Dirk Lueth, Co-Founder of Upland, on the State of the MetaVerse, SuperApps, and Web3 Games | Ep. 258
In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Dirk Lueth, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Upland, talks about how Upland became the leading Web3 Metaverse SuperApp, why the future of web3 gaming will be completely open, and their partnership with FIFA Women’s World Cup.
About Dirk Lueth
Dirk Lueth, Ph.D., is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Uplandme, Inc. Based in Silicon Valley, Dirk is a serial entrepreneur and an early adopter of blockchain and related technologies. In addition to being the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Uplandme, Inc., Dirk co-founded and is chairman of the Open Metaverse Alliance for Web3 (OMA3). He is the author of the bestselling book, Navigating the Metaverse: A Guide to Limitless Possibilities in a Web 3.0 World (Wiley, 2022) and the official Metaverse ambassador of the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC).
Previously, Dirk co-founded European and US-based FinTech and digital media companies, including the Financial Times Deutschland and Forbatec, which SunGard acquired (today NYSE:FIS). Dirk mentored over 30 startups through his work at international startup accelerators in Silicon Valley and is a frequent speaker/panelist focusing on topics about the metaverse, blockchain, and platform economics. He studied Business Administration in Frankfurt and Paris and earned a Ph.D. from the European Business School in Germany, where he wrote his doctoral thesis about private and state-controlled currencies.
Dirk Lueth gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication, provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com.
Highlights Of The Interview
- How Upland became the leading Web3 Metaverse SuperApp
- Upland expanding to new cities, recently London, Birmingham, Berlin, and soon Tokyo
- Upland ‘Cafes’ and the recent partnership with Nowhere
- Partnership with FIFA Women’s World Cup
- Web3 gaming; Why the future will and most be open
Full Transcript Of The Interview
Matt Zahab
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. It’s your host Matt Zahab. We are buzzing as always and I’m super pumped to have today’s guest on the show. We’ve been trying to get this gentleman on for a hot minute. We finally got him on. Today we have Dirk Lueth, the PhD Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Upland, also known as Uplandme, Inc. I would bet the house that it is the most popular Web3 game that you can find on the App Store. I used to play it on my iPhone. I still do. It’s an absolute treat of a game. Dirk is based in Silicon Valley, is a serial entrepreneur, an early adopter of blockchain and related blockchain tech. In addition to being the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Upland, Dirk also Co-Founded and is chairman of the Open Metaverse Alliance for Web3, also known as OMA3. He is also author of bestselling book Navigating the Metaverse: A Guide to Limitless Possibilities in a Web3 World and he is also an official Metaverse Ambassador of the Global Blockchain Business Council. Before getting into the blockchain world, Dirk Co-Founded European and US based FinTech and digital media companies, including the Financial Times, Deutsche Land and Forbatec which SunGard acquired. Dirk has mentored over 30 startups through his work as an international startup accelerator and has done a whole lot of other stuff too. But we don’t have time for all that. Dirk, pumped to have you on. Welcome to the show my friend.
Dirk Lueth
Great, thank you for having me Matt. Really stoked to be here.
Matt Zahab
Yes, I’m super pumped to have you on. And Upland, you and the team built one of the only Web3 games that is actually fun to play that is a legit game that has been buzzing on the App Store. You’ve also done it on a blockchain that not a lot of companies chose to build on such a unique story. Before we get into all that, tell me a little bit about your past. You are obviously a serial entrepreneur. You’ve established a bunch of really solid companies, and then you made the jump to Web3. Tell me a little bit about your past and why you made that jump.
