Staking Claim to a Digital Plot in AR, with SuperWorld’s Hrish Lotlikar

XR for Business

English - December 20, 2019 08:11 - 29 minutes - 26.8 MB - ★★★★★ - 12 ratings
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Imagine owning the
digital real estate surrounding the Taj Mahal. Well, to be real with
you, you can’t have all of it – today’s guest, SuperWorld co-founder
Hrish Lotlikar, already has a piece. But he’s made it easy for anyone
who wants it to buy the rest, and other plots of digital real estate
around the world.

He also talks about The
Rogue Initiative and SingularityNET!

Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is
Hrish Lotlikar from the Rogue Initiative, SuperWorld app, and
SingularityNET. Hrish is the co-founder and chief business
development officer for the Rogue Initiative, a Los Angeles based
entertainment company composed of award winning entertainment
industry professionals, including alumni from Amblin Entertainment,
Pixar, DreamWorks Animation, Disney, Activision and they are creating
new original feature films, television, AAA cinematic interactive VR,
and gaming content. He’s also the co-founder of SuperWorld —
superworldapp.com — which is Foursquare meets Pokemon Go meets
Monopoly in the real world, building a community in AR, powered by
the blockchain. They’ve built an AR real estate marketplace, ad
marketplace on the blockchain, which also acts as a social AR app,
allowing users to personalize their real world by adding anything,
anywhere in augmented reality with photos, videos, texts, and 3D
objects, and share those experiences with their followers. He’s also
an advisor of SingularityNET, a decentralized marketplace for AI
algorithms allowing companies, organizations, and developers to buy
and sell AI at scale. Previously to this, he was in venture capital,
but he got better. If you want to learn more about Hrish’s
initiatives, you can go to the Rogue Initiative, which is
therogueinitiative.com,
SuperWorld, which is superworldapp.com,
and SingularityNET, which is singularitynet.io.

Hrish, welcome to the show, my friend.

Hrish: Hey, thanks so much for
having me, Alan. I appreciate it. Looking forward to having this
conversation.

Alan: Oh, absolute pleasure. You
do a lot in this space. And the first time we met was at– I think
it’s now called Global World Summit. But it was called– what was it
called before?

Hrish: The VR/AR Conference?

Alan: Yeah.The VR/AR Association
Conference. But let’s unpack these amazing initiatives that you’re
doing. Let’s start with the one that’s Rogue.

Hrish: Yeah.

Alan: Tell us about it.

Hrish: Sure, yeah. So, Rogue
Initiative we started back in late 2015. My co-founders, Pete Blumel
and Cathy Twigg. The goal of the Rogue Initiative was looking at the
convergence of linear, Hollywood, traditional entertainment and
interactive entertainment. And how could we — from the ground up —
create new original properties that brought those forms of
entertainment together? Because there is a confluence of technology
and Silicon Valley in Hollywood that was coming together. And how do
we how do we kind of leverage that, to create new original content
that goes across all of those medium? So building and developing a
new story that starts on the feature film side and then organically
moves to interactive all the way through TV, through all the way to
amusement park rides and toys. So building franchises from the ground
up, bringing in top Hollywood talent and interactive talent, and
knowing from the foundations of creating that content, that we’re
building it to go across all those mediums. And that’s the kind of
hig

He also talks about The
Rogue Initiative and SingularityNET!

Hrish, welcome to the show, my friend.

Hrish: Hey, thanks so much for
having me, Alan. I appreciate it. Looking forward to having this
conversation.

Alan: Oh, absolute pleasure. You
do a lot in this space. And the first time we met was at– I think
it’s now called Global World Summit. But it was called– what was it
called before?

Hrish: The VR/AR Conference?

Alan: Yeah.The VR/AR Association
Conference. But let’s unpack these amazing initiatives that you’re
doing. Let’s start with the one that’s Rogue.

Hrish: Yeah.

Alan: Tell us about it.

Alan: Very cool. So let’s move
on to SuperWorld app. Let’s talk about that. What is that about?

