Building a startup in a sector you’ve never worked in might seem a risky move, but it can actually provide a competitive advantage.
That’s certainly proven true for Vivino. Founded in 2010 in Copenhagen, the scaleup has raised $221 million in funding, and become the world’s most downloaded wine app and largest online wine marketplace, with a community of 50 million users.
This success came despite an unconventional background. Vivino’s cofounders didn’t come from a place with a rich history of wine, and neither of them had previously worked in the sector.
For Heini Zachariassen, co-founder of Vivino, and founder and host of Raw Startup, coming from outside the industry adds a big advantage. “You’re free to do whatever you want in any way you want,” he tells TNW.
So how does this freedom translate into founding and scaling a successful startup?
The first important aspect is the ability to bring a fresh perspective to the market, which enabled Vivino to help a customer segment that the industry was neglecting: wine lovers who don’t know much about wine.
Vivino supports these users withcrowd-sourced data. When they take a photo of a bottle of a wine label, the app can show them ratings, reviews, and average prices for the bottle.
“If you’re in the industry and somewhat set in your ways, you can have a lot of baggage that influences the decisions you make,” Zachariassen, who will be speaking at TNW València on March 30, says.
The Vivino app. Credit: Vivino
The outsider’s position allowed Vivino to steer clear of industry politics that can apply pressure towards a certain direction, or certain standards to live up to.
“We didn’t listen to the industry. We didn’t listen to the wine experts. And we purposely didn’t do so,” Zachariassen explains. “Because we’re not building the product for those two groups. We’re building it for the casual wine drinker.”
This played a pivotal role in product development and design. In its beginning, the scaleup focused its resources on how to solve a specific problem for a specific user group, and how to create a good product to do so.
“This initially left the design looking scrappy,” Zachariassen says. “And that was fine for us. But that’s harder to accept if you don’t have freedom. If you have three generations of winemakers looking at you, for example.”
Having the flexibility to prioritise problem-solving and substance over style in the beginning was also beneficial for the company’s resource management.
“When you build a startup, it’s all about resources, right? Design was always a priority for us, but we didn’t want to do it upfront because we also knew it could kill us,” Zachariassen notes.
At TNW València Heini Zachariassen will speak about how atypical backgrounds can lead to successful founders. Credit: Vivino
At the same time, the freedom to fully focus on a specific target group and think outside the box led to an innovative solution: a user-friendly wine rating system.
The typical rating of wine is based on an 100-point system, which for the scaleup’s team wasn’t relatable to non-experts. “Vivino is not for someone who has a wine cellar. It’s for someone who has five bottles on the kitchen table,” Zachariassen says.
This led Vivino to implement a five-star rating system. As this scale is used in most popular rating apps, the company felt it would be easy for everyone to understand.
There’s also a personal element to Vivino’s success. While Zachariassen was an outsider to the industry, he was an insider to the problem; he was the actual future user. “And that’s probably the key if you’re an outsider, really understanding the problem you’re trying to solve.”
Heini Zachariassen will be speaking at TNW València, which takes place at the end of March. If you want to experience the event, we’ve got something special for our loyal readers. Use the promo code TNWVAL30 and get a 30% discount on your conference business pass for TNW València.
Drop me on a Balinese coastline with a decent paperback and my smartphone, and I’ll luxuriate for two weeks straight.
But fly me out to the same spot with a Nokia 3310 and a physical map, like the one my dad used to carry, and I’ll probably have a nervous breakdown.
Most of us can agree that we’re hyper-dependent on tech, especially when we’re navigating a new place abroad. And the further or more remote you go, the more likely you are to run into tech breakdowns that can put a damper on your plans to wander freely.
From racking up hidden costs to avoiding embarrassing gaffs, here are some of the top tech nightmares when traveling and how to avoid them on your next trip.
Free to roam… Or not
We’ve all been there. You forget yourself for one minute and enable your data to look something up: “best restaurants in Tel Aviv,” “fastest flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai,” or “how to dress for Scottish weather.”
Five minutes later, you’ve racked up a hefty roaming charge. Ouch.
While some networks let you roam freely, others aren’t so generous. Before launching his alternative activewear brand, Rusty Martin spent some time travelling by skates. And subsequently paid a small fortune for it.
“I landed in Vancouver after an eight-hour flight and met some local in-line skaters,” Rusty tells me. “When I got back to my mate’s place, I had a bunch of notifications. I’d left my data on, and racked up about £70 in charges.”
Wait! It gets worse: “I didn’t pay the bill for over a year,” Rusty admits. “I was kinda like fuck the corporations, I don’t owe them. I didn’t even actively use my data, I’d just left it on. It all felt very unfair. But then they send debt collection agencies after you and ruin your credit rating.”
Always check your data plan (and your data settings), before you catch your flight. Or better yet, invest in a data plan that has your back.
Travel tech company Holafly eSIM provides eSIMs for people who want a steady and reliable connection without roaming charges. They offer regular data plans in over 130 countries, unlimited data plans in over 45 destinations, and even for entire regions like Europe. So, if you’re on a trip through Europe, instead of buying a plan for each country, you only will have to pay one time to get coverage in various countries. And because it’s a digital SIM, you can activate it in a matter of minutes by scanning the QR code sent to your email. Easy peasy.
Testing local limits
With internet censorship on the rise, don’t be surprised if your beloved apps and websites don’t work in other countries.
Srishti Verma got caught out in Vietnam when she was conducting research on reproductive health and rights for a non-profit based in Atlanta.
“The website loaded at first, but it didn’t work properly. The navigation was poor, things wouldn’t load, and it was affecting my research”, Srishti shares. “No access to related websites had me thinking something was wrong with my internet connection.”