Dirk Lueth
Yeah, maybe with that, maybe it just started the two companies, as you rightfully said, it was Financial Times of Germany and then a company in the FinTech space. So I was always very connected to somehow media and financial things on one hand. On the other hand, I did a PhD about private and state controlled currencies. And that was a kind of funny story because when I wrote that, and it’s many years ago now, I thought, okay, this was just an academic exercise. I’m never going to need that again. But then in 2010, I think it was late 2010, I was thinking about, okay, what the Internet gave us is basically conveying information for free, right? Because as I co founded a newspaper, which was very old, right, which has to be printed, has to be delivered and all that, all these kind of costs went away, basically, right? All you could do, everyone can now become a blogger, write something and publish it at almost zero cost. I mean, some boosting costs, but really you cannot neglect that, obviously. So back in 2010, I was thinking, okay, because computer games came up, mobile games at that time, and I was really fascinated seeing, okay, those games actually have currencies, but they always defined in an ecosystem. I said, okay, but this cannot be everything if you can now transfer value in the Internet, that is really interesting. But the problem, what I was always thinking is, but this middleman in there. And that’s actually when my PhD came back in, I actually analyzed exactly that, right, the cost of decentralization, cost of centralization, without knowing about blockchain at that time. But I knew, okay, when it’s too centralized, it’s too expensive for a society. When it’s too decentralized, it’s too expensive for a society. So anyways, I thought, okay, you know what then if now games are doing this but they’re still very centralized, is there other ways of going about it? And I did some research and played around with a lot of things and then a friend of mine told me, hey Dirk, take a look at this. Have you heard about there’s a white paper, it’s kind of hyped right now in the developer community in 2010 and you should take a look at it was, to be honest, was one of many things I looked at that time, right? I actually focused much more on games which were being launched during that time, how they monetized and everything said, okay, I’m going to take a look at this white paper, right? And then Satoshi Nakamoto white paper. And I read it, had to read it a few times, right? Obviously I think most of the people who are not really in cryptography understand for the first time. But I basically understood what he was trying to get at. And then I said, this is really cool. And that’s where actually then sometime in 2011, I actually purchased my first Bitcoin and basically I did get it from someone I met somewhere in San Francisco and on basically everything on paper. And I tried it out and actually worked, right? I don’t know where the paper is these days, but I don’t have it anymore because at this time I thought, okay, there’s something very interesting to it, but maybe that’s not all of it. Maybe there will be other solutions, right? At that time I really didn’t recognize that this is really the thing that’s going to make it like always in technology, right? There’s so many great ideas, but some ideas make it, some ideas don’t. And that’s how I got basically into it really early. And then in 2011, 2012, I started developing my own solutions around that. Not around, particularly around blockchain, because I said, okay, now we have Bitcoin. But I said, okay, this is just a currency, but you need to be able to transfer also other things and in that time, I did more research on it and was really funny because I went here in Silicon Valley, I went to meetups with five or six people and they’re basically computer nerds freaks who really loved the technology behind it but didn’t think about any business things. I’m much more a business person. And then I dove deeper and deeper into it.
Matt Zahab
Very interesting. So you actually studied in-game economics and in game currencies and how all of that makes up and becomes sort of the ethos of gaming. What games did you look at to sort of build your thesis and finish your PhD in that?
Dirk Lueth
I looked a few mobile games which were out there by then. What was it in that time? I think I looked, of course, at Second Life a lot, right? Because they were around. I looked at IMVU, I looked at Eve online a little bit at that time, right? So that was mobile games, which was still which one I looked at it. Was it Angry Bird at that time? Because it was a different background. I think I was more looking how actually it monetized it, right? In the sense of I was looking also not just how currency working, but also how do you make people to pay or something, right? So that’s what I’m also looking at. Right? So several things during that time.
Matt Zahab
I was fortunate enough to work with a team that I won’t shut them out, but I learned so much from them about the in game economics and how to pull and push on human psychology in order for your users to actually buy transactions similar to Upland, it technically is a free to play game, right? Like, you don’t need to pay to play it, but once you do. Buy it’s UPX. I believe it just makes it infinitely more fun and there’s so much more things to do. But just seeing these little psychological pulls that the game developers and creators have on the users and there’s no malice involved. It’s the way she goes. It’s part of it. I found that so interesting. But I’d love to get into Upland. Let’s jump into the bread and butter of the show. You guys have so many big announcements before we get into all that, just for the few listeners that perhaps are unfamiliar with Upland. I’d love Dirk, if you could give a quick sort of elevator pitch TLDR on what exactly Upland is and how you and the team have grown it to become one of the biggest games in Web3.