Hrish: So SuperWorld, I
co-founded with Max Woon. Max co-founded Xfire and sold it to Viacom,
and he’s been involved in several other companies at the very
foundational level. Even in the VR/AR side with Sliver, and he’s been
involved in toonstar, and SKIT, and Phizzle. And we got together
because we saw Pokemon Go become the fastest company to hit a billion
dollars in revenue, and just the growth and excitement around
location based AR and putting kind of gamification on that, and
bringing in a big license brand. And we thought if we can build the
next Pokemon Go, wouldn’t it be great to build a place where the next
thousand Pokemon Gos get built on? And that’s kind of the vision
behind SuperWorld. It’s an augmented reality platform, where users
and brands can create AR around them and put anything around them
anywhere. And then that would be characterized as kind of like
Pokemon Go meets Foursquare, right? Pokemon Go is putting digital
objects around you anywhere, Foursquare’s the data elements of that.
And we have a big data strategy at SuperWorld. And then the third
part of SuperWorld is Monopoly. So how do you basically sell or buy
the world? And if you buy the world, or buy parts of the world —
we’re selling the whole world in 100 meter by 100 meter plots of land
— you get a share of any of the XR commerce that happens on the land
that you own. And we built that on the Etherium blockchain. So each
plot of land is a non-fungible token, that once bought can be
repriced to whatever you want. So it’s a unique digital asset. We’re
getting people buying the world, and so the analogy is back to 2009,
with Bitcoin launching and there’s a finite amount of it, or domain
names back in ’95, if you had the opportunity to buy a really cool
domain name. And so that’s kind of the excitement around SuperWorld.

Alan: So what properties of you.

Hrish: But so far I’ve bought a
few select properties around the world, just places that I have
nostalgic kind of interest in, historical places. I think I have a
piece of the Taj Mahal, and the pyramids in Egypt, and some places in
Manhattan, but I definitely want to keep a lot of stuff for our users
to buy. So I didn’t buy too many, but we kind of see it as as a way
for people to buy things around their interests. So back to what I
was interested in, there’s other people that are interested in
sports. There’s a lot of people who come in and buy a lot of sports
stadiums. Other people buy downtown. Some people buy their apartment,
or where they live, or where they once lived. So it’s kind of
interesting when you think about the XR world, the digital land
around you, there’s different reasonings that people have to buy
things. So it’s kind of fun to watch that.

Alan: It’s pretty cool. I’m
actually just buying something right now. [laughs]

Hrish: [laughs] Awesome. And
remember, what’s really cool about this is when you buy a property —
it’s .1 ether, so about twenty five bucks or so right now — is you
can reprice it for whatever you want. So if you’re like, “This
is a valuable property,” you could say “Hey, that’s 500K
now.” And so what’s cool about this, is now you have 500K of
real world dollar property in SuperWorld, so you’re not just a user,
you’re like a stakeholder.

Alan: Cool. I have to buy some
etherium and bitcoins to do this.

Hrish: Yeah, yeah. You have to
transfer some ether to your account.

Alan: All right. I have to go to
in– this is going to be more than I can do just on the phone here.

Hrish: [laughs]

Alan: I’ll figure it out.
Awesome. Well, I’m definitely going to go buy a block of land,
because why not? What land should I buy? I feel like the Monopoly is
when you got me, I was like “I’m in!”

Hrish: Yeah.

Alan: I’m going to buy my
property!

Hrish: [laughs] You know, what’s
funny is that I haven’t seen anyone just buy one. When you buy one
and you get your head around what we’re trying to build, it’s very
hard to buy just one because, you’ll probably.

Alan: I’m going to make a
suggestion on the app.

Hrish: Yeah?

Alan: When you click the spot to
buy, the picture comes up over the spot. So I can’t really see what
spot it is.

Hrish: Yeah, you can adjust the
screen if you’re on your mouse, if you’re on your laptop or even on
your phone, you can kind of move it up and down. So you’ll be able to
kind of adjust that. But you’re right, it does do that sometimes. So
it’s something we’ve got to– yeah, definitely. If you adjust screen,
you’ll be able to see it. But the UX/UI is definitely one of the
things we’re working on improving.

Alan: I love it. I’m buying this
spot right here. Awesome. I got the perfect spot! I’m not telling
anybody where it is! But you’ll have to–

Hrish: Until you own it. Until
you own it. Then you’ll be telling everyone you own that spot.

Alan: Yeah! I own it! Pretty
cool.

Hrish: That’s what’s still going
on, is people talk about it naturally.

Alan: So yeah, let’s talk about
how businesses can start to kind of utilize this new idea of owning
virtual space.

