Virtua is a gamified metaverse that provides immersive social Web3 gaming, digital collectibles, and interactive experiences. In Virtua, you can explore, hang out, and own land and properties where you can showcase your personal NFT collections. Co-founder and CEO Jawad Ashraf joins the show to tell us more. Jawad is an entrepreneurial industry leader in blockchain technology and the metaverse. As a pioneer in emerging technology and innovation, he has built a career-launching and leading successful businesses. In this episode, he tells us about the inception of Virtua and what it entails. Also in this episode, learn how Raze Fintech is bringing fundraising into the next century with crowdfunding-style crypto integrations. Tune in and get the latest scoop from the Edge of NFT!

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Jawad Ashraf Of Virtua, A Gamified Metaverse Delivering Immersive NFT Gaming Experiences, Plus: Brian Anderson Of Raze Fintech

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This is Jawad Ashraf of Virtua, the gaming metaverse platform which changes the dynamic of engaging with digital experiences. I'm here on the Edge of NFT, the platform which tells you about all the dynamic projects in Web3.

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NFT-curious readers, stay tuned for this episode and learn why 2023 could turn out to be a year of shakeouts and building, how our guest's most prized possession is a simple garment that means everything to him and how Raze Fintech is bringing fundraising into the next century with crowdfunding-style crypto integrations that are carefully crafted to be on the up and up with the latest regulations.

Finally, NFT LA 2022 was a blast but it was also a blast off in a giant plume of bright burning rocket fuel. Web3, NFTs, blockchain, decentralization and a suite of immersive new tech developments have exploded onto the canvas of life. Outer Edge is the theme of 2023's event dedicated to those of you building with us at the outer edges and making the future happen.

The community-centric gathering returns to Los Angeles from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023 to uplift creators and technologists through interactive experiences, a wide variety of discussions and presentations and entertaining surprises that transport participants to the outer edge of what's possible when we co-create a new paradigm, embracing the decentralized web, AI, extended reality and more. To register to attend or learn how to co-create an experience on the Outer Edge, head over to OuterEdge.live. The event is being organized by The Edge of Company and us founders of the show.

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This episode features Jawad Ashraf of Virtua, an NFT and metaverse ecosystem. He's the CEO and cofounder of Virtua and an entrepreneurial industry leader in blockchain technology and the metaverse. As a pioneer in emerging technology and innovation, he has built a career launching and leading successful businesses. Virtua is a metaverse driven by games and social experiences, a world where you can constantly reinvent yourself, a world where you can create, play and socialize with like-minded people and a vast virtual space that you can truly call home. In Virtua, you can explore, hang out and own land and properties where you can showcase your personal NFT collections. Jawad, welcome to the show.

It's good to be here.

It's a pleasure. Virtua is a gamified metaverse, providing immersive social Web3 gaming, digital collectibles and interactive experiences. Tell us how this project came into being and what it entails.

Back in 2017, I was very interested in VR and the way that new technology was coming out but what you wouldn't get with VR was any market data. I would come off building some other companies and come up with an exit. To gather market data, I formed a company. What the company was doing was releasing VR games. We did that for about a year. We launched them on every platform. There was a Google one that used the phone. There was a Samsung one. There was an Oculus Rift. We used that to gather lots of information about how to build decent VR games.

At the end of 2017, I went looking for people to join the team to form what was known as Terra Virtua. We dropped the Terra after the whole Luna thing, which seemed to be quite pragmatic. I got ahold of my cofounder, Gary Bracey. Gary Bracey is one of the luminaries of video games. He's a BAFTA-awarded member. He was one of the guys in Ocean Software, which was one of the biggest gaming companies back in the '70s. He's had his hand in Tomb Raider and plenty of the AAA IPs.

I got ahold of him. I live in Dubai and he lives in England. Finally, I managed to pin him down. We met up in a Starbucks outside a car park in Staines in England. We sat down for the first time, "This is what Virtua could be." Within a week, we incorporated the company. We got on so well. It was great chemistry. We formed it. Gary brought a whole bunch of great people to the table, including Doug Dyer who was one of the guys involved in Warner Digital. He was one of the people who were behind Rise of Empire from Microsoft and who worked in Harry Potter and a whole bunch of stuff.

We bought in some great games people who had built the beginnings of the MMO and worked with mobile. That was trying to get the right people in place who had access as well as talent. We did that and got in some other people like David Atkinson, one of the founders of Holochain. We got in people who could allow us to walk into large brands. There was a massive thing years ago where the world and their dog were trying to get into IPs but we were there first.

