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SecurelyFounded #3 with MILC
Recorded: Nov. 3, 2023 Duration: 0:46:18Space Recording
Full Transcription
Let's fix a few things.
Okay, we have more people joining, so welcome everyone.
This is a clearly founded episode three, as always, with myself and Monica.
We, this week, are going to have Milk joining us, and our special guest is going to be Hendrik, CEO of Milk.
Monica, would you like to say a few words before we give the stage to Hendrik?
Yes, of course.
Hi, guys.
Lovely to always be here and to also provide valuable content to the community.
Just wanted to share that, well, first of all, I am the CMO of Founderheads.
We are a boutique Web3 VC that is mostly oriented towards the founders, so it's not just about the project ideas for us, it's also about the founders.
And we have over 30 companies in our portfolio currently aiming to end the year with 40, and we have kicked off these spaces together with Clianthi in order to create added value content for our community and for members of the Web3 space in general.
And up front, I apologize for my baby boy's sounds in the background, because he loves to participate in these things as well.
Thanks a lot, everybody.
Yeah, thanks so much, Monica.
Before we usually start our, let's say, presentations of the protocols, what we like to do is to give our guests the chance to basically let us know how they got into the space.
In your case, Andrik, I'm thinking you're coming from basically the, let's say, normal world into our world.
How did you get to basically make the transition from the traditional Web2 space into Web3?
Yeah, that's actually a pretty long journey.
It started already six, seven years ago.
Actually, I'm from the traditional media industry.
I used to be a TV producer all of my life.
I founded my own television station almost 10 years ago here in Germany, another one in Switzerland.
So I'm a traditional broadcaster, producer.
So my home base is more or less the media and entertainment industry.
And a couple of years ago, I was thinking about how could we transform our industry into something new,
especially when I saw the opportunities the blockchain technology was providing to us.
We came up with the idea to reorganize something very complicated in our industry through blockchain technology, which is the licensing business.
Licensing in our industry basically means here's the producer, sells something to a network or to a platform.
And in between, there's a nightmare of organization contracts and things.
It's really, really complicated.
And it's really a pain in the ass for everyone in the industry.
And we thought that we can do that much easier, faster, more fair, more transparent through blockchain technology.
So we started to develop the project called MILC, M-I-L-C.
The name stands for Media Industry Licensing Content.
And this is how it all starts six years ago.
And while we were doing that, we were thinking about, okay, if we are reorganizing by adding a new technology, our space, our industry quite a bit,
or at least if we have the opportunity to reorganize that, how can we invite the audience more into our industry?
Because actually, whatever we are doing, we do it for an audience, for our viewers or readers.
It doesn't matter what kind of media we're talking about, but we're actually not really interacting with them.
So we were thinking about this, actually, a traditional social media platform where media professionals interact with their audience directly.
And while we were doing that, suddenly the mediaverse revolution came by.
It came a little bit out of nothing.
We were aware of some interesting technologies already, but we were not that sure whether we should go that way or not.
But in the middle of 2020, I guess, we said, basically, that's really interesting.
And if we want to do something really new, we should use that technology that was named by Facebook and Microsoft, the mediaverse or the mediaverse industry.
So we added that kind of platform into our business model.
And together, we call that an opportunity or an expression of how we interpret the transformation or the transition from web to or standard broadcasting into something which is called web-free or in the kind of third dimension.
That was the story a little bit.
Yeah, very good story.
So you did go briefly over what Milk is, why it was created, kind of like the problems it's trying to solve.
So basically making licensing easier for everyone, and especially in Web3, where we're still having issues with copywriting and making sure that the owner of any kind of creative work stays the owner,
and they have an easier time to basically get paid for their work, but also keeping the ownership of the work that they create.
So if you could dive a little bit on what is the exact problems you're trying to solve?
Because as Milk evolves, and at least from what they've been able to see and what they've been able to read about what you guys do, you're not trying to solve just licensing.
You're trying to do a lot more than just that.
So could you dive a little bit on the different problems you're trying to attack at the same time?
Yeah.
So basically you could call the Milk Metaverse platform.
It's already live on milk.global since May last year.
