Genopets Co-Founder: Jay

Jay, how are you and where are you calling from?

Thanks for having me on. I am in California, Los Angeles. Our team is spread out around the world. We're definitely a remote team here at Genopets, but a lot of us are based in the US. Yeah, I myself, California.

Nice. And have you lived all your life in California or where were you before?

No, I've been all over. I was born in the US, but I went to university here is originally what brought me to LA. That and sunny weather. I'm like, I'm one that's very affected by the weather. If it's too cold or too hot or raining or whatever, I'm not wild about going outside. It very much affects my mood. So when I found out about California, when I found out about this temperate climate, that's never hot or cold and doesn't rain too often, it's perfect for me.

That and diversity of food. I'm a big food person. LA has some of the most diverse food climate that I've anywhere that I've ever traveled. You can get great ethnic cuisine from basically around the world, all here in LA.

Nice. And then why did you choose LA instead of SF, for example, in California?

Well, I went to USC, University of Southern California. So I was in LA. And SF is cold. I do think SoCal weather was a big draw for me. When I initially made this decision to move to LA, it was very much weather, temperate climate. I lived in Texas before and it was always raining, always hot. A lot of people. So yeah, it wasn't my favorite.

Before you started Genopets, what were you doing?

So I got into crypto in 2016-ish, 2017. 2017, 2018, I was one of the first employees at Block.One working on EOS. It was one of the layer one protocols back then that got really popular. I was on the marketing side of things, building community. It was my first foray into Web3 community building. We had one of the most exciting runs through the market of that time, building up a really solid foundation of people that were excited to build a new layer one.

Today, there's like a million layer ones. At that time, it was Ethereum and a handful of others that were starting to spring up. So yeah, that to me was probably one of the most interesting parts of the space is to see the power of Web3, which we didn't even call Web3 that much then. The power of crypto or blockchain to build community around this fundamental technology that was going to change the way the internet worked.

That's what got me really excited about crypto. I've never actually been a huge crypto trader. I've always been more on the building side. I started my career as a product manager 10, 12 years ago. So the idea that blockchain could fundamentally change the way data was transacted and validated online and digital scarcity as a concept really resonated with me and in all the different potential use cases.

Obviously, that's arrived me at gaming today. But it didn't start there. It started at more of the plumbing side of things on the layer one. So yeah, that's kind of what got me into the space. I was there for a few years. And that's where I met my two co-founders, Albert and Ben.

They had one of the most popular projects on EOS at the time called Geno S. They won our hackathon. It was a health data marketplace, actually, that would make an NFT out of your health data and enable passive income to individuals when researchers utilized your data in the aggregate for studies. So today, companies like 23andMe or Ancestry or just in general, when your data is aggregated and sold, you never get a piece of the pie.

So the idea was to make an individual's data into an NFT so that in the aggregate, when your data was traded, you could get royalty on the utilization of your data in said pharmaceutical research or whatever study was using your health data. For a number of reasons that didn't really pan out, it wasn't fun. It was very data-centric and not consumer. So why as an individual would I care? Unless you were going to pay me a bunch of money, then maybe I would care.

And it's funny because that thesis is actually what turned into gaming in crypto. If the game's not fun, I'm not going to play unless you pay me a bunch of money. So Ben, my co-founder, had the idea back then to say, this NFT that represents your health data, it doesn't have to be an NFT that's on chain that nobody knows what it is and it's a bunch of cryptic blockchain stuff. It should be represented by something fun and something you care about, like a pet.

So can we make a pet that is an NFT and has a bunch of blockchain technology stuff behind it, but the average user is not even going to care about that. They're going to care that their pet grows and evolves and looks cooler the more they take care of themselves. And that became the hook for Genopets that tied it back into the previous idea of motivating people to stay active, of rewarding people for taking care of themselves, of providing this way to make people care about living a more active, healthy lifestyle all through the guise of a pet.

Because you'll skip going to the gym most days, but you don't skip feeding your dog. So can we bring those two motivators together and make taking care of your pet something as commonplace as putting in a few extra steps every day?

So you guys had this idea. What did you do? You have this idea. How did you start building it?

And actually I wanted to say, and I totally forgot, usually when I do these podcasts or AMAs, et cetera, I'm walking on my treadmill. I got a treadmill when we started Genopets. I put it under my desk because I'm in meetings all day long, obviously working. So I wouldn't usually get to do this sort of thing. Go out and take a walk is less common for me. I don't know if the sound is going to bother you, but let's test it out and see what happens as soon as the beeping stops.

I don't know if you're getting a lot of background noise there. Hopefully not. It's a little bit noisy as a thing, but it tends to smooth out and I can just get some steps in while we walk or while we talk.

What's the level of your GenoPet?

So I have a level 23 Genesis GenoPet. There's a bunch of process and lore and story behind the way this works. A lot of crypto games typically require you to buy something to get in the game. And then after you buy something, you're constantly looking at how much money I can make because I put money into this game. And the game is predicated on basically this idea that I spent some money to make some more money.

That's actually the thing that I never really liked about crypto is that the only reason to ever get into crypto for the last five years has been to spend some money to try and make more money. It's always been about the finances. Gaming has this unique opportunity to get people to care about crypto, not because of how much money they're going to make, but instead because it's fundamentally going to change the gaming paradigm.