Fortunately, Srishti’s pal reminded her to use a VPN, and all was not lost. But there are plenty of other countries where this solution would have fallen flat on its face. VPN bans and limitations are widespread in countries such as China, Turkey, and the UAE.
With a smartphone tucked neatly in our hands, it’s easy to forget not all countries have the same level of tech freedom.
All WiFi is good WiFi (just kidding!)
WiFi access is so ubiquitous that the thought of being without it is practically unbearable.
Michelle Coulson felt something similar on a recent trip to Portugal. As a digital nomad who helps people get remote jobs, her work was rudely interrupted by a lack of connectivity.
“We’d just gotten to a campsite and discovered there was no WiFi. We couldn’t find a shop open to get our mobile data topped up either — so we ended up driving miles to McDonald’s to use their crappy WiFi!”
At times like this, public WiFi is a godsend. But there’s a catch, often in the form of sacrificing a few personal details to log on. We all crave internet connection, but sometimes a public fix just isn’t worth the risk.
Crafty hackers can create doppelganger WiFi networks that look just like legitimate ones. So while you’re mindlessly scrolling, they’re scrounging for your account details. It’s an easy way to get your identity stolen — or the contents of your bank account.
If you’re using shared or public WiFi, find someone who can confirm you’re on the right network and call on your trusty VPN for an added layer of protection. Keep in mind that, if you’re connecting to a WiFi you don’t know, you also won’t know how they’re going to use the data collected during the session.
To ensure you have coverage without having to mess with dodgy free WiFi hotspots, check out Holafly’s guide to eSIMs.
Modern travel woman use internet connection and mobile phone outside the tent in the wild – concept of travel and communication – free people and alternative vacation
Adaptors, voltages, and avoiding electrocution
No one wants to watch the light die on their phone screen before making it to the hotel. Forget your travel adaptors and this is the reality.
There are 15 electrical plug types, so make sure you find out which ones you’ll need for your destination country. Type C covers most of Europe (aside from the UK, Ireland, Cyprus, and Malta). But you’ll only get away with using type I plugs in Thailand.
Traversing multiple countries? Get yourself a universal adaptor. And try to find grounded ones — this will lower your risk of getting electrocuted if there’s an exposed wire in your gadget.
Most modern devices have variable voltage, so using them in a range of countries probably won’t get you fried. Gadgets that are designed to be portable — like smartphones, tablets, and laptops — usually have variable voltage. Shavers, hairdryers, and electric toothbrushes tend not to be, so make sure you check the specs on your devices before packing them.
Be prepared to power down
Was the sun just turned off forever? Or did you get caught in a power cut? I’m guessing the latter.
Power cuts will increase as the climate crisis worsens. And even paradise isn’t immune from a little lights-out action.
Georgie Darling is a digital nomad and travel writer who spent the first seven months of the pandemic stuck on the tiny Indonesian island of Gili Trawangan.
Due to the size and position of the island, Gili is prone to earthquakes and power cuts. Often at the same time.
“They were such a part of my daily life that the only reaction to the ground shaking was an ‘earthquake?’ message in our group chats,” Georgie shares.
“I got caught out a few times when client calls fell around the same time as the earthquakes and power cuts,” Georgie admits. “I quickly learned to keep my laptop and phone fully charged.”
For added protection, arm yourself with an eSIM (as mentioned above) and a couple of power banks. The Zendure Supermini is pocket size but packs a powerful punch. If you need something more heavy-duty, pick up the ZMI PowerPack 20000 — it’ll charge your phone and your laptop via a USB-C connection. And make sure you give clients and loved ones a heads-up about outages when possible.
“It made a good talking point with clients”, Georgie says. “Especially when I told them that the phrase for ‘power cut’ in Bahasa Indonesia is ‘mati lampu’, which directly translates to ‘death to the light.’”
Don’t get lost in translation
Where the risk of embarrassing yourself is low, translation apps can get you out of a pickle. Like checking the menu for meat-free options, or decoding the signs at a train station.
But bad translations can have awkward consequences. If you arrive in France and need a lawyer (un avocat), you could end up asking for an avocado instead (also un avocat). Oops.
Promising research on using Google translate in emergency departments showed that 82.5% of the translations retained their meaning. But results vary significantly between languages, which is a problem if you have sensitive information to share.
The best way to avoid translation app fails is to use them cautiously. Don’t count on them saving your bacon every time — and do some practice on Duolingo before you jet off.
So if you’re not quite ready to trade your smartphone in for a map book, don’t forget to pack your virtual suitcase before setting out on your next globetrotting adventure. Handy travel tech tools like an international eSim, VPNs, and portable power banks will make all the difference when you’re trapped in paradise without a connection (your Insta followers and mom will thank you).
Spatial started out as an enterprise remote collaboration solution. Then, it changed lanes to offer virtual worlds for consumer social uses. Now, it could become an immersive gaming platform. At least, in part.
A Look at the Toolkit
The new “Spatial Creator Toolkit” is a Unity-powered interface that allows users to create custom avatars, items, and “quests.” The quests can be “games and immersive stories” as well as “interactive exhibitions” according to a release shared with ARPost.
“This evolution to gamified and interactive co-experiences is a natural expansion for the platform and the internet,” said Jinha Lee, CPO and co-founder. “With more than 1 million registered creators on the platform today, and almost 2 million worlds, we are committed to empowering all creators.”
The toolkit also features advanced tools for linking virtual worlds together. All of it is powered by visual scripting as opposed to conventional coding. The company said that this allows “zero learning curve and instant scalability.” During a closed alpha phase that began in December, companies with advanced access including Vogue and McDonald’s broke in the toolkit.
