We Believe the Metaverse, Like the Internet, Needs to be Open and Accessible to Everyone
Back in 2007, my co-founder Mattias Johansson read The Singularity Is Near by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, which got him excited and inspired. The insights shared by Ray led Mattias to the realization that the exponential advancement in technology would be able to unlock the full creative potential in each person. Over time, this could bring people together in a virtual reality, or what we now refer to as the Metaverse.
Mattias was always creative as a child and while growing up he created everything from music, to drawing and painting, to comic books, and stories. As an adult, he has always been at the cutting edge of technology, whether it be working on the first big budget commercial VR experience for the Oculus, or making his own tools to create digital music, or extending web technology so anyone can use it, pretty much anything that offered the ability to express a thought, or a vision of what was in his mind.
In 2015, Mattias discovered the possibility to create VR in the browser in your mobile phone using the open source 3D library Three.js. He was amazed when trying this out for the first time when he literally looked into another world. A new and unexplored world just laid there waiting for him to explore. He realized how this could enable millions and millions of people all over the world to use the web as a gateway to the Metaverse, so he got to work focusing on bringing his ideas to life.
Early the next year, Mattias showed me what he was working on and I realized this new medium was going to have a lot of potential. I have always been passionate about building businesses and he has always been passionate about creativity. Since we met and worked together in the early 90’s repairing arcade machines and running carnival games, we knew we always wanted to work together on our own company, when the time was right.
There’s a special chemistry that you can see surrounding the company even today. Along the way, whenever we have needed someone for a key role, or we needed an opportunity to materialize, a meeting to happen, or for something to work out, the universe has somehow aligned. Now when we see the market opportunities in Metaverse, UGC and Web3 at the exact moment we are where we are, the timing is perfect. The important moments for the company have truly been serendipity.
Even before we founded the company we‘ve had the word Metaverse in the back of our minds. Like the VR boom and perceived bust a few years ago, Metaverse seemed like a word that we didn’t dare bring up, especially with investors because it has huge meaning. It also sounds like it might be too ambitious.
So in 2019 we had been in business for a couple years and we put up our first prototype at HiberWorld.com. The feedback was amazing with tens of thousands of people coming to check out the platform and the easy, frictionless no-code 3D creation it offered. A lot of people were likening it to Roblox, on the web, although we didn’t have anywhere near the content offerings of Roblox, nor did we have the variety of games and experiences. But since we didn’t require the ability to code, it was a lot more accessible to an audience hungry to express themselves.
Later that year we released touch creation, which made it possible to use mobile phones and tablets to instantly create, all through the web and without the need to download anything. This made the platform grow a lot organically because creating was simple, easy, and anyone could do it. We also weren’t blocked on a lot of the school networks like Minecraft and Roblox were, so we became somewhat of an underground hit at schools. We then started to truly understand how people were using the platform.
They were making games, experiences, hangouts to discuss homework, pixel art showcases, and one fateful day, when NBA superstar Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi passed away in a tragic helicopter accident, the community even made 3D memorials to express their sorrow and grief. It was a sad day, but we also saw how HiberWorld was helping people to show how they felt and discuss their feelings with others. From the tragedy came more realization for us that we were creating a platform where people could spend time in the community and not be afraid to be who they are.
We continued to grow as a company, raising seed and seed+ funding rounds. We actually drew the attention of the original marketing director of Angry Birds, SYBO, creators of Subway Surfers, and the co-founder and former CMO of Discord. They all invested alongside some of the best investors on the planet. We’re talking about really smart people that we consider part of the team because it matters who is in the trench and on your bench when you are going after a huge opportunity.
Over the past two years, more than two million 3D creations have been made on HiberWorld. That’s two MILLION virtual worlds from the minds and hearts of our passionate community, all while flying under the radar and not really marketing the platform at all. This is all on the back of a prototype that we were using to prove out the potential of the platform and what appealed most to the community.
We know they love to create. They love to socialize and be with their friends. They love to make new friends. But most of all, they love that they can do all of this just by typing in a url in their web browser: www.hiberworld.com. No-code creation without a download makes it fast, easy and fun to jump in. We like to calculate TTF or Time To Fun, and we know we have mere seconds to capture and retain attention. We seem to be doing something right.
Last year we saw how the community was evolving and because of the global pandemic, we saw incredible organic growth. With all of the isolation in the world, people were turning to HiberWorld to escape reality, hang out with the friends they couldn’t see in real life, and also to make new friends. Millions of virtual worlds offer a lot of variety and it makes it easier to find people with similar interests.
Spring forward to October last year. Mark Zuckerberg took the word Metaverse and put it into the public lexicon. Remember we started this story talking about that? Well, when your parents and grandparents are asking about the Metaverse, it is a pretty well circulated concept. With that, we realized the time was right and that it is time for us to talk about what we have been working on since Mattias first dreamed of the Metaverse many years ago.
We are working on the Metaverse. That’s not to say that we are the only ones doing so, but we and many other companies, not just Facebook, are working on delivering the tools and technology that will bring generations into this emerging alternate reality together.
Today we are starting the roll out of our new engine and platform which will start to fulfill the mission that we set out to achieve years ago. To give everyone the ability to unlock their creativity and participate in the Metaverse. This means making content creation accessible to everyone, supporting digital ownership and interoperability through the use of Web3 technology, and embracing inclusion where everyone has their own virtual space in the Metaverse.
As for the new experience, we have significantly improved the graphics, increased the number of people that can share a single virtual world, and possibly the most exciting part, we have added the ability to co-create with friends in real-time. We also have a massive roadmap of features and updates that is in the works, and I’m confident the results will be jaw dropping.
The first part of the roll out is live. We have an App for Apple iPhones that is now available in a few test markets, namely New Zealand, Australia, and the Philippines. This new experience is what we have been working on quietly over the past two years. Over the coming months, we will roll out to more countries, offer the new experience at HiberWorld.com, and support more devices and hardware platforms. But essentially today is the day we start the next phase of our journey to open up the Metaverse to the masses.
Here’s a peek at what we have today, and this is just the beginning:
I’d like to take this last moment to applaud our team which has now grown to 70+ people, all dedicated to building out this creative platform so it can support anyone and everyone that wants to participate in the Metaverse.
I can’t wait to see what’s next.
-Michael Yngfors, Co-founder and CEO, Hiber