What you see is a three-dimensional city, and you see a lot of screens in that city.
And that could give you already an impression of what that platform is supposed to become at a certain point.
It could become kind of a three-dimensional Netflix, Amazon Prime, a three-dimensional YouTube.
So basically it's a place, an infrastructure where people who own content can distribute their content.
And there are many ways of doing that.
The most professional way is the B2B licensing process where projects that are in development or in production are sold to platforms that want to air those content at a certain point.
It's basically a closed shop business, but that's only one way to distribute content.
Another opportunity is, of course, you place your content on that platform, and you add the paywall, like Netflix is doing that or other streaming platforms.
So that's an opportunity for you to distribute your content.
Or the third way is you just share your content with the community, and you participate directly on the advertising income the platform does.
Either way, we don't tell you how you should do that.
You can choose whatever you want, as long as you have the opportunity to get your professional produced content,
which is usually very expensive to produce, into a market that pays you for that somehow.
That's one thing, but that only reflects the video and film industry a bit.
We expanded our media entertainment metaverse a little bit further.
We added the music industry as well.
We added the art industry, game industry is about to come and publishing industry, so that we are more or less reflecting all those big columns of media and entertainment.
But in between, as it is a three-dimensional space and it's an interactive space, things like e-commerce and service lifestyle things really do belong to our industry as well.
So we're providing room and space for anyone who wants to do kind of a business with the users or the other way around on that platform.
So basically, we could call it an infrastructure, an open infrastructure for media entertainment, service and lifestyle.
This is what we're aiming for, and basically, we are a little bit, yeah, we define ourselves a little bit as the technical landlords.
As I said, the platform is open.
It doesn't matter for us whether you're a network, whether you're a producer, whether you're a musician, whether you're a label.
It doesn't matter for us.
You can use the infrastructure in order to get into contact with that new mediaverse community.
And our strategy behind that is that we think that it might be easier for all of us to collaborate on a shared platform than that everybody does his own platform.
And the users got lost by many, many, many spaces, and they do not know where to go.
And this is actually something where we found out that the industry is really reacting very positive to that.
Building a mediaverse the way you see it is quite complicated.
It's quite cost incentive, and it could fail quite easily, as we have seen with media.
They tried it, for some reason, they were not able to do it, so it's not easy to set up such a technical infrastructure.
And the industry we are dealing with is actually quite open to just share with us that space, do whatever they want.
We don't interact with them as long as whatever they do is good for the user.
So that's basically the world of Milk, the way it is right now.
Thanks for touching.
That kind of answers my upcoming question of how do you approach this differently and the way that you do this by being more professional,
trying to get more of the professional networks and the professional people into the space
and having them stay here and basically function the same way as they did, but with better tools in their hands that will help them to still be in the space.
The last question on my side would be to give us a little bit of context, because you're far more experienced than anyone, I'd say, in this call in this space.
So to give us a little bit of a broad overview of how big this opportunity is, how big is this market, how big is this industry and how it would look like for, let's say, all your plans work.
How would that look like for crypto?
Yeah, so basically, you can assume that the media and entertainment industry could be seen as the largest industry that exists on that planet.
And only the licensing industry, when it comes to video and film, is something like $500 billion per year.
This is the amount of licenses that's changing from A to B.
So it's a quite huge market.
And as we all know, content is one of the most important things that we love to use the internet for.
So basically, we think that if you provide the user with a platform where he can have access to, especially professional content, I think it could be a very, very good use case and something the user will like.
If I'm talking about the film and movie industry, I just mentioned the number, there's the music industry that is maybe as big as the film industry, the game industry is even bigger, and so on and so on.
And so basically, doing something in that new Metaverse space means that you're reflecting quite a huge market.
And as the Metaverse industry is quite young, we're quite happy that so far, we are the first platform really focusing on that.
There will be more, I assume, in the future.
But so far, it's the first place where you can do that.
I think 500 billion, usually, it's a very big number.
Everyone's excited to hear about that.
Monica, I think your turn to bombard us with questions.
Sure, will do.
Thanks for swapping with me the mics.
Actually, I want to turn the discussion into the more, you could say, a broader direction for all kinds of interests to meet, you could say, in this direction.