Spatial’s Room to Grow
According to the release, the company hopes to become the YouTube of 3D games. “As Adobe is for 2D video, Unity is the software unlocking 3D games and the new medium of the internet. Spatial is like the YouTube for these games, enabling instant publishing to the mass market,” said CEO and co-founder of Spatial, Anand Agarawala. “Anyone can build, the key is unlocking the capabilities to allow the magic to happen.”
Considering plans for a creator marketplace by the end of the year, the new business model is also similar to platforms like Roblox. That platform is a flagship of the gaming creator economy but has so far stayed away from NFTs.
Having fully embraced NFTs, along with other Web3 building blocks like cross-platform avatar compatibility through Ready Player Me, Spatial has a lot of opportunities and tools at its disposal that platforms like Roblox don’t. These include partnerships in the larger Web3 community, and at least some level of interoperability with other immersive platforms.
In short, we still have to see where this direction takes the company. But, it looks like calling the platform a “YouTube” or a “Roblox” might be selling it short. Both of those are massive creator-driven online marketplaces and communities, but both of them are limited by their own walls and that might not be true of this new side of Spatial.
Let’s See How Far it Goes
Skepticism about what may seem like another blockchain game drive is understandable. However, blockchain games that have let users down in the past were largely trying to shill their own products with questionable infrastructure. Spatial is a proven company with an open ecosystem that has nothing to gain by anyone losing. This should be fun.
Riders working for Deliveroo are employees, not freelancers, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled on Friday, in a potentially precedent-setting case for the country’s platform economy.
The case was brought to trial by trade union FNV, which has been engaged in a legal battle with Deliveroo since 2018. The dispute started when the British firm announced it would discontinue work contracts for its delivery drivers, instead offering them the option to continue as freelancers. FNV immediately filed a lawsuit, arguing that the drivers deserved the legal protections afforded to permanent staff members.
FNV deputy president, Zakaria Boufangacha, said that, as freelancers, Deliveroo’s employees had virtually no say over pay rates and working conditions. “As a result, they have to pay and arrange their own insurance, days off and pensions. And they don’t do it, because the pay is far too low,” he said.
In 2019, the Court of Amsterdam supported the union’s stance, ruling that delivery workers were pseudo-freelancers because there was an established authority relationship between Deliveroo and its drivers. The company, judges argued, could monitor what the employees were doing, workers were not completely free to work when they wanted, and they had no say in the drawing up of their contracts, as freelancers would. The Supreme Court has now confirmed those rulings, putting an end to the years-long dispute.
Even though Deliveroo left the Dutch market last year, the ruling could have major implications for businesses that operate in a similar manner in the Netherlands, regardless of their sector, predicts FNV union leader Anja Dijkman.
”This Supreme Court ruling matters to hundreds of thousands of self-employed workers,” she said. Dijkman says she has been concerned for years about the position of self-employed workers in the platform economy (those who work for online platforms like Amazon, Uber, and Airbnb).
The ruling, she said, will make it harder for companies like Deliveroo to try to claim their staff members are actually freelancers just because it is a cheaper way to operate a business. “It will be case law that others can fall back on,” she added.
There are currently some 1.2 million self-employed workers in the Netherlands, and that number is growing daily. For years, the government has been working on new rules to clearly differentiate an employee from a self-employed person, but there has been little concrete progress to date. Trade unions and politicians are concerned about this legal grey area, and they say a clear definition is needed.
Margreet Drijvers, director of the interest group Platform Independent Entrepreneurs (PZO), believes that Deliveroo’s judgment does not provide this clarity. “The Supreme Court has actually left everything as it was — no new criteria have been introduced to precisely define what exactly is or isn’t a self-employed person,” she said.
Not all delivery drivers are happy with the verdict, either. “I lost my job because of FNV,” said former Deliveroo delivery driver Eddy. As a self-employed person, he can choose which rides he drives and how many hours he makes, he said. Now he works for Uber Eats.
In potentially good news for drivers like Eddy, employment lawyer, Joyce Snijder, also believes that the Deliveroo ruling will have little influence on similar cases — such as those involving taxi service Uber and temp agency Temper — which are currently before the courts.
Whether the case sets a precedent or not, one thing is for sure — as more and more workers enter the platform economy, the need for legal clarity for self-employed workers is becoming increasingly urgent.
With three versions of SteamVR trackers under its belt, HTC has been a leading enabler of full-body tracking in VR. Now the company’s latest tracker could make it even easier to bring your body into VR.
HTC’s new standalone Vive tracker (still unnamed) has a straightforward goal: work like the company’s existing trackers, but easier and on more platforms.
The ‘easier’ part comes thanks to inside-out tracking—using on-board cameras to allow the device to track its own position, rather than external beacons like those used by the company’s prior trackers.
Photo by Road to VR
To that end, things seem really promising so far. I got to demo the new Vive tracker at GDC 2023 this week and was impressed with how well everything went.
Photo by Road to VR
With two of the new Vive trackers strapped to my feet, I donned a Vive XR Elite headset and jumped into a soccer game. When I looked down at my feet, I saw a pair of virtual soccer shoes. And when I moved my feet in real-life, the soccer shoes moved at the same time. It took less than two seconds for my mind to say ‘hey those are my feet!’, and that’s a testament to both the accuracy and latency being very solid with the new tracker.
That’s not a big deal for older trackers that use SteamVR Tracking, which has long been considered the gold standard for VR tracking. But to replicate a similar level of performance in a completely self-contained device that’s small and robust enough to be worn on your feet… that’s a big deal for those who crave the added immersion that comes with bringing more of your body into VR.
Throughout the course of my demo, my feet were always where I expected to see them. I saw no strange spasms or freezing in place, no desync of coordinate planes between the tracker and the headset, and no drifting of the angle of my feet. That allowed me to easily forget that I was wearing anything special on my feet and simply focus on tracking to kick soccer balls into a goal.