Dirk Lueth
When I dabbled around, maybe just one quick step back. We tried out a lot of things from 2012 to 2017 or 2016. And I saw it’s very complicated, right? With private keys, wallets and all that stuff, right? When we said, okay, we have to build something which is super easy for users to understand. And what’s more easy to understand if you use something which people have done in their life before? And I’ve never, ever met anyone who has not played Monopoly in their childhood. So basically, that was actually how we got inspired. We say, why don’t we take the idea of Monopoly? Obviously this has something to do with real estate, and purchasing streets and so on. We take blockchain and we take the real world. Then we launched then in 2020, we called it at the beginning, we called it a property trading game, right? Because that was what was possible at the beginning. Right? So we are based on the real world. We’re currently live in 23 cities. We have three cities in South America, four cities in Europe coming soon to Asia. We can talk about that. But the basic idea is you purchase land which is based on a real world parcel, and then you start earning a small yield on it just for the pure fact that you’re owning it. But then you can increase very much like a monopoly, you can increase the yield by completing a collection, right? So three properties on the same street or collect three museums, it just depends what kind of collection you choose. You can do that. But this sets in motion the interaction between the players because now they have to trade it’s very much. When you think about trading cards hey, you have this, I have that, let’s trade. And things are getting together. You can also sell them. That was the origin of Upland but of course today we’ve developed so many more features you can build on your properties, you can run and operate shops, you can sell digital goods to others. We have cars and car racing, we have treasure hunts. Just in October November we started calling Upland now a super app because one of the reason was super app. The idea comes also from WeChat or from other applications, especially in Asian regions where you have actually one app who does many things. And our idea is the same thing but as, let’s say, platform operator, you provide what is called an API to your users or to developers so they can develop their own apps on top of it, very much like what WeChat does. So we allow now our users to develop their own apps on top of Upland and connect to them. And we have multiple of those coming on board. Now we’re just accelerating the program and we also added more social features, but more social because we call that now because we call ourselves a metaverse. Super app now is the idea is that you can go in cafes and socialize with others. Immerse there that’s typical metaverse. But also we said okay, not all people always want to do that. So we also have 2D type of immersion. That means we have a chat tool in Upland now where you can very much like Discord, you can connect with other players and so on. From property trading game to super app.
Matt Zahab
Super apps. Dirk I love this term. I feel like this is what Elon Musk is trying to do with X, almost. I feel like there’s a lot of similarities between this. He copied you guys. WeChat started it all. You guys copied WeChat Elon Musk is copying Upland. You heard it here first. But I’d love to just take a deep dive, more into super apps for a second for the majority of our listeners over here in North America and in Europe, most of us aren’t too cognizant of what a super app is. You have these apps in China and in the east, like WeChat, where it’s like you said, you have your social aspect, you have your bank aspect, there’s e commerce baked into it. It does it all. right? Can you just go on a little tangent from here? You definitely know more about this than me. Can you give a quick little explainer on what exactly super apps are and sort of why you think this is the future for Upland?
Dirk Lueth
Yeah. So the history of super apps, usually they start out with something. So WeChat was obviously, as I said, a chat tool. But you have also, like in Indonesia, which was basically a right hailing tool. Right? And then they started to develop other apps around it, like delivery service and many other things. Tht depends. Always there’s always some kind of core around it, but then you as the user, you only need basically this one app. Of course, you can install more apps on your phone, but the advantage now is because you don’t need to sign into every app, there’s one advantage, your money, your wallet is there. It makes life so much easier, right, for you as the user. Downside is, of course, now you focus many times in the old Web2 world on one company who is in control of everything. Right? And this is now the contrary in Upland, we do it a very similar way, but however, we have a much more decentralized approach, right? And we don’t own the data, we don’t own the users and so on. So that’s a little bit different, even though, let’s say the marketing world is still super app. But at the end of the day, when you look under the hood, it’s a little bit different. But you can do many things in one app, right? So that’s the basic idea.