What I wanted to ask is about, of course, the weaknesses about the Metaverse, because I think, well, Meta is one prime example, and the one that got stuck into the memories of a lot of people, especially in Web 2.
And we do have examples here in Web 3 as well, which weren't as successful from the very beginning of their aspirations.
So I wanted to ask your opinion, Henrik.
What do you think is the biggest weakness of Metaverses?
Why don't they succeed the way that they are trying to from the very early days of theirs?
I don't see a weakness in the Metaverse industry itself.
But if something new starts, you will see a lot of projects that will fail.
And other one, others will be successful.
So there will be a lot of coming and going as long as the industry is quite young.
But more or less, we're talking about nothing more than making the Internet become 3D.
And this is actually something which I think is very natural, really, really brings the Internet more into our reality.
I think we're not here to swipe with our fingers on a piece of glass or type on our computer.
However, what the Metaverse is promising is a more interactive consumption of whatever in the Internet is happening.
So basically, it's a transformation of the Internet.
It's actually a new expression of the Internet we know right now or a new expression of what we know right now as Web 2.
I personally think that that movement is unstoppable.
It will take some time, but I don't think that it will take that much time.
We're talking about maybe three, four, five years till I assume that many, many, many 2D websites will become 3D spaces.
That you will see a lot of very, very cool interactive opportunities, very, very new developments and functionalities.
We do not know how they will look like today.
Yeah, but basically, the problem is for everyone who develops a Metaverse platform that it's very complicated in development because there is no reference.
You cannot ask someone.
You have to solve a lot of technical problems like data compression in order to make it available for many, many users.
Video broadcasting through a three-dimensional infrastructure through the browser is not that easy.
And many, many, many, many other technical problems.
And you need to have a clear storyline of what the meaning of your platform is.
Why should a user use that platform?
What can he experience on that?
Those are those three, four complicated things.
And, of course, it's expensive.
You can't do it with a few dollars.
It's a very, very complicated investment process.
So, you need investors or you have to have the money on your account.
And the other problem is that nobody knows exactly where to go.
So, you have to try a lot of stuff or try things out.
You have to go back three steps in order to make four steps forward.
And, of course, a lot of things could happen on that way.
Basically, you could fail quite easy.
But that doesn't mean that the industry is failing.
It's maybe you or me.
That's a really good perspective.
And it's very, very detailed.
I'm happy that we get to understand and hear these arguments, which are usually...
We hear them from...
Well, basically, they're usually different.
We hear them about how metaverse is on this wave.
Everybody's going to join it.
Like, it's the next big thing and so on.
So, I'm happy to actually hear a different perspective, which is very much realistic and truthful.
So, this actually brings me to my next question.
Because if I may put my two cents into this, I also think that it's not just about the metaverse being expensive and such.
It's also about us being quite early.
And this way, everybody, you could say...
Well, you could segment people, audiences into different understandings of what a metaverse is supposed to be or what it should look like.
So, what do you think, Hendrik, would take us to get a billion new users into the metaverse and basically leap into it?
Yeah.
So, basically, metaverse platforms have the opportunity to become the new Disneyland.
Each platform is able to become a theme park in that virtual space.
So, you're not limited with physics.
You're not limited in gravity and all those things that makes it complicated to open up a real-world theme park.
You can do whatever you want.
The question is, does the user like it?
Does it really use it?
Is it fun to use it?
Is it an experience or is it a good service?
This is the question that you have to answer.
But out of my perspective, this is what you have to do with each project.
You have to think about carefully of what the meaning of everything is.
And you need to be a little bit, how do you say that, you have to be clear that you can't solve all those problems in a week.
It's a really, really long development process.
We're working on that platform since, as I said, 2020.
We opened up our first metaverse expression in November 21, based on a completely different technology.
We've figured out that we can't go any further with that technology.
So, we had to throw the whole development away and start from scratch again.
So, we did it again by using another graphic engine.
In that particular case, Andre Engine 5.
So, we released our second metaverse expression in May last year.
And we do not know or we do not think that it's already finished.
It's a start.
It's life.
And I like to call it like a Disneyland, but the roller coaster is not open.