While the tracker worked well throughout, the demo had an odd caveat—I had feet but no legs! That makes it kind of weird to try to juggle a soccer ball when you expect to be able to use your shin as a backboard but watch as the ball rolls right over your virtual foot.
Ostensibly this is the very thing that trackers like this should be able to fix; by attaching two more trackers to my knees, I should be able to have a nearly complete representation of my leg movements in VR, making experiences like ‘soccer in VR’ possible when they simply wouldn’t work otherwise.
I’m not sure if the demo app simply wasn’t designed to handle additional tracking points on the knees, or if the trackers are currently limited to just two, but HTC has confirmed the final inside-out Vive tracker will support up to five trackers in addition to the tracked headset and controllers.
Trackers can, of course, be used to track more than just your body, though apps that support these kinds of tracked accessories are rare | Photo by Road to VR
So the inside-out factor is the ‘easier’ part, but what about the other goal of the tracker—to be available on more platforms than just SteamVR Tracking?
Well, the demo I was playing was actually running purely on the standalone Vive XR Elite. To connect the trackers, a small USB-C dongle needs to be connected to the headset to facilitate the proprietary wireless connection between the dongle and the trackers. HTC says the same dongle can plug into a PC and the trackers will work just fine through SteamVR.
The company also says it’s committed to making the trackers OpenXR compatible, which means (in theory) any headset could support them if they wanted.
– – — – –
I only got to use it in one configuration (on my feet) and in one environment (a large office space). So there’s still the question of how robust they will be. For now though, I’m suitably impressed.
If these trackers really work as well as they seem from their first impression, it could open the door to a new wave of people experiencing the added immersion of full-body tracking in VR… but there’s still the lingering question of price, which historically never seems to be quite right consumer VR market when it comes to HTC. Until then, our fingers shall remain crossed.
InnerspaceVR is bringing its sequel to the VR puzzle adventure A Fisherman’s Tale soon, aptly named Another Fisherman’s Tale. And now both InnerspaceVR and publisher Vertigo Games have released a new gameplay video showing off just what awaits. Detachable body parts, galore.
Revealed today at the Future Games Show (FGS) Spring Showcase, the new trailer shows off some of the upcoming VR puzzle game’s mind-bending universe, which this time is said to use the player’s own body as core puzzle mechanic, tasking you with detaching and replacing key body parts to solve puzzles.
Check out the trailer below:
InnerspaceVR says the sequel brings a new chapter to the story of Bob the Fisherman, “weaving a magical and moving narrative about the meaning we create through building and rebuilding our authentic selves.”
In it, the studio says players will do things like throw Bob’s hand across a ravine and then make it crawl to retrieve an object, or send your head elsewhere for a different point of view.
Limbs are also modular, as you replace them with a variety of objects to unlock new skills, such as a pirate hook hand to let you scale walls, a crab’s claw to cut through a rope, and a fish’s tail to improve your swimming ability. Puppeteering hands will also let you pick up distant objects, items and tools.
InnerspaceVR says Another Fisherman’s Tale will be a five to six hour adventure, putting you in the shoes of Nina, the daughter of the series protagonist. Here’s how InnerspaceVR describes it:
“Recollecting Bob’s grandiose stories of pirates, sunken ships, treasures and mystical locations, Nina begins re-enacting his adventures and dives head-first into an imaginative world of memory and fantasy. Will she be able to separate fact from fiction and uncover the hidden truth behind the fisherman’s tale?”
And yes, it appears French comedian Augustin Jacob is reprising his role as the game’s smokey, baritone narrator.
Another Fisherman’s Tale is slated to launch in Q2 of this year, coming to PSVR 2, Meta Quest 2, and PC VR.
BMW has invested in DeepDrive, the German startup behind a new type of “ultra-efficient” motor for electric vehicles.
The €15m Series A funding round also saw participation from the likes of UVC Partners, the Continental Corporate Venture Capital Unit, and former board member and CTO of Audi and Volvo, Peter Mertens.
Founded in 2021, the Munich-based startup has developed a radial flux dual-rotor motor that boasts the highest torque and power density of any EV motor available today, the startup claims. It also has low noise emissions, and is built using far fewer rare earth materials.
All of this translates to an electric motor that is fast, quiet, and super efficient. What’s more, the motor and its power electronics can be installed in both the wheel hub and the central drive of an electric car. Why does that matter? Well firstly, it means the motor can be installed in a wide range of electric car types. Secondly, an electric car with four ultra-efficient motors, one in each wheel, would be insanely fast, but quiet as a mouse.
DeepDrive refined its technology at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, and is now ready to go commercial. Credit: BMW
But the real selling point is more modest: DeepDrive’s drive unit results in a car that will drive 20% further and require 20% smaller batteries than its competitors. That might not sound like a lot, but this increase in efficiency could result in serious cost savings over the lifecycle of an EV, and automakers seem to agree.
Marcus Behrendt, Managing Director at BMW i Ventures, said he believes the motors offer major advantages in terms of weight, cost, and space — enabling the “next generation of ultra efficient and resource-saving electric vehicles.”
The founding team of DeepDrive first met at TUfast, the student motorsport team of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Since then, they have developed the technology, filed patents, built the first prototypes of the drive, and validated its function at the Fraunhofer Institute, Europe’s largest application-oriented research organisation.
Now, armed with fresh capital, DeepDrive plans to start production of the dual-rotors and expand its team. The company says it is already in talks with eight of the world’s top 10 automakers, and aims to begin series production in 2026.
DeepDrive co-founder and CEO, Felix Pörnbacher, said he believes the demand for their dual-rotor technology shows they are “on the right track.”
