Merging Virtual Companions with NFTs with Max Giam

What is up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the debut crypto podcast. And today I am joined by Max the co founder and CEO of Metapals. How's it going Max? I'm doing well and glad to be here. Yeah, excited to dig into this. Before we get into Metapals and Tomagachis and virtual companions and all that fun stuff. Let's talk about your origin story. How did

you get into crypto web 3 crypto web 3. Wow, that takes me back. It would have been like 2016 or 2017. I think when I kind of delved into cryptocurrency. I did marketing for a finance club back in university. And then I joined a small startup that was a cryptocurrency brokerage back in Australia. And that kind of introduced me. To all these concepts of blockchain and

the early on sets of kind of NFTs. And then from there I kind of did a lot of branding consultancy. So working with other startups to do branding or marketing. And then from there kind of evolved into more entrepreneurial mindset. Why started to lead some teams in kind of blockchain space. And that kind of brought me to doing my masters at Singapore. And that's when they

kind of ideated into what we know of as Metapals. Cool, very cool. So from a high level, what is Metapals? And I love Tomagachis. I think a lot of people listening to this grew up on it. So I think we kind of get the concept. But I'd love to hear from you overview of what it is and what you guys are kind of seeing this evolve

into. So Metapals aims to foster this sense of virtual companionship through digital pets that live on your computer screen. So right now the first iteration is you can see these on your browser screens and they live on an additional layer on top of say, for example, Google Chrome. And so you can interact and play with these NFT pets directly from your computer screen. And then the

next evolution would be things like mobile, AR VR and then jumping your pets from different like metaverses and their idea of interoperability. But how this will kind of started was that actually if we want to go all the way back. My co-founder and I we love Tamagachis in the Opetts growing up. So I'm more of a Tamagachi fan. And my co-founder that he's more of a

Neopets fan. So we'd spend hours after school, we'd purchase accessories or trade within the Neopian stock market. And in Tamagachi you can have that feature you can like marry each other. And so we were hooked on this idea of virtual pets. And then further down the line in our masters, we actually wrote a report, this big report on the idea of emotional connection with virtual life.

And so the examples we did use were Tamagachi in Neopets. And so we thought that actually this idea of having an emotional bond with the pet could serve as quite a useful tool to onboard the next generation of non-crypto users into this kind of meta-first blockchainspace. Nice. Yeah. And I liked that it's browser-based as well. Because I think MetaMask has done a good job. At least

in this first few phases of like Web3 connecting on websites and all that, I think it's a better low barrier to entry. Out of all the barriers to entry, it is probably the easiest for the non-native Web3 people to get involved in. So I thought that the stage that you guys are at, I'd love to know if there's a large team here. If it's live, if

you have a good user base, what's the status? So for the past that, we've been doing a lot of customer discovery, a lot of interviews and surveys. To get really understanding about our customers, about our users. We have a team right now of about 13 full-time employees. And so we're currently in beta testing stage. So if you go to our website, you can kind of sign

up to our beta list. And then we go on week. We go through different beta testing stages to improve the game and the browser experience. And then we plan to launch later in the year in the round of November. Very cool. Very cool. And I, I noticed that on the roadmap, you have things like my favorite sandbox, horizon, stuff like that. What does it look like

in a virtual experience? Or what are you imagining this is going to look like? Yeah. So this idea of interoperability, which I'm sure you're familiar with in kind of a blockchain space. The way we apply that is just like a real pet, to your dog or cat that you have a home. It's not just reserved to one room. You can take it out to your living

room. You can take it to the dog park. You can even take it out to the dog park. You can take it overseas. And so to replicate that kind of experience in the virtual space, then we have this thing called interoperability. And so with our pets, your Metapile, not only can you interact with it on your computer screen, but that NFT that represents your pet can

now be poured over to different metaphors, like you mentioned. So for example, in the sandbox, you'll have a 3D representation of your Metapile pet. However, it'll still be linked to the same NFT contract. And so it's still the same pet. It's just kind of visually represented in that particular metaverse dimension. Got it. I think something that's really important is around this whole virtual companion concept. And

I like that you guys are focused on that because there is like an emotional connection that needs to happen. I think there's, there's just so much to be researched there and learned as we get into this whole like interoperable future and virtual connections and friends and friends. Gen Alpha and Gen Z are just on a whole other wavelength of spending time in these virtual worlds and

spending time online than millennials and boomers and everybody. I think it's such a fascinating progression. So I like to think that this is almost like a tomogachi for the next generations because you're you're allowing for that connection. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of those kind of temagotchi inspired projects. But I think that with that backing, and understanding the kind of tomogachi and how they started,

we studied these underlying mechanics that allowed you to form these bonds with virtual pets. And so I think that an important aspect of that's making sure and maintaining that level of companionship. And the way we do that is through these underlying mechanics that strengthen the bonds you have with these pets. So you might see with like other kind of cryptocurrency or blockchain based projects that relate

to pets. Their focus is more so on things like finance. Financial gain or like battling your pets with other pets. And I think that, you know, that's one angle you can take for sure. But for me and my experience with the pets I have at home, so my dogs and my cats, it's a bond that you don't need to have these kind of gimmicky mechanics to

it. It's that emotional bond you form over time because of those those little interactions you have with each and every day. And so those are the things that actually help with your mental health and your well being in the long term as well. So we interview a lot of people that have pets or had pets in the past. So, you know, people that have struggled with