Matt Zahab
And it’s crazy because of, I guess, the overarching sort of you know, laws and governance structures over here in North America. It’s very difficult with the antitrust and all the competition laws and everything. I feel like it’s much more difficult. A company like Facebook or now Meta could have tried to do that. I believe they have on multiple occasions, but it usually gets shut down. And again, obviously with Upland, this isn’t a type of WeChat where you’re storing everyone’s data and there’s crazy amount of discovery and surveillance over everything. It’s a whole different ballgame. But super apps are incredibly interesting, and we’ll hopefully talk about this a little bit more later on in the show. Before we get back into Upland, I want to take a quick sort of fork in the road and just talk about the metaverse for a second. You have a best selling book called Navigating the Metaverse a Guide to Limitless Possibilities in the Web 3.0 world. You also have a podcast, which is metaverse focused as well. What is the current state of the metaverse right now? It’s so sort of up in the air. Three years ago, the narrative was that we as in Web3, would have a metaverse up and buzzing already. That clearly isn’t the case. There’s really no big front runner. All of the sandbox right Decentraland. Those sort of used to be the front runners for it. Now no one plays them. You guys have much more daily volume than those guys do combined, if not 100 XM. What’s the current state of the metaverse Dirk, where are we right now?
Dirk Lueth
Yeah. So maybe again, taking a step back. Right? When we started Upland in 2018, we used on purpose the URL upland.me for metaverse.
Matt Zahab
Come on. I always thought it was just .me because it rolls off the tongue. Wow. Good to know. Crazy.
Dirk Lueth
But at that time, I always said, going to use that word because no one knows what a metaverse is. Obviously, I had read about it, and there’s a famous novel from Neil Stevenson called Snow Crash about the metaverse and so on. But know, at the beginning I always talked know, we are a parallel world or something. It’s a virtual world. So that was what people understood. And then things have dramatically changed when Mark Zuckerberg renamed or rebranded his company to Meta. Right? And that also when we saw all of a sudden exponential growth. We’ve been growing very nicely over time. But then this announcement came out and there was a super hype phase starting in October 21 and go until February 22. Right? It was just incredible. As I said, I’ve helped a lot of companies to grow. I’ve had my own companies. But the growth we have seen during that time was just crazy, really. Naturally. Anyway, where do we stand today? The problem is right now, the narrative we all know, AI everyone’s talking about, even though you have now a lot of critiques, also now that it’s very expensive and no, AI is the same hype as Blockchain and everything was before. Right? Technology always goes up and down and so on. Right? I think the metaverse is still something which is coming, for sure. I mean, I’m just returned, for instance, from a trip in Japan and was just incredible how people are enthusiastic. Right? Because the narrative there is completely different. So the conference I attended WEPEX, you know, was even started by the Prime Minister of Japan, if Joe Biden, or to do would do the first speech, right?
Matt Zahab
That’s wild.
