Opportunities in web3, blockchain and fintech with Robby Yung, CEO of Animoca Brands

Robby Young is CEO of Animoca Brands, a $6bln blockchain gaming company and one of the most prolific investors in web3 on the planet.

Robby talks about:
0:46 - His journey to being CEO of Animoca
7:23 - Why luck played a part in Animoca's pivot into blockchain games from mobile games
14:08 - Why gaming is an on-ramp into blockchain and the metaverse
15:42 - What is the metaverse and how does web3 and NFTs intersect with the metaverse
18:23 - What drives Animoca Brands web3 investment strategy
23:16 - What are the biggest opportunities in web3 and the metaverse
26:09 - What skillsets and mindsets should people wanting to get into web3 strive towards
32:43 - Advice for anyone starting their career

Robby is interviewed by Matt Cheung (@matthew_cheung_) co-founder of Work in Fintech and Benyamin Ahmed (@obiwanbenoni), chief evangelist of Work in Fintech, creator of Weird Whales and 13 year old NFT prodigy.

Watch the interview on Youtube here https://youtu.be/QoZd-pu-Ioc

Check out our website: https://workinfintech.com/ and subscribe to our mailing list to hear more about opportunities in fintech and web3

Follow our socials:  
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global/
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/WorkinFintech
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw

Check out our new NFT newsletter: https://futureloop.com/thefutureofnfts

Check out our website: https://workinfintech.com/ and subscribe to our mailing list to hear more about opportunities in fintech and web3

Follow our socials:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WorkinFintech
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw

Transcript

Matthew Cheung  0:00  
Hi. This is Matt from Work in Fintech. And today, we're really excited to be joined with Robby young, who's CEO of Animoca brands. And today he's going to be interviewed with myself, most importantly, with Benjamin Ahmed, the Chief Evangelist of work in FinTech, and creator of the weird Wales collection. Hi, Ben. Hi, Robby.

Robby Yung  0:23  
How are you? Good to be here.

Matthew Cheung  0:25  
Awesome. So I guess, Robin, just to kick it off, can you talk through your journey from back in the day when you were studying at college, all the way through to your role today? Like we were just saying, it probably wasn't a straight line. They take you where you are. But it'd be interesting to hear how that journey was for you.

Robby Yung  0:46  
Sure. So how long do we have? I'm older than you think. So let's see. Let's start with the stuff up front. I studied political science and public policy in school. So I didn't end up doing anything career wise, that related to what I studied, but I think I studied things that were quite diverse. And a lot of different things that I think helped teach me how to think, because part of what I studied included, econ and statistics, and you know, all kinds of, you know, some classics and history and lots of different things that just I think, helps give you a bit of a good, well rounded education, if you will. So I've definitely applied some of that, especially the literature. I started out working primarily in what the bankers called TMT, so Telecom, media and technology. I began in the early days of wireless telecoms, when it was still analogue, before digital. And these were the early days of mobile. So mobile telephony, you know, you're what we now have as smartphones. And then I moved into the internet, because the internet, the World Wide Web was just starting at the time. And there was a lot of excitement around the potentially the internet's. And so I tried to figure out a way to jump in. And I was fortunate enough to be able to convince my family to lend me a little bit of money to start a business. And we started a web development business making websites for companies, and this was in 19, this was about 25 years ago, in 1997. And so we did that for several years, quite successfully. And as people will tell you, when the market is rising, and it's very people are feverishly enthusiastic about everything, and then making money is not hard. And so I mistook success at that time for skill, and learn that lesson, a few years into it when the market crashed. And you know, people didn't want websites so much anymore at that, at least for a bit, at least for a bit. So then I started another business, together with a couple of friends of mine, one of whom was somebody that I had gone to secondary school with. And another one I met, you know, just working. And we started a media business. And this was, again, this was all in Asia. So I lived in Asia at the time. And so we started a media business to roll up advertising supported media in China, so TV, radio outdoor. And so we raised venture capital, and we, we acquired media companies into a holding company with the intent to take the whole thing public. And it didn't quite work out that way. But we did. Okay. So the magazine business, we ended up merging with another public magazine company and spinning it off or was actually a newspaper company, and spinning off the magazine business and listing that. And then we took the remaining part of the business and planned to do an IPO with it. And so we got our IPO organised, and prepared our roadshow. And we submitted our documents to the SEC in the US to do a US IPO. And that was in September of 2008. So for those of you who remember that time, it was arguably the worst possible time to have picked to do that because the entire global financial system collapsed within a couple of weeks of us submitting our prospectus. So we we had to postpone that IPO. And again, you know, deal with the unexpected, so we had to kind of go back to the drawing board and try again. So we tried to do an IPO again a year later. But you know, the financial markets were in no condition to support a riskier company like ours, because it was still a young business and And eventually we ended up taking the business public about what would this be 2009, three years later.