We got into Paramount and got Top Gun and The Godfather. We went into legendary pictures and got the Kong franchise. Every meeting we were doing for the first year was all about trying to make people understand what NFTs were. When we formed the group, the first thing we did was take our VR knowledge. We created a full VR metaverse prototype with a bunch of games in it. That was back in 2018.

You could wear a VR headset, walk around, play five different games and also have VR experiences. That's where Virtua first came from. After we did the VR experience and set up that prototype metaverse, we realized that no one understood what NFTs were, what blockchain was, what VR was or what the metaverse was. We thought, "Let's double down on an NFT platform first but with a USP."

We were the first in the world to allow credit card payment from day one and create a wallet seamlessly in the background from day one. Years later, everyone thinks it's a great idea but we did it back then. What we did was built it all up so that we could come into the metaverse layer. We got all the CGI footage from special effects. Half of every NFT we're doing is based on 3D models we could put into the metaverse layer. That's a massive monologue but that's where we came from.

It's interesting when you listen to folks in the street talk about how we have to make Web3 more accessible with credit cards and on-ramps. There are a lot of projects like yours that were thinking this way much earlier. People talk about problems when there are already solutions. OneOf also does things with credit cards and taxes. Several projects have been successful at doing this. Magic Link is another tool. That's why we're excited about our upcoming event. We will drop some alpha later on but making the metaverse as we call it accessible to all is fundamentally important but it's not something that we have been thinking about for a while.

Even when we introduced credit card and wallet creation, we got spanked by a lot of users for not being very gung-ho on wallets because we were thinking, "This is the crypto audience. This is the mainstream audience." We were getting a lot of flack for not doing that so we incorporated every wallet and everything else. Years later, everyone has gone the other way.

What I wanted to share with you is we're tied in with Mocaverse where we get about 10,000 audiences per episode. Plus, we have a 25,000 newsletter. We're a year-round media outlet. When I think of how we can collaborate, year-round we're going to be planning a gaming/metaverse event separately maybe in summer or fall depending on the market. With Orange Comet and some other top projects in the space, we have skin in the game around the NFT infrastructure.

It's a very Web3 partnership. It's unfortunate we're starting to get to know each other before Outer Edge LA but I'm open to any way of collaborating in a way that you collaborate with other marketing community partners and whatever fits seamlessly. I don't know how you pitched NFT LA but fundamentally, it's how can we add value to this event together and create a bigger pie together.

One of the things that we're trying to do a lot of and that we do with Cardano Island is creating simultaneous events. You have something which happens there. You've got a metaverse event, which is a dovetail into what you've got. We give space to people as well.

We don't have a metaverse partner yet. We have talked to everyone, even Matty, known as @DCLBlogger. He's a big metaverse guy. He's an investor. He wants to create experiences. The hardest thing for that has been this. We need someone to figure it all out. We say yes because we don't have the internal bandwidth to think about it.

We have done a lot of that because we have worked with a ton of brands. We've got almost different mix decks, which explain different possibilities that we can work together.

That's fascinating. It's exciting to finally have you on the show, given how on the forefront of things you have been. If we look at what has happened since you got rolling, Web3, the metaverse and the NFT industries have all converged. I'm curious what your thoughts are on where we are in terms of the state of the metaverse and what we have to do next to enhance mass adoption.

That's one of those things. It is been a journey over the last few years. They say, "In crypto, time changes." I do feel like I've been at this for twenty years. It has been a long time. The interesting thing is that we have almost gone full circle to where we started. They say timing is everything. When we launched, we launched a metaverse in VR with games and VR experiences. Pretty much everything that we did was too early. When we started, we did that and then took it down to the NFT platform. The main thing is that when we did the platform, we still had our eye on the metaverse ball.

In crypto,time changes.Click To Tweet

What we did was made NFTs, which were high-resolution and high-fidelity 3D models directly from the CGI footage of movies. We had the special effects visuals from Lost in Space or the actual series itself and Godzilla versus Kong. We had the Cliffs Notes and the movie scripts before the movies came out. Until we created 3D assets, which would work in augmented reality, which we had on Android for three years, we launched that years ago but why would we do that? It's because we knew when the metaverse does come, which we're starting to see.

Those assets would immediately work in the metaverse. That comes back down to what you're saying about mass adoption because, ultimately, in crypto, we tend to speak a lot about the tech, the chain and everything which is underneath it but the mass market consumer doesn't care. They just want it to work. When you're on the iPhone and you're doing an in-app purchase, you don't care about the underlying stack, the hosting or wherever it's working. You want the utility.

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This will be quite interesting. I've been in technology for a long time. This is the only cycle of tech where everyone who is into tech contemplates their navel and talks about the technology. If you engage all of the crypto community, any metaverse worth its salt still won't have enough daily active users to be of use to anyone. Roblox and Fortnite eclipse anything on the market. Ten thousand daily users of some of the top metaverse projects aren't going to cut it. You have to go deeply into the mass market and adopt them. That was your second point. That has always been something that we have been focused on.

