virtual-worlds
(7)
Herman Narula and the problem of making worlds matter
His family built in bricks and mortar. Herman Narula chose virtual worlds, raised $502 million in one funding round, and discovered that getting people into a world is only the beginning.
Francesco D'Orazio and the secret life of an audience
Before Pulsar, there were rumours, avatars and two very different dance crazes. Francesco D'Orazio has spent his career asking what happens when an idea finds its people.
Peter Lipka and the price of a millisecond
From Goldman Sachs to Improbable, Peter Lipka has worked on the systems behind shared virtual worlds. Now, as Somnia’s CEO, he is putting that experience to work on a blockchain with a changing clientele.
David Baszucki and the classroom that got out of hand
Before Roblox, David Baszucki made software for physics lessons. The students had other plans - and their improvisations helped point him toward a world built by its players.
Anthony Leung Bet on Belonging - Then Built a World Around It
The former Riot development director made a counterintuitive wager: online games could feel less like contests and more like neighborhoods. Palia became the eight-year test of that idea.
Bradford Oberwager
Bradford Oberwager is the Executive Chairman of Linden Lab and CEO of Tilia, the fintech arm powering Second Life's virtual economy. A serial entrepreneur who built and sold companies in personalized vitamins, healthy snacks (Bare Snacks, acquired by PepsiCo), and labor technology (Jyve, acquired by Advantage Solutions), Oberwager led the 2020 acquisition of Linden Lab alongside investor Randy Waterfield. Since then he has staked $35 million on securing money transmitter licenses in all U.S. states to enable real-money payouts from Second Life's Linden dollar economy, grown monthly active users to 600,000, and championed a mobile-forward future for the world's original metaverse.
Teppei Tsutsui
Teppei Tsutsui is General Partner and co-founder of GFR Fund, a San Francisco-based early-stage venture capital firm focused on gaming, generative AI, creator economy, and consumer tech. Tokyo-raised and University of Chicago-educated, he co-founded GFR Fund in 2016 after a decade spanning Mitsubishi Corporation, Morgan Stanley M&A, and GREE - where he moved to San Francisco in 2014 to launch their seed investment program. GFR Fund III closed at $53.5M in 2023, and the firm's portfolio of over 100 companies includes three unicorns - VRChat, Animoca Brands, and Sky Mavis - with GFR's earliest and most famous bet being VRChat, invested when the platform had just 1,000 active users.