Episode 06

[00:00:00] The podcast. Super excited to have Jerome Fowrie from Immersive, one of our portfolio companies, visiting us today in the office, which is always a treat. Welcome. Thank you. Um, I know you have a long journey from New Zealand. Tell us a little bit about your travel. Um, well, first off, there's a direct flight, um, from Auckland to New York.

That's a good thing. So 17 hours. 17, that's nothing. Yeah, when you're in New Zealand, everywhere is a bit of a, um, at a distance. So I'm doing seven countries in seven days. So, um, a road warrior, Auckland, New York. Um, Paris, Belgrade, Munich, and then doing some skiing in Kitzebuehle, I think I pronounced that right.

But it's work skiing. It [00:01:00] is work skiing. Alright, it's a MasterCard event. Um, a number of our partners are there and a bunch of prospects that we'd like to engage with are there as well. So there's going to be some thought leadership, there's going to be some great connections, um. Bunny hills. Bunny hills.

Keep it easy on the downhill, okay? I don't want to hear about injuries. I know. I should probably snowboard as opposed to ski, but I don't do it myself, but I'll look after myself. I remember when I last saw you, I feel like that was Abu Dhabi, uh, last year. And you said from New Zealand just to get past Australia is how many hours of flight?

Oh, goodness. It's like 10, something like that. Yeah. It's crazy. Well, uh, very happy that you made it here and very happy to dig in a little bit with Immersive. Uh, so maybe kick off by telling us a little bit of your history and then a little bit of the origin story for the business. Where have you been?

How did you come about? How'd you get into this space? [00:02:00] Yeah, cool. So, um, so my father was a programmer. Um, and I grew up around computers. At the age of seven, I wrote my first computer program on what was then a green screen on an Amstrad. Um, so always been into tech, always loved how it worked. I used to read books on, you know, how computers worked and processes and all that kind of stuff as a young person.

Um, I got into payments in, goodness, must have been the late 90s. Um, and what we're always specializes in what I would call the last mile plumbing. Um, and I guess on the innovation front. So back in those days, uh, windows started becoming the dominant point of sale kind of operating system. You know, previously, the big petrol stations and the Walmart's of the world would have these IBM type systems and a pause and a small retailer would have a cash register.

Then you got these point of sales that ran on Windows, and what they wanted was to integrate the point of sale with the payment terminal. [00:03:00] So we developed an ActiveX control that enabled the POS to integrate with the payment terminal. We then, um, took that and essentially, Created, I think, some of the world's first e commerce, so this is like 1997, just for some context.

And then in 98, we, um, did an e commerce payment where essentially we wrote some software so that, um, a Linux daemon, essentially, um, could be run on the client side. Uh, it was great planes, actually, for a supermarket that was going live, and airlines would run this type of stuff. And then we wrote software to manually Enter the card number into the payment terminal, so the banks thought that someone had done what they called a mail order, telephone order transaction.

That's how we did the first e com back in 1998. Then we used to sell these boxes, hardware and software, with your typical license fee, traditional model. And the, um, founder, who was probably one of the most, um, innovative, [00:04:00] um, geniuses in the world now today, actually, in payments, um, came up with software as a service.

So in 2001, we basically aggregated everything onto one piece of infrastructure, and we onboarded multiple. customers, essentially into what you'd call now as, as SAS. And this was a revolution, like 2001, this was very early days. And I remember at one stage, um, we were onboarding both Qantas and Air New Zealand.

And, you know, these are, these are big airlines and they process very large volumes. And the thought of both of their, um, customer data essentially being in the same database. It was revolutionary. It really was, it really was, right? And so, you know, we'd start doing SaaS based payments back then, but it enabled us to really innovate at pace, you know, so that was the power of it all.

Having shared infrastructure means we could add new features and, you know, really scale, and then all the partners would get the benefit of that. Then in sort of [00:05:00] 2005 ish, um, worked with Citibank. On a deal to set up this, um, uh, retailer called Apple. So they had these massive projects, um, global teams that booked out two floors at the Hilton in Sydney.

It was like two years, and I remember talking to the CIO at the time, and, you know, we were charging them, you know, millions of dollars, and at that time the banks in Australia would give you a payment terminal for free. And I just asked them, you know, like, I've got to ask, what, because they want to do transactions over the internet.

And they wouldn't do transactions from iPods because, you know, the iPhone wasn't out back in, back in those days. You know, why are you spending all of this money for us to build basically a switch, certified with a bank, bring these new terminals in, get regulatory approval to do, you know, payments over the internet.

And he said in a very deep Irish accent, and I wish I had an Irish accent that I could, you know, pull out right now, but I don't. But he said it's all about the customer experience. You know. 2006 [00:06:00] 7 when I asked this question, that really stuck with me. Um, you know, they wanted to be able to take payments away from the cash register.

So those Apple stores were crazy. Do you remember when they came out and then, you know, there were the queues outside for days, I think. Days, you know, and the number of transactions these guys were doing was just absolutely phenomenal. And, you know, McDonald's used to have a saying, um, or a stat at least, that for every 6 seconds they could save at a point of sale, it delivered 1 percent to the bottom line.

Wow. So they, they had to look at it from a financial metric perspective, so that's why they missed key errors in time. But Apple was all about that experience, you know, that was just embedded in obviously the way they design the products and they deliver the product, but also how they did the retail store.

So I did that. Um, uh, that company is still hugely successful now, you know, it's processing, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars a year. One of the largest players [00:07:00] in the space globally. Actually the guy, Andy, who founded and owns it, he's got a townhouse up at Eastside that he spends a lot of time in.