That's why we have made partnerships with Shelby, Jesse Lingard and quite a bunch of brands but we're focused on how you can bring in the mass market. Shelby would be a good example. If you look at the way that we're dealing with it in Virtua, let's say that you've got a Shelby game. What you do is that you have different acquisition channels. Let's say it's mobile. We want the mass market user. Mobile is the main channel to bring the mass market. If you've got Shelby NFTs, you launch a Shelby mobile game, which is part of a games network. You get the mobile gamers engaged with that and then do a drop of NFTs, which they don't even necessarily need to think of as NFTs. You think of them as DLCs.

From there, you move over to give them a free metaverse crib and do a freemium upgrade model for the metaverse. That's how you're going to go ahead and acquire users. I don't think it's all about the land of the landowners. It's going to work. It has to be about coming into the metaverse and having lots of gaming experiences and interesting things to do. It's about the acquisition and then retention. Most metaverses have nothing to do with it. We are pushing hard to try to integrate new game ecosystems. We have over 190 people in the house. We're building games. We're a game studio. We're also going to be doing tons of hackathons everywhere to get people to build games as well.

That intersection point between gaming and the metaverse is so critical. The two go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly.

There are 3.4 billion gamers in the world. It's more than Hollywood and music combined. If you want to start in a metaverse, focus on those. Don't focus on celebrities, stars, movies and music. Focus on gaming and look at how you can bring the Web2 games into the metaverse and bring the Web3 games into the metaverse because, ultimately, Web3 games have no audience and/or they're not very good generally.

Web2 games don't understand it. They have heard the metaverse is the front of NFTs. You need to gently guide them in. That means if you've got a Web2 game, integrate them into the metaverse and do it in a way that it's a persistent online virtual world and DLCs as opposed to, "We want to go ahead and make NFTs and metaverses," because it frightens them and frankly, it makes no sense for them to do that. They don't want to disrupt their business model.

Let's take a simple game on mobile. If you've got a mobile game, which is a Web2 game with a massive audience, they have reached the pinnacle of its monetization. It's all ads and in-app purchases but they could bring that game into the metaverse along with their community. Let's say you've got a mobile game like Subway Surfers, for example. They could have surfer shacks and skateboards. You now have social elements. They can do NFTs and crafting, which has a little monetization on top of that.

When you say acquisition, that's how you acquire. You bring gaming communities and mobile communities all in. If you can get a fraction of the users that we have done in the past, you can do well. Before Virtua, one of my companies was a kids' gaming mobile company. We acquired 24 million users in 9 months. I'm sure that if we follow this model linked to our metaverse, we can get an acquisition that should hopefully blow everyone else out of the water.

One thing that I come back to over and over again when people talk about the metaverse or getting into the metaverse is a lot of what people are working on is replicating real experiences, "We want to have a lecture. Let's put you in a virtual lecture hall." I always go, "A Zoom call is better. I can be closer to your face." We want to do the things that you can't do in reality in the metaverse. What you're getting at here is that gaming is a lot of the stuff that people enjoy about these virtual worlds that you can't do in the real world.

To give an extreme example, I can't go out with guns and shoot zombies in the real world. I'm going to go into a metaverse to do that. These games have in effect built small versions of what we think of as a metaverse. They built these virtual lands. All you're going to do is port them into your system and make them a part of the bigger collection of what's available. That's interesting. I mentioned the word collect surreptitiously there. Tell us about Virtua Kolect. Can you tell us what's going on with that?

When we launched TVK, our token, we were very lucky to be listed on Binance within a couple of months. We were one of the few metaverse tokens that are sitting on Binance. One of the things we were careful of right from the beginning was regulation because we're based in the UK. Our token was launched in another country but effectively, from day one, we have collected tax VAT. From day one, we have been careful in terms of how we use a token with an eye on how this regulation will come into the future, what we should do and what we shouldn't do with that in mind because a lot of projects are close to the wind, which means that in 4 or 5 years, you may end up paying the price.

There are certain things that we didn't do from the beginning, which was to allow TVK to be used to buy stuff on our platform. It's more like a membership club or loyalty club that allows you to go ahead and do things. You stake your TVK and end up getting a whole bunch of benefits but also, moving forward, we're going to have an in-game metaverse currency and TVK will be able to be used to buy their internal currency, which will allow microtransactions because whenever you go ahead and try to do anything on the chain for those things, you get muddled by fees.

