Veteran Entrepreneurs Set Out Again: Plai Labs Discusses Why They Choose Web3

Author: Plai Labs

Original Title: "INTRODUCING YOUR NEXT GENERATION SOCIAL PLATFORM POWERED BY WEB3 AND AI"

Compiled by: Babywhale

Web3 and AI social platform Plai Labs announced on January 20, Beijing time, the completion of a $32 million seed round financing, led by a16z Games and a16z crypto. It is rare in the Web3 space for a16z to bet on both gaming and cryptocurrency sectors simultaneously.

In fact, the two founders of Plai Labs, Chris DeWolfe and Aber Whitcomb, were the founders of the social media platform MySpace and the game studio Jam City. The two veterans, who started their entrepreneurial journey 20 years ago, shared their thoughts on re-entering the Web3 space in a blog post after the financing announcement:

On the 20th anniversary of MySpace and the 13th anniversary of mobile gaming company Jam City, Aber and I are back in the game with our new company Plai Labs, which will leverage Web3 and generative AI technology to provide the "ultimate" online social experience.

The development of network technology and the progress of its functions have created new and better ways to build value and entertainment around people's digital identities. Today, at a new inflection point in consumer technology and on the eve of the next significant evolution of the web, we launched Plai Labs to reconstruct social networks from the ground up. We are leveraging the collective experience of top senior engineers, game developers, Web3, design, and AI experts to deliver all the latest technological advancements to the public in an intuitive and engaging way, allowing them to benefit from their digital identities.

Before we founded MySpace in 2003, the web was essentially static, meaning it was more like a reference guide or encyclopedia of content. You often hear the term "Web 1.0" to represent content published on file servers, where the internet was a medium for you to read that content, accessing information slowly through dial-up and simply reading it. If you were a law student or didn’t want to carry a lot of books, it was convenient, but it lacked vibrancy and the ability to add or write additional content.

Around 2001, with the emergence of Web 2.0, we could read and write on the web. This meant that if you had some HTML knowledge, you could create and upload written content to a webpage, which had an address on the internet accessible to the world, and you could also upload a small image or a blinking logo to the webpage.

For MySpace, our goal was to make it easy for everyone, not just developers, to enjoy the conveniences of Web 2.0 and have an intuitive space to showcase their digital identities, express their creativity, and share with the world. We made it easy to drag and drop content on MySpace, allowing users to create online personas. We used to say it was like a "snapshot" of your bedroom or dorm room: from movie posters to album covers, books, the causes you supported, or, in most cases, your friends around you.

This was the beginning of social currency, with likes, comments, and other features. With the widespread adoption of high-speed internet and mobile phones capable of shooting videos and high-quality photos, MySpace became the gateway for an entire generation to enter the world of online interaction, driving a revolution in online life. People like Dane Cook, Bruno Mars, and Katy Perry quickly harnessed the power of the internet and amassed large followings on MySpace as their first foray into the online world. Meanwhile, established talent and entertainment brands recognized the value of these online communities, seeing them as fertile ground for growth. For example, "The Office" premiered on MySpace before it aired on NBC, and Obama’s town hall meetings were also held on MySpace, where musicians debuted their new singles.

In 2009, after selling MySpace to the American publishing conglomerate News Corporation, Aber and I were captivated by the rapid rise of the intersection between gaming companies and social media, particularly in Asia, where we saw how mobile became a giant in the dissemination and consumption of gaming entertainment. Gaming was being democratized for the masses. Aber and I knew it was time to venture into the next wave of gaming, so we co-founded Jam City.

At Jam City, we placed a strong emphasis on building analytics and testing tools to help us understand player behavior and how to customize their experiences based on each player's skill level and pace. We doubled down on providing fresh and engaging content to our players every day. We brought major IP games like Harry Potter, Family Guy, and Jurassic Park to fans around the world, creating dynamic and exclusive extended experiences for the audiences of these IPs. It goes without saying that we witnessed firsthand how today’s players have begun to have higher expectations for their gaming experiences. Players have become more sophisticated and focused on earning and accumulating digital goods, including unlocking certain rights, or even just the bragging rights among other players. What do these goods mean to them? That successful "badge" or limited-edition character is real. As long as others can see it or know they earned it, it has real value.

Leveraging our experience in social and gaming, we ventured into Web3 with the blockchain interactive experience of the chain game Champions Ascension, which is currently in Pre-Alpha stage and has been opened to NFT holders, soon to be available to everyone. Champions Ascension is a meticulously crafted digital playground filled with a variety of crazy characters who build and battle in a virtual world called Massina. Every aspect of this gamified metaverse utilizes creative tools, and we believe these tools will guide us into a new realm of interactive entertainment. Our internal "wizards" (animators, illustrators, designers, engineers) will continue to iterate so that more people can experience this virtual world. Additionally, our UGC platform provides every player and developer with a brush, allowing them to participate in our creator economy. As we continue our journey with Plai Labs on Champions Ascension, we hope users will continue to engage and have ownership over everything created.

We are also witnessing the rise of a different type of content creator, who outputs images never seen before in the world through your interaction capabilities and training datasets. This human experience with AI marks the first time the public sees and feels AI, and it’s an exciting area for Plai Labs. Over the past year, while developing Champions Ascension and supporting the platform and products for this new social experience, we have been developing and utilizing new AI and generative art protocols in Champions.

We love the moments when AI connects with creators and inspires them. We want to invest more energy in this area. Products like Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Midjourney have helped propel this new field of visual arts. Plai Labs has several products in development, and we believe these will bring new momentum to this field. Stay tuned for our upcoming products.

If there’s one thing we learned from founding MySpace and developing games at Jam City that have been downloaded billions of times, it’s that experiences need to be fun and approachable to meet the needs of a broad user base. You don’t need to be a developer to use MySpace; you just need to be a passionate creator. Moreover, we unleashed the imagination of mobile devices, creating advanced gaming equipment that allows users to experience with friends around the globe. Now with Plai Labs, we will carry that same spirit into a new stage, merging social and entertainment to create a new model that allows users to experience ownership, community, monetization, and content creation.

Our team of innovators and practitioners is top-notch. We are carefully building a company whose products are interconnected and will serve as a stepping stone for more products. Most importantly, the products and experiences we are developing will be fun, shared, and contribute to driving the next revolution of social networks, benefiting millions of people.