In Europe, electric cars (including hybrids) made up 35% of all new vehicle sales in 2022, up from 10% in 2020. However, EVs are still costly to produce, and the limited range of many models remains a stumbling block for manufacturers. This is driving demand for motors that are smaller, lighter, and more powerful, which is good news for DeepDrive.
The second edition of Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW) is set to take place at the end of this month in Decentraland’s Luxury District, where global brands will feature their digital wearables. MVFW is a four-day-long event that combines fashion and AR try-on technology to offer a unique, immersive experience to attendees.
Metaverse Fashion Week, which will run from March 28–31 this year, will see the participation of luxury brand Coach for the first time, showcasing its products in the virtual show. The event brings together top designers and brands, making it an exciting opportunity for Coach to showcase its signature leather-made products in the metaverse.
ZERO10’s AR Try-On Tech Highlights Coach’s Iconic Tabby Bag
In collaboration with ZERO10, Coach will introduce its iconic Tabby bag with a unique AR enhancement as part of its upcoming activation during MVWF. The feature will be accessible via the ZERO10 app, allowing users in Decentraland to try on the product virtually, providing a new and engaging way to experience the brand.
The AR enhancement effect, which makes use of cutting-edge technology, adds a unique touch to the virtual fashion event and provides visitors with a dynamic way to interact with Coach’s products. Using AR try-on, shoppers may virtually try on clothes, accessories, and even cosmetics before making a purchase. Buyers interested in a product can virtually see how they might look in it.
As a global digital fashion platform, ZERO10 offers AR try-on technology to brands and independent creators. Through its iOS app, users can try on digital clothing in real time using their phone camera, collect items in a virtual wardrobe, and create shareable content for social media.
The digital collections are collaborations with both emerging and established fashion brands, designers, musicians, and artists and are released in limited drops within the app. The app’s cloth simulation technology simulates fabric flow, while the body tracking technology lets users try on virtual outfits for unique social media photos and videos.
Blending Tradition and Innovation
This year’s Metaverse Fashion Week theme, “Future Heritage,” encourages both traditional and emerging fashion designers to engage and work together. As part of the upcoming event, brands will conduct interactive virtual experiences both on and off the runway.
Dolce & Gabbana plans to exhibit pieces from its Future Reward digital design competition. Tommy Hilfiger intends to launch new wearables on a daily basis, along with products powered by artificial intelligence. DKNY will have a pop-up art gallery and restaurant called DKNY.3. Adidas, like Coach, will make its MVFW debut this year. For owners of its “Into the Metaverse” non-fungible token (NFT) collection, the sports brand will debut its first set of digital wearables.
Coach will also participate in Brand New Vision (BNV), a Web3 fashion ecosystem that enables attendees to try on wearables from various global brands seamlessly and instantly. BNV has created specifically designed stations to showcase the digital clothing collections created in partnership with top brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Carolina Herrera, Michael Kors, and Vivienne Tam. Moreover, a newly built “Fashion Plaza” will also exhibit emerging digital fashion possibilities.
MVFW Open Metaverses and Web3 Interoperability
Dr. Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro, Decentraland’s head of MVFW, remarked that they are honored to carry on the Metaverse Fashion Week tradition this year. “We are seeing the return of many luxury fashion houses, and also the emergence and elevation of digitally native fashion. We are excited to see the world’s greatest fashion minds engaging in digital fashion and exploring what it can mean for their brands, and for their communities,” she said.
This year’s MVFW will highlight the force of interoperability across open metaverses while expanding the boundaries of what digital fashion can be. MVFW23, organized by Decentraland and UNXD, is an immersive art and culture event, in association with the Spatial and OVER metaverses, that welcomes fashionistas from all over the globe to gather, mingle, and witness the most recent breakthroughs in digital fashion.
Fashion brands trying on various virtual technologies like AR try-on is a testament to their commitment to staying at the forefront of the latest technology trends and providing their customers with unique and immersive experiences.
Having been exclusively building VR games since 2013, nDreams stands as one of the most veteran VR-exclusive game studios to date. And with more than 200 people, one of the largest too. The studio’s CEO & founder, Patrick O’Luanaigh, continues to bet his company’s future on the success of VR.
Speaking exclusively to Road to VR ahead of a presentation at GDC 2023, Patrick O’Luanaigh talks about the growing success of nDreams and why he’s still doubling down on VR.
Starting in 2013, O’Luanaigh has navigated his company from the earliest days of the modern VR era to now, which he believes is VR’s biggest moment so far—and growing.
Between the company’s own internal data and some external sources, O’Luanaigh estimates that VR’s install base is around 40 million headsets across the major platforms, excluding the recently launched PSVR 2. At least half of that, he estimates, is made up by 20 million Quest headsets.
That’s why he’s bulked up the company to some 200 employees, nearly doubling over the course of 2022 through hiring and studio acquisitions.
O’Luanaigh says, “this is the biggest we’ve ever been and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. […] In a decade of exclusively making VR games, we’ve never seen that growth before.”
O’Luanaigh knows well that content is key for getting players into their headsets, and to that end his efforts to scale the company are about building bigger and better VR content to keep up with the growth and expectations of the install base, he says.
“Setting up our fully-remote nDreams studios, Orbital and Elevation, was significant for us in establishing a powerful basis for developing multiple projects in parallel,” he says. “It gives us the specialism to develop the variety of VR titles, across multiple genres, that the growing market now demands.”
O’Luanaigh points to nDreams developed and published titles Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), Shooty Fruity (2020), Fracked (2021), and Little Cities (2022) as some of the most successful VR games the studio has launched thus far, with Phantom: Covert Ops specifically finding “important commercial success” on Quest 2.