Uh, and then in sort of 2016, 17, I got into Web3 payments, um, and I did a deal with, um, Verifone and who are two of the largest manufacturers of payment terminals globally and similar to the Alipay WeChat Pay. Um, I came up with a model that essentially enabled them to talk to an endpoint to generate a QR code that they could present.

But instead of having one app that could consume that QR code. Any app could consume it. So Web3 wallets, and one of them at the time integrated with us, could, um, scan the QR code and then talk to another end point. And we built a system, uh, banking infrastructure, um, outside of Visa, MassCard, Rails. So our own network.

And essentially enable any app to transact anything, including [00:08:00] crypto, on any device. Because what merchants don't want is a new integration, a QR code off to this side. You know, everything needs to be integrated from a reconciliation perspective. Staff training them, staff phones. Simplicity. Simplicity, right?

It's just got to work natively. You've got to try and bring these things together. So we did that. We even created an NFT very early on, I think. So 2019. And get me excited. Mate, we, we tokenized, uh, Coke. So, um, Coca Cola ended up investing in, in this company on, on the back of this. But the way I looked at it is, you know, Coca Cola distribute their products, you know, via retailers and distribution networks around the world.

Well, but they don't actually have a relationship with the end user. You know, they've got it with the petrol stations and the supermarkets, but not with Dan or Jerome. And so I thought, well, if you can digitize your products and distribute your products digitally, direct to the consumer, and if you can influence that consumer to drive them to your retail partners, when you're [00:09:00] competing against PepsiCo, as an example, and one of the first point of sales to integrate with us was Vista, who had about 50 percent market share for Um, then instead of being a cost, you can be a sales channel and the value you get from engaging directly with consumers, you know, is, is, is massive, right?

And so we created a, um, I guess what's called now broad asset and ERC 721, that you could put into your web three wallet. And then you could transact that on Coke vending machines and at point of sales systems and all this kind of stuff. So this business ended up being hugely successful. I ended up selling it.

for about 35 million U. S. Um, uh, but one of the challenges with that business is you had to onboard both consumers and merchants, you know, and some merchants would say, B to B to C. Exactly. And it was really painful because consumers would ask where can I Spend, and merchants would say, how many consumers have you got?

Chicken and egg. It was a grind, it was a [00:10:00] grind, and so, then, um, I started seeing these things going on, in crypto, particularly FDX, Voyager, Celsius, all this type of stuff. And I thought to myself, um, what if we found a way where consumers could transact directly from their Web3 wallet? Without trusting a third party, you know, without a bank, without an exchange, without even trusting, you know, my, my company.

And so I ended up, um, thinking more about this and I was working with MasterCard on another project to help, um, female entrepreneurs in Fiji basically accept payments on their phone, settle to a MasterCard so that Female entrepreneurs in Fiji? Yeah, micro SMEs. So this is, you know, COVID iss all happening at this time.

You know, tourism is taking a hit and there's a lot of these, um, micro SMEs and in Fiji it happens to be predominantly females that, you know, parts and crafts and they sell them on the side of the street and they, you know, the Australians and Kiwis go there and they don't have dollars on them, they just want to tap a card due to the convenience, but they don't have bank accounts and [00:11:00] so it's like, okay, well, how do we build an acceptance device on an Android phone, essentially, and instead of settling for a bank account, let's sell it, sell it for prepaid card.

And so this was my first relationship with, um, MasterCard. I, I historically always been a visa shop. Mm. You know, the previous company I put the first direct link into Visa for a non-bank in the world. And, you know, DH the founder of Visa is a, you know, big sort of idol for me. I've read all their books. Um, it's the original decentralized business actually, um, which is kind of interesting talk about.

But, um, what I did is I met with MasterCard and I think, well, if I can bridge. Web 2 and Web 3 and bring the best of both worlds together, then I think we were on to something. And so for me, you know, the Web 2 thing that was really good, is one, you've got 100 million places where you can spend these cards.

You know, recently you booked with us globally. Yes. Um, you also get the protection that if you go to nikes. com instead of nike. com, you can [00:12:00] Do a charge back and get your money back. So you protect it as a consumer, but then with three, there's obviously a whole bunch of benefits with digitally native money.

You know, you can obviously send it instantly to anyone. Um, I think compliance has a whole bunch of value. You can do as well with on chain transparency. You get trust and transparency at the same time. Um, and so. I spoke to MasterCard and I pitched this idea to them. Um, actually at first the person that, um, came on the call was actually going to say no to us, but I even ended up meeting with the CEO, Michael May, back here in New York.

Um, at the time Visa was the main Um, crypto shop, nine out of 10 cards in the crypto space with Visa cards. Um, MasterCard was very big on buy now pay later. And what they were looking for was some leapfrog technology. And so we ended up, um, MasterCard funded this. They've been an absolutely great partner.

Um, they flew their crypto experts, uh, from around the world to this location with the founding members from my team. And we figured out how can we [00:13:00] do, you know, transactions in less than one second, by tapping a device or card. On chain in a decentralized way, you know, so for me it was always about the values of Web3, you know, it's around, you know, um, my data, my digital identity, you know, the democratization of things and decentralization, you know, you know, it's a lot more equitable than the sort of centralized sort of models.

And so I was like, okay, well, how do we bring the values of Web3 and the tech of Web3 integrated with this MasterCard network? And, you know, we've got all these experts together and we, um, ended up, you know, Immersive was born. Immersive was born, yeah. Why only one I in Immersive? It's missing the final I.

What's the story? Well, I could get the dot com as a short answer. Okay. And register trademark. All right. I actually think it looks better as well. I like it as well. But I'll tell you, there are people even within our company that are constantly Misspelling it. So tell them it's [00:14:00] not wheel of fortune and you don't get to buy extra bowels.

