Interview Preparation

startups that look like to improve an industry’s aging infrastructure are definitely welcome in sectors like financial services and healthcare. But why would a company build infrastructure for an industry that seems to have hit its prime and surpassed it in record time?

That was my question when I saw the news about Futureverse’s recent $54 million Series A round. The startup is a platform of 11 companies ranging from game studios and entities that enable web3 payments, to blockchain startups that provide the tools for brands and developers to more easily create content for the metaverse.

am i missing something aren’t we all tired of hearing about the metaverse against our will? Haven’t we noticed that people don’t want their social or work life to be anything like Second Life?

Aaron McDonald, co-founder and CEO of Futureverse, told TechCrunch+ that some of the most vocal players in the category have made the metaverse look like one thing, a virtual world, as opposed to what he sees: technology that could create a virtual world and also power many other things.

For McDonald’s, it’s not unlike how we think about the Internet today compared to when the term was first coined: it’s no longer a thing, but rather the thing that powers apps and websites. In keeping with that framework of thought, Futureverse defines the metaverse as the collection of interoperable applications built on top of user data.

Essentially, Futureverse is looking to help people create more comprehensive experiences where users don’t even realize it’s running on the blockchain or using NFTs, McDonald said.

An example of this is a game that Futureverse released with FIFA for the Women’s World Cup. Users train a team of automated players in an immersive world, but are unaware of the fact that it runs on web3 and uses NFT. For most users, then, it’s just a game.