Over the years, Spatial has undergone a wide-ranging evolution. It evolved from an AR collaboration platform to a Roblox competitor (with 2M+ creators), and it's now a VR game developer with the top earning VR game on the Meta Quest store (Animal Company). Spatial has raised almost $50M, according to Crunchbase, based on the founders’ convictions that 3D virtual spaces are the future of social experiences.
In this conversation, our host, David Taylor, sat down with Anand Agarawala, the Founder and CEO of Spatial, to unpack the lessons learned from the success of Animal Company. We explore how a founder decides when it’s time to pivot, the dynamics of competing with Roblox, and what the future holds for VR, UGC, and web-based games.
We’d also like to thank nSure.ai for making this episode possible! As a proven industry leader, nSure.ai provides scalable payment fraud prevention that’s not just effective but tailored specifically to your needs. To learn more, visit https://www.nsure.ai/contact
This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.
David: Welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, David Taylor, and today my guest is the co-founder and CEO of Spatial, a company that has undergone a wide ranging evolution over the years from its early days as an AR collaboration platform to its recent position as a Roblox competitor with 2 million plus creators, and now a VR game developer with the top earning VR game on the MetaQuest store at the time of this recording called Animal Company.
Spatial has raised almost 50 million according to Crunchbase since its inception, based on the founder's conviction that 3D virtual spaces are the future of social experiences. In this episode, we'll explore how a founder decides when it's time to pivot, the dynamics of competing with Roblox, and what the future holds for VR, UGC games, and web-based games.
So without further ado, Anand Agarawala, welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast.
Anand: Thank you. Excited to be here.
David: Can you kick us off by giving us a bit of background on you and how you came to found Spatial?
Anand: Sure. Yeah. So Spatial is my second company in the 3D user interface space. My first company was called Bumptop, started that off as my master's thesis in 2004 over 20 years ago.
Woo! And it was a 3D user interface that used, imagine a computer desktop, you know, use a physics, use a physics engine, the Novadex physics engine to make your computer desktop feel like a physical simulation. So you could pile everything up like a, like your, like a real desk. You'd pin stuff on the walls, have sticky notes, very tactile in that, and so, it was.
That was back in 2004, before the iPhone existed, so the idea was when we move to touch interfaces, how is that going to change interfaces? That company was bought by Google in 2010, and we joined the early Android team, so I was one of the first PMs on Android and got to see that rise, and then at Google, worked around on Google Photos and Google Glass a little bit, but ultimately left Google.
David: And when you were, when you were building that started to interrupt, but when you were building that, did you know touch screens were going to be a thing? Or did that sort of come about separately?
Anand: Well, it's interesting. It's like, it's a hunch, right? Cause I think like researchers, I was, I was doing it in the university of Toronto. So the hunch was that touch interfaces, but it was all about the stylus back then. If you remember tablet PCs, the idea was it was going to move to touch.
But with stylus-based computers and of course, Steve Jobs was like, we don't need the stylus, but people lose that, forget it. And so similarly, I think like people had the hunch when we started spatial, that things are going to move into a VR, AR headset, and that's going to be your next computer. And so, similar trend.
David: Got it. Okay. So, sorry, I interrupted. You're saying you, you founded Spatial.
Anand: Yeah. So after leaving Google, trying to figure out what to do, went on a vision quest, you know, try, you know, did a gap year and, eventually.
David: Wait, a vision quest? Tell us more about that.
Anand: Well, you know, it's like, okay. When you leave a company, everyone's like, or like when you've had this exit, everyone's like, what's your next thing?
What's your next thing? What are you going to do next? And like, I felt like it was important to just kind of lose yourself and like, you know, derived from first principles, if you're going to start something again, and, and, and, and, and know why, right. And so like, you know, I kind of just like, and just seeing where it goes, you know, travel, do, cross off the bucket list stuff, you know, enjoy life, you know, learn to DJ, you know, stuff like that.
I became a male model briefly, which is crazy. Bergdorf Goodman, that was crazy. Very briefly, did not last. I'm glad we're doing a video recording for this. Yeah, exactly. So they can verify. But, but then I think eventually I realized like, oh, wait, I'm a creative person. I need to build. And I, the key moment for me was trying the HoloLens one, because I think like VR was hot at the time around 2016.
Oculus had just been acquired by Facebook then, and, you know, VR didn't really click for me because I felt like it was very dissociative, that it was like kind of pulling you out of the real world. And then I tried the HoloLens. That was the game changing moment. I was at a conference in Minneapolis called IO Festival and I tried it and I was like, holy shit, this is so mind blowing.
This is exactly the type of like it was so clear and so vivid. And even to this day, I think it's like the, the quality of display is, is, you know, better than a lot of the stuff out there. So, and so it was just mind blowing for me. I was like, I thought AR was way out there in the future and now, um. You know, it's actually, it's a lot quicker.
And then I, I assumed that the curve I saw at Android and mobile phones of how quickly that ramped, that that was going to happen to AR and VR as well. And so, um, I was, and, and I'd been dreaming up all these 3D user interface ideas at, you know, at BumpTop and then at Google as well, where, you know, it was just like, okay, sweet, we have now the inner, the device to now make this happen.
The idea was, hey, your next, your next computer is going to be a pair of glasses. It might not be today, it might be in a couple of years out, but we want to seize this opportunity to create some of the foundational apps and experiences and way we collaborate in, in AR and in this new world. And it was a chance to put our fingerprints on history, right?
Like the idea is that it's the last visual interface that's going to exist. And , we have a chance to correct some of the things and, and , you know, like that that work encumbering us by, you know, like, you know, tons of notifications, thousands of tabs open, you know, just things that don't really feel natural and is humane is using a pencil and paper using your desk and so following through similar themes of the last piece of work.
So the idea was start Spatial. Met my co-founder, convinced my co-founder Jin out of move from Korea and start this company. Didn't exactly know what the product was, but the idea was like, okay, back us. We, you know, we want to create some, AR is the next big thing. We want to figure out the next big, we want to figure out what those foundational interfaces and experiences are of this new world.
David: Got it. Cool. Well, and so I, I want to, I want to read some headlines to the audience because you guys have had a long journey since that original founding story a lot of pivots, and just to give some context on the various areas you've explored and I think we'll explore even more than when what these headlines suggest
Anand: Adjustments.
David: Okay, adjustments.