With the release of those titles over the years and their ongoing sales, O’Luanaigh shares that nDreams doubled its year-over-year revenue over the last 12 months. And with multiple new projects in the works, including Synapse, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, and other (unannounced) projects, he believes the company is on track to more than double annual revenue again by 2024.
Phantom: Covert Ops | Image courtesy nDreams
Though he’s leading a company of 200 employees, O’Luanaigh calls himself a “massive VR enthusiast,” and is still very clearly in touch with makes VR such a unique and compelling medium.
He says his studio aims to build around five key pillars that make for compelling VR content:
Aspirational roleplay – first-person embodiment of appealing roles or characters
High-agency interaction – tactile 1:1 mechanics in a freely explorable world
Empowering wielding – Feel, hold, and use visceral weapons, tools, and abilities
Emotional amplification – Immersive situations that provoke strong, diverse feelings
Fictional teleportation – Presence within desirable locations, inaccessible in real life
And while O’Luanaigh could easily steer this studio away from VR—to chase a larger non-VR market—he continues to double down on VR as the studio’s unique advantage. Far from moving away from VR, his company is actively trying to bring others into the fold; O’Luanaigh says nDreams continues to expand its publishing operations.
“The success of Little Cities, which has just launched its free ‘Little Citizens’ update, has been a great validation of our investments into third-party publishing and we are actively on the lookout for more amazing indie developers to work with.”
With the scale that VR has now reached, O’Luanaigh believes the market is truly viable for indie developers. And that’s why he’s glad to see the rise of VR publishers (and not just his own company); having the benefit of longstanding expertise in the medium is crucial to shipping a shipping a quality VR title, and that’s why O’Luanaigh believes VR-specific publishers like nDreams will play an important role in bringing more developers and great content to VR.
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That expertise is increasingly building upon itself in the company’s VR games which have shown impressive mechanical exploration, giving the studio the chance to test lots of VR gameplay to find out what works.
Few in VR have had the gall to prove out something as seemingly wacky as a ‘VR kayak shooter’ and actually take it to market in a large scale production like Phantom: Covert Ops. And you can clearly see the lineage of a game like nDreams’ Fracked shining through in upcoming titles like Synapse. Though the game is an entirely new IP and visual direction, the unique Fracked cover system is making the leap to Synapse; a clear example of leveraging a now battle-tested mechanic to enhance future titles. But more than just a reskin of a prior shooter, nDreams continues to experiment with unique VR mechanics, this time promising to harness the power of PSVR 2’s eye-tracking to give players compelling telekinetic powers.
Synapse | Image courtesy nDreams
To that end, the studio’s lengthy experience in the medium is clearly an asset—and one that can only be earned rather than bought. Where exactly that experience will take them in the long run is unclear, but even after all the ups and downs the industry has seen, O’Luanaigh and nDreams remain all-in on VR.
Meta today revealed at Game Developers Conference (GDC) a fresh bit of insight into Quest Store stats.
The company says in a developer blog post there are now 500+ titles available on the Meta Quest Store, 40 of which have grossed over $10 million in revenue.
At Connect 2022 in October, the company reported that 33 titles out of the 400 apps on the Quest Store at the time had tipped over the $10 million mark. Since then, the Quest Store has ostensibly added around 100 games in the time span of around five months.
And it seems those high-earning games are picking up steam too. The number of titles at the $20-million mark has doubled year over year, Meta says.
As far as today’s stats tease go, Meta is most certainly counting all Quest apps and games on the store, and not just those targeting Quest 2 or Quest Pro. Notably, the company is sunsetting the original 2019 Quest soon.
Photo by Road to VR
Chris Pruett, Meta Director of Content Ecosystem and Head of Third-party Games, outlined a few key metrics in what’s performing best on Quest:
Top game genres include multiplayer competitive, physics combat, horror adventure, fitness and workout, social collaborative, and shooters.
Growth categories include single-player narrative adventure, boxing/golf and sports, RPG, simulation, and survival.
Referring to game revenue, Pruett says there’s a “giant correlation between quality and sales.”
“The cohorts of Quest customers over time, the ones coming in recently, look very different than the early enthusiasts,” Pruett said to the GDC crowd. “Their expectations are like those of a modern game console.’
Pruett doesn’t think we’re “anywhere close to the upper-bound for visual quality and game complexity on Quest 2—partially because we have some awesome tech that most of you aren’t using yet.” Continuing, Pruett concludes that “increased revenue potential on the platform is what’s going to drive quality.”
Despite the blogpost announce, the company hasn’t revealed any change in gross app revenue since Connect 2022. Meta is still stating it’s generated “over $1.5 billion” in revenue from Quest games, tallied from the platform’s founding in 2019 to October 2022.
We have boots on the ground at GDC 2023 in San Francisco, so we’re sure to learn more while we’re there. Make sure to check back soon for all things VR/AR gaming from this year’s GDC,
Ah, the joys of pitching. Your entire masterplan squeezed into a few sentences, a room of powerful strangers with your future in their hands, and mere seconds to impress them. Who doesn’t love a quick dip in a shark tank?
Quite a lot of people, unfortunately. Luckily for them, pitching coach David Beckett is here to help.
Beckett has spent decades mastering the art of public speaking. He first honed his skills through over 1,000 corporate presentations across 16 years at Canon, before switching to the crisper craft of startup pitches.
In 2013, Beckett founded Best3Minutes, which provides in-person and online training in his method. The techniques have now been taught to more than 1,800 startups and scaleups, which have gone on to raise over €420 million between them.
“My goal is not to tell people what to say,” Beckett tells TNW. “My goal is to give them a framework to find their story, practice it, and make it land with their audience.”
At TNW Valènciaon March 30, Beckett will provide his latest pitching workshop. Ahead of the session, he shared some of his top tips for startups.
