My (emotional) interview with Tommaso Di Bartolo, the Web3 expert who made me start my blog

Hello, Tommaso!

Antony, nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.

For me, this is a bit of an emotional moment because as you will discover during the interview, Tommaso is the person that made me start my blog six years ago. One month ago, for the 6th birthday of my blog, I really wanted to reconnect with him. It’s like six years we don’t have a conversation with each other. It’s like a magical moment for me. I’m happy to be here with you, Tommaso. For the people that don’t know you, why don’t you introduce yourself a bit?

Antony, first of all, I’m super humbled to reconnect. The fact that you announced that this is a special moment for you, it’s a special moment also for me. Roughly six years ago, when we met in the progress of you building and learning how to start up, I vaguely remember that I might have dropped something like, “Content is important,” or maybe, “Sharing with others what you’re doing is important.” I’m glad to see that you followed the advice and that it makes you happy because ultimately, all we seek as human beings is to be happy in what we do because as a reaction and a result of that you’ll be successful within and then outside of you.

About myself… real quick. I’m, as most of you might have guessed, based on my name, an Italian citizen who graduated then in Germany. I lived in Germany for almost two decades. I traveled through London on my quest and my adventure to seek the crazy land and the land of opportunity, which is then ultimately Silicon Valley. I moved here almost 12 years ago. That’s the geographical side of things.

On the business side of things, I’m a typical Silicon Valley guy. I started in tech in ’98. I started then my first company, roughly around the dotcom burst 2000, 2001. Fast forward, I did four startups with two exits. Actually, for those who might follow me online, I just started my fifth startup after six years of being apart. It’s a metaverse that connects the physical world with the digital world and takes basically the engagement limitation of web2 into a more immersive, and to a more rewarding world. Anyhow, that’s my fifth startup that I’m creating right now.

I’m part of UC Berkeley, where I teach entrepreneurship focused on the metaverse and web3. I’m a two times author, and the most recent book is Navigating the Metaverse, which I’m humbled that Wiley published in May this year, which is within the top one, two, three books globally about the metaverse. I do invest in startups. I’m part of a couple of startups in the metaverse. That’s about myself in a nutshell.

It’s good because when we met each other, of course, I was already working in VR, while you were in other fields, and now we reconnect here, thanks to the metaverse. Why have you decided to enter this metaverse field with both a startup and a book? Where do you see its full potential?

My entire life has never been an active decision, but more a result of curiosity. As an entrepreneur, what should lead you is curiosity. You should be always curious about things, because I believe very strongly, Antony, that curiosity leads to execution, and action. You’re curious about everything, you can re-invent anything… and then it takes you to action. Once you start executing, you start understanding if the thing that you’re executing is connecting with you. That’s what I call the moment of you discovering your talents. This is what led me in my now over 20 years, two decades of being an entrepreneur through several topics, such as the topic that I had. My previous one was mobile, before that was cloud computing, and then it was security. Now basically, the metaverse is the consequence of learning.

The first time that I got involved in crypto was really in 2012, 2013, when I was doing my third startup. It was through a business partner of mine, who actually gave me a hint about this digital currency. To be honest, I totally diminished that. I said, “Well, this doesn’t sound very legit.” Then fast-forward, I got invited to give a class at UC Berkeley about go-to-market in the space of blockchain. This was 2017. I got more and more involved, so stay tuned on what’s going on. I joined as a retail investor, obviously in the alternative coins and the general, Bitcoin and Etherium space, which then matured me into early 2020 digging into this immersive world, this world of ownership, this world of decentralization. I started observing that this provides a new engagement level that is changing human behavior, a new engagement level that is groundbreaking compared to what web2 could empower. That’s kind of in a nutshell, Antony, how I got involved into the world of metaverse and web3.

I had the early suggestion to start writing a book with Cathy Hackl and Dirk Lueth, which are my co-authors of the book called Navigating the Metaverse. Cathy Hackl is known as the “godmother of the metaverse”. By the way, I always used to joke with her because I say, you know, “As a Sicilian, I cannot say I’m the godfather of the metaverse because it doesn’t sound right.” [laughs] Anyhow, that’s about how I got into this.

