's going to be value created around some PFP projects. It just will. And it's already happening with Bored Ape and we're deep in that and it's very much a work in progress. But I'm really excited about tokenization and we have a half dozen other projects of things that are not games that are being tokenized that really make my pink parts tingle, let's say.

Dude, oh my God. I need to learn more about this. Yeah, you need to learn more about the pink parts, not those parts.

Take a pass.

I'm curious. I'm not sure.

Join. Join us. Join us at Only Fans for the next podcast.

Want to make the account now? Okay, I'll get around. Go for it.

No, I'm curious if you could share. I'm not sure how much you can share, but what does Animoca look for in the companies that they do invest in, like the game companies? Obviously Animoca is invested in some guilds. I believe Animoca is involved in Board Ape in some way or they have some investment in it or something.

Like how do we make a board ape game? And Cool.

Yeah. What can you talk about here?

Yeah, I mean, yats on the board of.

The foundation around apecoin. Right. So I mean, like we're deep into that. Yeah. So, you know, it's really fascinating for me because, you know, it's been how long now? It's been like 10 months or so. Less than a year. The early days, way back, nine months ago, like I would have a call because it was still so kind of inside baseball in a way. Like if you knew about SLP and Ronin Sidechain, then you are probably already kind of crypto native, right? So, hey, somebody wants to start a game, can you talk to them? Great, I'll talk to them. Right? They connect me on Telegram, you know, telegram address. And then I show up to the call and like, you know, like I said, I'm 55. Like I'm a notch below that those two old guys in the balcony of the Muppets. Right. In a way, like get off my lawn, kids. Right. But I, but I, but I really, I really try to be like, you know, exercise every day and my wife's 15 years younger and I have a 6 year old daughter and my second current and final wife and I'm running after them while I'm fleeing the Grim Reaper, right? So, you know, and I try to be radically, radically, radically open minded, but I also like, kind of like, I kind of like been through a bunch of cycles before, right? So I show up to this call and somebody's there and they're like, you know, it's an avatar and they just have their, you know, their telegram name as the, you know, as their name with like the symbol for boron, whatever. Some sort of umlaut, whatever. Yeah. And then I was just like, hey, you know, I'm Rich Robinson, entrepreneur, residents. And like. And he's like, hey, bro, so list five Twitter names. And he's like, yeah, you know, we don't have any allocation left, but we'll give, you know, we'll save a million for you guys because I think it's good. And like, you know, let me know you have 12 hours to come in or not, right? And I was like, that's an interesting pitch. What's your name? He's like, like, my real name? And I was like, yeah, shocker. Yeah, your real name, right? And he's like, oh, we can do Kyc after. And I was like, like, after what? After we make a. Yeah, after I give you a million in your wallet address. Like, I was like, we. Like, like, I like, like that's that, you know, and like, that wasn't the only one that ever happened, right? So I'm just like, oh, yeah, breathe, right? I'm just like, I'm, you know, I'm sorry. We have fiduciary responsibility. We can't, you know, invest in, you know, anonymous projects, right? And like. And he's like, okay, you can dox me, but go this. And then it turns out, turns out the fact is that like, you know, back then it's like, I, you know, I a small bag of crypto, and now I got a big bag of crypto and now I'm going to make a game. And it's like, yeah, no, no, no, you're not, right? It's like you could accidentally make a company. I think I've seen some people that are like, you know, like the entrepreneur, like, equivalent is like, look at that brave, incredible, insanely competent entrepreneur flying a dragon across the sky. Sitting on the back of the dragon, right? Woohoo. But then if you go up and zoom on the entrepreneur, they're like, I'm on a dragon. How the hell did this happen?

How did I build this? Why did I be I.