So Immersive is launched. Let's dive into a little bit of this dynamic given that you had worked with Visa To great lengths and now MasterCard is inching forward So tell us a bit about that dynamic because while Visa has historically been the bigger player Uh, your perspective when it comes to web three is unique and seeing how each of them have moved both in terms of how they staff their organizations, the willingness of the executive suite to push forward with crypto.

Maybe that changes with a new regulatory regime in the United States, uh, later in January, tell us how you, how you've sized all that up. So the way I looked at it is. At the time there was a change of guard at MasterCut. And the new CEO was very vocal around his support for blockchain and digital [00:15:00] currency.

So I knew that he wanted to make a mark strategically. And from the top down, if the CEO is on board, That helps. Things happen, right? And when you're innovating, it's always in front of regulation. Regulation plays catch up to innovation. And so a couple of things that are good, having that partnership with MasterCard, when regulators, and we're a regulated entity by central banks or similar around the world, when they see that you're a principal member of MasterCard, that you settle directly with MasterCard, that you contract directly with MasterCard, that you meet MasterCard's Compliance requirements.

Right. Which in some cases are actually higher than local regulation. Hmm. Um, that gives them confidence. Um. Seal of good housekeeping. It is, right? I mean, they do a lot of due diligence on us. You know, we have to have capital within, you know, for a week or so. Um, you know, we need to meet their crypto onboarding requirements, which is enhanced due diligence.

There's a whole bunch of stuff around [00:16:00] risk, fraud, that we need to meet, obviously staff and capability. Um, but you know, payments and almost anything in life really, nothing's more important than trust. Right. You know, and so you want to innovate and you want to be legally compliant. And those two things often are at different ends because on the innovation side you want the user experience.

And then the regulatory Seamlessness. Kind of, there's a, there's a natural tension. You want to bring that bridge closer together. How do you have a really elegant user experience? And so now, within Web3 wallets, um, we can onboard, uh, a new user, um, all within the app in under, um, 90 seconds. Oh. I think there's further optimizations, particularly when you get, you know, trusted, verifiable credentials that you can share.

You won't need to do the, the passport and the cell fee and that type of stuff. But, you know, we've done optimization so that, you know, the user doesn't need to enter their name. You know, we can get that directly from the passport as an option. Um, [00:17:00] we also don't require them to enter their, um, or upload any utility bill, or similar for address verification because we have integration.

To trusted data sources. So when you put your address in like a credit bureau would look at it. Um, we can see that. Yes you are paying the cable bill They're not paying the cable bill anymore. This is no cable bill, but they're paying some bills for power electricity. Yep Broadband hundred percent. We username and password Right, that's a very web2 way of doing things.

You know, all the onramps now, pretty much any user, password, if you want to transact over 1000 with us, you can sign in with Ethereum, or sign in with Algorand or XRPL. So we use web3 authentication for the user. So you make these optimizations, and then I think, We're probably the most compliant company, because when things are on chain, you know, we use chain analysis, so we can do pip checks, sanction checks, nature and [00:18:00] purpose, you know, we do so many more checks, and we have such greater visibility over the actual user, because we do enhanced due diligence, over the currency itself, because it's on chain, and we see the entire flow end to end.

So you have this really high level of compliance, with this, you know, really elegant user experience. And all they need to do, you know, just tap the phone, you know, spend, but you're spending on chain, you're spending crypto, the merchant doesn't even know it's crypto, there's no fee to use the service because we generate our income through this fee called interchange, so we charge the financial institution accepting the card.

Yes. And so you, as I said, the original kind of promise that bridge, and if you look at our logo and branding. When I was talking to our designer, I said, you know, I want to bridge because, you know, on and off ramping for me was a bit like going to a foreign country. I lived in Japan for a while and I remember taking the train there, you know, so you go from the site, you know, the fear to crypto for me was a bit like going from a locomotive to a Shinkansen in a foreign country in a train station with a [00:19:00] foreign language.

You know, 2017, 19, whatever. It was all very complex, C phrases, all this type of stuff, right? I was like, I want a bridge. So when I go from, you know, like in Europe, when I go from country A to B, I just drive over. And the bridge that I wanted was the Bifrost. You know, from, from Thor. That was the vastest bridge I could think of.

And so, and I mean, you're an artist, so you'll appreciate it. Um, Derek Lockwood, who was the creative director for Saatchi Saatchi in New York, happens to be a Kiwi. And he's my design guy. And so he, um, but. I know you can use AI and all these things, but our, all of our designs are done by hand. So we've got a hand.

As they should be. They're done by hand, so, you know. By a Kiwi. By a Kiwi. Even better. He's the Kiwi that came up with the love marks for McDonald's and I'm loving it and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, he was the global head of design at Saatchi and Saatchi, um, and he did it. Well, Americans are loving it, okay, and they're loving it a bit too much.

That's why we have an obesity epidemic across the [00:20:00] country. Uh, you mentioned Qantas and Air New Zealand, so I take it that you have preferred status with those airlines. They must love you, given your, your, your travel. Is there one versus the other that you prefer? Look, our national bird in New Zealand is the Kiwi.

Okay. And it's a flightless bird. Meaning? It's got no wings. It doesn't leave the ground. However, the people You can say that I'm a flightless bird then, right? Well, if you want to try that at home. Um, but we're explorers, we're innovators, you know, we've been big exporters, because that's how we, you know, we're very far into the world.

But we're the first to do a free trade agreement with China, as an example. We've just done one with the UAE. You know, when countries want to do free trade agreements, they look at New Zealand as the global Um, kind of exemplar in this particular space. From a financial, um, and, and money perspective, we were the [00:21:00] first country in the world to openly float, uh, the sovereign dollar.