Yes, it’s fun. I also love Cathy, I met her a few times at some XR event. She’s amazing.

She is.

I know about this book, but why don’t you tell us what’s inside? I mean, what are the greatest lessons that people can get from it?

Well, the subtitle of the book is “a guide to limitless possibilities in Web3”. First of all, we introduce kind of the framework and the ecosystem of this web3 world. We answer the questions “how do I understand web3? What are the components of web3?” I would say, it’s not a technical perspective, but it’s almost a non-technical perspective. Really, people that are not in tech, but maybe in charge of either entrepreneurs or executives or managers, they want to dig into this topic. It’s a light way of you getting into the ecosystem, then understanding how to start out. The importance and definition of why economy within the metaverse is fundamental.

We dig into the topic of NFTs and the relation between NFT and the metaverse. Why NFTs and NFTs in the metaverse? I designed there a commercialization quadrant, which explains for the target audience how you should plan out a strategy when you’re thinking about distributing or commercializing NFTs throughout the various distribution channels out there.

We have a chapter in which we describe how to measure success in the metaverse. In there, I specifically dig into the topic of the difference between advertisement and the future of advertisement, which I coined as Joint Value Creation, JVC, which gives you basically an understanding of how to create value within the metaverse. Definitely, a book that you don’t need to be an engineer to understand, but it guides you and it gives you a better perspective of the opportunities, what you could do, how you can start.

Very cool. The book can be bought on Amazon, by the way. But I want to get some advice for free for our readers, since you are an entrepreneur and an expert also in marketing. There are lots of people now entering the metaverse/web3 hype… how can someone create now a company that can survive all the buzz, all the competition in the metaverse field?

From an entrepreneurial perspective, I would say that this is most probably the most exciting time that we have ever had. When I started my company after the dotcom burst, my first company, I always had the kind of this crying, because I had missed the opportunity as an intrapreneur. I was there in tech already because I started in ’98 but not as an entrepreneur. I kind of said, “Oh shoot, I missed this big wave. This initial wave.” Ultimately I had no reason to cry because two decades into it, I actually came to the very intriguing phase which was the phase post the hype. To entrepreneurs I say: “In what phase are we in?” We are in a phase in which humankind is changing its behavior. Every time that we have friction and behavioral change, there are tons of immense opportunities.

Step number one, stay curious. Don’t say, “I don’t know”. You always know based on what you dig in, based on what you read. Keep yourself active. Then start to understand one thing: every time that you do a startup, the main principles are always the same. The number one is what problem are you solving and for whom. The way that you are then solving this problem is the what. The fact that we have now Web3 underlaying with ownership, traceability, visibility, and potentially unique digital assets… it’s just the how you’re doing it.

What problem are you solving? Why are you solving this problem? It’s fundamental. Keep yourself curious, dear entrepreneurs. Start to understanding a fundamental problem, and then connect, obviously, with things that are more inclined to the most recent needs of humankind… which is what? We have been asking for traceability. We have been asking for visibility. We have been asking to co-create things. We have been asking that we were overwhelmed with information. We have been asking that ads are broken, because we don’t want to be bombarded. These are all signals that we as an entrepreneur need to understand. Then the question is, “What throughout those signals can I solve? Then how can I solve it with web3 technologies?” That’s in a nutshell, Antony, what I would suggest to any of your listeners.

Since many of my listeners are like me, come from the tech world and we totally suck at marketing, to be honest, do you have also some advice on how to do marketing? Is there a different way to market a web3 company from a traditional company? Do you have some piece of advice for us?

The main fundamental difference is that in Web2, what we all were trying to achieve is to have followers. Actually, let me zoom out a second. In Web1, we were basically creating websites in order to invite people to visit your information in your product. This is when it started to say, “Visit our website, www I don’t know .com.” This actually then matured because we had more and more websites and people were proactively seeking information and products. Then the technological advancement with the mobile phones and then the social media said, “Why do we make those people look for something? Why don’t we give them information in the palm of their hands?”

That’s basically was enabled through the push notifications that were pushed to your mobile phones. That’s when social media started really becoming strong. As fundamental to the social media, we have the business model of the ads and the advertisement. We went from www– “Visit our website,” to, “Follow us on Twitter, Instagram,” and so on.