And at that time, I stayed on with the business for a year, and helped to do some handover and stuff. And then, and then I joined Animoca brands where I am now. And this was, you know, a business that I thought was really interesting because it is, you know, we were, we were a mobile game company at that time, this was before blockchain. But mobile games seems to me to be a bit of everything that I'd ever done before. So it was a bit of telecoms, it was a bit of media, it was a bit of internet, it was a bit of advertising, all in one product. And so that that intrigued me, even though, you know, I didn't know anything about making games, I'd played games as a kid, you know, I grew up playing games, like many kids. And in fact, I'm just the right age that I grew up literally at the invention of video games. So I started with Pong, you know. And, and so that was, you know, a formative part of my youth. And, and that didn't make me any better at knowing how to make games. But it intrigued me to be involved in the industry. And and it's been a fabulous business to be a part of five years into it. You know, we ended up pivoting to focus on blockchain, and decided that that was going to be an avenue of growth, potentially, for us. And that this new technology was going to change the way we make games and change the way that people play games and their relationship to games, particularly, you know, financially, as well as from an experiential point of view. And so we've been working on that for the last five years, and, and hopefully, people still enjoy our games. I'm sorry, that was long intro.

Matthew Cheung  7:00  
That was great. The September 2008, IPO must have been quite quite sore point. But be interesting. Obviously, the Bitcoin white paper came out in October 2008. And there's no, it's no surprise, really, that it came out so swiftly after that. And you said five years ago, when you pivoted into blockchain with Animoca? What was the thinking behind that at the time?

Robby Yung  7:26  
Like most things that make people look smart, in hindsight, it was luck. So we were in we, we had a relationship with a startup company in Vancouver. And we were in the process of acquiring them. And they and you know, we were, we were looking for new avenues of growth all the time, you know, the mobile games market was maturing, and growth was slowing industry wide. And so we were always looking for new, different, you know, whether it's different content categories or different gameplay styles. And in looking for new avenues of growth, we were acquiring a business in Vancouver that made back end software for multiplayer games that could make your single player game into a multiplayer game. And they they had let some people go, and they had extra office space. And so they sublet their office space to some people who are doing a hackathon project. And actually it was a bunch of crypto people. And so it was through that relationship that we got to know those people and ended up offering to help them to publish their first game. And that game was crypto kitties. And that was the first arguably blockchain game. And that was what's now called dapper labs. And they had basically invented the NFT, about a month before we met them for the purpose of making crypto kitties. So we ended up publishing crypto kitties in Greater China. And, and that was really the experience for us that, you know, very quickly, because, personally, I didn't really know much of anything about blockchain up until that point. Many of my colleagues had been following Bitcoin and Aetherium for a while before that, but more out of curiosity than anything that had to do with our business. And I think at that point, you know, we started to understand very quickly that this could have a huge impact on the game industry. Because although crypto kitties was not a game of the type that we were familiar with making, because it's a collectibles experience, primarily. What it taught us about the idea of having fungible and non fungible tokens was something This seemed really obvious to us that this was how games in the future should always be made. it. Because basically, when you think about tokenizing, a game, what you're doing is you're telling people to buy a fungible token, like Aetherium, or what have you, inside the game, so a virtual currency to buy virtual items as NF Ts. And that's what people playing games have already been doing for 15 years, you know, that's free to play gaming. So you don't have to teach them how to do anything new to bring blockchain into their lives. But what it does do is it gives them true digital ownership over their stuff, the stuff in the games that they don't currently own, that they only rent. And so we thought, well, this just makes sense. I mean, if you have the choice of having a game, where you pay virtual currency for virtual stuff, and you own it, versus one where you do the same thing, but you don't own it. Why would you pick the latter? I mean, it just seemed obvious. It was a like a light light bulb moment. So we decided from that point on, that we were going to stop making so called traditional games and just make blockchain games.

