Author| Yu Huiru Editor| Luo Lijuan
Over the past year, no one has known about the metacosm.
In China, the first meta-universe research institute, the first scenic meta-universe research center, the chief analyst of the meta-universe... All kinds of new names also appeared almost overnight, and the wave of meta-universes surged to all walks of life, streets and alleys.
Most people actively or passively enter the metaverse wave without understanding what the metaverse really is.
In the past few months, it is not uncommon for listed companies to "touch the porcelain" meta-universe to pull up stock prices.
In addition, according to the statistics of the third-party platform Ene Niu data, the investment cases in the meta-universe field in the second half of last year were significantly more disclosed than in the first half of the year, and there was a gradual upward trend.
Although the secondary market once appeared blindly hyped, in the observation of Zhichun Capital, the attitude of the primary market to the metacosm is mainly cautious and optimistic.
As one of the earliest and most distributed funds in the metaverse field, Zhichun Capital has invested in a number of meta-universe projects such as Oasis Oasis, Kaiheola, Vyou Micro-You, ACE Virtual Geji, Gemsouls, NXGen, RSS3, Kuaiyin, JUMP and so on.
ACE Virtual Singer Image Source: Courtesy of respondents
So, when investing in the metacosm, what are investors investing in? What is the ROI of such projects? What are the new technologies and directions to look forward to? In response to these problems, recently, All-Weather Technology and Zeng Yinglong, a partner of Zhichun Capital, chatted.
"Invested Metacosm"
24/7 Technology: What is your internal definition of the metacosm?
Zeng Yinglong: When our fund was established in 2017, one direction we paid attention to was finished in one sentence, that is, "computing power liberates creativity". We believe that people have unlimited creativity, in the progress of science and technology, computing power, the perfection of various tools, they can be released, get a good expression, this is also a kind of creator economy. Based on this perspective, we began to invest in metaverse-related fields such as music, virtual people, and games. The earliest is actually the phrase "computing power liberates creativity".
Tell us about our definition of the metaverse. Metaverse and web 3.0, they tell a very close story. But they are still biased or directed. In our definition, the metacosm is actually more inclined to emphasize people and information, or the progress of the medium between people and information. So you will find that it is difficult to avoid or ignore AR and VR when talking about the metaverse, because this is what we have seen so far that is more likely to become the next generation of technological information interaction platforms or interaction methods.
So in the metaverse, we have actually been looking for something like "how people and information interact is more humane, lower cost, and lower threshold", and we are investing from this dimension, which is actually a very general definition standard.
24/7 Technology: How many meta-universe-related projects have you invested in, what are they?
Zeng Yinglong: There are about 20, and some of the boundaries are blurred.
All-weather technology: Just talked about "computing power to liberate creativity", which is a more basic and technology-oriented problem, but from the perspective of the projects you invested, I don't see more investment in basic things such as equipment.
Zeng Yinglong: There is a situation where the device may not change, but the form of interaction has changed. For example, the project we invested in related to virtual people, such as Gemsouls, it is actually to turn your interaction with information into your interaction with a person on your phone. For example, what we are going to eat tonight, this time we may open the public reviews, search for themselves, and then pick one by one. But there are a lot of virtual people on Gemsouls, and one of them may know what you like to eat, you can find it directly, let it help you find it, it will definitely help you find it.
The metacosm emphasizes that the way people interact with digital information has changed, which is the core variable, and the more humane people and digital information are, the more humane the way people are, the process of the ephemeral universe.
The AR glasses and VR glasses I am casting now can be understood as the front end, but there are many assumptions in this. Maybe in the next five to ten years, with the front-end pattern not changing, what changes is the intermediate pattern, what is this? Like you don't use your fingers, you use your mouth. When you drive, you tell the map that I'm going to the company, and it will directly help you navigate to the company.
We say that the application layer is actually the backend, which is a specific product form, such as content that may be related to VR. At the moment we are also looking at it continuously, and there are some projects that we are still quite interested in.
All-weather technology: Your metaverse-related projects have been called this name since 2017, or because the meta-universe has recently been on fire, do you think that the projects invested just match the meta-universe, so rub a hot spot?
Zeng Yinglong: We didn't mention before that we invested in the meta-universe or did a meta-universe project, after the fire, we found that the valuation of many of our invested companies went up, and they were also popular in the market, and others felt that they were very "meta", so they came to us and said how your meta-universe invested so well, we still went from the demand to see the project, the investment project.