Um, the New Zealand dollar is 2. 1 percent of all, um, trade currencies globally. Uh, the inflation benchmark, around 2 3%, that was from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. So, you know, you've got this kind of environment where we like to export, we like to travel, um, there's a lot of senior New Zealanders, um, in senior roles with major companies all around the world, and one of the co founders of Tesla was a Kiwi, uh, as an example, you know, the top guy at GM was a Kiwi, um, you know, We enjoy exporting.

We enjoy lots of different cultures. We love traveling and yeah, I've got I think six different airline apps. I mean, crypto by nature is hyper global. You know, so we need to be hyper global as well. That means I spend a lot of time on a plane. I think last year, just for some context, I did maybe a hundred plane trips.

Wow. [00:22:00] That's a lot of time in an aluminum can. But you look okay. Oh, look, I love it. I love going to different countries. I've been, you know, it's randomly bumping into you at Abu Dhabi, but I love the UAE. You know, I really, I think the UAE brings the best of a lot of the places I enjoy most. And New York is definitely a top three city for me by a long shot.

I love the drive. I love the energy. Um, obviously, you know, financial markets, you know, New York is amazing. Singapore is very clean and safe. Um, and then, you know, you've got Maldives, a beautiful beach, if they go to UAE, and they've imported the Maldives sand at Satia, a beautiful beach. Literally. Yeah, they have.

The regulator there is the most advanced regulator in the world, and the easiest to engage with. You know, they have monthly kind of drinks that they sponsor, because they wanted to get to know Founders and entrepreneurs [00:23:00] who are innovating as people, they don't get you to produce a thousand page document that ticks a whole bunch of boxes.

You know, when I sent our business case for A DGM approval, A DGM is the regulator in abu. Oh yeah it is. Sorry. Um, the regulator came back to me and asked, do we support ERC 4 3 3 7? So it's account abstraction and um, basically means you don't need a seed phrase and it's a lot easier to sign up as a crypto user.

A bunch of other stuff as well, I guess, but, um, because, uh, and if we don't, do we plan to because it provides a better user experience? Now, I've never had a regulator ask me about ERC XYZ or the user experience. That just hasn't come up at all. Um, I thought, great, you know, and I went to a conference with, um, Binance.

That was amazing last year. And they had the regulator from El Salvador there. And they're a specialist digital asset regulator, and the way he positioned it is like, having a [00:24:00] standard regulator oversee crypto is a bit like taking your Tesla. To a traditional mechanic that understands carburetors and combustion engines, you know that yes, they're both mechanics And yes, they're both cars, but there's a pretty significant difference, right?

One has thousands of parts one has far fewer parts and no engine 100 like us is a good example. So in the u. s. If you want to issue, you know crypto cards Basically, um, you need a BIN sponsor in order to do that and to be that provider, which we are in multiple markets. You need to have FDIC approval and be a registered bank.

Now, yes, I understand why you need FDIC approval if you're holding onto users funds and taking deposits. But when you're transacting and providing this bridge from the user's wallet that they control to the MasterCard network, and at no point do you hold onto consumer funds, And it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, you know, and a lot of markets that [00:25:00] require you, you know, even the central bank of UAE, you know, they require 6 million Durham on hold.

If you issue cards because of this notion that if you issue cards you're holding on to some sort of value for the consumer. And so with ADGM, when I positioned what we essentially invented, so you know, we're the first in the world to do this, you know, we had a whiteboard session with them. And then I thought, oh, okay, whiteboard session with the regulators, with the regular, yeah, look up, I mean, I go to dinner with them.

I have, you know, one of them was actually, um, over in, um, you know, Miami for new years. And so, uh, you know, uh, and New Orleans, sorry. Uh, so I messaged her, you know, when everything went down over news to make sure she was okay. You know, so you have this relationship and you can have open dialogue and that's how you.

Can innovate and regulate and bring that get together because the spirit of engagement. It is is there a sense in Your network and those in New Zealand that you will have a [00:26:00] new opportunity for engagement with a new administration David Sachs as a crypto and AI czar. What is your perspective? What is MasterCard's perspective since you interact with them so much?

In the last six weeks, we've had significant engagement, um, with Mastercard. Uh, they've been really supportive. They've had a bunch of their banking partners sort of, you know, reach out to them and I guess vice versa. In the United States. In the United States. So just in the last six weeks, post election results, you've had U.

S. banks that have largely given you and others the hand. Now beginning to turn the page and contacting MasterCard or you and others directly Asking for what? Asking to meet? Asking to explore partnerships? Correct. So they want, um, there's a couple of things, right? So the largest sort of EZ MasterCard partners globally, I think the largest has about 50 million cards on issue, something like that.

I think it'd be [00:27:00] Citi or Costco, Walmart, something like that. You know, those are the biggest customers for these schemes at the moment. Now, one of our, well actually we've got two partners that have over 100 million users. Immersive has two partners, each of which has over 100 million users. So that is an order of magnitude compared to the historically large issuers on those, on those card platforms.

Yeah. And because I was going to ask you about the quantum here and what the addressable market is you're saying that is already in the hundreds of millions, correct? So, you know, the partners that we have on board now that we are actively contracting with or integrating or they've shown a strong interest to work with us.

Um, that's north of 400 million users. Now let's say you can onboard 20 percent of 400 million ex U. S.? Um, it's hard [00:28:00] to say exactly what the U. S. number would be, but, you know, you could probably go with a 20 percent number, something like that would be U. S., right? So, you've got 400 million, call that 80 million, 20 percent adoption over a three year period, you know, that's 16 million cards.

that we could issue in this market. Crypto data is also very different. So crypto users spend twice as much on technology, travel, um, and I think transport in general. That's just to get to the crypto conferences. Forget about the rest of their lives. Yeah, exactly. Right. So they, they spend. Plus, their average card spend is also twice that.