Hrish: There is a lot of use cases for businesses as we think about the XR space around us. I think what’s wonderful about the medium is, you see through the success of Pokemon Go that there are people willing to — at this point, lift up their mobile phone — but definitely in the future with AR glasses coming around the corner, look around them and access contextual data. The way we think about it, — back to Pokemon Go for brands — it could be a brand like Coca-Cola or Nike who says, “Hey, why don’t you walk around your city or go around your city, and find all the rare Nike shoes that we have around the city.” And all of those shoes are interactive pieces of content. So you can collect points or play a game or all of that stuff is possible. But it also can be educational. It could be that I’m in my apartment, and I want to learn how to bake some cookies, I click on a button and I see Betty Crocker making cookies next to me.

Alan: Interesting. It’s really
exciting.

Hrish: It is a very different
way of thinking about building a social platform. And that’s what’s
kind of exciting about it, is thinking about how XR can be applied to
a decentralized type platform. I think decentralized media is a
concept that is going to become more and more important, as we see
issues with other more centralized forms of media and curation of
content, and news and other things. And so we’re really trying to
build SuperWorld and leverage the power of XR, but do it in a way
that takes into account people’s privacy, takes in account data
sharing, and it’s very permission[-based]. So that’s kind of all
parts of this vision, that we think about when we think about the XR
world around us. We don’t want to create a world where you’re being
bombarded with data and information that you don’t want, you can turn
it all off if you want, but you can also kind of in a very permission
way bring in XR type experiences into your environment that you want.
That’s all part of the vision that we’re going towards in SuperWorld.

Alan: So how will it work when
people want to create experiences? Then will you have like a set of
agencies or studios that you work with?

Hrish: Yeah. So that’s a good
point. So currently what we’re doing is working with brands that
we’re engaging with at SuperWorld. But ultimately we would like to
bring in other agencies and other developers on the AR creation side
into a marketplace where AR developers, individuals or companies can
work with brands and be able to create those experiences. At the end
of the day, what we would love to do is create an environment where
brands and developers can showcase their AR to users that want to
experience at AR and XR in all of its forms — whether it’s brands or
influencers or even just their friends — on the platform. So at this
stage, yeah, we’re kind of working on creating all the AR ourselves,
but ultimately we’d like to transition that to more of a marketplace
model.

Alan: Yeah, that makes sense.
So, there is one more company on the list of your incredible
companies here. SingularityNET.io, what’s that all about?

Hrish: Yeah, so
SingularityNET.io is a company founded by Dr. Ben Goertzel, who is
one of the top AI researchers in the world, well known for his role
as chief scientist at Hanson Robotics as well. Sofia — the humanoid
robot, if you’ve seen her — SingularityNET is Sofia’s software and
provides some of that software there. And so SingularityNET is an AI
marketplace. It’s a decentralized marketplace for AI algorithms. And
one of the things that we’re working on through SingularityNET —
where I serve as an advisor — is another company called Area 51,
which is a decentralized AI virtual avatar company. So, connecting
virtual avatars to the decentralized AI in order to make virtual
assistants, to make virtual influencers, to make virtual Hollywood
characters, there’s a lot of different use cases for virtual avatars
or virtual characters. And the point here is we’re connecting it all
to a decentralized artificial intelligence as part of SingularityNET.

Alan: Let’s go back to Rogue
Initiative for a minute. You guys are an entertainment company. What
are the experiences or things that you’ve done so far that people
could try?

Hrish: Sure. So we’ve launched
Crowe: The Drowned Armory on Oculus and HTC. HTC is also one of our
investors. We are in post-production with a cinematic VR experience
called Agent Emmerson, which should be released very soon. Actually,
we just got finished with that. So we’re working on getting it.

Alan: Is it volumetric or 360
video?

Hrish: It’s 360.

Alan: Right.

Hrish: Yeah.

Alan: And the Crowe one, is
that– it’s available on Steam, is it?

Hrish: Yes.

Alan: Great.

Hrish: That’s right. It’s on
Steam and Oculus.

Alan: Very cool. So those are
the new ones coming up. When is it coming out, the new one?

Hrish: It should be out soon. I
don’t have exact dates on it. We just got wrapped up on it, and we
announced it a while back. We had some delays in post-production. So
that just got finished. So we should have that, I’d say, out in the
next few months. We [were] planning on having it out earlier this
year, but we had some delays. The other thing that we’re working on
Rogue is a production with Michael Bay, the action director, which
has been announced. But we’ll have more announcements soon. And
that’s that’s going to be according to our model of building
franchises that go across interactive and linear production.

Alan: Very cool. That’s pretty
exciting. In one of my earlier interviews today, we were talking
about how Hollywood studios are starting to make these five to six
minute experiences to enhance the moviegoers’ experience. So you go
to the movies and watch the movie, then after the movie you can get
in VR and experience the movie as well.