Benyamin Ahmed  11:07  
Robby just touched on this a little talking about blockchain games. Let's go to the basics. How would you describe a blockchain game to someone new and how upgrades existing model? Sure.

Robby Yung  11:19  
So I think first of all, talking about blockchain games is kind of a funny thing, because it's not any specific kind of a game. I think, you know, we use the term blockchain games now only because most games don't use blockchain. And only a small subset do. Just the same way that a decade ago, we might have talked about online games, because most games were not online games. But I think it's one of those things that over time, we're gonna stop talking about blockchain, because it will just be part of the infrastructure of games. But I think what differentiates a blockchain game is that, you know, as I was mentioning, the in game currency, the soft current currency in the game, and also the assets in the game that you buy, the race cars, the swords, the you know, whatever those items are in the game, are tokenized as NF Ts. And so what that means is that you can own those items. And the ownership of those items is really important, because we haven't really had true digital ownership before, which means that you have agency as, as the customer, the owner over those items, you can buy them, you can sell them, you can trade them, you can gift them to your friend, you can take them out of the game experience to a third party marketplace, or to another game. And that's really, you know, where the excitement happens, because historically, games have always been siloed, you know, experiences, and they never mix with each other. The point is to keep all your users in this walled garden, and extract as much revenue from those users as you can. But in the web three contexts, you know, a blockchain game allows you to create a game that is one part of a bigger puzzle, which is, you know, now we're calling the metaverse, which is lots of different game experiences where that stuff that you pay for in the game can be brought to other places. And so I think that the definition of a blockchain game is this tokenization. And this interoperability that gives you the ability to really own stuff in games, that's yours that you can treat, like your physical stuff. I can play with it here. I can play with it there. And we should have been expecting this from games a long time ago.

Matthew Cheung  13:36  
So do you kind of see the gaming element being the on ramp for the world to move into blockchain? Because at the moment, Blockchain gaming users are pretty small compared to vanilla kind of gaming users compared to the world and so on. But do you see gaming as an on ramp to blockchain and also as an on ramp into the metaverse? And, like you said, the interoperability piece when you're jumping? Because you know, before you couldn't jump from Call of Duty to all the Warcraft? Now, there's a way you could essentially,

Robby Yung  14:07  
yes, and I think most importantly, we have to generalise and say that entertainment is the route by which most technology is brought to a mass market audience. So everything from the smartphone to the video cassette recorder to you name it, these are all things that happened inventions, you know, online payments, online payments came around, not because of E commerce, but because people wanted to buy entertainment online. Right? I want to talk about what kind of entertainment in front of Ben, but people wanted entertainment. And so they figured out how to use credit cards and buy things online. Because I think that entertainment is what drives people to want to buy new stuff. It's exciting. It's fun, they enjoy it. It's not frankly, you know financial services people don't want to you know, buy a new device so that they can do online banking in a better way. Because it's not fun. It's a utility. So within entertainment nowadays, gaming is by far the biggest entertainment medium, you know, it's bigger than TV. It's bigger than than film and music, etc. So gaming is the best entertainment route to reach the biggest possible audience. So it's a long answer, Matthew, to your question, which is that I think gaming is the way that we're going to onboard the majority of people in the world into blockchain.