Dirk Lueth
Yeah, this is really wild. Right? So that’s something also to show. And I think the problem was when people see something and then this is my personal interpretation they saw the video from Mark Zuckerberg, right? I said, oh, it’s already I can do a gazillion things, right? But that was never really defined. And then I think it’s always when your expectations are that high and then what you can actually do is much lower, right? Then there’s a big wave of disappointment in a certain way. And I think currently that would be quite straightforward. The narrative metaverse, there’s a few articles, very critique, maybe rightful and outright. But on the other hand, the metaverse is something you build 3D in a game. When you have a good 3D game, you built AAA game, so called, right? You don’t build that in one or two years. When you think about GTA, I’m not sure exact time frame, but I think they needed eight or ten years to release a new update. Right? Just insane. And Upland launched in 2020. Now we’re in 2023. I think we have achieved a lot already, right? I can say that also to my colleagues in the blockchain world at least. So it just takes time. People just have so high expectations and that’s now the art of every entrepreneur. How do you bridge that time? So people still feel entertained, they still like it, right? And that’s also why from day one I said I don’t want to build from day one like an immersive space where people can go and can do nothing, right? That’s just not working. So you have to actually slowly get people into it. You give them some game engagement points where they can do something, click around or you know, or do something on the screen and trade and so on. And then substantially, you introduce these immersive spaces, but where they can do more with each other, or where they can do more interact more with the app or whatever. But that is something you have to do over time, right? I always said this is a longer term journey. We are not at least in a ten year journey here with Upland to build it out, where we all think in a certain sense what Mark Zuckerberg has shown in this video. And that’s something also what the Metaverse is about. So I think it’s coming for sure. And I have to say one interesting observation I also made, I tend to understand also more. It’s good when you travel, right? When I’m in Asia, when I’m in Middle East, people, they live differently than sometimes in the US. In the US, you live on a big farm, right? And maybe odds in Canada, right? For 50 miles, there’s no one else who lives there, right? You’re just by yourself, right? When you go to a city like Tokyo, Hong Kong or wherever, right? I mean, there’s one skyscraper, one high rise next to each other. And I think the Metaverse also helps a lot of people to think, to dream and to do other things. And that makes it much easier. Why people probably are more receptive. I mean, that’s my theory. I might be wrong here, but more receptive to this kind of escapism, right? To do something right in the Metaverse, that’s one aspect of it. The other aspect is as soon as you can do other things also, let’s say more in the Western world, which you cannot do really in the real world, right? For instance, you can come together with like minded people and not just on a 2D chat now you can meet, you can wear something and can be someone else if you want to be someone else. I think this will more and more people will get used to that. Because if you think about younger generations, they’re growing up with Roblox, they’re growing up with Minecraft and Fortnite and so on. But when they’re getting older. They might want to use other tools. It’s always like that in life, right? And that’s where actually Upland comes in. So Upland basically has its core user group in 21 to 49 ish years old, right? Of course we have a little bit younger, a little bit older, but usually we don’t allow users below 18 to play, right? So Upland starts at 18. So that’s something where I think where it’s going to go, right? Then people also will be able to contribute more. We have more user generated content coming in, right? And then becomes more and more the ownership of the users themselves. And then the narrative will actually also change when people start enjoying it more and then instead of being just in empty rooms.
Matt Zahab
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Dirk Lueth
Yeah, I think always when we come to different computing paradigms you always have to change something, right? We had Web1.0, which was basically only right then Web2.0 was read and write, right? Was basically social web. Then we have now Web3.0 which includes own to it, right? Read, write, own and then you have now the metaverse where you actually act or you do something in a virtual world. But the problem is when you come from the Web2 world and we have a closed metaverse and sometimes I really struggle also to call them even metaverse, right? Games which are just for themselves like Fortnite or Minecraft. The problem with that is I get somehow locked in, right? And if the operator decides to shut down the game or the operator decides they don’t like your face or whatever, they can always say, you know what? You’re banned, you cannot play anymore. You lose all your assets and everything is gone, right? You even don’t have chances to sell your assets stuff you have actually acquired, right? All you can do is extract the entertainment value of such a game, right? But not necessarily the monetary value you’ve put in. But when you compare that to real life so let’s say you live in Canada, I live in the US. Right? So I take now my car, drive to the border and now I’m crossing the border. Now I have to buy a new car in order to do something in Canada and make you on vacation or so, right? So that’s completely stupid because first of know I have now to spend money again. Maybe the car seller in Canada is happy at that moment, right? But