Letter from MetaVRse Co-Founders
Julie & Alan Smithson
Creating MetaVRse, one of the most advanced XR products in the world did not happen overnight. It was through years of building technology (hardware and software) that we built the team and skills required to lead an industry moving faster than almost any other in human history. The ability to rapidly iterate and improve in an agile environment has been essential for our continued success. Below is a bit of our history and our vision for the future.
Julie and I are personally dedicating 25% of our shares in MetaVRse to build a new education system that will better prepare our children for a future with only one certainty; rapid change. By using every piece of technology we invent at MetaVRse, we can fundamentally change how we educate and compensate the next generation to create a global mindset of abundance, peace, love and community.
Our personal mission is:
“To inspire and educate future generations to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally responsible way.”
The only way humanity continues to evolve is to harness the full potential of every young person to work in harmony to create a world of abundance for everyone, not just an elite few. To give the opportunity to solve world problems to every person from a young age. With the power of VR/AR/AI/Blockchain/IOT/5G/Quantum Computing, we can solve the world’s challenges and lead our planet towards a utopian society we could only dream of in the past.
The future belongs to the next generations, who are growing up with the world’s knowledge in the palm of their hands. Let’s show them how best to use this power for good.
Our Past — Emulator & Entrepreneurship
Alan graduated from the University of Guelph with a B.Sc. in Molecular Biology, but what he really learned while there was entrepreneurship. Julie graduated from George Brown College School of Hospitality, what she learned was operations and logistics.
Alan went on to become the number one sales rep for Leo Pharma in Canada and Julie became Director of Catering for Delta Hotels. We were both uninspired with the status quo, so we began starting businesses. Between 2004 and 2010, we had the following companies;
- Canadian Pre-Paid Medical Plan (Block-fee program for physicians)
- Star Productions (DJ Service)
- Memory Plus (Nutraceutical to reduce memory loss)
- Blue Mountain Hostel (Ski Resort Hostel)
- Alvic Property Management (Rental houses for students)
- SmithsonMartin (Emulator DJ System)
In 2010, with our partner, Pablo Martin, we invented and brought to market Emulator, the most advanced DJ performance system in the world. Launched at TEDxToronto, we sold units all over the globe and worked with artists such as Linkin Park, Infected Mushroom, Armin Van Buuren, Morgan Page, Starset, and many more. We won the DJ Mag Innovative Product of the Year in 2011 and worked with brands creating unique activations using the technology. Some of the brands we had the honour of working with include; Microsoft, Hyundai, Sony, Heineken (at Coachella), and more. We were part of the second cohort of the Ryerson Digital Media Zone (DMZ), recently voted the #1 university business incubator in the world. We were featured on Discovery Channel and we even got a deal on Dragons’ Den!
Love Sandal — Our 13 year old daughter’s shoe company
In August 2013, when she was only 9 years old, we put our daughter Abi into “Inventor’s Camp” where she learned about 3D Printing, Coding, Electronics, and Entrepreneurial mindset. On the last day of the camp, Abi noticed her mom had ugly sandal tans on the top of her feet and said “wouldn’t it be prettier with heart shaped tan lines instead?” and that is how the Love Sandal was invented.
After a successful Indiegogo campaign and with support from UPS, Abi went on to win “Top 20 Under 20”. She has been featured in Inc., Huffington Post, Canada AM The Social and Toronto Star. Abi also had the opportunity to speak on what it means to be an entrepreneur to a group of 300 internet entrepreneurs in LA. Abi was the youngest member accepted to the Ryerson Digital Media Zone (DMZ), she was mentored by the President of Aldo, she had a booth at the world’s largest shoe trade show in Las Vegas, and has a list of accomplishments many seasoned entrepreneurs would be envious of.
Over the years, we have kept a curriculum of everything we taught Abi about entrepreneurship, business and success principles and this became the inspiration for our future mission to create the most advanced and prolific education platform in human history.
Curiosity Camp — First introduction to VR
Because we built a hardware/software solution that was light years ahead of anything else and created a new way of performing, we were often asked to perform for technology conferences and events. In the summer of 2014, we were invited to perform at Eric Schmidt’s ‘Curiosity Camp’ with over 150 tech investors entrepreneurs and visionaries.
Imagine driving into the California mountains to a Boy Scout camp with no cell service or wifi and meeting with some of the most prolific tech minds of our time around the campfire. Inspiring doesn’t begin to describe it.
One evening in a small dimly lit tent, I waited to try this new thing that everyone kept saying was absolutely incredible. I first put on the bulky headset and giant headphones and had this transformational moment when I was instantly teleported from this little tent in the woods to standing on stage in the middle of a live concert. Not only was I at the concert, I was standing ON STAGE, next to Beck!!
The bulky headset was the Oculus Rift DK1 and the concert was Chris Milk’s ‘Hello Again’ Beck VR concert. It was right then, I knew VR was the next big thing!