Benyamin Ahmed  15:33  
And will be how would you define the metaverse? How would you say how web three and NF T's are being set together to fortress metaverse?

Robby Yung  15:42  
So to me the web to me the metaverse as a concept is inextricably linked to the idea of web three. Because I think that what we have in web three is, you know, thanks to blockchain. Blockchain provides this secure transactional layer on top of the internet that we didn't have in web two. And with this ability to to exchange value between each other, you know that I can send you a token, and you can receive it and we can exchange that value over the internet. I think that is fundamental to the metaverse because the metaverse to me is actually not all that different than what we already have today. You know, we've got great experiences, we have Minecraft and fortnight and Roblox and, you know, social network sites. We have all these greats, you know, again, siloed experiences. And the metaverse is really just our ability to bring all of those together so that they talk to each other. And if you bring all of those things together, then I think it's very important that you have to have the portability and interoperability of stuff. So if I own something in fortnight, why can't I bring it to Roblox? Why can't I bring it to Minecraft? Why can't I bring it to Facebook? You know, that interoperability is really key. And once we use blockchain and we tokenize these things, then we can not only facilitate that interoperability, but because it's the metaverse, it's this digital space. The important thing about this space, also is that people are able to own it, not just people, businesses, companies, you know, entertainers etc, everybody can have their piece of the virtual world, just the way they have their piece of the physical world. And they can use that, you know, as a business or as personal space, etc. And that's what I think the metaverse is. So I think, you know, it's not necessarily this sort of Ready Player One. Virtual reality. I mean, I think that's, that's part of a Metaverse experience. But I think it's more like just the coming together and interoperability of all experiences generally. And I think that's going to happen slowly over time, the more that we adopt blockchain,

Matthew Cheung  18:00  
moving over to what you're doing with Animoca brands, on the investment front, you've made some 340 investments in lots of different companies. And presumably, like you said, on the blockchain side, crypto kitties was one of the first projects, how how, how do you look at different projects and companies and what's kind of driving that strategy?

Robby Yung  18:22  
So we look at a lot of projects we have, we have a great team, you know, of people around the world. And we work with also a lot of other great investors in the space because, you know, we're always happy to share projects and ideas and stuff. So I think we've got a great network of people who, you know, understand our interest in web three, and also how we can hopefully be helpful to people in the ecosystem, and find ways to work together. So we generally, you know, we have a very broad based approach. I think we think of web three culture as our sweet spot. But that can embrace many different things. Gaming, obviously, is probably the largest part of it, because that's, that's our those are our routes. But it also includes things like art, and music and fashion, as well as defy because all of these are aspects of web three culture. And the beauty of web three is again, going back to that interoperability drum that I will keep beating throughout this discussion. All of those different aspects of web three culture have the potential for interoperability. And so that's why we're active, you know, at least to a certain extent in all of them, because you have the ability to have a Metaverse type experience that includes fashion and music and defy etc. And, you know, our most well known project the sandbox, for example, includes all of those under one roof

Benyamin Ahmed  20:00  
Robby, where do you see the Internet? In 10 years? Do you think within 10 years, we'll have to mass adoption with web three NF T's?

Robby Yung  20:10  
Yeah, for sure. I don't think it's gonna take that long. I'd say five. This is one of those where you're going to look back at this video and then laugh at me later. But we'll see.

Benyamin Ahmed  20:23  
And also, what other web three products are you interested in?

Robby Yung  20:27  
What other web three products? Honestly, we, I mean, my own personal interest overlaps a lot with with our interests as a company. I mean, we like to support projects that are really that adhere to openness and adhere to a multi chain ecosystem. I think the most exciting thing about web three is that it's essentially an open source movement. I think the thing that amazes me is the is the innovation that we see from people who are, you know, building on top of other people's assets and achievements, you know, just like you're weird whales, right? I think the coolest thing about the weird whales is not necessarily that you made it, no offence, but that somebody else can make something really cool with them. That's the best part. That's the innovation. That's what we get in web three, this collaboration, where we have a way to all work together, and layer our achievements on like, stand on each other's shoulders, so to speak. But at the same time, we have digital rights management and IP protection built into the system, so that everybody benefits so that if I use your weird whales to make something really cool, you will still benefit from that, because it's IP that you created, and you as the creator deserve, you know, to be recognised for that. And that's really important. And we've never had the way before in the internet's to be able to really honour that, you know, that that creativity. And that's why we ended up with streaming platforms, which I think is unfortunate. I mean, they're amazing from a user experience standpoint, but they're not terribly great for creators.