1. Tune in to your audience
Your pitch needs to align with the desires of your audience. Who are they? What’s important to them? How can you impress them?
Imagine you’ve created a crypto-powered parking app. You could expound on the benefits of storing driver data on a distributed ledger, but few people enjoy torture by blockchain.
”When we work on something day in, day out, we often just want to tell people about what we’ve built — but the audience might not care at all,” says Beckett.
“The execution comes from your product, process, and team.
A more powerful pitch will illustrate a real-world impact. You could say (if it’s true, of course) that people waste 20 minutes every day finding a parking space. With the click of a button, your app cuts the time down to 60 seconds.
That example, however, may not enthral everyone. To make your audience do what you want, you need to know who they are.
2. Focus on the problem and solution
Your pitch needs to focus on pain and gain. This should fit into a simple statement that reveals what you can do for customers.
A human problem makes the issues more relatable. What does the pain result in? How big is the problem? Will people pay to solve it? How have you validated that? Investors want these answers.
“Things that especially trigger them are the size of opportunity and execution against that opportunity,” says Beckett. “And the execution part is product, progress, and team.”
3. Establish a clear objective
A successful pitch results in action. The ultimate target is often a set investment, but startups normally need to take a different first step. It could be a follow-up meeting, an introduction, or scanning a QR code that shows the audience further information. The most important outcome is maintaining a connection.
Beckett’s former students range from furniture giant to Dutch startup Lalaland.
Whatever your objective, make it clear and memorable. You may only have a few minutes to convince your audience to take action.
“Of course, you can’t communicate all the details in that time, but that’s not really the goal,” says Beckett. “The goal of the pitch is getting to the next step.”
4. Use post-it notes to organise your thoughts
Once you’ve got an objective, you need a strategy to reach it. Beckett advises using post-it notes to get the ideas out of your head and into a storyline. To shrink the prep time, he also recommends downloading his Pitch Canvas, a free storytelling tool for structuring your pitch.
“It’s really difficult to deliver the pitch with certainty and passion when you haven’t got the story straight,” he says. “Once you’ve got the story straight, you can start going into the delivery part.”
5. Demonstrate your value
Investors want to see evidence that you can execute your plan. If you’ve got customer traction, explain who’s using the product. If you’ve got a demo, show the product working. When time is short, a screenshot can suffice.
“If you can convince them that it’s a business, not a concept, they’ll think differently about it,” says Beckett. “And what convinces people it’s a business, not a concept, is a working product and customers.”
“Once they say things out loud, they often find what they wrote is too technical.
If your product is still a concept, there are other ways to demonstrate your value. One is showing you have the passion to put in the hours. Another is any funding that you’ve already raised.
“There’s a couple of things that come from that. Firstly, people trust you. Secondly, you’ve been through a due diligence process, so they’re unlikely to get surprises.”
6. Captivate them with your opening
You need to quickly gain the interest of your audience. Investors can see up to 1,000 pitches a year and are always short on time. To capture their attention, your opening has to stand out.
If it doesn’t land, says Beckett, their support “is almost certainly going to be a no-go.”
7. Polish the delivery
Once you have a prototype pitch, it’s time to verbalise it. Practice saying it out loud in front of an audience, and use their feedback to fine-tune your delivery. You can then take a step back and reassess the clarity, focus, and rhythm.
“Once people start saying things out loud, they often find out what they wrote is quite technical, and want to make it more direct,” says Beckett.
Beckett’s masterclass isn’t the only TNW València session on pitching. Startups will also take the stage for a pitch battle.
Your delivery should emphasise the words that matter. Beckett uses the example of a fictional delivery startup. In a pitch, the founder plans to say, “We deliver a sustainable and energy-boosting doughnut to meetings near you.”
If their focus is proximity, they can stress that doughnuts are delivered “to a meeting NEAR YOU.” If their USP is sustainability, they can emphasise that “we deliver a SUSTAINABLE and energy-boosting doughnut.” If they’re selling the energy effects, they can accentuate that it’s a “SUSTAINABLE and energy-boosting doughnut.”
Your delivery must also connect on a human level — a crucial element of pitching. Just one moment that shows your passion for the project can make an enormous difference.
8. Manage your time with a script
In discussions about public speaking, the relative merits of spontaneity and planning are endlessly debated. For Beckett, the best balance depends on your allotted time.
In a half-hour corporate presentation, you might only need to memorise the opening. In a short pitch, however, you’ll probably need a full script.
“For a three-minute pitch, the pressure is too much for most people’s brains to manage,” says Beckett. “If they don’t make a proper plan, they forget to say the things they really want to say, and spend too much time on things that are not so important.”
9. Time to perfection
Beckett has done extensive research on our listening and speaking capacities. He’s concluded that you should pitch a maximum of 150 words per minute.
“If you speak faster than that, people can’t follow,” he says. “It’s best to speak a bit slower so that people can process it. Get a bit of air around the key messages, but with enough energy and speed.”
Those 150 words will fit into approximately nine sentences. A three-minute pitch, therefore, will typically comprise around 27 sentences. If you’re struggling to structure your story, those rough boundaries can help allocate the time.
And if that doesn’t quell the anxieties about being judged in a few minutes, just remember: it will all be over in a few minutes.
David Beckett will be speaking at TNW València, which takes place at the end of March. If you want to experience the event, we’ve got something special for our loyal readers. Use the promo code TNWVAL30and get a 30% discount on yourconference business pass for TNW València.
When Barcelona decided to clamp down on dark stores, it opened a new chapter in the story of rapid grocery delivery. In January, the city’s authorities rolled out new restrictions on buildings used by the likes of Glovo and Getir, which had been relentlessly expanding.