Yes, because they're all sort of in the same theme of 3D immersive spaces but I'll just read these these three that I found , through some internet sleuthing. So chat up, telly feels like FaceTime built for AR Spatial raises 25 million pivots to NFTs. That's 2021. The last one was 2020.
Roblox competitor spatial announces UGC games and unity integration. That was 2023 and I was looking for a headline about animal company, but no one's written about it yet, which is awesome because now we can break some news about it. So, so yeah, just to, just to follow up on that with a question, like I'm interested in the founder perspective, right?
Like you've had these, these evolutions and, and I want to sort of understand like. What's the point in which, as a founder, you know, okay, this, this product is, needs to, to evolve, like, and it's time to try something new, and then how do you also approach what that new thing is?
Anand: Yeah, yeah, it's a good question.
I mean, I think like, yeah, those headlines are a trip down memory lane, you know, we were, we started an AR company in 2016 and it's almost 10 years later and we don't have everyday AR headwear, you know, and so, you know, it's been a long journey to try to stay alive and try to do something compelling and continue to grow our user base and part of it was like, really, I think one, so we were always searching for signal.
You know, where can we and what would what would the general arc that happened is like we started off. Our first device was Holland's one and we kind of became the biggest app on Holland's one. And we're like, okay, we've saturated this market. You know, we can wait for it to grow. But how do we get to the next level?
And then COVID happened 2020. Quest one and quest two was happening. And we're like, we, you know, we had some issues with VR and because we wanted us to augment, you know, your, your real world experiences, but yeah. Everyone's stuck at home. People are totally fine with VR. So we shifted to Quest.
And that gave us another order of magnitude number of users, and, and we became one of the most popular, you know, non gaming apps there. And then we kind of saturated that, and we're like, okay, how do we get the next level of growth? We gotta go to mobile. And so mobile helped us get another order of magnitude growth.
And then eventually web. And then web helped us get another order of magnitude of growth. And meanwhile, like when we started building this company, I think lessons from the last company because Bumptop was meant to be this futuristic interface vision for the future. But, when touch computing got there, like aka the iPhone, nobody needed a desktop.
And so I was really burdened by that experience because, like, you know, I wanted to really future proof as much as you can, you know, my next startup Spatial and so like, you know, we didn't know what the final headwear is going to be when we started on the HoloLens 1, but we knew that it's going to generally be made by Apple or like it's probably gonna run iOS or Android.
It's going to be a touch interface or a pointer or a wand or something like that. We can abstract certain things away. We knew multi platform would still be relatively important. You know, not only between headsets, like just in the same way WhatsApp connects iPhone and Android users, you could imagine a need for that with a multi headset world, but also, you know, connecting it to your phone, like your phone will still be important, you know, for a while, right. We still use desktop computers, even though tons of time on phone. So trying to take as many of these learnings as possible into the construction or the kind of strategy and kind of, you know, approach of the startup. And so, you know, as we're growing, we're trying not to lose sight of that fact and, like, expanding the capabilities of the platform, expanding the users.
We, you know, today, we're majority web, even though you can run, a user can connect from, you know, put on a VR headset, like a Quest, and join a user running from mobile, joining from a user running from, , the web, and the web's our biggest platform, I think it's like 70 percent of usage right now, but, , and it's meant to be a doorway to the future, like, we also, a lot of those learnings came from actually putting the product into tons of Fortune 500's hands, And they would, you know, we try to get them immediate or I mean, they would run regular meetings.
We had customers like Pfizer and Mattel, some great fortune 500 partners, , Purina, and they would use these things and they would try to have a meeting with 20 people and invariably someone wouldn't charge the headset or they couldn't get it on or whatever. And that can mean. So just clicking a link and you're into a zoom, you know, we tried to replicate with our web app.
So we have, you know, a spatial IO link. You click it, you're instantly in. And just really removing that friction, even if you're just getting your headset set up because, you know, for whatever reason, so that, you know, that's an example of kind of the constant evolution. I think, yeah, so we were just always finding trying to find signal trying to get to a bigger and bigger market.
And you know, we get to the kind of maximum of where we were in that market and kind of keep looking beyond. And so, yeah, it was just a single finding
David: Where did each of these markets that you go into sort of have? I mean, I know VR has always been sort of over projected in terms of the amount of demand.
Like, was that sort of the case that each time you made these pivots, there was sort of a market signal That these, these were going to explode and then they just never really took off the way that they needed to, or, well, kind of, but was it more of a strategy of like, we're just going to, we're just going to win each of these markets, you know, until we, until we get across all of the markets, a really big, big, uh, user base sometimes.
Anand: I mean, sometimes the headsets went away. And so, you know, like there was some headsets that were like AR headsets that plugged into a phone. And so those didn't really take off. But we didn't mess in those. I mean. The headsets didn't get to the scale of phone and desktop, but phone and desktop are pretty huge and we, you know, we, I wouldn't say we've won those markets by any means, but, yeah, there, you know, it's also about like, is there a product market fit here for users of that market?
Right? So there's a bit of a balance.
David: What would you say is the common thread across all, everything you've done so far? We're gonna get more into, so like, it sounds like you sort of, yeah, you eventually moved to web, desktop, mobile, and, and you even started creating content. We haven't gotten to that part yet.
But I'm just wondering, like, what's been the common thread across everything you've done so far?
Anand: I think really, I mean, the conception of the company was invent the future, right? I think like, and we think that like, like, if you think about static 2D interfaces that we use on desktop and mobile, really it's like to pull those in the future, we think the future of interfaces is immersive, it's multiplayer, it's spatial, it fills the room around you, it's ideally meant for headsets that are, that let you seamlessly blend the real world and the physical world, so you can sit on a desk and it can feel like a virtual colleague is sitting right next to you.
And so pulling the, bringing that kind of futuristic vision of how we see that, you know, the future of the internet, the future of computing as the social, spatial, thing, you know, even called, I think like, yes, collaborative computing. We're trying to build the world's first collaborative computer because it's the, we can all use this thing at the same time.
You know, even, you know, even called it like, you know, the way a basketball team, you know, moves up the court, and you know, like the nonverbal communication, you know, kind of know where each other is going to be that feeling. Can we get that feeling in computing and in a computer that we use together and can collaboration feel like that on a computer rather than email and like email inboxes and slack threads and that.
So, um, I forget the question.
David: We'll see what's been the common thread across everything. So is it, is it the, is it the, is it more? So I talked about it like social, but it sounds more like you're focused on, on co working and, and, you know, connection within, within the workspace.