You're going to be able to use Ethereum or Bitcoin to buy their internal metaverse currency but if you use TVK, you will be able to get it at a discounted rate. There will be much more value in using TVK. Plus, the Monster Zone is one place that we have launched. First of all, on the land sale, you could purchase with TVK. It opened up to other currencies. What we haven't done from the beginning is do what is like, "Stake your token. Get free tokens until the project eventually runs out of tokens."

It makes no sense. It has always been about, "Stake your TVK. You're going to get value. You will get these features and these things." To be fair some of our implementations haven't been fantastic but in 2023, we're going to be up-ramping it to tons of metaverse benefits by having TVK, including voting rights for certain things, naming stuff, deciding the future of certain areas that you've got and having access to sale drops. There's a whole bunch of stuff that will get utilities from the token.

Can you clarify it for the readers? I don't think it got clear. Make a distinction or join the concepts of TVK as the token and then Kolect. What does Kolect represent, the name of the token? It's for the readers' sake so they know what we're talking about.

It's the Virtua Kolect token. We treated our token as a collectible because that's everything in NFTs. TVK is a token. We're on a ton of exchanges from Kraken to Binance and a whole bunch of them. It used to be Terra Virtua Kolect. Now, it's The Virtua Kolect because we did a big branding exercise after we got people contacting us about Luna and telling us we destroyed their lives. It's not us. It's them. We rebranded.

You mentioned some partnerships. You've got one in development with Monster Zone and JLINGZ. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that's going to work?

The way that we're doing it is that on our main metaverse, Virtua Island, we're having Virtua City and Virtua City is having different districts. What we did is work with certain people who we thought could do interesting things in terms of NFTs with real utilities. Jesse Lingard, for example, or JLINGZ is a young footballer. He has played in some amazing clubs. He's got an eSports brand. He's very forward-thinking. He's going to be tethering a Lingard district in Virtua. That is going to not only have drops and interesting things but it will have football games that are going to be launched.

When we talk about the Monster Zone, that's more of a sword and fantasy experience, which will be in an area that we have already launched, which is going to have a whole bunch of playable features in it. You've got one area that is more playable, fun and gamey. You've got the main city and the city is having districts. There's going to be a Shelby district as well in the main Virtua cities.

What we're trying to do is bring different types of products and IPs along with interesting games. When we had each discussion with an IP holder, there was a program, "If we're going to do Shelby, we will have a Shelby racing game and Shelby drops. There will be garages in the metaverse that people use. There will be a Shelby tower. There's going to be a freemium upgrade model." We worked out programs with our IPs when we did that. That's why we see Jesse underpinning our Sports Zone. We got partnerships with Yorkshire County Cricket Club. There will be different types of sports as well.

That's what we're trying to do. We're bringing them in. They will all be in one space but this comes right back down to what we spoke about in the beginning, gaming and utility. When you come to the metaverse, there should be interesting stuff to do. You've got to cater to different tastes but every time you cater to them, you are also bringing in big fan communities. That's what we want to do, bring in the mainstream fan community.

When you come to the metaverse, there should be interesting stuff to do. You need to cater to different tastes, but every time you cater to them, you are also bringing in big fan communities. Click To Tweet

That's how we think about our audience growth. It's a similar way. We're going to bring in a different audience based on a topic. We will bring you in. Your audience comes in and becomes part of our audience vice, versa. It's a natural model that makes a lot of sense but maybe not everybody gets it. Since you've been in this space for so long, what are your predictions here for 2023 in the NFT market, digital real estate, digital identity, gamification and all this stuff? What do you expect to see? What are you planning for as a business?

In the state of the current market, what we're doing is knuckling down and building because what you're seeing is that everyone is either on the conference circuit talking themselves up or not and knuckling down and building stuff. You're not releasing much in this market because everyone is frozen. A lot of funds are announcing a lot of investments but a lot of them are backdated investments. Everyone is very hesitant. In 2023, you're going to see a lot of people building cool stuff.

As the market picks, they will announce it, show it or bring it in. Some companies will be going toward a mass market audience but you already have to know the timing of things. You can have a fantastic product launch. I believe it won't go anywhere because between tech layoffs, FTX and all of the domino effect that we still haven't seen, there are so many projects that were hit by FTX that are still limping along. Even they're going to hit the wall because they have tried their best and the best people try the hardest.

2023 is going to be a muted year. If we see anything, it will be toward the third quarter. I do think things will get worse before they get better but all founders and all companies need to watch their burn rate, try to build, acquire users, growth-hack and guerrilla-hack. How many people announced licensing partnerships that have stopped happening? I remember that in the height of NFTs, we were trying to negotiate with football clubs.