the rest of the economy in Canada, they’re not going to be happy because I’m going to spend less money for that particular thing. So I think this is the same logic. When it’s open, I can go with my car from one world to the other. It’s my car, right? Then I will actually consume also more I will consume different things and more people participate from it. I think that is a very idea of being a more democratized world at the end of the day. What that means concretely in terms of the metaverse is and that is vision which I have and many others have, is really in an ideal solution in the future. That’s also what we’re trying to achieve with the Open Metaverse Alliance that we’re doing also with Upland, with the third party applications where we allow our users to take their data and their assets with them or their identity. Like an avatar and using it in one world and using that in the other world and come back to the other world and take it back home. Because if I sold something, maybe then in Canada I can take that money and bring it back home and spend it in the US. If I want to. Right? Of course there’s some taxes in between or so sometimes, but that’s how it works and that’s exactly how it is. Why in the world is it that we are always locked into these walled gardens is because certain one company was trying to set up Monopoly, right? And then back to doesn’t have to be really necessary with the game, but the idea is and then it’s good for one company, maybe their shareholders, but it’s not good for the overall society. That’s the reason I think the open metaverse and interoperability is the much more stronger value proposition, right? But you have to solve different challenges in order to make that also much more compelling.
Matt Zahab
Very well said. One of the things that intrigues the hell out of me that you guys, your team has done growth related the brilliance of sort of and like you said, this was 20 minutes ago at the beginning of the pod about how you don’t know anyone who hasn’t played Monopoly. And I agree with you. It’s like that one of the, you know, most famous games of all time, especially when you’re a kid. It’s a classic. It teaches you about in game economies, about negotiations, dealing. We could go on about it. But another Monopoly thing is that you guys included real world, pretty much real world properties and real world cities. So, Dirk, you and I were talking for the show, you know, helped your northern border friends in Canada out yet? I can’t wait for Toronto to pop off. But I bought some properties in Upland close to me in Detroit. It’s only about a five hour drive right across the border. And if you live in these cities, there’s a good chance that you’re going to want to buy some land, right? Some Upland properties close to where you live, which is super cool. Moving forward on that. The amount of partnerships that you guys have cranked out, and more recently, congrats on this. This is massive. The FIFA Women’s World Cup partnership. absolutely huge news. You guys doing your Upland cafes again, more massive stuff. New cities, London, Birmingham, Berlin, Tokyo, just execution after execution. Walk me through how you and the team continue to grow and execute and some of the best things you’ve done to achieve the growth that you have.
Dirk Lueth
Yeah, first of all, yeah, I think we have a great team. So that’s the first thing. So not everything somehow comes out of my head now, right? Obviously, the original idea, together with my two co founders, but we have very strong people who helping us and doing and the funny thing is, sometimes things are happening in Upland I’m not even aware of anymore. This is so much stuff going on, it’s just impossible to follow for myself, right? That is just a fact. But we’re always very humble at the end of the day, we say is okay, we can have ideas, we can set the infrastructure, but at a certain we also reach our limits. And again, we don’t want to be now this walled garden kind of company who comes up with everything. What we really want to do is that we want to empower the community. We empower the community by giving them user generated content tools. They’re all not there yet, but we’re developing them. We have the third party developer platform. We have that, right? And we have also what we call progressive decentralization. Right? At the beginning, Upland was a little bit more centralized, and that’s on purpose, because at the beginning, an economy is very fragile, right? Is also one of the secrets, because there’s always, unfortunately, people who are trying to find loopholes and to get more money out to do something, right? And you need to be in control of that at the beginning at least, because you cannot think of everything. But over time, as the economy grows and as there are more transactions happening between the players, we can ensure actually that we can delegate more responsibilities to the players. So we have voting, actually, we had a few votes already where people were actually voting and we suggested something. We as Upland think that’s the right way of going about it, but people were able to vote against it. I mean, they voted for it, but could go also the other way. Right? We’re completely aware of that. Right? But like this, it’s all empowerment of the community. But on the other hand, sure, I mean, now we’re launching so many cities, it becomes more and more complex, right? It requires a lot of discipline on our side. Right? Also, it’s not just we have to think about what we’re doing in Detroit now, what are we going to do in London and Tokyo and all these cities, right? It’s also the language barriers, right? So I speak a few languages, but I don’t speak Japanese, for instance, right? So now we have to have Japanese speakers who help us to understand the local market and so on. So there are challenges and as we grow, right? We have to think about how we’re going to solve those challenges.