Then we started understanding that we were overwhelmed with information. That the way that we were creating ads was broken because we did not really engage. This moved then also together with, not only with the needs, but with the technology advancement, to a point that we are today with web3, with the blockchain, visibility, and ownership that allows us now to create immersive experiences.

Instead of saying, “Visit our website or follow us on…” The future will be, “Experience us in…” An experience means that you will for the very first time, we will for the very first time, no longer be bombarded with outside in content, but we will be having immersive, dedicated experience that will touch upon all of our senses, not just our eyes, but eventually our smell, our kinetics, so that we can focus on what we are looking at, so that every content piece is actually an experience. It’s an event if you so want.

At the center of all this, we will be having an economy, a supply and demand of digital assets that are also unique. This digital economy will so surpass then the economy, the GDPR of every single country that we are seeing because there is more opportunity to do in the digital than in the physical world.

I want to finish this topic of the metaverse asking what’s Tommaso Di Bartolo’s vision of the metaverse in 10, 15 years from now?

I have a very clear vision, a very clear belief on where this entire metaverse realm is going, and by the way, I finalize that in my book. I finalized that in my course. Before I get into vision, for those non-technical professionals, who would like to actually learn more about the metaverse on how to metaverse, what risks and what metaverses are out there, you can go on almameta.xyz and sign up on a course, which is a course that I was asked to run outside UC Berkeley, so that everybody as a non-technical professional would have it available.

There are three visions, if I reverse engineer my vision of the metaverse. Number one of the metaverse is that we, the humankind, within the next years, will have and switch the entire educational system into an immersive way. The reason for that is that the current educational system is broken. Not only it is expensive and it’s exclusive, but it’s also very fragmented and no longer meets our needs of learning with content. The metaverse will allow through its immersiveness to create micro contents. Those micro contents, we will be able to track them and for that, we’ll be able to give you micro certificates. Basically, learning will be the way we live. Every single book that we read, every podcast we do, every webinar that we do, every experience that we do will have a certification that this grew and influenced our knowledge. That’s number one.

By the way, the metaverse to me is all around us. Maybe I need to specify that too, because people say, “Oh, the metaverse,” and they think maybe of games that they are right now positioned as the most popular content. Games are the category of games in the blockchain. Whatever you’re seeing right now, these are early pioneers that are serving gamers and early aficionados, and this is metaverse, or these are blockchain based games. The future of the metaverse is when you will be able, through augmentation, to have seamless integration into your real life, into places, people, and products. Whatever you see around you, will be an access point to a digital realm, a digital environment that will reward you through tokenomics, which we call right now web2. The moment that you have the real life seamlessly integrated with the digital realm, this is when the real metaverse, the mature metaverse will be mainstream. By the way, for those who are interested in this concept, you can check me out on Forbes. Especially right now, September, I’m releasing the next article, exactly to talk about the three phases of the metaverse from an early adopter to a mature phase.

Number one is education in the metaverse and division. Number two, because we are learning that we will be working in the metaverse, we’ll be having a bigger, a larger workforce of producers, service providers, creators, and developers in the metaverse than we have in real life, we’ll be having an immense amount of opportunities given the fact that we now for the very first time can create digital asset that you can own, so an economy will be activated.

Last but not least, because of this economy that is going to be activated, the GDPR, which is the gross domestic products in every single country… the physical goods, the supply, and demand of the physical goods will be surpassed by the supply and demand of the metaverse which I call the gross metaverse products, which is the supply and demand in the metaverse. This is my future-back vision. Number one education; number two workforce; and number three GMP will surpass the GDP.