“It was in that exact moment standing on stage with Beck, when I realized that this was the future of human communication and I wanted to be part of it.” — Alan Smithson
MetaVRse
MetaVRse is an award-winning web-based, low-code, real-time 3D creation platform for the future of human communication, collaboration, commerce and culture. We serve global enterprise clients at the intersection of training, marketing and retail.
Mission: Metaverse Creation For Everyone.
Focused on building bleeding-edge, innovative virtual and augmented reality products and solutions for the world’s leading brands. This was the company that gave us a full understanding of the technology and people within the XR industry. We have done almost every aspect of the industry through paid projects that have funded our R&D phase.
Over the past 5 years, we have done quite a few of world firsts (VR Photobooth, AR Portal, WebAR, Matter-tags) as well as some amazing work in 360° videos (when you had to 3D print the rig and hand stitch), Photogrammetry, 3D models, AR projects for sales and marketing, VR training, spatial audio, VR collaboration, Hololens, avatars, computer vision, machine learning and volumetric capture.
We have provided these services to companies in a ton of different industries; mining, food service, higher education, media, retail, industrial, manufacturing, alcohol, sports.
Some of the highlights of our journey can be found here.
- MetaVRse Virtual Showroom (2021)
- MetaVRse 2017 Highlight Reel
- VR Photobooth™ & Infinity Mirror Booth
- AR Travel Teleportal
- WebAR Product visualizer
- Web3D Player™
- AR Sandbox
- AR Business Cards
The long term vision for MetaVRse is to make tools for spatial computing tools that can serve to future-proof learning and harness the power of exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, blockchain, quantum computing and 5G to solve this impending crisis.
MetaVRse won the 2022 Brandon Hall Award for ‘Best Advance in Education, Delivered Through Technology’
We have created a development platform that makes it easy for anyone to create powerful 3D and XR experiences including; educators, coaches, mentors, trainers, marketers, sales people, designers, healthcare professionals, engineers and more.
There is a seismic shift happening towards micro-degrees, upskilling and on-demand courses. .Our software is web based, device/browser/OS agnostic and takes no specialized skills to create experiences allowing time to competency to be 2–4 weeks, not 3–6 months.
We envision a future where learning is a lifelong endeavour that is constantly evolving while progress remains immutable. Our platform has the potential to reach billions of people unlocking the true potential of humanity.
Unlimited Awesome Academy
An existential risk is coming. Current education systems are ill prepared to manage the rate of change caused by the disruption exponential technologies will bring. Entire new job categories are being destroyed and created daily while schools, universities and corporate training systems remain largely unchanged and unable to adapt fast enough to these changes.
UAA Vision:
“Education and Economic Prosperity for Everyone, Everywhere.”
By 2030, the Education market globally will reach $10 trillion (HolonIQ). More than 120 million workers need to be retrained/reskilled in the next 3 years as a result of intelligent/AI-enabled automation (IBM). Companies and organizations are scrambling to hire, train and retrain employees for new positions being created by these new technologies.
Once you have children, your perspective of the world changes. You will do anything for your children and that passion and drive extends to every part of life. Once we realized that we could teach our own daughter the fundamentals of success through entrepreneurship, it was not hard to extrapolate that if we created a system for this, we could educate an entire generation of youth to think differently. Using the power of habit, we can change the mindset from individual to community.
“The world is changing exponentially. Those prepared for the inevitable future will prosper beyond our wildest imagination and lead a life of success, happiness, fulfilment, love and accomplishment while leaving our earth and future generations a legacy of economic, social and environmental sustainability” — Alan & Julie Smithson
Unlimited Awesome Academy (UAA) will be a new education system that instills daily habits, rituals and beliefs that are fundamental to living a successful life. The program will be free for all youth ages 11–18 with a smartphone. MetaVRse is the first step to creating this new education paradigm, using emerging technologies (XR/AI/Blockchain) to better prepare our youth for the future.
Our vision is simple to state, but impossible to realize in 100 lifetimes. With this simple, yet impossible goal, we aim to empower the next 100 generations to strive to achieve it through continual improvement, invention and innovation. UAA will create the foundation to inspire and educate the next generations to think and act like entrepreneurs in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable way.
Our Personal Commitment to Future Generations
Julie and I are personally committing 25% of our equity in MetaVRse to fund the start of the Unlimited Awesome Academy and every piece of technology we invent, patent and perfect at MetaVRse will be licensed to UAA to help educate and enrich students’ lives for free, in perpetuity.
If we all work together to change the mindset of the next generation of youth, we can prepare them for a world radically different from the one we live in now and guide them to solve the world’s problems (climate change, education, healthcare, gender equality, sustainability, poverty, responsible consumption).
I hope you will join us on this journey by partnering with us at MetaVRse as a client or supplier as we strive to make a positive dent in the world. Our youth are our most valuable resource; we must do everything in our power to help them navigate an uncertain, technology-driven future.
With Sincere Gratitude,
Julie & Alan Smithson, Co-Founder’s — MetaVRse