Matthew Cheung  22:12  
So in your unique position, with your you've been in various industries over the last 25 odd years, you've you've spent a lot of time in blockchain and obviously been deep in it. Now, you've got a very unique kind of view, because you're, you're involved in so many different projects through the investment side of the business as well. So you're seeing all these things going on. If you were talking to someone who's looking at web three, and the metaverse and these kinds of sectors that we're looking at, and this next evolution of the Internet, where do you see the biggest opportunities for someone who's looking to get involved from a career perspective? Or, or even if they're looking to build a startup? And where do you see kind of things converging? A few years down the line as well, you've already said in five years time, you're sort of policy that mass adoption, at some point, we will see the Ready Player One, you know, goggles, contact lenses, whatever. But how Where do you see the opportunities kind of right now for people? And does that kind of blossoms as it goes forward?

Robby Yung  23:16  
Sure. I guess I see it in two main places. You know, Fintech is one, obviously, because Fintech is the oldest part of the blockchain related world. And it's, it's not mature, but it's maturing. And I think there are plenty of different ways for people who are finance industry professionals to be involved in, in blockchain and digital assets. And I think that it's it's at a stage now, where I don't think, you know, I would recommend to anybody who's in finance that they should consider, you know, a career in digital assets. Because I think that even from a conservative standpoint, you can build a solid career in digital assets. Whereas I think, you know, a few years ago, I would have said, well, if you can afford to take the risk, you know, and put aside a few years, and if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But I think digital assets are here to stay now. And so so that's, you know, if you're going to take a conservative view on the blockchain world, that's the best place. I think if you can afford to be a little bit more risky, then I would say definitely come to our neck of the woods, which is culture and entertainment. And within that gaming is going to be the lowest hanging fruit. I think eventually, blockchain will make lay he sort of make its mark in a big way in industries like music, for example. But that will take more time and these are still very early days in an industry like that. I think the best place to get started is honestly just to get involved in it yourself. So buy some NF T's you know, get involved in some projects, Jim bunch of discord and Twitter and and engage yourself in some communities and see if it's for you. Because I think one of the things about working in entertainment is that it is kind of a it's a little bit of a passion based career, meaning that people do it because they get to work also with content and in an industry that's often overlaps with personal interest. And so I think getting into the culture is a part of being successful. Because I think if you're not involved in the culture, it's more difficult, because this is not the kind of industry where you just come and sit at a desk for eight hours a day for a steady paycheck.

Matthew Cheung  25:44  
I think that leads quite nicely into my next question around what's what's a good skill set and mindset for young hungry students that are looking to get into the industry? Like I already said, it's not it's not a desk job, nine to five, it's, it's a culture element. And it's, it's, like you say, it's very open. But yeah, what kind of skill set and mindset would you think people should, should strive towards?

