#24: Anton Bernstein, Co-Founder @ Pocket Worlds | How they built and grew Metaverse apps with over 3 Million Monthly Active Users

Web3 Talks: Stories & Tips from the Builders

If you're a Metaverse skeptic, this episode might change your mind. I talked with Anton, whose apps have built metaverse since 2016, so long before this word became popular. And they make $30M/year. How it's possible? Check out the episode!

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Follow Anton & Mac:

https://twitter.com/antonber

https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski

0:37 Intro

1:27 Quick history of Pocketworlds and HighRise

2:30 How did Anton get into web3, and why did they add web3 to their web2 app making $100M/yr in transaction volume

5:10 How Mac got hooked to HighRise

5:55 Who’s the typical user of Highrise and Everskies apps, and why do they use them?

8:04 Why avatar chats and Second Life didn’t take off and why people might get into metaverse now

11:15 Monoculture vs. Subcultures in the Metaverse

13:08 Why focusing on subcultures might work

14:19 Why their first two apps didn’t work out, and how did they use paid acquisition to get the first HighRise users

17:00 Why their retention curve goes against common knowledge

19:37 How they learned who was the 5% of the most engaged users and why 10% of their employees are former users

21:10 Why web3 is a good fit for their users and how they convinced them

21:35 How they sold out their NFT collection in 30 seconds by making millions of $ and becoming top5 collections on Immutable X despite the UX hurdles

23:40 How Mac realized that Metaverse makes sense

27:20 Metaverse is like Burning Man - focused on self-expression and interactions where you can be who you want to be

29:30 Two methods of letting users generate the content in Highrise and Everskies

32:55 How Anton’s friend makes millions of $ a year by making content in Second Life

34:30 How they want to let people earn revenue and why he’s more interested in this world than Axie Inifity’s model

35:15 How do they make their $30M revenue/year, and how it’s going to change with web3

<36:10 cut how they’re transitioning into web3>

37:40 Is Anton scared about risking their current business model during the transition

39:46 Hardest things about running a consumer app

42:45 Why they didn’t give up despite the two failed projects

43:45 What would Anton fix about web3

46:16 The most mind-blowing projects Anton has seen

48:00 His experience during Axie Infinity summer

49:29 How would he fix Axie Infinity to make it more sustainable

51:05 People spending time vs. spending money on the games

54:27 Guests ideas - people from Immutable X & MiniRoyal FPS game on Solana

55:30 Why it’s hard to transition to a sustainable model for STEPN

56:30 Where people can learn more about PocketWorlds