These startups use dark stores as distribution hubs for their speedy deliveries. Couriers zip in and out of the buildings all day to collect goods for customers. The facilities, however, have sparked a backlash in many European cities. Residents are complaining about the noise levels, the gatherings of couriers on the street, and the taking up of urban spaces that the public can’t access.
The criticisms have unleashed a wave of actions against dark kitchens. These restrictions add another obstacle for delivery startups, joining job cuts, consolidation, and a worsening economy.
These issues are changing the fortunes of an industry that surged during the pandemic. Often touting delivery times of 15 or 20 minutes, many companies had sprung up promising groceries to your door at super-fast speeds, even if you only wanted a carton of milk, a loaf of bread, or a six-pack of beers.
The crucial tools in making this possible are dark stores or mini fulfilment warehouses dotted around a city in strategic locations close to densely populated areas. To reach mass scale, you need a lot of the facilities to cover a city’s key markets.
Therein lies the crux of the dispute with city officials — and more authorities are starting to take action.
‘Strict’ rules
Glovo, the Barcelona-based delivery giant, is at the coalface of this changing landscape for rapid delivery.
The company, which started by delivering food from restaurants, has invested heavily in the grocery segment in recent years. The company has also partnered with real estate firm Stoneweg to source property to serve as dark stores. It now has 100 dark stores, or micro fulfilment centres (MFCs), across multiple countries.
Glovo cofounder Sacha Michaud told TNW that the new rules in Barcelona are the most stringent that the company has seen to date.
“Our position on this is that it’s quite a strict way of trying to deal with the problem that many other cities haven’t taken,” he said.
“If you have a neighbourhood and somebody wants to set up a restaurant underneath your block of flats, probably the neighbours are not too keen on that. They’re going to have a lot of people walking in and a lot more movement, but it doesn’t mean you have to abolish restaurants in our cities.”
Michaud cofounded Glovo in 2015. Five years later, the pandemic arrived to transform his business.
Michaud said Glovo is examining the new requirements in Barcelona and will comply with the standards rather than shut its dark stores down.
Under the new rules, companies can refurbish their dark stores to additionally serve as walk-in retail or dining premises. They can also create a space on-site for couriers to wait, which addresses the issue of crowds gathering outside on the street.
A spokesperson for Barcelona City Council told TNW that companies have a two-year window to comply.
The Dutch capital now requires delivery centres to have a specific permit to operate, which gives officials oversight on how many are in operation and where.
The permit rule arose after complaints from residents. Given that dark stores are a new phenomenon, existing zoning laws had to be re-jigged to address the challenges.About 30 dark stores in the city will need to comply with the new rules.
“We’re open to discussions with all relevant parties and stakeholders.
Flink, the Doordash-backed start-up, operates in the Netherlands. A spokesperson said the company was the first of its kind to secure a permit in Amsterdam for a new store. It also has a second application pending.
“In consultation with this municipality, Flink has opted for stores with a ‘business’ destination in the zoning plan, close to residents. The city district chairman inaugurated the first location,” the spokesperson said.
While Flink said its new location is “close” to residents, dark stores cannot be located in the middle of a residential area, as ordered by local authorities.
Flink is also in the midst of a dark store debate in France. In Nantes, the company is under pressure to move one of its centres away from a residential area, following complaints from residents.
“We can’t confirm a move so far in Nantes but are of course open to discuss with all relevant parties and stakeholders,” Flink said.
Shifting markets
The landscape for rapid grocery delivery has changed drastically in just a few months.
Venture capital firms have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the sector’s startups, many of them just recently founded, in a land grab for the emerging market. But questions abound about the economics of 15-minute delivery — especially in a post-lockdown world and with the rising cost of living — and what the path to profitability looks like.
Several thriving companies had emerged during the boom. Their rapid rise was typified by Berlin’s Gorillas, which was founded in 2020 and has raised more than €1 billion. The company quickly became the face of the burgeoning industry in Europe, while also expanding into the US.
The progress, however, came to a screeching halt after market conditions swerved — leading to hundreds of job cuts and exits from a number of markets.Last year, Gorillas was acquired for $1.2 billion by Getir, an eight-year-old Turkish company in the sector.
Getir had also been quick to expand in 2020 and 2021, scooping up its own share of the market across Europe, and snapping up British rival Weezy. These deals have put Getir in a prevalent position in several markets across Europe, where the competition has shrunk. Getir declined to provide a comment for this story.
Amid this environment, other companies have recalibrated, often by tightening their belts and narrowing their focus on key markets, abandoning the expand-at-all-costs mindset.
Zapp, the British player founded in 2020, made these types of adjustments after pulling out of international markets and shedding jobs. The company’s senior vice president of strategy, Steve O’Hear, said Zapp is concentrating on owning the London market for now.
“Zapp has always been focused on winning London as its primary market, where we’re seeing tremendous success, having more than doubled the business in the last six months alone,” O’Hear said, adding that the company will look to expand in “similar megacities” in the future.
Prior to joining Zapp, O’Hear spent over 15 years as a tech and business journalist.
Like many of its peers, Zapp’s target is now aimed at reaching profitability in an industry that looks very different today than it did just two years ago.
Glovo’s Michaud said that despite the challenges, there is still growth ahead for the broader food and grocery delivery industry. However, the sector is now contending with another problem: rising costs.
From inflation to surging energy prices, the cost-of-living crisis in Europe is hitting people hard. Inflation also means a higher cost of groceries and less discretionary spending by consumers.
“If they have less money in their pocket, they’re going to spend less and that’s a fact. We might grow a little slower than we were growing before,” Michaud said.
“Consumer slowdown is happening. We have 150,000 retail partners worldwide, 90% of those are SMEs and they’re feeling the pain of consumer slowdown.”