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We went for the main cricket league and they wanted $60 million for the IP. How in God's green Earth are you going to make $60 million on NFTs? It was bananas. In 2023, you're going to see more people building the metaverse. There will end up being metaverse fatigue. I do think what will happen is that later on during the year, people would start understanding, "This metaverse looks pretty but it doesn't have utilities. Where are the users?"

There's going to be another little bit of a shakedown coming on because a lot of people are bringing out effectively unreal demos that look phenomenal but there's so much underlying plumbing that you need to make these things work. There's a reason that AAA games cost $100 million. It takes 5 years or 6 years but in crypto, we expect to knock out our metaverse in six months. If we don't do it in three months, the community starts complaining.

Shakeouts and building.

You are keeping it real. I couldn't agree with anything that you said more. It's funny. I remember we had Republic Realm on the show. It has been a while. She was talking about that tricky association between physical real estate and digital real estate and how different they are but in a lot of ways, you could take out the word metaverse and apply a lot of what you said to the real estate market. Commercial properties have to rezone to rent to tenants. You're planning out your spots for 2024. It's going to be a murky time for the real estate market. I found that interesting because as much as we try to disassociate from physical real estate and virtual real estate in some conversations, there are a lot of parallels there in terms of how 2023 is going to play out.

A lot of the stuff that we were doing in crypto is going to align with what has come before. If we want to grow the market, it's the Roblox players that we want. They're the people that should be in the metaverse. I do think we're going to see a lot of interesting things. Upland's approach to the metaverse and digital real estate is very interesting as well. I met the CEO. It's going to be an interesting year.

You've talked a lot about the underpinning of Virtua and what's going on. Fast forward, what's on the roadmap for the next several years? What's your vision on how this all plays out for you all?

I see three streams of the way the business is going to go in terms of the acquisition. One is mobile acquisition, which is critical. That's where we will bring in the millions of users because we have done it before. Even if we convert 4% of it, that will bring us the users that we need. The second is the crypto channel. There, you lead with how everything is metaverse or NFT-based. We're going to have different streams of acquisition. That's the second one. The third one, which is going to be the most fun one for us, is all about game integration and bringing multiple games into Virtua.

In 2023, you're going to see the APIs coming out and integration with games publishers. That's one thing. Before the end of 2023, I want to see from within our studio 50 mobile games, which will be out in the market as well. That's what you're going to get in 2023. What you're going to see moving forward is a lot more creator economy-driven stuff. For example, imagine that somebody publishes a game. I can see you having the game going to an NFT project and then them being able to remix the game and release a version of their own.

I can see interesting stuff happen like game integration and Web2 integration but I see game remixes done for degen projects and degen projects taking elements of what we have and plugging them into other games, which will increase the market. We want to push that. If there's a mainstream game that comes in and integrates and one of their collabs is with a big degen project coming in, all of a sudden, it's a win-win for every.

That's the way that we want to do it. We're gung-ho about the game integration. Add tons of more features. We have launched our Cribs, which are virtual villas, which are running in WebGL. There's nothing to install. It's high-fidelity already. We already launched our mobile application. We already have had VR for over two years but we never launched it because we don't think the market is right for it yet. We've got all our desktop stuff happening as well.

On the Crib side, I feel like I could use a little bit more sleep. There should be an Edge of NFT Crib, Eathan, for us to hang out, party and maybe get some Zs while we're at it. What do you think?

I'm looking for some special effects while I'm sleeping in there.

There are some strobe lights.

Didn't you do something over at the body hacking thing?

There are some binaural beats that we should play. You can have your focus beats and REM beats. That could be fun.

I'll clarify. What is that place that you go to?

It's Upgrade Labs. Upgrade Labs is his biohacking spot that I hit up regularly to handle the intensity of planning this event.

I don't know if he has it but they have these immersive things where it's light and sound. It's very rejuvenating. That's what I was thinking.

It's a virtual float tank. Jawad, when you're in LA, I'll take you over.

I want to pop down and see you when I'm there next.

Before we get to our Quick Hitters, very briefly, what are some other things that you're looking at in the Web3 space that you're inspired by outside of your projects?

One of the guys who have been doing rad is Gala Games for the way they have bought different game developers into the mix, the way they're expanding other assets and the way they're running the nodes. I do love what they're doing. They're the model which is the closest to a mainstream model. They're thinking about driving users and bringing in interested people from even outside crypto. I like what they're doing. They have gone from here to here very quickly by making the right calls. As a project, they're one of the best ones out there.

That sounds appropriate. We did some stuff with them. I highly recommend taking a look. That takes care of our regular interview segment. The next segment up on the block here is our Quick Hitters, which will be fun. I'm sure you have a lot to share. Edge Quick Hitters are a fun and quick way to get to know you a bit better. They're ten questions. We're looking for a short, single-word or few-word response but you can feel free to expand if you get the urge. Here are the first couple of questions here. Number one, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?