Metaverse does include ar/VR, AI, blockchain, entertainment, community social and other fields that we invest in, and the investment label of Metacosm also reduces a lot of communication costs.
24/7 Technology: So you're actually an "invested metacosm"?
Zeng Yinglong: It can also be understood in this way.
24/7 Technology: How has the Metacostem's investment label changed for you?
Zeng Yinglong: The biggest change is just mentioned, when I talk about a certain project, everyone is in a roughly close state. In the past, when I said what direction to look at, I might say that I look at AR and VR, and it takes a long time to explain from multiple dimensions, but now basically just by looking at the metaverse, everyone will naturally push me around the labels of AR, VR, and games, and the communication cost is much lower. Efficiency gains for our fund or for me personally are the biggest changes.
Vyou Micro You Image Source: Courtesy of respondents
"Oasis Oasis of the Day"
24/7 Technology: When were you first concerned about the Metascopic Project?
Zeng Yinglong: We started to pay attention in 2017, when we were talking about the creator economy.
24/7 Technology: What reasons to focus?
Zeng Yinglong: At that time, we were focusing on the virtual tipping point of the digital economy. In this world, people only have time, and this one thing will not change. At that time, we found that in countries with a faster digital economy, people moved online 6-8 hours a day. We think this is possible globally, and people spend most of their time online. Digitalization is transforming the time distribution of people in the world, and people will have more and more attention and time distribution to the digital virtual world.
From this dimension, our fund becomes a virtual world group, which is called internally. Our research has found that everyone's more and more attention and consumption are serving his emotions, so we believe that what can make people happy and improve entertainment efficiency on the Internet is something that will become more and more valuable in the future.
24/7 Technology: What was the first project invested by this virtual world group?
Zeng Yinglong: It should be oasis of Oasis.
24/7 Technology: Tell us about the before-and-after process of investing in Oasis Oasis.
Zeng Yinglong: Yin Sang is a serial entrepreneur, and when he came back to start a business, he wore Oculus all-weather technology uest glasses to show us, which was very cutting-edge at the time. You can understand that he built a room where you can watch movies, you can play games, you have friends, and everything is like communicating with you with virtual experiments. He told us he was going to do this thing, and we were so bright that we were going to vote for him that day. The founder is an outstanding young man who has experience in business operation and is an outstanding young man after 90.
All-weather technology: the day of the decision, did not do due diligence?
Zeng Yinglong: There is a background, Yin Sang before starting a business, we knew him, it can be said that he has been observed for two or three years, based on this background, as soon as he said to start a business again, and is doing a direction that we have always agreed with, we voted for the first round. In fact, what impressed us the most was the founder.
24/7 Technology: What are your criteria for judging good founders?
Zeng Yinglong: One of the core points is the degree of personnel matching. You will find that everyone's interests and past experiences are different, and his past work and experience play a key role in whether he can do this or not.
"The Metacosm project is about spiritual needs"
All-weather technology: Some of the projects you disclosed, such as open black and fast tone, I think it is more biased towards a social platform?
Zeng Yinglong: First of all, I think this is still that sentence, the three themes of metacosmology, social networking, and platform express different things, such as social is actually a need, metacosm is a concept or standard, and the platform is actually a business model. Our fund is particularly optimistic about the demand level, first of all, the social needs in the digital world, especially the community category, because we find that there is a very obvious phenomenon now, and more and more people may be more and more lonely in real life. But they have so many personalized needs that they go online to find like-minded people.
All-weather technology: So whether it's music or virtual people you're voting for, it's actually social at its core?
Zeng Yinglong: In essence, what is excavated is the spiritual need, which has nothing to do with whether it is a metaverse or not, which is a need point in everyone's heart. Another variable is that with the development of urbanization, people's concept of relatives is becoming weaker and weaker, so their sense of belonging is very weak. At this time, they need community, in the digital world, people can find a lot of like-minded people, community gives people a strong sense of belonging and security.
This is the reason why our fund invests in the community platform around different dimensions and interest points. You will find that whether it is our music or the community of games has social platforms, they have a feature, that is, they have a very crazy crowd, which also shows that it pokes some very deep points of users.