Don't bite me, don't burn me, don't throw me off, right? But from a distance it looks like, oh my God, it's amazing, right? And like, that can happen right? Where you're just like, I thought I was sitting on a rock and now I'm in the stratosphere, right? But with a game it's like if you haven't been through like dev hell, live ops optimization and like, you know, made a whole bunch of mistakes, like it's, it's so rare that you could like, you know, maybe you could get something or maybe in the very early days you could be like I got a bunch of money. And then you got a bunch of people who are like, you red pill them who have a lot of gaming experience but you know, you really need the leadership to like, I believe to like really understand what's going on. And so now we're seeing a lot of really, really kick ass web two companies, you know, gaming companies who have a lot of experience who are like really thoughtful about the game economy. And like I've, I spent, you know, I've red pilled myself into EVE Online. You know, like that company is 20 years old and they hired a full time PhD economist in 2008. And you know, there's a really fascinating graph that shows you know, all of the different sort of line items of the sinks and faucets in their economy. And you can see the top four or five, that's the sinks are way out here and then the faucet is way in here and then everything else in the middle. It all kind of balances, right? And like an in game economy before it was kind of simple because you didn't have any leakage for the most part. There were some secondary markets where people were grinding for World of Warcraft, know famously for you know, for gold and, but, but now like running an economy, even if you're like a country, like how well does that go? I mean Ray Dalio, his book Principles is amazing, right? But he like, I really, really highly recommend Ray Dalio's book but also his 30 minute video and he also has this great personality test called Principles. U? Yeah, Y O U. But he's, he's a really world class economist as well too in his thinking. And he talks about the boom and bust cycle and how economies work, work and you know there's great videos and I make my students look at that. It's kind of like entrepreneurship where you just have like these cycles like all right, I have this thesis failed. I'm learning from it. I'm going to go here, right? And like these boom and bust, like everybody's just making it up anyway. But the most brilliant people and almost like unlimited resources, let's just print more money, let's you know, raise interest rates, let's pull these Levers, right? And even with that, it's like, oh my God. Like, you know, the iceberg, right? Oh, shit. Right? And like, you know what I mean?

Or it's too late. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So that stuff's all gonna get worked out and it's gonna take a little while, but I'm really excited. Like, if you look at like, you know, iPhone launched in 07 and then you know, like some of these League of Legends or whatever, it took a few years for companies to figure out, like, okay, it's not, you know, like on Facebook. It's not farmville. Like that addictive kind of, you know, you know, game loop, like that can work, but it's kind of a race to the bottom, right? Like let's, let's find the right game mechanics. And now there are so many. So men need games that are free to play. And historically people like free to play. That's bullshit, right? Like every time there's a new thing, like in app purchase, free to play, like ridiculous, dumb, failed. Yeah, you're going to get me somehow. And like there are multiple, multiple, multiple billion dollar franchises around that and many hundred millions and many, many others as well, too, right? Premium model. It's a very big model, right? Yeah, it's 180 billion a year for gaming, right? And you know, 90 billion of that is mobile. And you know, 40 billion of that is in app purchases, right? So just taking some of that IAP and switching it to NFTs, you know, that's a, that's a common thing to do, right? Because you're just like, oh, we have the yellow Pages, let's make the yellow pages dot com, right? And it's like, okay, it's really going to be like Yelp or something. You know, it's not going to really be called the Yellow Pages, right? Or like, you know, let's create a taxi service. And it's like, yeah, it'll be a whole new thing that we can't necessarily wrap our heads around. But I think there has to like even like, I love Marx Brothers movies, right? If you look at their original movies, they were like, they were stage performances because they performed on vaudeville. So it was basically two cameras and they were kind of like on a, on a set that was like a stage, right? And then they're like, oh, wait a second, we can move the camera around. We could do other stuff, right? Just like early television was like radio, right? And like that kind of, you know, that, that's, that's something that's a kind of like, necessary. Even like early, you know, cars looked like kind of coaches in a way behind a horse. Right. So. So it's like, you know, that's. That's sort of. We're in that stage right now where we're like, like, okay, I get this and let's just put this there. But then, wow. There's so many new things that we can't even necessarily foresee.

And that's the beauty of this space. Like, we had Justin Kahn on here. You know, he did Twitch and he recently got funded.

Terrific. We just invested in Fractal.

Did you. I was gonna say he raised 35.

Million for fractal and his co founder, Robin Shan, is a really good buddy of mine. He's an amazing.

They're good guys.

Angel and entrepreneur.

Yeah.

Was Robin on his wall too?

We haven't had him, but we chat with them pretty often, though. Yeah, we're synced up with them on some of their games that have come through Meta Ops, Psycher. Yeah, they're just like, it's a cool platform. I love the model there. But something he said on the podcast is Justin, he was like, this space, he sees this much bigger than anything he's ever done. And web3 specifically in gaming with just like how many ideas there are and there's iterations across the board, anybody can do. And if you have an idea team, it's just, just. We don't know what's going to come. But yeah, there's a lot of support from funding from collaborations. I mean, it's just a cool space to be in right now that. Who knows what's going to come up? You know, these services that will be taken from maybe Web2, but I think it's Chris Dixon, he's like, you know, skeuomorphism, you know, you want to not just bring.