Hrish: Yeah.

Alan: It’s– I think it’s really
interesting.

Hrish: It’s going to be going
beyond just a marketing vehicle, where people can experience aspects
of a movie. And I think we’re going to move towards fully interactive
entertainment, and that’s going to be very exciting. So I’m looking
forward to that. I know me personally would definitely enjoy an
experience where I have a lot more agency in entertainment. I’m very
excited about the future of that. But yeah, currently, it’s also a
really great marketing accompaniment to any kind of linear
entertainment on the feature film side.

Alan: Yes. Did you see the one
they did with– I think it was South By Southwest. It was a huge one
where you jumped out of a helicopter in VR and it was crazy.

Hrish: Was that this year?

Alan: Yeah, it was the Amazon
Prime show, Jack Something Or Other.

Hrish: OK. No, I didn’t see
that.

Alan: It was crazy, you have to
look it up. I’ll out it in the show notes. It was nuts. You literally
went on a– what’s the thing when you slide down the rope?

Hrish: Rappelling?

Alan: Rappelling, yeah. It was
like, you were rappelling across this vast thing in VR. You’re in VR
on a physical– it was nuts! Like, who thought this up?

Hrish: Crazy. I missed you at
South By this year. I didn’t see.

Alan: Yeah. I actually wasn’t at
South By this year, I didn’t go. I really wish I had been there, to
be honest. It was just a timing thing. I double-booked myself. I
didn’t realize.

Hrish: Ok. Yeah, there’s always
so much– I think GDC is going on at the same time. So it’s noise.

Alan: Yeah. Oh well. Next year,
I’ll be there. I was a judge for the South By Southwest Awards this
year.

Hrish: Oh really? Oh, that’s
right! I think I remember seeing that. That’s so cool. I’m sure you
saw a lot of good stuff.

Alan: Well, I was the judge for
AR or virtual and augmented reality and also blockchain. So I saw a
ton of blockchain companies, and a lot of them were working in the
kind of logistics and tracking where your food comes from and that
sort of thing. And I thought that was really cool.

Hrish: Wow. That’s– that is.
Yeah, there’s so much innovation going on around that.

Alan: Let me ask you a question.
What’s EastLabs?

Hrish: EastLabs is an early
stage accelerator that I founded about eight years ago in Ukraine.
The premise there is the region in Ukraine and Belarus and Russia
graduates some of the best and brightest technology programmers and
developers and designers. And the workforce over there — as you know
— is pretty amazing. And the top people end up working in
outsourcing for Facebook and Google and other top tech companies in
Silicon Valley. The ones that get to San Francisco, start Facebook
and Google and WhatsApp and the top tech companies. And so I started
EastLabs with two other partners, Eveline Buchatskiy and Olga
Belkova. Evelin ended up running TechStars in Boston and now runs a
venture capital fund called One Way Ventures, funding immigrant
entrepreneurs, and Olga’s in parliament now in Ukraine. But we got
backed by one of the biggest investors in the region, Victor Pinchuk,
and his EastOne Group, which is a large investor over there. And
basically the goal was, is how do we fund these awesome
technologists, these programmers, how do we get them together and
build world class companies that originate in Ukraine and then move
their front office to the US or Asia or wherever, whatever market
they’re targeting and keep their back office in that part of the
world? Which is where it should be, because they’re so good. And
that’s what we did. We invested in about 35 companies in Eastern
Europe, mainly in Ukraine. We sold one company, and two or three are
still doing very well and thriving. But most of all, a lot of the
founders that we invested in went on to start second or third
companies that have gotten funded by top theses in Silicon Valley and
gotten pretty well-known. So we kind of helped build the ecosystem
over there, and we’re really proud of that. Yeah, so EastLabs was
kind of one of the originators of the Ukrainian technology ecosystem.

Alan: That’s incredible. It’s
really interesting, because I do see a lot of talent coming out of
the Eastern Bloc and the talent is there. The cost to develop things
is a lot less. It’s up there in talent for sure.

Hrish: Yeah. The Soviet system
had a big emphasis on science and technology and mathematics. And I
think they graduate thousands and thousands of a very high level
programmers every year. It’s an awesome place to find engineering
talent, for sure.

Alan: Indeed. On that note, what
are one thing that you would want listeners to kind of think about in
each of the companies? Rogue Initiative, what do you want people to
think about?