Matt Zahab
You got to walk me through the cafes as well because this is again like it seems cliche and it seems front of mind and a no brainer. I’m sure it wasn’t, but after the news comes to light and this is obviously the Upland cafes and the recent partnership with nowhere, but seems like such a no brainer and it’s just brilliant at the end of the day, great for growth. You got to walk me through that. How did it all go down?
Dirk Lueth
Yeah, we always said that we want to allow users because at the very beginning our claim was play, earn and connect, right? At what we say in Upland. And the connect aspect was always basically was a little bit in Discord and so on. And we always said no because in Discord also we had the Upland Cafe in Discord already, right? So that was I think was either us or maybe even the player suggested it. I actually don’t remember that. But we always said, okay, let’s also transfer that idea into the metaverse. And as I mentioned earlier, we had 2D chat, Discord type of chat already one to one communications in Upland implemented on a 2D level. And then we said, okay, now we need really the cafes, right? And the 3D level. And again, what we released right now is a very early version of it. But what was important is that people can go in there, they can take their avatar because we introduced, we have a partnership also with Ready Player Me. So you can define your avatar in Upland and then you can actually put variables on your avatar, right? So that’s now you go into the cafe and then you go there and then you appear as your avatar. You can walk around a little bit. What is super interesting, so one thing you can do is for instance, we did our AMA in the cafe, so people were able in the cafe to watch it like on the screen or also after we did actually conversation. So Idan, my co founder, did that. We had groups and when you approach a group with your avatar spatial audio, it actually increases in volume. Right? It was very interesting, very much like in real life. And the funny thing is, you really have to try it out. And my personal experience is when you’re in cafes or when you journal 3D rooms, right? It really feels at the end of the day when you leave it, you have the impression oh, have been there. Right? I was somewhere. That is really something. Because right now, people especially who are very big critiques of the metaverse, many people probably have never even entered the metaverse, they just read about it and so on. But they never experience this for a few hours or see that because everyone who does that after a time and gets this full 3D immersion, you start saying oh good, this is a different feeling than just being on the internet and looking at my flat screen and my newsfeed or whatever. Right? And that’s what we are trying to achieve also with the cafes. And as I said, it’s just version one. There will be much more coming.
Matt Zahab
And before we go, Dirk, because we are getting a little tight for time, you got to talk to me about the women’s FIFA World Cup partnership. You guys are doing a bunch of activations that also include in game experiences as well. What does that look like?
Dirk Lueth
Yeah. So we started off with FIFA. I’m in the Qatar World Cup already and the idea know, we have a little know also people were able to buy their colors for the countries they’re able to achieve. People are proud of it. So I’m German, right? And I know that in the US soccer or football, it’s not that popular. But when you’re in those countries, people having their flags outside of their homes. So we copied that ideas pretty much what we have. But also what we introduced is where people were able to purchase bundles and then in the bundles they could get some items there. And those items you can collect fan points and the higher the fan points are, you get rights to get actually to rare items. And the very rare items is that we have actually the gold as NFTs from the World Cups. So in Upland, for instance, I don’t know if you watched the World Cup, the final, but France played against Argentina was the best final I’ve ever watched in my life, to be honest, because it was so exciting at the end, even though Germany didn’t play, but it was overtime and penalty, really, the full drama. And Messi shot a goal there and that is an NFT now. So in Upland is the place to get that NFT, which is awesome, right? And of course, there’s all the other goals and what have you, right? So that’s what makes it such an interesting partnership.