Teen Titans #1, a comic.

That sounds like appropriate stuff you're into. Next question, what's the first thing you ever remember selling in your life?

I used to sell the same comic books back at school on the playground. It was all about the comics. That was another comic again. I had a little stack at the moment. I read them and sold them so I could buy more.

We have seen a lot of that here. It's not every guest but I would say a good 10%, 15% or maybe even 25% are doing some sort of exchanging of collectible cards or comic books. They're buying them and selling them as a kid. It's a common theme here. Question number three, what's the most recent thing that you've purchased?

I bought one of those foldable laptops. It becomes a 17-inch screen. I bought that. I love toys. That's something I'm enjoying playing with.

That sounds fun. It's one of those things where the screen itself is bendable almost.

It folds up and then you can open it as a mini-laptop and then unfold it as a 17-inch screen. It's pretty cool. There's a lot of spec to it.

On the flip side of that, what is the most recent thing that you've sold?

I sold an OPPO mobile phone. It was a foldable OPPO I imported from China. I sold it.

Is it online on a marketplace?

I'm in Dubai. You've got this thing called dubizzle. You can put it up. We're still doing that.

That's a thrifty thing to do. That's good for the environment. Don't throw them away. What is your most prized possession?

My dad passed away a couple of years ago. It's a jumper that he used to wear all the time. After he passed away, I got the jumper. That's probably my prized possession because it still smells of him.

A jumper for vocabulary purposes is a sweater.

It's a sweater he used to wear.

That's very sweet. Do you wear it as well?

Everyone in the family got his sweaters. Everyone wears them from time to time. It's one of the things we do.

I have a good friend who passed away a couple of years ago. I visited his wife several. She said she had a scarf of his. That was something that she wanted to give to me. It's nice to put it on and think about him for sure. After that, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service or experience that is currently for sale, what would it be?

A red carpet to Quantumania because you can buy those tickets from time to time. They do come up. If I had it, I would love to go to the red carpet of that. I've met some of the cast before and I've done my fair share of red carpets. There's nothing more fun than doing that. It's Quantumania, the Ant-Man movie. I would love to buy the red carpet tickets to that. You can get them.

Next question, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?

Generosity. I always like to do a lot. I would like to pass it on because there's not enough of it.

There have been days where I wake up and say, "I'm going to do a little bit of extra." Sometimes you don't even feel like it. You're grumpy like, "I'm going to do some more for somebody else and see how that all pans out." It usually works out pretty well.

It's a bit of an echo chamber. Give it out. You will get it right.

Another thing on that is before the holidays here in the US or before Christmas, we were out to eat for breakfast. This guy came over to our table and said, "You're such a beautiful family. I'm going to buy you breakfast. I bought you breakfast." I thought that was wonderful. We ended up buying breakfast for a couple of other people at the restaurant. That's a fun way to do it for sure.

It makes you feel great. It's nice to do stuff. One thing about coming to places like Pakistan, where we've got offshore centers as well, is you see how hard it is for a lot of people here. We have got homeless in the West but when you see it all as well as some of the ways that people live here, it makes you realize that we're very lucky with what we've got.

On the flip side of this, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would you pick?

It's my impatience. Being a CEO, all the time, everything is too slow, especially if I haven't eaten. That gets magnified. I'm way better than I used to be. There are times when I'm doing a diet or something like that. Everyone is trying to give me food.

You mean they're trying to give you food because they want to get you in a good mood? Is that what you're saying?

Impatience leads to intolerance. I would love to eliminate it.

Impatience leads to intolerance. Click To Tweet

Question number nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?

I had a shisha.

Here's the flip side of that and our final question. What are you going to do next after joining us on the podcast?

I'm going to watch episode four of The Rig on Amazon. When I'm in Lahore, there's not much to do so I end up watching Amazon. It's the only time I get to watch anything on TV.

Should we head on over to Hot Topics?

Let's do it.

We have a very special Hot Topics guest to kick it off here. His name is Brian Anderson of Raze Fintech Incorporated. He's the CEO. The company launched in early 2022. Brian came up with this bold idea to help companies tokenize equity and revenue, helping them raise capital but to do it within the regulation of laws in the US something he saw everyone else was trying to avoid. Thanks for joining us for the sponsored Hot Topic. Brian, tell us off the bat here what is Raze in a few words here.