So average card spend is around, it varies, but globally it's around 2, 000. But, you know, on different card 000 in the US. But they spend 16, 000. You know, and so these banks now can get these massive amount of users without having to do any work. These partners have already integrated with us. We provide all the technology.

[00:29:00] They provide the license. And their ability to, you know, earn income is high, but the other thing that they get a lot of value and benefit from is they historically, you know, they can't attract top technology talent to the bank, right? There's no innovation happening in banks. If banks think they can innovate, or any large company thinks they can innovate, then, you know, I think they're just kidding themselves.

To innovate, you need to be able to make decisions, to be decisive. to take risk and to look at risk on different metrics, right? So first off, what is a specific risk? Don't just say, well, risk and compliance and, you know, that's not enough. What is the specific risk? What's the likelihood? What's the severity?

What's the mitigation? And just as importantly, what is the upside? You know, and then based on that information, you make a decision with, you know, the right people in the room that can debate these things. And, you know, arguably with 70 percent of the information. You know, if you try and figure everything out at the start, by the time you figure it out, it's, it's too late, you know.

Right. You've got to kind of go [00:30:00] and adapt. You know, it's one of our core values is adaptability. It's, it's very, you know, it used to be about IQ, then it was EQ, now it's AQ. Your adaptability quotient is key, right? So you've got to ingrain that in your culture. And so these archivists can't do that. And so by partnering with companies like ours, Then their team can get exposure to innovation.

They can learn what's happening at the forefront of, you know, sort of money, payments, currency, you know, what's happening globally, what's happening regularly. Like, you know, we deal with, oh goodness, I'm at maybe six regulators at the moment. Right. So I can see different things in different markets and how things are going that they historically wouldn't get that type of exposure.

Right. So the, the, the learning and value that they get from engaging with us, I think is probably greater than the income that they get. You know, it's not the, you know, the best customer is not the one that spends the most. It's the one that teaches you the most. And so I think that's what we're going to start seeing in the U.

[00:31:00] S. is banks are going to want to remain relevant to consumers. You know, they're getting absolutely. smashed on multiple fronts, right? On the consumer side, you've got big tech, you know, Google, Apple, Facebook, you know, potentially X, all looking to get into payments. Really hard to compete against that on the consumer side.

On the other side, you've got, um, acceptance innovators. You know, Stripe being the most obvious one, and then you've got the revolutes of the world coming in here as well, right, and then you've got this dilemma, this black hole of innovation, you know, they have these, you know, I don't know if they still do it, but for a while there, banks had these kind of hubs, these innovators, and they had, you know, the hipster, that, you know, they still do that, nothing happens, right, they, they, they chug, bugger all money into a project, so they don't fund it properly, they don't allow the project to actually innovate, so it's still got the same governance that everything else does.

And then they don't integrate it into the bank. So they don't distribute it. But it looks cool. It's just such a waste of time. I want to go back to our, uh, our [00:32:00] comparison of MasterCard. For which you are a principal member and visa given your relationship. Tell us a little bit more about the dynamic of how you see each of those big companies which were written up in Barron's, uh, the investor magazine just a week ago, uh, as, you know, potential picks to continue watching along with Amex in 2025.

Tell us how your perspective, MasterCard and Visa. Look, in simple terms, I'd say Mastercard is more of a technology forward business and Visa is more of a brand. Visa is everywhere I need to be. So is Mastercard. Um, Amex is different. Visa and Mastercard are networks, essentially. You know, they get data from A to B and they settle between party A and B at a scale that's, you know, unprecedented.

Amex actually holds on to consumers funds [00:33:00] and so they're a registered bank in the U. S. And so they're naturally going to be a bit more, I guess, risk adverse, uh, because of their, their structure. Um, you know, MasterCard. And they've also targeted a different clientele, right? Correct. Yep. Amex has historically gone for upper class, upper middle class, um, Visa and MasterCard have a much broader base and more, more users, more points of sale.

Correct. Yep. And politically corporate and travel and that type of thing with Amex, right? So, I mean fundamentally I don't, from our perspective there's probably not that much difference in call it the product or service. Where I see the big difference is one, you've got the CEO at Mastercard who is extremely pro crypto.

On the back of that they have the larger out of the two networks. teams and a budget and investment in crypto. So they've got global crypto sales teams. So in terms of personnel and allocated resources, you're seeing a larger [00:34:00] footprint for MasterCard than for Visa. Yeah, look, I mean, if you look at all The sort of card products coming out now, whether it's from exchanges, wallets, you know, that type of thing.

Where I first engaged nine out of ten were Visa cards, I would say now quite easily nine out of ten are MasterCard. You know, and they're very open like, you know, we um, you know, they referred the business to us. Um, it was a meme coin, right? A very cool meme coin. Um, and they wanted to do basically a Web3 MasterCard.

Now, I don't know if you've done crypto onboarding For, uh, you know, a DAO or a foundation based in the Cayman Islands with, you know, the, the CEO who has one of those kind of anonymous kind of looks, um, it's not easy, you know, and you got to have the right partner and Mastercard, you know, their compliance teams like, okay, well, how, how do we do this?

Okay. So, you know, what's the DAO sort of governance and token structure live, how does [00:35:00] voting work? You know, amazing. They wanted to figure it out. They wanted to figure it out. They wanted to do it the right way. It's new for them. It's obviously very left field. I mean, it's new for us as well. It's new for all of us.