Robby Yung  26:09  
Interestingly, I don't, I would probably be giving more advice to people who are older, because I think young people already have generally the right mindset for this, because they haven't. They haven't gotten too stuck in their ways, and their mentality and their way of thinking so that they're open to the fact that things can be done in a different way. Because, you know, they're young things have only been done for a certain amount of time as far as they're concerned. And I think that's one of the things about web three, which is you need to be you need to be able to see where it's going to be able to appreciate what it's capable of. Because what it can do today is less than perfect, it's a little bit like having an electric car, an electric car is a great thing. But it's a pain in the ass to charge. And it doesn't necessarily last that long, it has a kind of a fundamental flaw, which doesn't mean you shouldn't buy an electric car, it's just something that always nags you in the background about electric cars, because we're halfway there, sort of on the road to mass adoption. But if you can get your mind around the fact that well, it doesn't matter that it's difficult to charge, just put all that aside and forget about it. Because I can imagine a world where electric cars are easy to charge, and you can charge them in five minutes, then you start to think of it completely differently. And you start to define how you are towards that industry or that object in a way that visualises it the way that it should be. And then you can help build it and make it that way. And I think web three is kind of the same. So if you play a blockchain game today, it's a different experience, it's not as good an experience as playing a web two game. It's just not it can't be because by definition, something that is open and interoperable. With the rest of the world, the UI UX, that experience can never be as good as something that's maniacally controlled by only one company. Just like, you know, if you compare the experience on Android to iOS, it's different. Because in one case, everything is massively controlled. But there are benefits to openness. And so you have to see what those benefits are. And they can outweigh, you know, the amazing UI UX of total control.

Benyamin Ahmed  28:41  
Robby, this question can relate to web three or outside of your personal life? What new skills are you learning right now?

Robby Yung  28:48  
What new skills am I learning? For? I think first of all, I've not thought so much about macroeconomics before in my life. Since since I studied economics to begin with in school, I don't think I've thought about macroeconomics as much as I have in the last two years. And, you know, I think web three has really thought a taught me to think about it's like going back to the interesting thing about web three, is I think it's it levels the playing field. Because when I when I joined the game industry a decade ago, you know, I was new to the industry, and I didn't know much, or I didn't know anything about making games. And so it was, it was daunting. And you know, I would go to conferences, and I would try to learn as much as I could. But I knew like I always felt like the stupidest person in the room because I didn't know anything. I was brand new. You know, if you asked me about selling advertising on TV, I could tell you about that, but I didn't know anything about games. And so you know, Five years into it, I knew more about making games, at least from a certain perspective. But now in the world of blockchain games, we're all new to it. And we're all learning as we go. And I think that, for me, the most rewarding part of it is that ability to learn together with everybody else, on the one hand, and number two, I think that the ethos and the philosophy and the spirit of web three, I think, is the best part of it to me. And this is something that I think would, I would, I hope, I think resonates with younger people to like, as you mentioned, Matthew students today, because, you know, I've spent most of my career working in China. And in China, the way that's the way that people work culturally, it's a very, very competitive environment, a lot of people. And what happens is that people are very secretive, because they're very competitive. And so as a result, if you tell other people what you're doing, often they will take your ideas, because they figure that if you've said it, it's fair game. And so everybody's very secretive, you'll go out to a cocktail party, and you'll talk to people, and nobody will actually talk about what they're actually doing. Because it's, you know, it's a competitive threat. And it's hard to live that way. And now I find myself in the completely opposite side of the spectrum, which is in the web three worlds, because collaboration is built into the system. You know, we all have a way that we can work together through interoperability, it makes everybody your potential partner as opposed to your competitor. And I have to say that from a career standpoint, I've never had so much enjoyment in my career. Except now, when I'm in a position that everybody I meet, it's not about, oh, what can I learn from them, and I can try to then out compete them by learning something from them. It's, hey, what can we do together? You know, because whatever it is, let's partner, let's do something together. And I'm happy to be an open book about what we do. Because it doesn't matter. You know, we all have ways to work together, because we're not all fighting for one thing, you know, and it's not winner take all.

Matthew Cheung 
So playing on that point of you're having the most fun in your career  right now. Mm hmm. If you were to go back in time to speak to your 18 year old self, what would you tell yourself?

Robby Yung
Okay. A couple of pieces of advice.Try really hard to remember until you're about 35 that you don't know as much as you think you do, even though you might think you do. Because you'll figure out later that that you didn't know as much as you thought you did.

And I think there are
 some certain fundamentals. 

So I think one of the things
 that I missed out on personally is I

didn't really spend much time in my career
 early on working for other people.