Matt Zahab
Speaking of the World Cup, little off topic here, but I must ask, do you remember where you were when Germany had that beat down on Brazil, in the Brazil World Cup? I remember watching that. I was with friends and it was at my house. I had a couple of buddies over. We thought it was going to be one of the best games. I believe it was a semifinal game. I think you guys scored a quick goal and then it was just boom. And I have goosebumps just talking about the story. I’ll never forget that. Do you remember where you were when that happened?
Dirk Lueth
Oh, yeah, of course I was actually watching with friends of mine in a sports bar. The funny thing is, I ordered actually some food while I was watching and then I looked down and then I saw a goal again. I thought it was just the replay. It was already the next goal, right? I couldn’t believe it, right? It was going so fast and yeah, that’s a moment I never forget. I’m myself a big football fan, right? And we have actually a big Brazilian team also. We always tease them about the seven vote result.
Matt Zahab
That’s great. Yeah. I’ll never forget that game. Dirk, what a treat. Really appreciate you coming on. Before we let you go, a couple of hot takes and then we will get you to let our listeners know where they can find you in Upland. But before then, give me a couple hot takes. Doesn’t have to be metaverse related, doesn’t have to be crypto. It can be health, wealth, happiness, AI, space, this new. ZP 99 semiconductor that everyone’s talking about. What do you have for us before we let you go?
Dirk Lueth
Look, I think one important, even though I probably say, hey, go to the metaverse and so on, but I always tell people have a good balance on life, right? So it’s always also meet people, but I think meet people in real life, but also benefit them from what you can do in the digital life because they can meet people with different perspectives, right? It’s not just your closed area where you live, but maybe now all of a sudden you meet people from Peru, Bolivia, wherever, or Germany, right? So you can so much easier extend. And I think that’s what we look for, right? We should learn from each other. And my hope is know, and that’s something we’re trying to achieve with the metaverse alliance, you know, that the metaverse is going to be a more positive place because we all know that, unfortunately, that the web can be sometimes very negative and so on. And I think it’s up to us to take that chance and to make it a better place.
Matt Zahab
Well said. Dirk what a treat, man. Really pumped to have you on. I love Upland. I play the game. Listeners at home again, we never charge guests to come on the show. This is just an incredible speaker and a really good game. So shout out to you and the team. Thanks again for coming on. Before you leave, can you please let our listeners know where they can find you and Upland online and on socials?
Dirk Lueth
Yeah, you can download on the App store, your favorite app stores or upland.me on the website. Twitter is @UplandMe in one word. And my Twitter is @DirkLueth. Maybe I should now say X handle. I don’t know how you say that these days, X handle?
Matt Zahab
I still call it Twitter. I’m not calling it my X.
Dirk Lueth
My twitter or X handle is @DirkLueth.
Matt Zahab
Just like I’m not calling the Staples Center Crypto.com Arena. I’m looking at the Rogers Center right now in Toronto, it used to be called the SkyDome, so the old stuff always stays. But Dirk really appreciate you coming on. Thank you for your time and can’t wait for round two.
Dirk Lueth
Thank you for having me.
Matt Zahab
Folks what an episode with Dirk Lueth, CEO of the one and only Upland. As always, I will include everything in the show notes. Everything to Dirk and Upland will be in the show notes. Go check them out on the App Store, whether it is Android or Apple. Incredible game. Super easy to learn and super fun once you get the hang of it as well. If you guys enjoyed this one, I hope you did. Please do subscribe. It would mean the world to my team and I. Speaking to the team love you guys so much. Thank you for everything. Could not be here without you. Especially Justas my amazing sound editor. You are the man. Appreciate your hard work, as always. And back to the listeners. Love you guys. Keep on growing those bags and keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy. Bye for now, and we’ll talk soon.