But that willingness. The difference for me is in the people. They've got these amazing people. This real willingness to support and invest. They've invested millions in our company to support us. Um, and it's very early days for us, right? So, you know, I'm confident they'll see a return on that investment, but, you know, they've had to put a lot up front to get us up and running, to certify us, you know, all this type of stuff.

Um, and yeah, it's the people. I mean, Visa's got great people as well. I've dealt with them over the years, but right now, if I look at the two teams, the investment that MassCard is making into crypto and its people and its processes. Uh, just significant. And that's from the top, top down. That's, uh, amazing insight.

So, let's [00:36:00] talk then about where immersive is today. Uh, precipice now of 2025. Uh, tell us a little bit about, you know, the, the process of fundraising in the past. Yeah. And the team that you've assembled to date. And if you look out over the course of the next 12 months, what is on the horizon? What is success?

So we, um, name each year. So for us, you know, 2023 was about cap raising. You know, we needed to get the capital to build this thing, right. Which is a very, very ambitious project. Like there's no global card issuers as a service and traditional payments. Um, and definitely not in crypto that, you know, multiple regulators or all the rest of it.

So this was ambitious as fuck. Um, then the next year for us was all about the platform. You know, so we had to build the, the platform and we're very lucky. One of our first customers was a large sort of exchange, but they had some very, [00:37:00] um, you know, uh, unique requirements that we need to build that were specific to them.

And so, so we, we did that and we built the platform. We did the first week three transaction on chain. We figured out how to get everything working. So that, that was kind of cool. Um, last year for us was all about year of the customer, you know, so it's pretty much about sales was, was the priority. So, you know, 80 percent of sales happen after the fifth contact.

That's sort of the general rule, right? So, and sales is a contact sport. Yes. So, hundred flights. Got to kiss a lot of frogs. You got to kiss a lot of frogs, right? You got to be there. Um, you got to be at these conferences. You got to be front of mind. Um, so, yeah, lots of sales activities. So, we signed up Do you find that your Kiwi accent is a unique Well, according to possibly, I don't know, maybe it was a Kiwi run survey, but apparently the New Zealand accent is one of the world's most attractive accents.

I would agree with that. I have set my Google Maps to a Kiwi accent [00:38:00] so that when I'm directed to make certain turns, it's soothing rather than stressful. I do find we talk, and maybe it's me as well, really fast, and I find in some countries Well then, you fit in great in the East Coast. Here, people understand me.

In some places that speak English It's like I'm talking in a foreign tongue. They have no idea what I'm saying, and I need to get the other English speaking people next to me to basically translate it. So, we're in a suit. Um, and this year, for us, is the year of adoption. Year of adoption. So, I'm saying thrive in 25.

Alright. I like that. Um, I was born in 77. That's the year of the snake. This is the year of the snake. So, I'm feeling good. We've got off to a phenomenal start to the year. Everything has been going Better than planned. I like that. Um, yeah, yeah, it's been a phenomenal start. And for us it's about adoption.

So we've got, you know, these, these pretty large partners that [00:39:00] we're onboarding at the moment. You know, multiple exchanges, multiple Web3 wallets. Um, we want to do a few things really well. So we want to make sure that we deliver for those partners. You know, one integration to seamlessly issue cards in 40 countries.

So we'll work with those partners. We'll open up new markets like the US. Um, we've just got approval for Latin America, um, you know, we're going to do UAE as well and then probably Southeast Asia. So that's sort of our priority is opening up markets. As I said, Web3 is hyper global. We need to be too.

That's what our partners need. So looking after that, you know, a handful of partners, I guess, are doing a really good job. So that's what we're going to focus on this year. Um, 2030, if you, you know, want to look at our North Star, so our strategy is designed so that by 2030, what we want essentially is 5 percent market share globally.

We want to stay being the category leader in this space, but if you say that, you know, a billion people are going to have crypto by 2030, [00:40:00] 5 percent market share means 50 million cards on issue, and basically that will, for us at least, generate billions of dollars in revenue. So that's our goal. How do we get 50 million users onto the platform by 2030?

And everything we do is designed to galvanize the team together. Um, we have four development teams. Really? Yeah, yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about management. Because you mentioned earlier how much of your time is required for travel. And that means delegation, right? That you have to have enormous trust in those who are You're still in New Zealand, uh, cranking and perhaps elsewhere.

Tell us how you've managed. There's a couple of things we've done. So one of my first hires was essentially a chief people officer. Um, you know, in the old days, I, you know, hr, I would say you hire HR once you've got 70 people. [00:41:00] But you know, your best investment is your people. And attracting the right talent, creating the right culture, maximizing productivity.

You know, you want people to come to work with a smile, go home with a smile. You also want 'em to be challenged and learning. 'cause that's when they, they thrive. I used to be an outdoor instructor. And I used to So rock climbing, abseiling, kayaking, rafting, mountaineering. If you did a corporate event or a school camp, I was the guy that was responsible for your life.

So basically, my worst nightmare. That's my worst nightmare, Jerome. Those are all the things when you think about a long cane poly, and they're doing the risk assessments. All of those. There's a reason why when you apply for life insurance, they ask a series of specific questions. Do you mountain climb? Do you parasail?

Do you parachute? No, I do not do those things. I, I, it's hard enough to stay on terra firma, but you actually, opposites attract. You're out there not just doing it, you're instructing on it. Well, it was one [00:42:00] of the best things to learn about business because, you know, you learn a lot about risk management.

Like back in those days when you took someone on a mountain trip, like for four days, you actually have to write, there's no phone or GPS, right? Um, this is 96, or something like that. Or 95, I'll go back a bit, anyway. Um, you have to write the route plan using a compass and a map on a piece of paper for every step.

