Sam Huber runs LandVault, which helps brands build metaverse experiences by securing virtual land, designing custom worlds, and monetizing them. The company has 130 staff and hires three to four people weekly. Huber says brands should treat the metaverse like a new sales channel, not a marketing gimmick.
Yeah, so the model that we operate right now is it's a full service basically for brands to enter the metaverse. At LandVault, we build technologies. Our mission is really to accelerate the metaverse economy because we think that's a good thing for the world and, you know, will lead to a fair distribution of the resources of the internet, mainly powered by the decentralization of Web3 that I mentioned. But what we do day to day right now is helping brands enter the space. We found that brands are effectively the first paying customers of the metaverse. They want to create a presence in that new version of the internet, just like they've entered Facebook and they wanted a profile on Instagram and they wanted to be on TikTok because the audience is there. Brands are starting to see that the audience is going to be in the metaverse, and therefore they need to be there to attract that audience. And so what we do is we follow a process that we call land, build, and grow. So for any brand, whatever they are, whatever, you know, they're fashion brands, entertainment, anything, they need first to find a place in the metaverse. So they need to figure out which platform do they want to be a part of, and within that platform, where in the map, which piece of land do they want? Do they want to own it? Do they want to rent it? Whatever they want to do, you know, we own a bunch of land that we bought a long time ago, and we keep buying land. And we're also able to work with other landowners who want to figure out a way to monetize the land, and they might not have access to those brands. So we pull all the land together, and we go to market with that so that brands can select their preferred location in the metaverse. If the brand wants to rent the land, This is something that we can do easily. You know, they would rent the land from us on a monthly basis. So that's the first step. The land is now selected. Then we are basically creating experiences from scratch. So again, you know, we've done a big project with a brand for Mastercard, for example. They wanted to create a Pride experience because this is a cause that they sponsor in the real world, and they wanted to bring that to the metaverse. So we basically work with them, with the agencies, and decide, you know, how is it going to look in the metaverse? And so we bring on designers, we have game developers, we have, you know, a creative director, account managers, the whole creative team to bring that concept to life in the metaverse. Now we have over 130 of those people in-house fully dedicated to LandVault. And we're about, we're growing about 3 or 4 a week at the moment. Wow. That's quite a pace. Yeah. And so once the experience is created, now comes the really interesting part. And this is where we apply our technology within those builds to actually monetize the experience. So a big part of our proposition for those brands is we're not a marketing company. We're not just doing a fun activation for them and just, you know, letting it there. Our goal is really to help them set a business in the metaverse. So that just like the brands are going to, you know, Facebook, or they came online in the early 2000s with a purpose. It was not just, let's talk about the brand. Let's consider this as a marketing purpose, right? It was, how do we, how are we gonna drive sales from the internet? How are we gonna drive sales from Facebook? Well, now we're thinking, how are we gonna drive sales and business from the metaverse? How?