And the whitewater raft is not there yet.
So, we're missing a lot of attractions that are supposed to come into that space slowly.
And basically, this is our strategy, our distribution strategy to invite more partners to try things out in that metaverse space and provide the user with something what he maybe likes and what he loves to use.
And the more that happens, the more reasons there are for a user to enter that space.
At a certain point, you might find platforms that are so rich in offering something to you that billions of users are not the problem at all.
So, there is actually a little bit more technical problem behind that.
How can you – what kind of data power do you need?
How many data centers globally you have to build in order to provide that traffic and so on and so on?
So, that's a little bit more complicated question.
Yeah.
But I don't think that it's a problem of the user using those platforms at a certain point.
As we can see on platforms like Roblox, they already have a couple of hundred million users per month.
It's a game platform.
It's quite understandable that game platforms are performing very well.
But I think that as well, service and content platforms have the same opportunity, but they have to grow.
If I can intersect here, I'm very happy that you guys have basically identified what me, for example, as a normal user of the metaverse,
not someone that's building on it, basically wants to see.
It's more things for me to do and more things for me to entertain myself.
So, I think that your approach of trying to get, let's say, all the different playgrounds into the park,
you know, that's the correct way to approach it.
And on top of that, having also the way for me as, let's say, as a provider of that service,
having a way to monetize that as well, it kind of works both ways.
So, you're kind of like solving both of the problems of which do we get first?
Do we get, let's say, the service provider first or do we get the people coming into the park?
So, I think that's a very good approach.
Yeah, right now, to be honest, we're a little bit afraid of having too much traffic
because what we're doing now, actually, we are working quite heavily in the back end
to split the infrastructure you see on mic.global onto different servers
just to make sure that at that point when we're promoting the platform more
and become a little bit more aggressive in communication,
that the whole infrastructure is able to resist.
It just doesn't make any sense if the people are coming
and the infrastructure stands still.
But as I said, that's quite complicated and that's quite expensive as well
as we have to deal with data providers like AWS or other platforms.
So, we have to be very careful of, on the one hand, we need more traffic.
On the other hand, can we provide the technical infrastructure in order to host that traffic?
Is there some monetization coming in in order to finance that?
So, it's something that we have to balance out very carefully.
But you're completely right.
Basically, for all the others, it's a big, big marketplace with lots of opportunities.
And what we try to tell those potential partners is that the milk platform is not supposed to become
the next Amazon, for example.
Those kind of blocking marketplaces, you have to pay 50% of your revenues.
Otherwise, you can't use my marketplace.
It's the opposite.
Actually, what we're charging is a small, we call it infrastructure tax.
It's a little fee, but it's a digressive model.
The fee gets lower, the more volume or revenues are being made on the platform.
So, that we want to give a clear sign to any partner.
Of course, there needs to be something that has to be invested in the platform itself.
Our developers have to pay their rent.
And there is a team in the background that keeps the platform fresh and up to date.
So, that has to be financed by everyone.
But we're not participating on the business you're doing by yourself.
What we want is that it should become a successful business for you.
And the more partners we have doing their successful business, the better it is for all of us.
And the better it is for the user.
But the user has an important role in our philosophy as well.
That's our interpretation of what the philosophy of Web3 is.
We said, for example, right now in Web2, we are all digital products.
We're using Twitter, X, Facebook, whatever.
We get those funny toys to play with.
But we're not participating on anything that is happening on those platforms.
Even though we are the reason why those platforms make money.
And we said in the future, it should become different.
We have the interpretation of our user as a digital personality.
If he's not there, we cannot make advertising money.
If he's there and helping us, for example, receiving advertising money or other incomes, we should share that with the user.
This is what we're doing.
We're sharing the platform revenues, always a 50% with all of our users in order to make them become more business partners.
And just making them become part of the game and feel a value of their existence, hopefully, on that platform.
So that's a different philosophy as well.
And I personally think that's more sustainable.
That's the better strategy for a future.
Yeah, so that's a little bit the world we are working on.
Can I just say that probably for me and Cleante, we as marketers are hearing loads of great stuff.