And so at any point in time during that trip, if I lost visibility, I could pull out the piece of paper from my waterproof bag, look at where I was and basically direct the group to safety. So I understand a lot about risk management, a lot about strategy, but also about leadership. And if you've done an abseil, it's a really interesting psychological moment.

So no one's died from a professional abseil in New Zealand, ever. Um, but people are so scared. And that first step, you know, when you're sort of about to Have you done an abseil? I just told you my list. Okay, so you [00:43:00] haven't done it. Alright, well, maybe we need to take some of these Maybe with your leadership, I'd be willing to.

I think there's better people than me now. But people who do the abseil, they're so, so scared, right? Even though there's like double safeties and all the rest of it. It's a very nerve wracking thing to do. That first step is really scary. But then what you find is when they're halfway down the hill You know, they start swinging out and, you know, getting more comfortable and bouncing around and then they get to the bottom and there's this massive smile, you know, and they're so proud of themselves and they're just, you know, enthusiastic and glowing and the belief in themselves.

Because they've survived. Exactly. And that's what you need when you're an innovator, right? Like you need the big rules of engineers. You know, again, that adaptability, you need to be able to say to them, like when we're doing our thing, no one's done this before, right? Like we're inventing stuff. You can't Google, you can't ask a friend, you know, you need to be, you know, decisive, you need to be a [00:44:00] good problem solver.

You need to have resilience, you need to have tenacity, you need to have grit, you need to make decisions, you know, figure things out. Um, that's not every engineer, you know, the startup founder engineer, that's what we, we needed, right? And so we had to create this kind of culture that had a particular type of engineer that was.

Able to operate in this volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world. You know, innovate. And not just survive, but thrive. Thrive, yeah. Thrive in 25, right. So, Mike was one of the first guys we hired. Um, we've got pretty close to 100 percent retention across, you know, the entire company. Um, I've also got two co founders at Amazian.

This is our second venture together. Um, you know, Matisse is the bridge between the customer and technology. So, you know, he's very good in front of partners, but then he can also, you know, write code. So an amazing coder. So he does that. Nathan is our architect. Nathan's probably the top in, you know, I've worked for some of the largest technology [00:45:00] companies in New Zealand, hired thousands of engineers and, you know, done, done lots, hands down the best engineer I've ever met.

Just a phenomenal engineer. Both of them entered during the stuff as well. Um, Matisse was a world champ kayaker. And he's also kayaked off Hooker Falls in New Zealand, which is a big waterfall. Not quite Niagara, but you know, that kind of extreme. He's a triathlete, So, um, you know, those two are amazing. Our chief product officer is a guy called Gareth Cronin.

Gareth is the ex exec at Xero, you know, a very large accounting software as a service business, big innovator in the space. He's probably the best product engineering leader in the country. We have Jordan Madison. She's a phenomenal, um, head of design. So she's been in Web3 now since I think 2016. You know, working with, you know, the likes of, you know, Ripple and a whole bunch of really massive projects.

And so she [00:46:00] really focuses on that user experience. And I mean, if anyone's seen any of our presentations, we've seen our investor updates, all that. Like, we take a particular consideration to the design, you know, um, we notice the attention to detail. Again, payments, you need to have attention to detail. So we do that.

So she hits that up. Uh, Paul is, um, one of our senior product managers. Uh, she's got 20 years experience in issuing and, and cards. Um, so it runs, it runs, uh, whether you're there, it runs when you are away. Yeah. And it's all by design. Yeah. And yeah, sorry, just not to cut anyone out. Uh, we've got, um, Matt, who's our, uh, CTO and looks after the dev team.

So essentially I don't. People don't really report to me that, you know, you know, they say you hire people smarter than you and all that type of stuff. And so I've got this very strong leadership team. I've got a phenomenal board of advisors. I've got an amazing group of investors that also, you know, provide a lot of support and guidance and, you know, um, [00:47:00] help on a bunch of different things, you know.

I think this is actually, if there's any startup founders listening here, I think Leveraging investors is probably one of the best things that we've done for our business. You know, no one is more incentivized in your success than someone that's giving you their money. Indeed. Um, and so, you know, we, we are very open, very transparent.

You know, we, we spend a lot of time preparing for investor updates. We tell them, um, what we plan to do. We tell them where we achieved and also where we failed. You know, we don't do everything that we planned, but we explain why we do that. We ask them for help. We tell them specifically how they can help.

And I've got the most, um, you know, we do these monthly updates. All investors will come in. It's very open. Each of the leaders talks about their area of the business. It's not just me. You know, talking, um, open questions, you know, every, everything is transparent. I mean, I think we do better investor updates than, you know, some of us, well, many of us, the companies [00:48:00] actually.

No doubt about that. Uh, no, we've been impressed. And as you think about the path ahead that you've described a year to thrive, and at some point, uh, desire to continue expanding and growing as require more capital in addition to the existing investors, what does. What does the next set of ideal investors look like to you?

This is interesting because our model is highly scalable. Like if you look at the unit economics and the cost to acquire customers, the distribution model via these exchanges and Web3 wallets, it's entirely possible that we can actually grow organically from revenues, depending on how the adoption. Cue the great music.

Look, I, I like, look, I love technology and innovation, but I also love business models. You know, that's what I liked about SaaS was the ability to, you know, have one corporate infrastructure, lots of development, keep the cost down for users, but then once you've got critical [00:49:00] mass, it's highly profitable and scalable.