Anand: I think it's pulling this vision of the future is immersive, collaborative, social, uh, into everything, you know, everything we do now, it started off on AR VR is a more enterprise collaboration thing.
It's moved spatial is now more brand focused metaverse. We've got a really exciting launch of Walmart this week that we basically built like what looks like a PlayStation game that runs on the web. But that's kind of the common arc is like, can we push push us into this more immersive, tangible future.
The idea is that the future of the internet is not going to feel flat 2d and singular like it is today. We want the, we think the future of the internet can be this embodied social, you know, richly visual, collaborative thing. And then that was, that's been kind of the common arc.
David: All right. So we're talking about this platform that you've been building where any creator or developer can come on and pretty easily build, experience in a 3D virtual space.
Similar to Roblox, but also maybe more targeted towards VR than Roblox. So what I want to understand is, you know, you're basically, you're competing with Roblox. What Roblox has been able to achieve is to get a flywheel going where content creation is driven by an existence of a player base and creators wanting to.
Build experiences for that creator base or sorry, that player base, the player base is there because there's already content on the platform. So you have the classic chicken or an egg problem. Like we can't get players unless we have content. We can't get content unless we have players and they've managed to, you know, get past that phase, get to scale.
And now it's all, you know, gravy for them. More creators keep coming to the space. They keep making more money, so how do you, as a new platform take that approach. You've been doing it for a few years now. What have you learned in terms of, uh, the things you've tried and what's been successful and what's not been?
Anand: Yeah. I mean, the initial thesis was like the UGC was blowing up, Roblox, UFN just launched. And so, the idea of like UGC in general was really, really strong at the time that we started going into this about two years ago. And I think like our idea was we want to bring the Roblox model, to Unity developers and, and to the web.
So like ideally two untapped markets. And, you know, Unity developers, majority of games are written in Unity. Majority of game devs are Unity developers. However, if they wanted to build a, UGC experience on the major platforms like Roblox or UEFN, they've got to use a totally different set of tools. Lua, you know, you've got to learn, you know, UEFN, you know, etc.
So, the idea was like, let people, and, and, you know, we were the, we are the only, I think that's it. Thanks for joining us. Have a great day. We'll see you next time. Give them monetization tools, make multiplayer really easy, multi platform really easy, you know, and just really simplify the barrier to entry, , you know, where you can just, you literally like, blank scene, hit go, it's instantly multi player, it's instantly hosted in the cloud, it instantly works on mobile, VR, and web.
And so that was a thesis. and I think like, like you said, there's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Now we had a huge coming out of the gate, and there's a ton of unit developers and people developing these, these compelling experiences, you know. We also were trying to bootstrap it with our, you know, UFN needs Fortnite to exist, right?
And so where's our we were like, okay, we've got compelling traffic traction, but we want to get to the next level and get Find our hit we need our hit game to help get this to the to elevate it, right? And so we need our build our fortnight. So we started building a lot of different game types, because we weren't sure what would resonate with this marketplace, with this audience.
We tried clicker games, we tried sniper games, we tried dress up games all kinds of stuff to just
David: What were you looking at to determine what types of games to make?
Anand: You know what? Variety of factors. I think like, what, you know, what, what's hot right now? Is there some trend in games that, that could be compelling?
What's working on web or on mobile, where we've seen things kind of take off?
David: When I was looking at your guys games, it felt a lot like some of the games you see on Roblox. Like, number go up games like, like Punch Hero or something along those lines. Yep. You guys built an only up game. So it seems like you're drawing a lot of influence from what's popular on Roblox and Fortnite.
Anand: There was a, yeah, there was definitely like that was definitely one of the theses we were trying, right? We're trying a bunch of different things. So for example, we're like, Hey, these fast growing games, like at the time, punch simulators were the hottest one of the hottest games on roadblocks.
And so we were thinking, Hey, can we bring that game to a different audience? You just click a link and you're in that same click a link you're in that we, you know, came up with for the, the collaboration scenario because we're using the same platform that we've been building all along for eight years, click a link, you're into punch hero.
And can we make this game way more accessible? You know, you don't have to install anything just runs in the browser. And, and that was a thesis there. I'm on only up exactly. It was a super hot game and we, we, you know, our thinking was like, Hey, stumble upon. Sorry, stumble, stumble guys brought, you know, fall guys to the mobile audience, and made it like, you know, made it super accessible for folks.
So you couldn't play it there. And we were thinking, can we do that with only up, you know, one of the fastest growing games as well. And so, yeah, so we were trying a whole bunch of different stuff.
David: Got it. Cool. So, so you're going through that process. What did you, what was sort of the takeaway after, you know, trying to build your own games for, for a while?
Anand: Yeah, we built a lot of games internally, like, well, okay, we built a lot of games into internal about 20 animal companies are 21st game. So I like to say 21st times a charm, you know, and like we, we started initially building them in house. And then we're like, well, let's try getting studios externally to do it.
And, so we tried that. We also tried like, codev where we like find a studio that has successful games, but they have more skin in the game. We also tried, we tried a shark tank style game show wolves den where we got iced tea and other judges to try to stimulate demand from a, from a gaming perspective.
Yeah. Cliffy B, you know, as well to sort of try to stimulate demand of developers to come onto the platform. And we also tried porting games that were successful elsewhere from developers, using the Unity based SDK, because the idea is it's very easy for them to bring over. So, tried a lot of stuff, you know, to make it work.
David: Got it. And so, did it, were there anything that worked particularly well, or was it all sort of like, you know, really difficult to get the flywheel going?
Anand: I think, I think the SDK is super powerful and, you know, the games by kind of mobile and like mobile success standards, you know, probably not there.
I think the web audience is very fickle. It's very hard to get something sticky, um, on web. And, you know, I think what like we really learned is that like, at the same time that this gaming stuff was happening, brands are loving our SDK and studios like Pidgeyama Kusama are loving our SDK. And so we're like, okay.
And that, that segment of start starting to take off in terms of monetization, the enterprise brand segment. And so we returned to our roots on the Spatial I. O. side and and now Spatial I. O. is generally, yes, you can still use it as a public facing kind of SaaS platform, you know, for, you know, easy one click metaverse stuff, but, Brands Enterprises is definitely the bread and butter, and that's working really well.
For that SDK, we honed for gaming because they still want, those Brands Enterprise still want that gaming element, and that customizability. But then we, but that also, through that, we stumbled upon the VR market as, as we were trying to, again, signal find and try everything, try web, try mobile, etc.