And I'm just so excited for your marketing team because there's so much good that you can do, so much content to provide, to create, and also so many channels to use.
So, I mean, I'm overly joyed, actually, for hearing that projects which are doing something with the metaverse, they've actually reached this maturity level.
And this realistic perspective of how long does it take and how much resources does it take to create a metaverse, and also the direction of interest has changed a lot.
So, from this perspective, I'm very happy to hear it.
And it also extends into my next question that I had about the maturity, the seriousness of metaverse projects, you could say.
I mean, we've seen a lot of different tries, attempts from Web2 brands to do something with the metaverse.
We've seen Nike, we've seen Louis Vuitton, Coca-Cola, and other brands.
Do you think these attempts were serious, or were they more like just an adventure, a test of what this technology could bring forward?
What's your opinion on this?
Is this a bridge, or is this just an adventure, a one-time thing?
No, I think that all those brands you just were mentioning have their suitcases already packed.
They completely understand that, as I said, that the metaverse expression is unstoppable.
It won't disappear anymore.
The question is, what are the platforms that will survive or that will become successful?
And we are in discussion with all those brands because, actually, we are inviting those companies as well to do something on our platform.
So, we are talking to those strategic departments more or less every day.
And it's always very interesting how big those strategy teams are, how much budget they have already planned, and how much, as you said, they have tried a lot already.
They have failed a couple of times, but they don't want to stop.
They want to try the thing as long as they have found their platform or some platforms or some expressions that could become useful for them.
Most of them are working on their own metaverse expressions as well, whether it's virtual car companies, banks are working on expressions, how a bank could look like in a metaverse.
We shouldn't forget the so-called industrial metaverse.
Actually, Germany is pretty good in that.
A company like Siemens is working on their industrial metaverse since already a couple of years.
And basically, they do a lot of cool stuff with that.
And if you're talking to those companies, they all say the same.
It's experimental right now, but it's not a question of if we're going to use the metaverse.
The question is only when.
How will it evolve?
What will be the developments and so on and so on?
But I think any innovative company globally has already their head deep into that industry and they're all waiting and working on projects that are about to come.
And I think actually we're going to see a lot in 24 already.
And then, of course, we're talking to other companies as well.
There are always others saying, no, it's just a trend and we don't need that.
And maybe we watch how the market is developing.
Maybe we step in later.
But that's always the case.
It was the same when e-commerce started back then.
Many, many big brands were under the impression that they don't need that.
And we all know the history.
What happened to them?
They're not here anymore.
Okay.
That actually proves my, well, basically gives me more arguments from my opinion as well.
Because I think that, just as you said, it's just, you could say the first iteration.
So, metaverse is already too big of a thing to fail.
It's already here.
And like you said, the question is correct.
So, it's not about how these brands are going to use it.
It's about the when.
So, very, very cool to hear this kind of opinion out loud.
And just to wrap up this broad section of questions, let's say, can we give our audience a small guide as to how to use the Milk platform?
Let's say I'm a totally new user.
I am a creative entrepreneur.
And I'm thinking about using your platform.
So, what do I do?
What's the guide here?
So, basically, all you have to do, go to milk.global, press the button which says metaverse, enter the metaverse, and just run around a little bit.
Have a look of how it looks like.
As I said, a lot of projects are about to come.
So, basically, what you can do right now is already click on the screen, watch some movies, watch some videos, go to the art gallery, watch some artists that are exhibiting there already, and so on and so on.
But there are more projects about to come.
We're now working on a first expression of how a TV station could look like in the metaverse.
Actually, we're transforming my German TV station into the metaverse as well.
Of course, we have to do that.
This is a project I think that's quite interesting.
Then a big music platform is about to come where we're reflecting the music industry or find an interpretation of how music could look like in the third dimension.
What is the difference to iTunes or Spotify?
So, there's a lot of things that are about to come in the next couple of months, I would say.
But if you want to do something by yourself, you're heavily invited to just ask us, and we're going to help you to start maybe your own business.
We have, for example, one building, we call it the Milk Global Trade Center.
It's basically an opportunity for you to start with the first 3D room and start to interact with someone.
Maybe you want to sell something.