Thanks for having me. We're simply a private fundraising platform with a Web3 infrastructure that brings together companies privately raising capital with accredited investor communities. It's something that people in the industry have been trying to do for a long time through all sorts of different ways, including ICOs and security tokens. We're doing it a lot simpler and using the great aspects of Web3. If you're a startup or an existing business, you can raise money traditionally using our platform through issuing equity, revenue shares, tokens and safe agreements. Our bold vision over the next five years is to be known as the most trusted global brand for raising capital.

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To make it clear here, a lot of people are doing things with NFTs, crypto tokens and so forth. There's always this topic that comes up. Is it a security thing? A lot of what you're doing there is saying, "If you've got a security and it is a security, we're going to help you make it follow all the regulations and make this right along the lines as it should be." Is that what you're talking about?

When we started this, it was important to me. I said, "We have to do this within regulation and in a compliant way. We can't be in these fuzzy areas. Is it a security or not a security?" What's interesting is I did my research extensively, hired an incredible attorney and got our legal framework in place. What was amazing is when I went out there, read the laws and did my research, I said, "This isn't that difficult. Like any law, you have to know what the guidelines are."

People get hung up all the time on what they're trying to accomplish at the macro but at a very small level or a micro level, what does everybody want to do in their startup? They want to raise money, find investors and do it in a compliant way. What's fun is this new technology we call blockchain and Web3 is an umbrella. It allows us to do so many things that we could not do before. It makes it faster, cheaper and better. Being in software for twenty-plus years, I've always believed the role of technology is to make things better, faster and cheaper.

The role of technology is to make things better, faster, and cheaper. Click To Tweet

On our last episode, Yat Siu said the thing he's most looking forward to is regulation. With what you're doing, we're seeing how that regulatory-compliant way of doing things with Web3 can add a lot of value to the ecosystem. I'm so glad that our friend Sam Borghese introduced us and got to know what you're cooking. I would love to break down the finer details of how Raze is using Web2 and Web3 to support raising capital. Lay it all out for us.

The main feature set that we focus on is it is a bridge between Web2 and Web3, which is so important as the technology gets adoption. We do things like providing a private pitch page or a landing page for companies raising capital. I want you to think crowdfunding-like but it's not crowdfunding. It's in the private placement capital-raising side of raising private money from VCs and accredited investors but you get that crowdfunding-like experience, which every raise should have so you can tell your story better because there is a lot of competition with raising money.

We have a rapid legal review process. It includes assigning investor agreements as part of your experience. Our platform does KYC and AML on every investor when they're investing in one of the clients that we have listed along with an accreditation check. The founders don't even have to worry about that piece. It's all handled within the process of checking out as an investor but here's one of the interesting pieces that we introduced.

Not only do we allow and facilitate traditional fiat and wire transfers but we allow the platform to facilitate a crypto transfer or a digital currency transfer in a compliant way. Imagine taking your Bitcoin, your Ethereum or whatever it is that you have and exchanging it for an investment of X number of shares in a company or an investment in a safe agreement. We are having people do that already on the platform with clients along with their raises inside the platform using their cryptocurrencies.

We all know the big benefits of transferring crypto. It's an instant settlement. There are no banks. It's not that we're trying to work outside of banks. It's that there are situations where it's easier to use crypto and people have a lot of crypto sitting on the sidelines. The last thing I'll say about that point is that in the past, it was only possible to use your crypto for speculative trades, day trading, DeFi-staking and buying NFTs. Tomorrow and even now with our platform, you could use your crypto to do traditional investing in companies.

That's a powerful feat but the last biggest piece and the big differentiator is that we're using NFTs where we think everything is going, which is real utility. Anytime an investor completes a transaction, they get a proof-of-investment NFT dropped in their Web3 wallet. If they don't have a Web3 wallet, it's okay. We have a solution for that too. They don't necessarily have to bring their own. Those are all the features of the Web2-Web3 intersection that we're doing.

Outline a little bit more the difference between traditional investment agreements and exchanging digital assets for these investments. Is it pretty much the same when it all comes down to it? Have you covered all the differences? Is there anything else unique to share?

The big gap I saw was that everyone was trying to make it overly complicated. They were saying, "Either I have to raise money with a safe agreement or a price round. I can't have anything to do with Web3 and crypto or I have to release a security token," which is hard. You're acting like you're a public company if you're doing an ICO or a security token offering.

You have to worry about liquidity, dumps and all that stuff but what about the founders that are saying, "We want to raise on traditional investment contracts for a price round but we want to accept crypto. We want to provide an NFT to our investors as proof of their investment so everything is on chain." Lawyers can go back and verify what is happening because it's all transparent. That's where we sit. It's a $1.6 trillion private placement market in the US. That's a pretty big market to play in.

Let's talk about one of your partnerships with the UCLA Anderson School of Business Venture Accelerator. What does that look like?