David: Well, you guys also tried building a couple UEFN games. Did you build any Roblox games?
Anand: We Looked at it. I think we looked at both. We never shipped anything on UEFN or Roblox. It was just like, try, it was, it was kind of like a signal finding, you know, we're in a brand new market. Let's figure out, you know, just how we can claw for life and get something that kind of takes off.
And, you know, as we got into it, I mean, like I went to RDC, I went to Unreal Fest, and like, I saw the people making the top games and like, it felt like, you know, we were in another league. I mean, like I was definitely 20 years older and, they just loved and breathed the platform so much, like, and like, they were just so in it that like, it, it was going to be pretty hard to compete with that level of, you know, person, I think that just understands the, the culture.
David: But you guys are like, you guys are, you know, a very talented group of developers, you know, most people who are successful on Roblox and, and Fortnite didn't start off as like talented developers, you know, they just happened to make something that they thought would be fun. And then all of a sudden it turned out like, you know, hundreds of millions of people agreed with them.
So, uh, like, I guess, you know, how do you, You didn't think that you could just sort of make a better version of the games that you were already seeing on those platforms?
Anand: I mean, they were so, I think like what we found when we got into it, Roblox, hyper competitive, really hard to get through, you know, hard to get our developers to code in Lua, because a lot of it's a big uphill curve to kind of do that, you know, I think, and then UEFN, it was just very difficult to make, you know, the surface area of what you could build in UFN at that time was very small, like basically any idea we'd have was like just, oof, we can't really do anything, there's no persistence, there's no, you know, so like, and most, I don't know if it's changed much, but when we were looking at it, most things were effectively kind of training combat simulators for the real game, and hard to kind of break out of that, so, yeah, challenging.
David: Yeah, the platform has evolved significantly, I would say. Like, if I think if you guys took another look today, you'd be like, oh, there's some things that we can build. I think the, the, the persistence is, is finally there, but there's also some limitations around persistence. Like you can't have persistence across different experiences, which means like, like you can't create an RPG game where, you know, you have multiple different maps within the same storyline.
Soo, that totally makes sense. So then tell me about how you came to decide to build a VR game. You know, you look at these other platforms and you're like, there's nothing here for us. Then you look at VR. What were you seeing?
Anand: Yeah, I mean, after building about 20 games, and not getting to the level of success we wanted to see one of the areas, you know, I mentioned, we're looking at everything.
UEFN, Fortnite, sorry, UEFN, Roblox, web games, like every, you know, SEO is a growth mechanism. You know, portals, you know, there's the whole gamut where can we find that kind of ability to break through? Which I think is very, I mean, that's one thing I noticed going to gaming conferences and just absorbing what people are doing is that like game people, like when people have that first breakthrough, that first casual game that breaks through, they're just kind of like trying a whole bunch of different stuff and they'll find a little crack of opportunity and exploit that. And so like, you know, similarly, we were kind of trying to do the same thing.
Build all these games, mobile, crazy hard, you know, the whole industry. I think last year was like flat minus Monopoly Go or, you know, like, and, and mobile's super competitive, web, you know, also kind of at the mercy of portals, and if you want to get traffic, if you don't have it already, and so that's a challenge.
And so we, and then all of a sudden, like one of our advisors, Charles Zhu, he was looking at VR and saw an opportunity there. And, you know, what's funny is, we've been on Quest since, like, Quest 1, you know, we've, and, and we never, you know, we knew about Guerrilla Tag, we saw, you know, but we just thought it was this isolated thing, and, um, you know, not really replicable, and, and, you know, we just, we didn't even consider, you know, doing a VR game, it was right under our nose.
But, as we started talking to some of the VR developers, people were making, like, decent revenue. And the, ARPU was like, whoa, okay, this is interesting.
David: Can you share some numbers?
Anand: Trying to think, not without, I don't want to reveal a lot of, you know.
David: You don't have to say, like, how much money were you hearing?
Anand: Well, okay, well, Guerilla Tag has mentioned that they've released, they've made 100 million in three years. Now, they're literally the top, top, top, top, although, you know, yeah, so that like, and that was a couple years ago, I think those numbers are slightly older, so you could imagine that the market's grown a bit and they're making more than that, but that gives you a sense, like, of, you know, where they're at, right?
How much is the market growing?
David: Just, I'm just trying to wrap my head around the VR market just to get, you know, grounded in that.
Anand: It's hard to say, I mean, like, you know, holiday, like, we've grown 4X since December. Which is awesome. Certainly there's a bit of bump from, like, Quest 3S launched this December.
And, you know, definitely there was an influx and that helped drive it. Like, you know, X Christmas was our biggest day ever. All those 3Ss opening up and stuff. We don't have meta information, like, no pun intended, on how the platform's doing. But 3S has definitely been helpful. You know, I think having something at that lower price point is really key because people still love, like, the audience that plays Guerrilla Tag and Animal Company, EAPS, they still love the 1. 99 price point, you know? And I think, like, yeah, there's a certain, like, that audience and that price point is, like, a really good fit.
David: Got it. And, and so, I guess it sounds like people on VR are sort of used to this, this price point.
It's better, like, 199 doesn't sound like you're making a ton of money on, you know, from every player, but
Anand: Oh, sorry, I meant 199 for the headset itself. Oh, I gotcha, I gotcha. So, so, so like, like, like, I think the Quest 3S is 299. But 199 is really like, you know, where you could really like players on the hardware are somewhat cost sensitive, it seems, and the lower the price goes, because I think that the quest three was closer to 500.
And that was the only headset market until Christmas or until end of last year. And so it was kind of an art, maybe an artificial drag on the market because they're trying to sell out their old quest to inventory. And, you know, that was slightly cheaper, on special, whatever, but TLDR, cheaper the headset, I think the cheaper this audience kind of loves it.
And what this audience is, it's the guerrilla tag, social, free to play younger audience, um, yeah.
David: Got it. So you've seen a lot more engagement in the last few months because this new lower cost headset came out and, you know, a lot of people picked it up around Christmas.
Anand: Yeah, yeah. And the good news is like so far, we're still seeing like February still been strong.
And, you know, like there's some seasonality that, you know, generally cools off in Jan, but we're still seeing in Feb. So I don't know if that's like the, the, the, the growth of the underlying platform or, you know, something we're doing or a bit of both, probably a bit of both.
David: Got it. Okay. In terms of the total VR market, do you have a sense of that?