I just really want to play this game. A part of this game or an expansion pack in this game is for me to learn Web3. And that's the way we designed Genopets. Anybody can download the app with no wallet. They don't need to know anything about crypto. You download the app from the store. Today we're invite code only. So if you join our community and you're active in our community, you can get an invite code.

But if you get an invite code to the game, you download the app, you sign in with Facebook or Google or email password, and you start to play. At some point throughout your journey, kind of like every free-to-play mobile game, you'll realize that there's more you could do or there's faster ways you could progress and grow if you learn Web3. If you acquire a wallet and you buy some NFTs, you start making stuff.

Think of it like the upgrades that you typically buy in your regular game. But we do all that through Web3. So it's not a requirement, but it's an opportunity to expand and enhance your gameplay to earn some crypto while you play if you do the Web3 side of the game.

And what's the future of the game? Where do you expect Genopets to be in one year and where is it going to be in three years?

You know, today we start as a step counter. It's a step counter. As you walk, your steps are converted to energy. Your energy fuels your gameplay. There's a bunch of different things you can do with it. But I do think in the nearer term, you know, over the next year, we're looking at a lot more motion inputs. It doesn't necessarily just have to be steps. If you get a good night's rest, should your GenoPet health recharge?

If you eat well, should it be more efficient at converting steps to energy today? Should its mood play into how it's growing and evolving? So maybe you need to pet it and play games with it. So we do see in the near term, completing like a bit of a Tamagotchi loop where you've got this pet that you take care of and, you know, you nurture it. In the longer run, certainly things like battle and exploring an open world and other things to do with your pet as the game gets more robust is the direction we're headed.

I do think there's a big open sea, no pun intended, there of stuff for us to really explore. And then once you have this avatar that is a reflection of you, can you bring it into other experiences? Should it be my avatar in other games? Obviously we'll build more roadmap for our own game, but there's a lot of ways that we're looking at this pet being a reflection of you that, you know, if I'm riding on my, if I'm, you know, if I'm at the gym showing somebody that my GenoPet is level whatever and has had this many reps, et cetera, it's just a cool kind of flex for this digital NFT, I mean, whether or not it's an NFT or whether or not you understand it's an NFT, the progress in this game being measured by my progress in real life has a lot of opportunity to, yeah, to really reach a lot of different audiences.

And then how, what's, walk us through a bit of when it comes to fundraising. When someone is at your stage, you have such a great product, great community, how do you raise funds? How can someone that is building something similar learn from you when it comes to fundraising?

It's interesting. Fundraising is always a whole separate work stream from operating your company. And it takes time. It takes the willingness to put yourself out there. It's a little bit like building community in that you're rallying new people to get behind you and you want them to tell each other about how great your story is. But you're telling a slightly different story. For us, we've always harped on the fundamentals of this project being really attractive.

It's a game that people are going to care about. We have a bit of validation now. The community is strong. People do care about the game. They care about the IP. They like the concept. They're willing to tell their friends to get involved. A lot of the initial flywheel is moving now. When you look at fundraising, oftentimes it does come down to what is that narrative? Is the product's foundation solid?

Do you have the right metrics? Is your retention really sticky? Even at a small scale to prove that it's got some legs. Do you have some growth loops? And then from there, are you capable of scaling the team? Do you have the right people in place? Do you know where to go? I think we're in more of a stage where we'd be looking at a growth round than a seed round. A lot of people, for their initial idea, they put together a deck.

People like the concept. They think there's a market for it. You can raise a small seed round, but with that seed round, what we've done over the last year is start to prove out that concept and really build out the game. So what we're looking at from our position now, if the game were at a similar stage to us, it would really be about identifying what your key metrics are, showing really strong retention and community growth, that there is a viable business model here, and that maybe that next tranche of funding helps you identify the right ways to scale.

Awesome. And when it comes, you mentioned the team. Who's in the team today? You mentioned earlier you are all remote. What's your logic with remote?

Yeah, we're all remote. There's 24 full-time employees. With agency and contractors, we're probably scheduled closer to 50. But what's really challenging from a team perspective, being remote, is obviously some logistics around, you know, being available at certain times and everybody having calls. That's given. But the thing that I think is most rewarding that comes out of that is the time you spend together is oftentimes hyper-focused and really effective.

So we've had a really, we've been half luck, half, you know, just doing it the right way of getting great people together that are willing to stretch the time zones a little bit to make sure we have some overlap, that are willing to be very communicative asynchronously. You know, some of those things really coming into remote work, I think, are very important. But also, it gives you the opportunity to find the perfect skill sets no matter where they are.

Just because you're in Los Angeles doesn't mean you have the same, you know, you have the best skill set for what we need. So there is that benefit. We also do things like, you know, have regular team activities and virtual ones and bringing people together in person. So there's that benefit that comes out of not having to pay for an office every day. You have budget to do other things. But yeah, I don't know.

It's an interesting time. I think a lot of people in the world had to be remote, obviously, for some time. Myself personally, I had worked remotely for a number of years prior to COVID. I've been pretty used to having distributed teams. So it wasn't a big change. Yeah, it's been great, for sure.