Diving into a New World with VRJAM CEO Sam Speaight

The first multiverse platform able to provide real-time live virtual events and concerts, award-winning metaverse entertainment platform VRJAM, is officially launching today and anyone can now access the platform by going to www.VRJAM.com. VRJAM uses real-time motion capture technology and VFX to enable creators to provide the most real live experience that’s available in a virtual world today. These unique abilities will now open the potential for brands and performers to host live events in the metaverse unlike ever before.

Recent partnerships with major companies and brands, such as interactive metaverse concert streamer Animal Concerts, Ethereum scaling blockchain protocol Polygon, NASA data-based Martian 3D mapping company Mars4, the upcoming launch of their native cryptocurrency VRJAM Coin on November 17, and an investment awarded by the creator’s of Fortnite, Epic Games’ prestigious MegaGrants program, all further highlight the vast potential and capabilities that VRJAM can provide.

VRJAM have partnered with leading Web3 music powerhouse Animal Concerts to bring some of the world's biggest music artists to the VRJAM platform inside a magical, custom built virtual events space. The 'Animal Concerts Villa' is an opulent Grecian mansion, created by VRJAM's award winning 3D graphics team to host live events and shows from Animal Concert's community of celebrity clients. To launch this remarkable metaverse events venue, a celebrity partner will present a concert performance within the space that will eclipse any live music event that has happened to date in the immersive technology space.

Using the power of VRJAM's real-time motion capture technology, an artist’s physical movements, voice and presence will be projected live into the metaverse and the performance will manifest in real life and inside the Animal Concerts Villa, simultaneously. The musician will exist within the Animal Concerts venue as a high quality 3D avatar created using technology from VRJAM's partners, Ready Player Me, the global market leaders in avatar creation technology.

VRJAM also recently announced its partnership with Ethereum scaling blockchain protocol Polygon to build Planet Polygon, a new immersive live events space within VRJAM’s platform. With Polygon’s expertise in blockchain solutions and VRJAM’s advanced virtual world-building in the metaverse, the two will create a state-of-the-art interactive branded virtual arena for gaming, music, and e-sports fans around the world to share unforgettable experiences.

Another recent partner VRJAM has teamed up with is NASA data-based 3D mapping company Mars4 to build the Mars Block 398 plot in the metaverse. Mars4 simulates a 3D map of the Martian terrain based on NASA Mars data, similar to a Google Earth 3D map of Mars. After the development of the plot, the two parties will jointly build it into an integrated community gathering club on Mars, with a complete VR experience, panoramic view, and real-time chat, interactive (3D) game objects, galleries, meeting rooms, huge open spaces for performances and collaborative events.

Another tremendous feat that further highlights VRJAM’s unique offering is the recent awarding of an investment from the creators of Fortnite, Epic Games via their prestigious MegaGrants Program. As tens of thousands of the gaming industries’ top companies at the forefront of technology are considered for this award and previous winners include Pixar Animation Studios, this is a crowning achievement for the newly launched platform.

This month VRJAM has launched and is now available for anyone to access via PC, and for the optimal virtual experience, it is Meta (Oculus) Quest 2 compatible, to interact with people around the world. It's a revolutionary real-time platform for virtual events and immersive content creation. By utilizing Web3 technologies, combined with their team’s expertise and passion, VRJAM offers users next-generation solutions for live performances in the multiverse. VRJAM empowers creators, platform owners, and brands to design and realize interactive, immersive experiences that not only leave their audiences awestruck by their beauty but inspired and eager for more.

VRJAM’s multiverse platform offers solutions for true live performance using technology that is years ahead of other similar platforms. It provides unsurpassed user experience and offers fans an array of unique features, including:

• A persistent ‘always on’ virtual world with a variety of live events happening every day
• A platform for the creation and rendering of revolutionary new types of NFTs
• A space for direct-to-fan engagement and the creation of ‘fan experience’ Esports
• Powered by native in-game cryptocurrency 'VRJAM Coin’
• A digital solution to empower game streams and Esports to exist in the multiverse
• A platform for the distribution and monetization of avatars, NFTs and recorded content from professional players, and spectators

VRJAM was founded in 2017 with a vision to combine blockchain and immersive technology to transform the human experience in digital space. Today, VRJAM is an immersive, live experience platform built on the Matic blockchain designed to magnify the connectedness of human beings in virtual space. It will help transform the metaverse for the better and create new ways to enhance and value the human experience.

We spoke with VRJAM CEO Sam Speaight for an exclusive and insightful interview you can find below.

What was your initial vision for the VRJAM platform and how have you seen it expand in the course of the past few months?

The initial vision is as it is today, and hasn’t changed. We set out to build the solution for content creators to reach fans and audiences in a more authentic way, in a way that was better, more effective, more amazing, and more fun than any other solution out there, and I believe that’s the product we’re bringing to market next month. It’s taken a long time getting there, but the vision that we set out with in 2017 has not changed.

In your eyes, how does VRJAM differ from other live media platforms out there right now? What sets VRJAM apart from its competitors?