Of course, of course, of course. Here I am mansplating Skeuomorphism without even saying it, but.

He taught me that.

Of course. Of course. Yeah. I sort of understood the concept, but I never had a word for it. So there you go. That's a good one.

Yeah, it is. But, yeah, very cool.

Well, I know, I know we got to get you out of here in a minute or two. So I'm curious, what, what do you. What's in store for Animoca brands where, you know, is there anything exciting that you could share with the audience? You know, any, any. Any final words that we can share before wrapping up here?

Yeah. So, you know, as I may have mentioned, you know, we have 200 companies that we've invested in made a lot of acquisitions in the game development space. We acquired two game companies just last week and we have, we're an operator at our core.

The DNA of the company is mobile game company. And then 2018 we switched to on chain. And so we love to create and operate and experiment. So we're really at our core, not a transactional venture capitalist. We want to add a lot more value to companies and help them. Maybe you're a game developer, but you don't necessarily have strong on chain experience. Right. And we can help to the technical side, the product side, marketing side. Oftentimes companies will come to us and maybe they have it down, but they want to issue a token. And we have token advisory services. We've done dozens and dozens and probably over 100 different token issuances. So we can help with that. We're looking to rapidly accelerate this open metaverse because we believe that the biggest sort of threat is maybe some of these established players start to create more walled gardens in the space. And it should be. We just want to have a small participation in hundreds and hundreds of different companies, eventually thousands, so that we can help to grow the whole ecosystem. I think it's a pretty terrific mission. And yeah, I mean, one thing that I'm a last note is that I'm really excited about is I have a guild that I'm running on the side here in Indonesia. And just if you're not in the developing world, then it's really impactful when you're here to see how you can, can do well, but do good. So, you know, a buck an hour, like, you know, the GDP per capita in the US is, you know, like it's approaching 60,000 US here in Indonesia it's 4,500. Right. And it's a little bit skewed a little bit heavier to a. So probably the average person makes, you know, 70 bucks a week. 60. 70 bucks a week, you know, maybe, maybe below, below that even. Right. So if you're making a buck an hour, 40 bucks a week, then that's. That's a needle mover. Like that's a. You can either either highly supplement your income or you're replacing your job completely. And that for me is super exciting. That kind of mission, like at this age and stage of kind of the cycles that I've been through, for me to get out of bed, I want to work with people that I just would hang out with anyway. And that's, you know, Yatsuyu and the rest of the team at Animoca, like I just. The cultural fit and you know who those, you know who those people are just amazing. And the mission and vision. But then also like what I can, can do to affect change. And the back of the envelope thinking that I have is that 7.6 billion people in the world, let's just take 15% of that. A billion people. So maybe in the developing world you're pulling the sled for probably five other people in your family. So let's say it's 165 million people earning money. They can move the needle for a billion people. And they're making about a buck an hour for about 20 or 30 hours a week on average. And there's some people that'll make, make two bucks an hour for 50 hours a week. But, you know, let's just say it's 25 hours a week for. It's 100 bucks a month, right? That would be coming in from yielding digital assets, managing digital assets. And that could be doing something around play to earn where it becomes more sustainable, where you're helping. Like for instance, if you have a horse in real life and then you put in a stable and then people groom it and feed it and walk it around and take care of the health and then you ride the hell out of that horse in the weekend, right? It's like it's HP and it's level, you know, and then you're just like, woohoo. Right? And I think there's, you know, there's a lot of like value exchanges. I think Web3 is not so difficult to really crack because it's kind of like web 2 is really weird and warped in that, you know, everything's free. You know, the Internet's a giant copy machine. And like, you know, there's a few companies that just kind of dominate everything. And I give all of my most valuable resources, my time and data to them for pretty much nothing. And you know, so in Web three, it's like, okay, things are a bit, little bit more aligned with how things work in the real world when you have assets and they yield and then people work to help you yield those assets. And I think there's going to be hundreds of millions of jobs in the Web3 space where people are yielding digital assets. You know, it could be in games, could be in metaverses, could be supporting those other people. And like, that's, that's something that I'm really driven to grow.

That's cool. We recently had Peter from Blockchain Space on and He's.

Oh yes, Peter, he's terrific.