I was just doing some quick Google searching. It looked like it was around like 17 billion dollars, which for the broader So this is VR game game market specifically. I think the VR market is probably significantly larger than that. But, but You know, if we think, you know, 200 billion is the current market across mobile PC and console, then it's roughly like, what is that?
Eight and a half percent of the total games market at the moment, which is not insignificant.
Anand: I think, yeah, I mean, I don't know what the number is that those ballparks sound about, right? I think the difference is like. You know, maybe how competitive it is, right? Like try to get a mobile hit game, you know, like we built this game in three months and we launched it, um, you know, in July, 4th of July, baby.
And I'm a Canadian, but I, I celebrated 4th of July this year, but with Animal Company release and, you know, in, and then within like six months or whatever, or I think like, you know, since then, like we're now the number one earning game on the platform, which is crazy. Like, I think that that.
You don't hear about that kind of stuff happening in mobile anymore. I mean, imagine being the number one game on mobile, like just in period, like that seems kind of like for an indie team, you know, I mean, we're not in these technically speaking, but for a small team that seems kind of impossible. So I'm trying to say is like the dynamics are different.
Yes, the market size is very different, but the competitive dynamics are also super different. And there's an engaged audience here. Like this, like, Guerrilla Tag publishes their CCU on their website. You can see, like, they're, you know, they're clocking, 70 Um, you know, and they're like, and, and, you know, like they're making, like those guys are monetizing as well.
David: Yeah. So, and it's interesting because you said you launched in July, but it did become the top earning game until around now, you know, January, February, what was like, what was that whole time period? Like, cause I, when I think about a big mobile game launch, I would assume that they become the top earning game pretty quickly after launch because they're doing a bunch of advertising.
So that didn't happen for you guys. It sort of, was it this slow growth or what were you guys? It's
Anand: interesting. I mean, we didn't even launch monetization until September. So we launched in July. We didn't have monetization until September, right? So like, what was crazy is like, we, this was one of our game experiments.
Like, you know, we tried a ton of games. We spent roughly three to, three to five months building them, generally speaking. And this was one of those. It was like a Skunk Works project, building a game within Spatial, which we had done before. And the team wanted to, at the three month mark, the team wanted to work on it longer.
And, you know, it had, it was kind of like a Gorilla Tag clone in the sense that it was like all gorillas with jiggly butts. And they were really fun and silly and goofy, like the eyes popped out of your head, the butts jiggled, and they were just, it was just silly and fun and stupid. And, and the team was like, no, no, we can't launch this, it's too much of a, a clone, and I was like, guys, this is awesome, we have something special here, like, a good pop song when you first hear it.
Sounds like something you've heard before. There's an instant familiarity with it. Right. And so I think we captured that with the initial thing because people instantly could connect with these gorillas and stuff like that. And so, that really helped. But we were not sure like but I also said like guys we want to spend as little time on this as possible because we Need to be the ability to be wrong and build another game in the kind of time allotment We have right rather than like work on it forever and then ship And so we didn't even like Basically, from when we launched, it had super strong CCU growth, TikTok, social, you know, I'm sure we'll get into it, but like, that was a big driver for us, but like, it was kind of up, up, up, up, and every month, you know, we're reaching new highs in terms of usage.
Retention was really strong out of the gate. I think we had, like, possibly near 70 percent D1, you know, 60, 70 percent D1 out of the gate. Like, it was super, super strong, and the numbers we're seeing were really inspiring. And so, You know, but we wanted to do monetization, right? And it took us a while to get there.
A lot of like the first couple of months was just firefighting, like make sure we can like get releases out and like, you know, systems are breaking and we just like players trying to hack us.
David: And were there anything that translated from the spatial work to the VR work or was it like learning a new like language?
Anand: No, I think, well, no, a lot translated. I mean, for one, like. Some of the team members who made Animal Company have been working here six years, you know, like, and so we're like a well oiled team and well oiled machine. We had weekly releases with good engineering practices. So, on Spatial, we had a weekly release cycle, QA, etc.,
And so, like, I, you know, I think , that's been a really helpful thing for us is being able to, um, bring over all that, like with this well oiled team that, you know, is like producing at a weekly pace with, with in systems and, and we were able to bring over a code too, which was exciting. Like our avatar system is pulled over from spatial, which lets us morph any clothing, any cosmetic to any different body mesh.
Which is awesome because it gives us this really rich, sophisticated, um, kind of best in class, avatar cosmetic system in VR. So not only were we pulling processes, expertise, but also code. And we were able to get a bunch of headstarts because we'd already built a monetization system, you know, for a spatial UGC platform and, and stuff.
So there was a lot to pull over for sure. And just the domain expertise of building something, because we, and we had reps of building games as well. So we got a lot of reps in, I think, before this.
David: Got it. We've gone pretty long without actually saying what Animal Company is, so can we, can you give us a description both on what is the, what is the gameplay, what's the, you know, what's the objective, and then also, how are you guys monetizing?
Anand: Sure. Yeah, so, , we, so Animal Company is a, kind of a, in short, kind of a guerrilla tag meets Lethal Company. Lethal Company, the horror friend game, you know, so, you're a bunch of animals, started off with gorillas, and, you know, but now it's all kinds of stuff, goats and moles and all kinds of stuff that you can be, and you go out on adventures, fight monsters, find loot, you know, go in caves, there's a, there's mines where you can mine stuff and find, you know, find loot there as well.
And so it's really exciting. We've got a very regular pace of updates, which is what our players love. On monetization, it is, and, you know, we started off as this horror kind of game loop where you'd go, you'd get scared, it was very scary. But we are moving to more kind of broader based social adventures, , things you can do together and even a potentially creative mode coming up.
I haven't lost sight of the UGC.
David: Nice. Is it PVE or, or PVP?
Anand: Yeah, PVE for now, wink wink. But, yeah, so, and then, immunization started off with cosmetics, and, you know, all kinds of cool, you know, wearables, and, and, like, not, not just cosmetics you wear, but, like, full on, you can buy our mole pack and be three different moles, or what have you.
And then we move to like items as well, like item based monetization. We've got all you can get a grappling gun or, you know, that, that sort of stuff. Now what's cool is that we have a tech tree. But our tech tree is amazing. You go in, you put a headset, you literally put on, you're already in VR, but you put on a VR headset in VR, and now you're in this like crazy expansive environment where you're literally immersed in this like, huge scale tech tree, so you're swinging across like a gorilla, you know, you know, collecting items and making sure you're trying to fill out your tree and stuff, so that was a really successful update for us.