I started my own business when I was 26,

which, you know. 

I thought in hindsight,
 maybe even was a little bit young,

maybe I should have spent a few more years
 working for other people

because I think sometimes
 that more conservative path

of working for a big company,
 having a boss or two or three,

you know, it's it's
 also part of your education.

It's not just a job.

And so you can learn valuable skills.

You can learn ways to interact
 with other people.

And so there's there's
 definitely some of that.

So I think for me and, you know, this
 this also could be a grass is greener

kind of thing. Who knows? 

I might not have benefited from it,
 but I always feel like

maybe I might have been able to do things
 differently, but.

And for the better,
 if I'd had a little bit more experience,

because I spent many years
 trying to find my own way

and maybe I could have shortcut
 some of that if I

if I'd had more mentorship
 at a younger age.

The second thing I would say
 is for anybody starting a business,

don't start it by yourself.

Start it with partners. 

Find friends. Find
 other professionals. Collaborators.

But don't do it yourself. 

My first business is I started myself
 and that was a mistake.

And it was a mistake because most start
 ups don't turn out well.

And that's just math. 

So, you know, as as hard as you work
 and as ambitious as you are,

and no matter how good your ideas,
 the odds are against you.

So there will be failures along the way.

And I've had plenty of failures. 

Most of the businesses
 I started didn't turn out well. Right.

And what you can learn from that, I think.

You know, my suggestion was to start it
 with partners, because the businesses

that I have been involved
 with, partners, when things are tough,

there are other people to 

share the burden who also have
 that burden of responsibility.

There are also big shareholders
 and founders of the business.

And let me tell you, you know,
 just as it's it's nice to be able

to share good times when things are going
 well with your partners.

But it's even better to share the lows
 and the burdens with some other people

and have more smart minds around the table
 to help figure out the problems.

Because, you know,
 that old adage of the buck stops here,

you know, if it stops only at your desk
 and nobody else's.

Those are big shoes to fill. 

That's some great advice there will be. 

So I guess just to wrap up then

going all the way back
 to when you were 18 year

old self and your studies and so on.

You said there was quite a diverse
 learning that you had

and you actually went down a route
 where it taught you and I think

which became really useful
 when you very well rounded the piece.

You just touched on that about mentorship. 

That's one of the things
 that we're trying to help with with work

is trying to provide mentors for,
 you know, people in exactly that situation

and going off to the better version. 

You did say that you do see entertainment

as an onramp into the metaverse
 and web3 and metaverse actually

bringing together all these siloed worlds
 and environment environments

with interoperability,
 portability, openness,

and then built on the web, three tenants
 of collaboration around innovation.

And that actually levels
 the playing field. Mm hmm.

And lastly, the opportunities
 you spoke about, you have fintech

with blockchain digital assets and so on,
 is an area people should be looking at.

And if they want to take a little bit
 more risk, have a look into culture

and entertainment
 with gaming being that low hanging fruit.

So so if people are getting excited
 about this stuff,

even though a few lightbulbs
 may have been switched on.

What what's a good place to kind of
 follow yourself and animoca and the things

that are projects that you're working on
 and looking at? Sure.

Well, obviously,
 our website is a destination

for everything, but I would say 

if you're interested in Web three,
 particularly, go to Twitter because,

you know, Web3 is 

actually the biggest, you know, crypto
 Twitter is the biggest part of Twitter.

It's and I know that from being told
 by people at Twitter

that it's the most active it's the most
 active content category on Twitter.

And and it's also,
 you know, it's also the the town

square of the blockchain community.

So I'd say follow us on Twitter
 and get involved with the community.

You know, follow Ben and follow you. 

Follow everybody who's in Web3 

and you'll get to know things very,
 very quickly. 

Matthew Cheung 
Fantastic. Robby Young, CEO of Animoca Brands, thank you so much for joining us today.

Robby Yung
No problem. Thank you, gentlemen. Have a good day.

Benyamin Ahmed
Thank you, Robby.