Maybe you want to find partners or whatever.
So, it's quite easy to start with the first metaverse expression for almost anyone.
And it's not expensive.
It's basically the 3D development costs.
The next level is what we already have.
There are some shops already there.
You receive your own building.
You start with your retail business.
If you're doing that, it's quite easy to achieve as well.
Of course, if you want to become bigger and bigger and bigger, there's no limit as metaverses are endless.
So, there's no limitation in terms of how you want to express yourself.
But what we try to explain, especially smaller companies like startups or mid-sized companies, don't invest too much.
Take something which you can afford and start to play with the metaverse a bit.
Make some experiences.
Maybe you figure out that it's nothing for you.
Then you might wait for a while or you think, oh, okay, I started with a small project, but it works pretty well.
I want to make it become bigger.
Then you start to invest slowly and you do whatever you do step by step.
But there are as well, beside the fact that you can transport or transform real-world existing companies into the metaverse already,
there's as well a big opportunity for business cases that doesn't exist so far.
For example, young designers, they could open up their own NFT shops selling gadgets and tools and things that other users can use in the metaverse,
in ours or in others.
So it's a cool opportunity for even if you are just a single-person company to just offer something and see whether it works or not.
So that's basically the way you can interact with the MIG platform.
We try to support that as much as we can because any expression of someone who's doing something on our platform is a promotion for our platform.
We love that.
We need to have thousands of people doing something very cool.
This is what we want to have at a certain point.
But as I said, in that particular case, we're different from Decentraland.
For example, you don't have to buy land or something else.
That's not our business model.
It's more a little bit of what is the advantage for the user.
Is it something the user likes?
That's out of our perspective more interesting for us.
And if we find out, okay, whatever you want to do, it would be really cool for the users,
then we try to support you and get you somehow in.
Yeah, that's what we're doing.
I can say that so far, this has been the most insightful space that we've held.
I think Monica can agree as well with this statement.
Yeah.
As anyone who's listening here, just come ask us, come up with your idea, start, be part of the game.
It's fun.
Yeah, that's what we always say.
Starting is the hardest part.
After you start, everything is easy sailing from there.
Monica, did you have anything else that you wanted to ask Hendrik?
Or should we start the closing remarks?
I believe we can start with the closing remarks because I think we could talk about this for so long.
Hendrik is a very, very good speaker with so many insights to share about this specific area in the Web3 space.
I just love hearing everything, and each and every answer just gives me more know-how.
Okay.
Well, Hendrik, what should people be following me for?
What's short-term?
What should we be excited for?
Actually, we'll be very, very happy if people just subscribe on our platform and just discover whatever we do.
We are in very close contact with our community.
We always keep them informed of new developments and so on and so on.
Most of the time, if we're doing something new, we ask our users to test whatever we're doing and help us to fix bugs and make the performance better.
So it's a nice interaction right now between the users we have and us, and it's a very helpful interaction.
So basically, if you are interested in becoming just a part of the development process of the mediaverse industry, then the MIG platform is actually really a place to go.
So as you will learn a lot, as you will get informed about a lot of stuff, as you will get the opportunity to see things earlier than others.
And yeah, that basically means you could become part of everything.
And over the time, you might discover, oh, here's another cool functionality.
Here's another cool service.
The world is becoming richer.
It's getting more exciting.
So basically, at that particular stage we are right now, we need as many friends as we can get.
That's great for you, I think.
I think that's great.
Everyone who hasn't checked out MIG yet, just go.
Just do it.
Don't think twice about it.
Just do it.
You know, that's right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that does it for this space.
Monica, if you have anything else that you'd like to say, I think on our side, everything's good.
I hope everyone enjoyed the space.
Thank you, everyone, for coming in.
Thank you, Hendrik, for attending and spending some of your time with us.
Thank you so much, everybody.
As Cleanti has shared and requested, of course, please go on and follow MIG.
Thank you so much for participating, for sharing your time with us today.
I believe you find these spaces insightful, as with each and every space, we touch different projects, different categories in the Web3 space.
And we will be seeing you in the future events, like every week that we do.
Yeah.
See you, everyone, next week.
Thank you all for being here.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
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Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