depression, especially during COVID, where we become more socially isolated. And now we're moving to more remote working. We're spending a lot of that time on our laptop. And it just means that we need this added level of companionship because we're not getting the same level of social interaction that we were. And so we need to migrate that level to something that's more virtual. And I think

the best way to achieve that is through something like pets. And I think we all know that pets, especially, is an amazing thing to do to have and take care of for your mental health and well being. Well said. So where do you think we're at with the stage of adoption? I think everybody's got a different take on this. You know, some people think that we're

in the 1990s of the internet kind of phase and everything like that. And I think I'd have teas or even sooner than that. Pre-1990s internet. But I'd love to get your take on where you think we are. I definitely think we're very much in the beginning of this whole idea of not just NFTs. NFTs are somewhat of a simple technology, but they unlock a lot of

different aspects of things that contribute to this idea of the metaverse and Web 3.0. But we are definitely at the very beginning of introducing people to this idea of metaverse. And I think what I'm more focused on and what meta pals is more focused on is not so much about the metaverse and how much can we get as many people into this space as possible. But

we also are considering, well, is this a space that we want to introduce people to? People outside of the blockchain space, I've talked to that. I don't know anything about blockchain or metaverse. The first thing I tend to bring up is metaverse. That's like those Black Mirror episodes. And so they have this negative perception towards metaverse because they either see Mark Zuckerberg leading the wave and

seeing all this kind of a scary thought as well. And so what we're trying to do is why not make that a bit more friendly? Why not make that a friendly or hand holding process in which people introduce this space and are open to a community of people that are just there to essentially have a bond with each other. Right? And so we think that a

companion by your side, such as a dog or cat, we need meta-pal animals. We need to choose access that kind of sidekick or that guide towards things like the metaverse. Agreed. Anything that can be kind of a sherpa for lack of a better way of saying. I think is such a key part. And also attaching something cute, just like a crypto kiddie's model is very, very

of founders that have created insanely cool projects with NFTs. So I wanted to get your take on what it was. What do you think that that aha moment was? For you? I think that I was introduced to crypto kiddies a bit later in the game. And so I was looking at it and I heard from all this hype about crypto kiddies. And so I got really

excited when I got onto the website to see these kittens on your screen, just like in the NeoPad states. But then I was suddenly disappointed because I realized that it was just a static image. It actually didn't move or interact or do anything. It was just a pitch up. And so this JPEG image was now the biggest hype in the NFT community. And it was just

a JPEG. Obviously, I really like the breeding mechanics of it. They go quite deep when it comes to how they generate new crypto kiddies. But I just felt like it was such a missed opportunity to not be able to interact with these kittens. And so I thought that why not bring back what I loved in the Tamagotchi, which is this idea that not only can you

take it where you want, but you are able to look after it and it gives you this sense of responsibility and companionship throughout your day. And so I thought that the one thing that crypto kiddies in the Dunk better is have that next level of interaction. And so we're taking that one step further. Hi, so I like to do a little future looking before we ask

the finale excitement question. Where do you see this in five years from now? And five years for everybody that's listening in the web three space is like 20 years in an traditional business. But I'd love to get your take on where you see Metapal is in five years. So five years times we would have completely finished the browser extension platform. So your past essentially will be

fully utilized within the browser extension. And then in five years, essentially, you'll have the mobile companion up. So it means that just like if you walk around in the day to day life, you'll have that augmented reality simulation where you can actually see your Metapal pet in 3D as you walk around the world. And then we'll be introducing more partnerships with a broad range of Metaverses.

So all the Metaverses, they end up being the most popular in the next five years are the ones that we're targeting to ensure that essentially anyone that is going into this kind of space. We'll always have a companion by their side if they want to go and try a different Metavers. Got it. So that leads us to the finale question, which is outside of Metapal. You

know, you've been in the space for a little while. You've seen a lot outside of what you're working on. What is it that when you're getting up in the morning, you check your phone and you're just hyped about to see. Throughout the day, I think the one thing that I hear a lot about Web 3, right? And this idea that a lot of people still struggle

to grasp. And I think that actually most people don't even know what Web 3 is. Including myself, we're really just in the beginning of what that actually means and entails. But I like about it is this idea that we are able to share and have a shared custody of our items. And I think that's a really exciting thought because it means that essentially we are enabling

a lot of different platforms, a lot of different software applications to work with each other in the level that we haven't seen before. And that opens up a lot of different doors for efficiency and also for collaboration and community generation. Just like, you know, what globalization did to World Trade and how we get so many different goods from around the world. I think that that is

like what's going to happen to the Web 3 space in which we are now collaborating in a whole new level. Got it. I agree. Totally agree. The Web 3, just like we said, this itself is like this term that sounds more digestible than crypto. And I think crypto collectibles shifted into NFTs. And I'm surprised at how quickly NFTs really just that term was used in like

the mainstream. I was really impressed by that. Well, those are the questions that I have for you. Where can people go and learn more about Metapales? Super easy. Our website has pretty much everything. It's Metapales.Pet. So I'll say that again, Metapales.Pet. That's the entire domain. And then I would suggest looking at it on desktop because it's a bit of an interactive website. You actually decide scroll

through the website with a little companion. We have Ichibu, which is our Shiba Inu and Tao, which is our Tabi Cat. And they take you along our website and kind of introduce these concepts that we're trying to promote. Awesome. Awesome. Well, wherever you guys are listening on iTunes or Spotify, all the links that Max mentioned will be in the show. Thanks so much for coming on

and sharing the story about Metapales Max. It's been the pleasure of staying. Thanks.