We saw this interesting opportunity to be able to help accelerators like them to take our platform and integrate it into their ecosystem so that startups could raise capital simpler and also potentially use Web3. We put together a partnership. One of our advisors, Sam, is pretty integrated with UCLA. He helped us form this partnership with them. I couldn't be more excited about that because they already have a huge proven track record.

They have launched over 400 ventures and raised over a couple of billion dollars through those companies. They have chosen Raze as one of their partners on the fundraising sites. We're going out there and sitting down in front of all of their new companies and giving them the ability to start using Raze to conduct their compliant raises.

I'm excited and so glad to have you at our event. Time flies since we first chatted about getting you in the mix.

We're honored to be here.

Congrats for filling this space that a lot of people tread lightly in, facing it head-on and bringing an opportunity to folks to do something special.

This is hard stuff. It takes a special type of leader like you and a special type of company to go into this type of area. We had Roofstock. What they're doing with real estate is the same thing. This is what gets me so fired up about the future potential of Web3 technologies.

That's why I do this every day. I fell in love with this space a few years ago but I wasn't necessarily embedded in it like you were at the time. I come from a traditional business background. Here's what I figured out. Like in the dot-com days when I was in college in '99 and 2000, it took people taking chances and showing people the real world and how to do things.

It takes all of us showing others how this technology can work in the real world versus trying to draw lines and divide people. We have to show people how this tech can work. Most people are looking, "How does this make my life better? How can this improve my life?" We set out to give people the ability to do something easier that is hard and chaotic and that's raising money.

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It has been a pleasure talking with you about all this stuff. We would love to chat so much more about it at a later date but we won't have so much time for the Hot Topic so we will have to sign off on this one. Before we roll out, can you make sure and let people know how they can find out more about you and what you're working on?

Go to our website at Raze.Finance. We're on LinkedIn and Twitter as well @RazeFinance. Thanks so much for the time. I appreciate you.

It has been a blast.

Thanks, Brian. Take care.

That's it for Hot Topics. The next segment is a fun one that we have been enjoying since we brought it in. It's a shout-out. We understand you might have someone special that you would like to shout out as part of the episode here. Who would that be?

I'm in the hall with the crew that is doing a lot of our development. The company is called Big Immersive. They had an anniversary. I would like to shout out to all the team who work through all sorts of stuff, power cuts, stuff burning out and all sorts of issues. They're always powering through. Here's a shout-out to the whole Big Immersive team.

That's beautiful. That sounds very appropriate. Before we cut off, let's make sure we let readers know where they can go to learn more about you and the projects you're working on. Where would you find the socials, the websites and stuff?

We will give you all the links but all the life is in Discord. If you go to the Virtua Discord channel, that's where you will find a very active and vibrant community with a lot of stuff happening. The Telegram group is also a great place to visit. For the rest, go to Virtua.com and go to the bottom. You can see all the links anywhere you want.

One place makes it easy. We decided we're going to go for a giveaway with you as well. We will put more details out on our socialists as we put out the actual giveaway but do you want to share what you would like to give away? I'll tell the readers a little bit about our plan.

In Virtua, we have our IP. There's a family robot called the vFlects, which we have been publishing for years. They're beautiful 3D models. They always have their personality. We're going to do a limited run, especially for you that we're going to do as part of your giveaway. I'm going to go and break that to the dev team. No one knows about this yet. We will do that. That should be great. They're beautiful assets.

What we're going to do with those as well is pair them with people who are purchasing tickets for NFT LA. We have announced our theme for 2023, which is Outer Edge LA. It will be exciting. We will get to give them away to the people who are excited about our events. That will be fun. We have reached the outer limit at the show. Thanks, everyone, for exploring with us.

We've got space for more adventures on this starship, so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers who will make this journey much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes, rate us and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Look us up on all major social platforms by typing EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Thanks for sharing this time with us.

Important Links

• Virtua
• Raze Fintech
• OuterEdge.live
• OneOf
• Magic Link
• Mocaverse
• Orange Comet - Previous episode
• Cardano Island
• @DCLBlogger - Twitter
• Shelby
• Jesse Lingard
• Virtua Kolect
• Monster Zone
• JLINGZ
• Virtua Island
• Yorkshire County Cricket Club
• Republic Realm - Previous episode
• Upland
• Upgrade Labs
• Gala Games - Previous episode
• Yat Siu - Previous episode
• Roofstock - Previous episode
• LinkedIn - Raze Finance
• @RazeFinance - Twitter
• Big Immersive
• Discord - Virtua
• Telegram - Virtua
• Spotify - Edge of NFT
• iTunes - Edge of NFT

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