So far we've been hitting on every like, major game update we've done, like we did the tech tree update, which was really huge for us. Monetization and engagement, also our mining update was really big for that as well.
David: Very cool, and I, you sort of mentioned it before I interrupted you, but you were saying that UGC might be on the way, which I think is, I love that because it's like, you're spending all this time trying to build the games, to sort of start that flywheel on your own platform.
And now you've gone to, you know, a different platform, you know, the meta quest. Platform and you built a game there and now this is successful and now you can bring in the UGC because you already have the player base.
Anand: I think, yeah, we're doing it more closer to what Fortnite did, which is get the hit game and then, you know, you know, extended.
I mean, I think like and what's cool is like we're seeing kids are already. Using the the rocket packs to make angry birds like they're in piling up the crates and like they're already finding ways to make games and make a creative mode without an official creative mode. So it's pretty good. It's gonna be pretty amazing to see them actually do it for reals.
David: That's awesome. Yeah. And I feel like rec room is sort of your ally here where they've been like training these kids to use VR headsets to be really creative for like the last Yeah. Yeah. It's five to 10 years, I don't know if it's quite been 10 years yet, but, you know, almost there, so there's this whole, you know, audience who is used to using UGC tools and used to VR headsets that I feel like you've sort of probably brought into your game in, in a large capacity.
Anand: Yeah. And it's really leveraging the loop that, that, you know, Roblox, like, I think like. In Roblox, you, kids play the games, they love them, and then they kind of graduate to being a creator and making stuff, and like, it's like this virtuous cycle, and what we're seeing, like, what's different about, like, games, like these games today versus how, you know, when we were a kid, you know, like, where you buy the game, you know, for the Nintendo cartridge, you put it in, and whatever's on the cartridge is what you're playing, and that's it.
These are like, the loop I'm seeing now is so cool, because basically, kids, they get the game, they also go on the Discord, and they are like, voting on features, so there's like a, there's a, there's a conversation with developers on that, right, that they're like, we like this feature, we don't like this feature, so, so, Like, I wish I had a game like that when I was a kid where I could tell developers, like what features I want, stuff like that.
And also they're playing the game. There may everyone want, oh, you know, kids all want to be YouTube streamers. They want to be the next Mr. Beast. So they're making content and then they're putting it out there and then other kids see the content and then they come into the game, you know, and, and then play it.
And so that's that loop, which I think is like, you know, the kind of the almost the core metagame of, you know, this and other, other, things that are taking off, that's the core, the core meta loop, I guess, that's powering some of our growth and also other platforms.
David: Yeah. I feel like one of the things people don't appreciate about UGC game platforms is just how much work goes into the community management side for, by game creators and they're managing communities of 10, 000 to a hundred thousand, sometimes a million players. And that's incredibly valuable to the platform. And a lot of times it's overlooked, but like you basically, you know, Roblox, for example, has like 10, 000 creators who are managing communities. Massive. And so like, yeah, I think to the degree that you can sort of facilitate and outsource all of the things that go into live ops.
Anand: The other thing that's interesting is with VR that's unique is that, you know, it's got a finite battery life. So They need something to do while they're not in the headset while it's charging, which is interesting. And we noticed that our playtime is like, it kind of has an upper limit in some ways, cause it's like, okay, like that device is going to die, you know, after an hour or 90 minutes, whatever it is,
David: Plug.
Anand: That can, well, there, there is, but you know, people, you're moving around so much and stuff, you know, people don't really want the plug, right?
Like, yeah.
David: Got it, cool. So, I want to sort of transition to looking ahead a bit. So what's next? Are you going to be a VR developer now or are you really just doubling down on animal company and going into UGC and then you're just going to sort of manage, do what you wanted to do on Spatial, but on Animal Company. What's what are you thinking?
Anand: Yeah, I mean, so the exciting thing is we have two businesses that are pretty interesting. So we have spatial still doing really well. We've got that big walmart launch this week, but you're, you're, you're listening to be able to see and it's crazy, compelling, brands, enterprises, continue to use it.
We've actually got some pretty cool AI agent work coming in there as well, like where, you know, there's AI agents. Generally, that's a text box, but there should be a mechanism. There'd be a way to, like, enrich your virtual world with these agents that can teach you stuff for, like, you know, corporate training or show you around or, you know, chat with you, whatever.
So I think that virtual element visual element is quite compelling for spatial. So we're going to continue to grow, spatial there. And then, animal company is just growing by, like, leaps and bounds. I mean, we really want it to be the next, you know, Angry Birds or, or like Big, you know, Adopt Me, like that kind of household name, yyou know, it's, it's, the sky's the limit. I mean, every time, like, it's so touching to see on our Discord, like, people are making their own plushies. They're, like, you know, drawing, like, in terms of fan art. And this stuff is posted, like, like, multiple times an hour. So, we think, like, the ability to become just a real franchise is crazy exciting.
You know, I think, yeah, the future is bright.
David: So, and I'm curious on the, on the MetaQuest side, what is the, what are the platform fees that you're, that you're dealing with?
Anand: Similar to Apple, right? 30 percent on. Yep, exactly.
David: Got it. And to that, to that end, I saw that meta just announced a 50 million horizon worlds fund.
I'm curious to get your perspective on the, you know, you've done this before, right? You've, you've done all of these things, incentives for creators. Now you're also a developer yourself on their platform. So when you see okay, Meta sort of taking these steps, you know, investing larger amounts of money in, in, to incentivize and creation for, you know, their, their, you know, UGC game platform or UGC, you know, social immersive world platform.
What, what does it mean? Like, what does it mean from your perspective?
Anand: Yeah, no, it is interesting. So I feel like, yeah, we've tried, I mean, they're obviously trying it like with a lot more zeros than we were able to throw at it, but, but, you know, we did try a bunch of that stuff before they don't have a fully Unity based development platform.
So you kind of need to have a bigger incentive to get people to learn to use your tools. Cause nobody wants to learn, nobody wants to use your tools unless. They're already players and they're already or, or there's a massive audience that's monetizable. I think they tried the let's make our hit game internally thing with that paintball game.
You know, and, and I think like, you know, that got, you know, decent success, but like not quite the breakaway that they wanted. And now they're, they're doing the developer incentive thing, which, you know, good on them for trying. There's always a natural tension. Cause it's like, you know. They also are a, they're a content developer, as well as a, you know, you know, app store for us, people like us.