Oh, that’s very cool. Now since the time is almost up, I want to tell you a bit about how we had our encounter that led to a lot of different things in my life, and I want to hear the comment on this story from your point of view. Basically, I was one of the participants in the European Innovation Academy in Turin (Italy) in 2016. I was one of the few with a real company, because many were there just as a game, to play as entrepreneurs. I had a startup that had a very cool technical solution for full body virtual reality already in 2015, the tech was super, but we suck totally at business, at marketing, et cetera.
This accelerator, the European Innovation Academy was very cool for me to learn how to be an entrepreneur. There were some moments when we had some lessons, then we had some exercises. But we also had some moments when we had 10 minutes with an expert to ask for advice. One day there was an investor, another day there was another guy about business. One day there was the marketing mentor… who was you, Tommaso Di Bartolo. We went speaking to you and we said “We are very good technically, but we don’t know how to promote our company. We don’t know how to do marketing.” You asked us about some things about the virtual reality ecosystem, how things are working. It was still very niche, so there we’re still no influencers, this kind of stuff, et cetera. You asked us if there were experts in our field, and we said, “Yes, but maybe…just a few… everything is still too new.” At that point, you told me this sentence, like master Yoda, “If there are no recognized experts in the field, you must be the expert.” You told me this and then added “You should open a blog or do something like that and then become the expert.”
Then we part away. We never saw each other again. After the EIA finished, a few days later, I started creating a blog on wordpress.com, the free platform, because I was like, “Okay, no one will care about it, but let’s try to follow the advice anyway.” On the 15th of August 2016, I started my blog. Even if it was Holiday in Italy, and I was sure one was going to care at all. But actually, I saw the traffic over time slowly growing, and I still don’t know for what reasons. In these six years of blogging, I managed to meet some cool people like the president of HTC China…. I interviewed people from Nvidia, from Facebook, even the “inventor” of the pitch of the The Lion King, Charlie Fink. I met lots of people. I’ve been invited to events. Thanks to the blog, I started a VR game with my team and I went to Shenzhen to launch it. It was lots of crazy things happening because of that sentence you told me. First of all, thank you for saying that, because it really changed a lot of my life. And then… I want you also to comment about this story.

I’m humbled that I was used at the right time and that you were receptive at the right moment because sometimes you can share things… but communication is always two-way, Antony. There is a recipient and there is a sender. I could have said anything and you could have not received it. Thankfully, you were then in a receiving position. Then not only that, it’s kudos to you, you started executing towards it. I used to say to every entrepreneur, when you ask a mentor or you ask five mentors, you get 20 opinions. It’s not about what the mentor ssay, it’s about what you, as an entrepreneur are filtering, what really touches your heart, what touches your soul, what touches your mind.

Filter whatever mentors are saying. Then obviously, whatever you think makes sense, execute towards it and have a mentality of experimentation. Then I’m here to say, I’m very glad and I’m very excited to see that you started executing. I’m very excited that this journey brought you to many connections. If I might be wrapping up things, maybe with one next chapter, one next sentence for you, Anthony, I hope we would not be meeting only in five, six years. Please keep me posted about what you do. Now, before I start, do I have your attention?

Yes.

The best is yet to come.

Wow. Why do you say this?

Because I feel it. This is only a milestone for you, like so many things. You started early on in something that people had no vision at all, including me. You were a visionaire back then already, meaning you are a visionaire today. Now it’s the time when you have to double down. Actually, feel one thing, if you might eventually right now be in a situation where you are asking yourself, “Should I actually do it?” I don’t know what situation you’re going through, but I know that as an entrepreneur, often we ask that ourselves. I would like to share with you, “Yes, do it. It is the moment.” You were an entrepreneur, you are an entrepreneur. You started early on, now it’s the time to do it, Antony. And for the audience… it’s the time to do it now. Let’s co-create web3 together. If I can help in any capacity, please hook me up and Anthony will share here the ways that you can bug me.

Really thanks for the kind words. I know that you have to leave, but let me finish with one question. Do you have anything else you want to add?

Well, as I mentioned, if you want to know more about the metaverse check out the book, it’s available everywhere in the United States or obviously on Amazon. If you want to take a course, it’s not just a course, it’s a course that comes with a focused community of metaverse peers and with a certificate and an NFT that we add, it’s almameta.xyz. If you want to read more articles go on Forbes and look up to Tommaso Di Bartolo. It sounds like red wine, but it’s not. [laughs]

Ladies and gentlemen, Tommaso Di Bartolo. Teally thanks for everything. Maybe these words have inspired someone else to create something cool in their life. Thanks really for the time you took to speak with us.

Bye, Anthony. Thank you.