VRJAM is intended to be a democratized solution, most of these other platforms are really only providing these kinds of technologies to elite class content creators and high paying clients. What we’re trying to do is provide a turnkey solution as a platform that's going to be available to any content creator be they small or large, any kind of global brand from an eclectic startup or a bluetooth tech corp. And this is to be something that really provides a solution that is accessible and available in a way that's uncommon in the industry today.

How does working with VRJAM differ from your prior work within the music realm? How would you say it's similar?

It's different in every way because what we’re doing now is software development. Some of the use cases for our platform well fit into the music businesses. It’s a part of the brand, but the platform itself is vertical agnostic. Any kind of solution where a client wants to reach an audience is a place within which our platform can create values. By no means are we beholden or locked into the music industry or music industry space. It's different in every way. Software companies are very different from the entrepreneurial endeavors involved in my former life in the entertainment space. One thing that’s similar is that in the latter part of my career I was always very involved in events. A lot of what I did focused on events of different kinds, from brand activations to concerts to festivals, and these are just events of another kind. Another flavor, another form out of events. Ultimately, these are still events and live experiences, and that live moment is vital, it's visceral, it's amazing, and it's addictive, and I'm just as enthralled by it today as I was when I put my first DJ party on at age nineteen.

With your experience in a music business and live background, how did you carry over your knowledge and expertise into the VRJAM realm?

Not many of the skills were transferable. The business management skill set certainly was, and having to survive in the crazy, tumultuous world of entertainment which is a brutal place to be as an entrepreneur a lot of the time really taught me to be a survivor, to withstand deprivation, and to really be incredibly agile, and i think that's benefited me a lot in current circumstances, in the tech vertical that we’re working in today. Also the native understanding of what a high profile content creator wants and needs in terms of live events and live experiences. That understanding really came about after many years of working with all sorts of grammy award winning artists. And now, to understand what audience experience really looked like in the real world. And that's not something you can go to college to get. This is something you’ll only understand years and years and years of working with these kinds of individuals and really understanding the creative scope for how live experiences manifest and what makes them magical and beautiful and amazing. That's something that I brought with me to this business which has really empowered some of the product's architecture, which is a big part of what sets our product apart from everybody else. I dare to say that there aren't many other CEOs in this space today that have the same deep understanding of that space, and have been able to bring that understanding to the architecture of their products.

When working on events from established artists to emerging ones, how does VRJAM not only approach talent, but curate the shows as well?

We really provide a support solution. What we try to do is enable artists, content creators, brands, influencers, anybody who wants to reach an audience, to do that in a more compelling, more authentic way. So what the VRJAM solution does is provide a platform, literally and metaphorically, through which we can empower these content creators to do that better, to have a more effective relationship with their audiences. While we do have a curatorial vision to what we do, our goal is not to be curators, but rather to be an empowering force for the creators and content partners that we work with. In this way, we try to create a tool box if you will, to give these guys and girls new ways to both reach creators in a more amazing, awesome way and to monetize those engagements in radically new and exciting ways.

Moving into the VR space in your career, what has that transition been like?

When I first set out to build VRJAM with a kernel of an idea that first became the company birthed in my mind back in 2016, I didn't really understand VR tech, I really had to get to grips with really deep diving into figuring out how the software worked and I leaned on some very intelligent smart people who i was able to attract to the project early on to do that. My understanding is that it has been evolving and rapidly expanding since day one and continues to today. VR hardware itself is evolving at an incredibly rapid pace, so when we launched the business we were really targeting mobile devices, building apps and solutions for VR content to really manifest through mobile phones that slotted into cheap VR viewing devices, but that has changed a lot. The industry and the hardware space has transitioned a lot, we’ve transitioned with it, and now there's more and more devices that have been coming to market and we’re really having to get to grips with understanding how those devices work and how our technology can work with them. Its an ever evolving and ongoing process.

What are you most excited for on the horizon this year from VRJAM?

The launch of our platform is a defining moment of the company so far, and will be the most momentous thing we will have done. While we’ve made our technology available to lots of clients and content creators before this point, it's always been in a low scale, studio style business model where we were providing ad hoc solutions, leveraging the tech we had built. Finally, now in October, the consumer facing widely available platform that we first had in mind when we launched VRJAM in 2017 is going to come to market and we couldn't be more excited about it.

How do you see VRJAM growing in the next year? In the next 5?

The next year is really all about expanding our community, bringing more and more content creators and more and more fans who are amazed by the expanding possibilities of Web3 into this space, offering them magical experiences that they can’t get anywhere else, really kind of expanding our community and building out a wider in-store base in terms of our product. That’s the next twelve months for us. Five years from now is really pushing VRJAM to the forefront to the immersive technology space and becoming the world’s first solution for live events and solutions in the metaverse, and doing that by partnering with a whole array of very very high profile companies, content creators and brands, and we have an incredible array of these partnerships that we’re going to announce in the coming weeks, so watch this space.

Dive into the virtual world of VRJAM by visiting www.vrjam.com.