So, but, you know, I don't know. I mean, like, if they make it take off, what does that mean? Does that mean we make a Animal Company for meta horizon? I don't know. I mean, audiences kind of, Different, I guess, because, like, if you look at how the experiences are targeted, like comedy clubs and things like that, karaoke, it seems to be targeting an older audience, but then if you jump in the experiences, they're kind of a younger audience, and so, I don't know, they've got to kind of reconcile some of that stuff, but, yeah.
David: Yeah,
Anand: I feel like I'm curious to see, 50 mil's a lot of money.
David: Yeah, and it's it seems like it's on top of the already like the incentives they already have right because they're they give around 50 percent of Spend in horizon worlds already, which is significantly more than what Roblox gives and I won't even get into UEFN because the calculation is all wonky.
But, so like they're giving pretty favorable incentives to creators in terms of, you know, take rate. And then also I think this 50 million fund is on top of that, right? It's like engagement based payouts. So I don't know. I wanted to get, I wanted, I was curious of like, you know, you guys would be like, all right, let's go after that, that pie, or if.
You know, you're, you're happy to explore the, you know, the, the app ecosystem instead.
Anand: I mean, so far it's very fun developing for the app, like for quest players. It's like, it's an awesome audience. They're super engaged, you know, we got the profitability in December as a company, which is crazy.
Exciting. And, you know, I think like sky's the limit, like.
David: Yeah, yeah. So, so when you say profitability, are you, do you mean like on a month over month basis, you have operating profit? Are you saying that you've paid back all of your, you know, your expenses over the last eight years that you've accumulated, right?
Anand: No month over month profitability. And yeah, on a path to that, that second thing, but yeah, since December things are looking very good. We achieved profitability as a total company. Revenues are continuing to increase and ramp up from that, which is crazy exciting. Hasn't cooled off given the seasonality yet, even.
Like, we're in February and things are still going up. So, yeah, profitable and on a path to, yeah, clear all expenses.
David: How long has gorilla tag been a top game, like maybe using that as sort of a benchmark for how long your guys's, engagement will, will, uh, sustain.
Anand: I mean, I believe they came out in, um, like COVID, sort of timeframe.
So around four years. I mean, it's hard to predict, like, to fully correlate it to us, because it was a different time, there was no Guerrilla Games, um, they kind of broke through, and you can buy Guerrilla Tag gift cards and like, you know, a Safeway Now and stuff, right, so. There are a new level of scale, but yeah, we are, I mean, one, we love Gorilla Tag, they're an awesome for the community.
They share their, they share their Gorilla Tag code. They share the CCUs. Um, and so we're, yeah, we're happy to be on that path with them.
David: Does, have there been other Gorilla Tag? You know, I won't like heavily inspired games that have come and gone, or, you know, I'm trying to get a sense of your confidence on, you know, your ability to sustain this for the long term and be one of those, you know, top, top games on the platform for them for a while.
Anand: Yeah, I mean, I think, if you asked me six months ago, I'd be a lot more nervous. I think the things that make me, I'm usually not very confident about this type of stuff. Like I'm not, you know, but I would say that like, I mean, it's hard to say games that have come and gone. Yeeps has been, Yeeps came out.
I think earlier, maybe a year had started or eight months had started, something like that, and they've been quite steady, you know, I think there does seem to be, if you look at the top 20 on, on Quest, a lot of the titles seem familiar, like there is, there is some stickiness to it, but, I mean, we have a lot more confidence now because we're just seeing like the, the, the KPIs we're seeing around revenue continuing to increase our conversion rate, continuing to increase on users and then just Dow, I mean, uh, Dow and now like our, our Dow is up, you know, four X from December one.
So, I think like, yeah, basically, you know, we can't predict the future, but, you know, we, we're also like the number two game. By popularity, so things are continuing to grow, which is really exciting. We think that if we keep, like, hitting on updates, content updates and things like that, we can continue to grow the pie and hopefully stay top.
David: Is this, so is this a, I guess I'm wondering, are you eating Gorilla Tags lunch right now? Um, or are we growing the pie?
Anand: It's hard to say, I mean, like, Certainly, I think there's some correlation in the audience, like when we have an update, you know, and they don't, you know, or they have an update, we can feel it in our metrics kind of thing, but I think we're growing the audience.
Like, I think guerrilla tags, you know, slightly younger. I think they actually allow 10 and up if I'm not mistaken. And, you know, it does feel like a bit of a different audience because like we have a different, you know, we have more and more horror and we have different animals and, you know, I think, yeah.
Yeah, I think it's, there's certainly some overlap, but it does feel like a bit of a different audience, yeah.
David: Yeah, and so Meta doesn't share that data with you and sort of what you're what the most played games are or what percentage of your audience is playing other games you just sort of looking at.
Anand: They do share how you're doing on the platform Generally like your revenue like your benchmark on revenue and engagement and we're top tier on that which is awesome But they're surely top tier too and, yeah. I mean, they're also very, like, I would say they're very good stewards and Samaritans of, like, trying to you know, bring the, bring the teams together trying to like, you know, dress challenges together and stuff like that.
So, you know, hopefully we can all grow that pie together and get more gorillas out there.
David: Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting that you can achieve a similar type of scale because, you know, in Roblox, when you see these copycats, you know, they can achieve scale, but never. Quite the scale of the original.
I'm not saying that Animal Company is a copycat, of course, but, given that there seems to be some heavy inspiration, I'm just drawing the connection.
Anand: Yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean, there's, it's, I think it's like, it's a really, it's like, honestly, grill tag is the most important, like launch on the VR platform.
I think since Beat Saber, probably, like Beat Saber, I feel like, showed this whole new level of embodiment, like a lot of games before Beat Saber, you know, Arizona Sunshine, except Superhot, they were very FPS, you got guns in your hands, you're moving with a joystick. Superhot had a bit of embodiment, and, and then Beat Saber. It was all embodiment, right?
And you saw a bunch of fitness games come out of that and, and, and, you know, a tailwind or a draft drafting that people could do off that. And the gorilla tag took the embodiment and, and to a whole nother level. And, and now there's all these game, this cracked open, this brand new genre and this new market of these, these, these kids who just love that kind of experience. And it's very social, silly, chaotic, and it just maps perfectly.
David: Yeah. And I, I can, I can totally see like a kid being like, hey, I need to get a VR headset, mom, because I need to be able to play guerrilla tag with my friends.
And obviously that's exactly what any, every developer building for this platform is going to appreciate that if you can get more headsets on people.