Yeah, we're partnered with him. He's an investee now too. Yeah, he's one of our sponsors, so I got to give him a shout out. But his, the fact that he's over in the Philippines and he's like the master of all the guilds, basically that's his mission.

He really is. He knows inside and out and he painted that vision data from that space.

Yeah. And how just the fact that you can have. There's a whole economic, a banking side or a finance side now folks that never maybe had access to banks or loans can do that through their earnings and these play to earn games. Leveraging a guild, maybe some of this technology that's being developed and tracking earnings and giving that trust to a financial.

Can start to own. Right. Because that's the thing is that when you're at the bottom of the food chain, like the ability to be able to get a loan at a rate that makes any sense, like it's kind of hopeless. Like you're really, really suppressed in a way. I was just like shocked even here in Indo to see, oh, somebody wants to open up a cafe, like the kind of gray market loans that they would have to take. And the terms are just ridiculous. Right. So it's like it's kind of almost impossible, but this opens up an entirely new world for people. And it's, it's pretty, it's pretty exciting and like, you know, and then, you know, if I may, like I also believe 18 years ago, 2004 was, was kind of a cute time. It was pre web 2, pre YouTube, pre iPhone, whatever. But it was pretty similar. Like you go back to 2004 and like. But I think 18 years from now, 2040, it's, it's like, it's really different. Like I think 2030 is going to be kind of different. 20, 40, 40, really different. Like, like it's like seismic societal shift. Because I see right now, I see the cracks already. Walmart's gonna pay 120 grand a year for their employees to go and train to be truck drivers. Right. What if you then can like have an AI service to basically, you know. Basically. Yeah. And it's like. And that costs 40 grand a year. And then it's, you know, already on it, you know. Yeah. And then, and then, and then it's also, it's also, you know, accident rates and you know, kind of like yield. You can just drive, you can, you know, trucks will be like planes where it's like planes like, you got to fill them up, you got to keep them in the air. Right.

Same thing with drugs.

You got to fill them up, you got to keep them on the road. Right. And it's like, it's like, you know, like, you know, that's one thing. And it's not even just, you know, necessarily truck drivers or baristas or cooks or waiters, you know, or. But it's like, you know, legal assistance as well too. Right. Like, I think AI Superpowers. It's a book by Kai Fu Lee. I've gotten to know him. He's in Beijing. He's a really amazing, amazing visionary. And he also has AI 2041, this vision of the future. In 20 years, what AI is going to look like, like that. That is all happening in China at an accelerated pace. Like us is the lab, but China is the. In the wild, it's like extract. Extract the DNA from the mosquito in the amber, make a. Make a dinosaur. A dinosaur. But like Jurassic island where they're like, oh, all the dinosaurs are dead. It's like evolution is happening. And especially accelerated by Covid. Especially accelerated by. By what's happening in the industry there. And China's even more closed off and difficult to see. And it's like that kind of rapid acceleration around AI and automation that is going to come hard this decade. And then by 2040, it's going to be like, it will be like I'm preparing my children, my sons. It's like all bets are off. It's a really radically different world and I really stand by that. And, And I think Web3 is going to be that as well too. And what a time to be alive.

It's fun, man. Well, I want to give a shout out to your Speed of China book and podcast coming out soon because it seems kind of relevant to what you're saying. Yeah. Is there a website up for that or anything yet or is that still.

There will be in. I'm going to try to get it by May 1st. So that's actually on my to do list for today.

Cool. Yeah, do that. Let me know when that's live. But also I remember Ray Dalio saying the latest big 45 minute animation or whatever it was. I definitely recommend everyone to watch it where it's like, like the changing of superpowers, world order. Yeah. And it talked about China and I mean all. It's exactly what you're saying. And it's pretty obvious to see when you're on the inside of some of these Web3 calls with developers investors and kind of the vision for things. And. Yeah, we're exactly where you're saying we are. And I'm going to read some of these. But AI superpowers, yours, when it's out, it's fascinating, endless. And you're seeing it, man. You're on the ground floor right there. So keep preaching.

I'm proceed at the show. I got a box of popcorn. See that? What?

Time to be alive.

Amazing.

It is. All right, Rich.

Well, hey, Matt. Matt and Joe. That was fun. Thanks a lot. Thanks for letting me blather away. Of course.

My man. Let's do it again. We'll stay in touch or something, you know. Yeah. We'll do all this. So.

Sam.