All-weather technology: meta-universe related projects, when you invest in what projects you may not look at, will not invest?
Zeng Yinglong: In fact, the type we are more afraid of is rubbing heat, and the personnel matching degree is completely insufficient. For example, I used to open a café, found the meta-cosmic fire, and ran to do Roblox.
24/7 Technology: Are there any metaverse-related projects you regret missing?
Zeng Yinglong: There is an overseas company, it was founded in 2015, we paid attention to it in 2018, when they were just three years old, the valuation at that time was only about 300-500 million US dollars, and now the valuation is tens of billions of US dollars.
24/7 Technology: Because what's missing?
Zeng Yinglong: Because the focus of our entire team at that time was on China, the first reaction of our attention to overseas projects was not to get it back. So this also gives our fund a very big revelation, we can no longer use various frameworks to lock ourselves, can not use the so-called standards to shut ourselves in the house, we must pay attention to global trends. Recently, we also participated in the investment in the overseas web3 dark horse project RSS3.
Scenes in Oasis Oasis Image source: Courtesy of respondents
"Everyone sees more, talks more, shoots less"
All-weather technology: After the meta-universe was on fire, many institutions set up branches to invest in the meta-universe project, what do you think about this?
Zeng Yinglong: I think it is very good, because every huge progress, it must be behind a lot of upfront investment, there are talents continue to enter. After the heat rises, the resources, talents, and money of the whole society will flow to this side, and its foundation will become better, or "that day" will come earlier, so I am very happy about this thing now.
24/7 Technology: What day was that day?
Zeng Yinglong: The picture in my mind is still relatively blurry, it may be that we people can break through the current appearance of interacting with numbers, not through the interaction of fingers, it may be with the mouth.
All-Weather Technology: Meta-Universe-related projects are all rising a lot?
Zeng Yinglong: I can share a phenomenon that the term metaversmic is getting hotter and hotter in mid-to-second half of 2021. The time of this batch of meta-universe-related projects we invested in is concentrated in the first half of 2020 to the first half of 2021. You will find that all the projects we have invested in have been very smoothly financed to the next round of funds. In this year, there are companies that may have increased their valuations the most by more than ten times, but they have not reached the point of losing their rationality.
All-weather technology: Are most of the meta-universe-related projects now inflated?
Zeng Yinglong: The primary equity market will not be, and the secondary stock market is possible. Because there is no liquidity in the first level, you can only exit after 5 or 10 years.
All-weather technology: So in fact, you are still more cautious about investing money?
Zeng Yinglong: The industry is very early, in fact, everyone is the same, think this concept is very hot, but what is this concept? Everyone has a question, and in the process of learning and talking about the project, there is no very clear standard like a ruler, which can be obviously quantified. The whole industry, everyone sees a lot, talks a lot, but really does not shoot much. We have paid attention to this direction in 17 years, although there is no clear standard as the ruler, but it has run out of its own set of logic, cautious and fast decision-making.
24/7 Technology: What does Metacosmic-related investment, ROI and cycle look like?
Zeng Yinglong: It is still in a very early stage, or a very chaotic state, very chaotic. In view of this situation, we will currently prefer to invest in earlier projects.
24/7 Technology: How long does it take to get out of chaos and move on to the next phase?
Zeng Yinglong: I think there may be a small answer in two years, I am not sure if it can be clear, but there will be a small answer in two years. According to third-party data, Oculus 2220 technology uest2 currently has 10 million shipments in 2021. Ecology has a lag, what does it mean? After the shipper signs, the content developer sees this number and will run to develop the application for this ecosystem. An application to come out, if it is fast, it is half a year, a year, and if it is slow, it takes one year or two years.
Why did I just say it for two years? I pay attention to more and more friends around me entering the ecology of Oculus all-weather technology uest2 for application development, and I think that the time point of two years is the time point when there will be many new applications, or a time point that has emerged. At that time, if you are lucky, there may be some killer applications running out, which will push the entire ecology faster. But if not, we can come back when the time comes to update expectations.
All-Weather Technology: How do you look at everyone's current meta-universe?
Zeng Yinglong: I am personally optimistic. It's hard to have a rational standard right now, or to say that the data will support it next year, the year after tomorrow.
24/7 Technology: Why so optimistic?
Zeng Yinglong: People are entertaining online, socializing online, and living online, and I think this may be the norm for the next generation.