You know, this business that we have has the potential to be highly profitable and, and scalable. You know, so if we don't need to raise capital, if we can actually do it from cash flow, that would be my preference. I want to build a long term business. As I said, you know, we've got plans for 2030. But we've got a 10 year kind of strategy.

You know, we really want to generate this billion dollars of revenue. Now, you know, we're likely to go and do a small round potentially in March this year. Um, to get us a bit more capital so that we can hire some of these resources in some of these global markets. Um, I want to have some, you know, senior leaders in the UK, Europe, GCC, UAE, RBW specifically, and in Latin America and the US.

So we do want to have some capability there, particularly on the business front. Um, and some capability from a technology perspective as well. Um, either, [00:50:00] I'm thinking maybe Croatia. Actually, I quite like Croatia. So maybe have a dev shop in Croatia, something like that. We've worked with devs in Croatia.

They're extremely talented. They're very efficient. And certainly more affordable than the US. Yeah. I also hear that the Croatian coast is beautiful, and maybe we should have a working session there. Love to, yeah. Look, I think I'd like to have an office in Croatia for Europe. Um, yeah, I think it would be a cool place to build a team.

Um, it's obviously pretty central to things, and it ticks a lot of boxes. I think it's an up and comer, particularly when it comes to tech capabilities. So, yeah. Um, definitely on the cards. So yeah, a bit of capital to, to hire some more capability in key markets is probably what we're looking for. Um, but I think very rapidly, you know, when we get the adoption numbers that we're anticipating, um, we'll be in a cashflow positive position.

Um, and then we can determine, you know, do we actually need more capital? [00:51:00] Can we go faster with more capital? And now I'm a mom. At this stage I'm 50 50 on that, to be honest. Immersive remains one of, uh, the portfolio companies that I've been most excited about at Beneversal, in part because it is addressing this critical bridge.

How do you get more of the traditional Web 2. 0 users, including my older brother, to start engaging with more blockchain based Solutions and applications, and I think it starts with that old red easy button. The easier we make the solutions, the more willing all of these folks will be to realize what we're focused on is not crazy.

It is definitely the future. Uh, and you guys are helping to lead the way. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I agree with you. I think you're going to see more adoption of people know that they can. Simply spend their crypto just by using, you know, Apple, Google Pay [00:52:00] card, then my viewers, they're going to be more likely to buy crypto.

You know, that's one of the concerns is what I do with it. Yeah, well, anything you want now. So yeah, I agree. Uh, final question before we wrap up today. I want you to think about your earliest memory of something where you for the first time perhaps felt a true sense of ownership. I've given the example of, uh, working in, you know, yard raking mowing grass, earning a couple dollars and going to buy.

a model car because I was obsessed with things that go and I liked airplanes. But at that point I wanted matchbox cars. And so I built a phenomenal collection, phenomenal collection of all these matchbox cars handpicked, and they came in a little briefcase, which matchbox also sold, and I would [00:53:00] arrange them in a certain way in one day in a rage of anger, my brother took that briefcase.

and chucked it out the 11th floor window and down went the matchbox cars. And so the question for you is, should I ever forgive him? But before you answer that, tell us about your early memory. I was four years old, um, when I first started early. Um, I used to love That's quite ambitious. I, I love lollies.

Ha, ha, ha. Um, I, I grew up in a pretty, shall we say, rough, rough neighborhood. Yeah. Um, and what I used to do is I used to draw pictures. And according to my, because I'm a fifty Pretty much 50 50 creative logical. Okay. But on my creative side, I don't have any of the traditional creative skills. You know, I can't play any musical instrument.

I definitely can't draw. I write worse than a doctor. Like, none of those traditional things. But anyway, [00:54:00] my really bad pitchers. And then I use the door knock. To all my neighbors. Wow. Um, and I'd sell these pitches for I think 5 cents at the time. But back then you could buy one lolly for 1 cent. And so a dollar mixture was a big bag of lollies back in those days.

Yeah. Um. And you were winning. And so yeah, that, that, that, that was me. Um. So you were, you were actually starting in sales. Yeah. At age 4. Yeah. Going door to door. And not leaving until you got your 5 piece. Pretty much. Pretty much. Or pretty much all my life, you know, like I said, I worked in Tokyo. I pretty much did.

18 hour days, it was 8am till midnight, and I worked Saturdays and Sundays, um, before school, um, I was into cars as well. And so I had a nice car, but I had to buy that car myself. Alright, so I used to get up every morning at 2am, go to work, then go to school at 7. 30, well finish work at 7. go to school. Um, so I could fund my [00:55:00] car and, and put petrol in it as well.

My parents didn't give me petrol money and all that kind of stuff. Right. So anything I want her to do myself. And so I was always very independent, you know, my parents put me on a plane by myself when I was like four years old, uh, international trip. Wow. Um, when I was 17, they played a trick on me. They left me in the desert in Australia.

They told me I was going on a holiday. And then they cancelled my return to go home. I ended up living in a car with two pairs of socks on each hand. To keep myself warm, because I couldn't even afford a blanket. Eating macaroni flavoured with soup mix. Washing windows in exchange for food, water and gas across the desert.

It took me two and a half years to make it back to New Zealand. Laughter So yeah, I think for me ownership is around accountability, as opposed to assets. You know, my, my plan is to donate, you know, whatever I, I earn or whatever. Everything is set up in a trust and the beneficiary of that trust is a, are charities.

So I've got charities listed and yeah, my goal is to, [00:56:00] you know, do pretty well and then see that go to good. I'd love to create my own program or currency that can only be used for good. So programmatic money, smart money. That can only do things that help that will be the subject of our next So look forward to having you back.

Thanks for visiting with us Great to be with you much success in your year to thrive. That's all for today. We'll catch you on the next episode Thanks for joining

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