Anand: Yeah. And I mean, hopefully like, you know, I don't know, like what happened, or when the kid gets a new headset, like they give their old headset to somebody, like something's got to happen with that old headset.
So, you know, we can keep growing the pie that way. That's fantastic. That's a good point. You know, it's kind of a forever game, right? Like, we keep adding to it, there's, there's still an extended richness, we, players don't have a way to create yet in the game, and they're, like, kind of cobbling stuff together, so we want to support that better, different game modes, you know, as well, so, there's a lot to do, I think it would, like, we don't, we're a startup, we're small, we won't take our eye off the prize and go too wide, you know, I think there's ways to go wide within the original, with the existing animal company, you know, Game that like ideally enhances the experience for players or brings it to a new audience, or I think there's like that.
That's probably a safer bet. Could we found something that's working? You know, games are hit driven businesses, you know, and we've got a hit. And so, how can we extend this hit versus like trying to make another hit, you know?
David: Yeah. And you see, you know, whether it's fortnight or, or Roblox that the early, you know, successes end up sticking around a lot longer.
You know, Adopt Me is like, 10 year old game, maybe not 10 years, but like eight year old game for cave in, you know, seven or six year old game. Like these games are stick around when they, when they, are the top games or, and then on, on Fortnite, you've got, you know, bed, bed wars. You've got, the pit, you've got all these games that, you know, we're successful.
Five years ago, and now there's, and there's still the top games on the platform.
Anand: And you, you see it on VR too, interestingly, right? Like Gorilla Tag's been around four years. Beat Saber is still kicking. It's still a top five game. You know, that's like one of the oldest games on the platform, virtual desktop.
Like some of these are OG that are from way back in the day from quest one, or even DK two, I think like, so, , there is definitely, I mean, you gotta not screw it up and I don't know what the list of games are that aren't still around, but we're hot.
David: Um, yeah,
Anand: Yeah, sure, sure, sure. But it's certainly possible, it's certainly possible, which is exciting.
Population one, that's also though, bought by Meta. So maybe that's, you know, but yeah, I mean, we hope to stick around.
David: Well, what I love about, you know, this whole. Entrepreneurial journey is that you've just been, you know, exploring, finding new opportunities to, to generate revenue. And ultimately that's what a good entrepreneur does, right?
Like they don't necessarily stick to, you know, the original vision. They find opportunity and they find, , you know, blue oceans to grow. So I think that's what you've been doing and, and I'm, it's awesome to see that you've, you know, finally hit it with, with animal company.
Anand: Thanks man. Yeah. It's, it's, it is like the entrepreneur journey is long.
It can be long. I mean, I think like this was definitely. It's an overnight success wrapped in a nine year struggle, you know what I mean? Yeah, with like lots of, you know, you brought up those headlines, lots of, fits and starts and, and, uh, trying to find that new gear and, and so on. So yeah, it's been wild, man.
I mean, a lot of battle scars, you know, along the way, but it feels so good to, to finally crack it, you know, after chipping away and chipping away. And, yeah.
David: Yeah. And in some ways it seems like all of those. All of those, you know, opportunities that didn't pan out. We're also still preparing you for the one that did convert, right?
Cause you, you guys had all of this VR experience. You knew the platform, you're able to port a lot of your technology over to, to animal company. And so, yeah, it's awesome to see that also, like if you do all this work, it's not. It's not for nothing, right? Like, there's a lot of things that translate to the next thing you pursue.
Anand: I think, yeah, I think, like, if you think about it as just learning, like, we have a ton of learnings. And I think, like, if we're navigating those, the idea maze, like, I feel like we've explored so many different, like, let's try this way. Nope, that way doesn't work. Let's try this way. Nope, that doesn't work.
But, you know, every time you try something, I think you are learning a little bit more and more about what works and what doesn't work and maybe be more efficient with stuff you try.
David: Yeah, it's interesting if, uh, you know, hindsight's 2020, but if you could talk to young and non, uh, eight years ago, what would you, what would you tell him?
Anand: I don't know. It's, it is tough. I mean, like, it was pretty fun building all those like wide eyed, AR augmented reality demos where we're like. Kind of building the first 3D web browser and building the first, uh, you know, meeting tool where we, like, literally put on the headset in the lab and see a virtual person floating next to you, like our, like our friend Peter from San Francisco sitting in my New York desk in my office.
And so that stuff was so compelling, you know, we got to it. You know, get in front of the, you know, some of the biggest fortune 500s. We don't want to Bill Gates and, you know, the CEOs of like Delta, Netflix and stuff like that, so it was, and, you know, and they used it, you know, which is really compelling.
So that stuff was incredibly fun. You know, I'd like, I don't know if I would tell. Young on and eight years ago, hey, just make a VR game. I mean, the market was in a different place, too You know, we probably could have I mean We're not as smart as lemming who came up with gorilla tag like that was kind of a stroke of genius to that that whole mechanic So I don't think our game would have even a work yesterday or not yesterday eight years ago But I don't know.
It's very hard to say you could say hey don't do X Y Z Where you could say like hey go right for gaming I mean I know we wanted to launch a lot earlier than we did But it's really hard to say hindsight 2020. I mean, we literally, I don't think we could have made animal company eight years ago. We didn't have the team, some of the team members, you know?
So very hard. I don't know. I wish I had a more succinct message for eight year old to go on.
David: And, no, it sounds like the message would be just keep doing what you're doing, man. It's all going to work out eventually. Yeah. Yeah, I hope so. Well, what's the, what's the best way for people to keep in touch, follow your journey?
Um, if they're, if they're interested, yeah.
Anand: Yeah, probably. I mean, LinkedIn or Twitter. I don't really update those a ton, but I should do it more. I usually retweet kind of our stuff. I think my co founder, Jin Ali, he's way better about that. The Discord for Animal Company is like really interesting.
And so that's like, but that's like a firehose. So, if you want to get on that, but yeah, follow Spatial_IO on Twitter. My handle is Anandx, A N A N D X and, what else? I think, Animal Company. Yeah. Follow Animal Company on Twitter and Discord, sorry, TikTok.
David: After this call, I'm going to go put on my VR headset that I got at RobloxRDC23 and, and, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to get, get in the business of animals.
Anand: Yeah. Yeah. Give it a whirl. It's, it's super fun.
David: Awesome. All right. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast, Anand.
Anand: Absolute pleasure. All right, see you. Thanks, David.
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