Hrish: So, for Rogue Initiative,
I’d love people to imagine what they would think of as an
entertainment franchise. What do they think of when it comes to XR as
the ideal way to to experience entertainment? The way that it’s
happening right now is a mix of interactive and passive, and I think
we all have our own personal opinions about what kind of things that
we want. But I think ultimately what’s really great is the XR medium
allows entertainment to really evolve from what we think of now, and
to what it will be in the future. Imagine watching a movie on your
coffee table in AR, right? Or imagine playing a game around you that
is part of the movie. And some of that stuff you can see in Call of
Duty and other console games that have been around for years. But I
think we’re going to see a real evolution in terms of entertainment.
And so I think that as we all imagine what we would want in
entertainment, those are the kinds of things that we think about at
Rogue Initiative. Those are the things that we’re creating on the
entertainment sites. It’s a lot of fun to think about that, but that
would be my take away there.

Alan: Amazing. So what would the
takeaway be then for SuperWorld?

Hrish: The interesting thing is,
that it being a platform where XR in all of its forms in terms of our
vision, where we imagine a place that you can really kind of access,
not only games or kind of Pokémon Go-esque type experiences, but
also one day be able to experience other things like education or
more enterprise applications. I think the takeaway there is that all
of this in the XR world is is still very formative. I’d say it’s
very– the way that it’s being built is piecemeal by brands, and
brands have apps or brands are using WebAR. All of these different
forms of AR are kind of out there. But I think the take away is, is
how do we create an environment, where we can create a place where
all of these things can live. And as users, we can kind of experience
those things again, in an environment that’s very permissioned, where
we’re not being overloaded by AR, and it’s very curated. And that’s
kind of some of the things that we think about at SuperWorld is, as
we are building an AR world in an AR platform, how would we build
that if we could kind of build the ideal platform? And part of that
is the decentralization. So I would say go and buy some real estate
and and help us build SuperWorld. And that’s the point, is when you
buy some real estate, now you’re a stakeholder on the platform. You
know, eventually we plan on giving owners rights or privileges on the
platform. And we want to build it with kind of everyone involved. And
so that’s the back to the decentralized kind of approach there.

Alan: Awesome. And finally,
SingularityNET.

Hrish: SingularityNET, we’ve
been around with Ben, creating decentralized AI and again, my
involvement in the SingularityNET came from my interests in AI And
I’ve known Ben for a while. And we think that AI and decentralized AI
really has a place in SuperWorld. And as we’re thinking about virtual
avatars connected to decentralized AI, the benefit here is, you look
around at other virtual assistants or other assistants like Siri or
Alexa or others on the market. You’re kind of freely providing your
data to those assistants that and they are mining that data. And we
think that if we can kind of build this in a way where the data that
is used by these assistants is– you’re being compensated for that
data. And so there’s an exchange of data for her payment. And then
also having that data and that information be processed by in a
decentralized fashion also has benefits for us as users, because we
aren’t feeling like the information that we’re providing is to a
centralized source that’s controlled by one authority. And so, again,
SingularityNET being decentralized, utilizing decentralized
algorithms and then back to XR and how we’re interacting with those
XR avatars. There’s a lot of benefits to that decentralized AI
infrastructure. And so that’s kind of the thing I would say I would
say, is the takeaway is, how is your data being used currently? And
is there a better way to have an AI virtual assistant experience,
where you’re having all your own privacy and and your data that
you’re providing accounted for. And you’re monetizing that data as
well, so I would say that that’s the takeaway, and some of the things
that we’re thinking about there at SingularityBET and Area 51.

Alan: Really incredible stuff. I
can’t wait to see what you guys dream up for these, in terms of kind
of real use cases as it expands and as the platform expands and more
users come on board and brands start to kind of flex what’s possible,
it can be really interesting.

Hrish: Yeah, yeah. Ben Goertzel,
who’s the head of SingularityNET, and also involved in Area 51. He’s
been working on AI and for 20+ years, and is one of the leaders in
the field. So it’s a pleasure to be able to have him and others like
Cassio Pennachin, his longtime partner and co-founder. We’re kind of
thinking about how do you bring in AI into the XR world. And I’m
honored to be able to help them and provide my insights on that.

Alan: Really awesome. Well, I
want to thank you again, Hrish, for taking the time out of your busy
schedule. This has been great.

Hrish: Yeah. Thanks so much. I
really appreciate it.

Alan: Thank you so much.

Hrish: Thanks, man. Looking
forward to seeing you soon.