In Conversation with Aileen Sim, First Meta

Overhyped or not, virtual worlds are growing in numbers, as are their users. Whether it turns out to be a fad or not remains to be seen, but here Gwen speaks to the lady behind First Meta, a startup offering you financial services in virtual worlds. First Meta has been featured on international sites and news like TechCrunch, WIRED, BBC, BusinessWeek, London Times Online etc. Also, it was was one of four Singapore companies to win a Red Herring 100 Asia award this year! Aileen gives us her story.

Gwen: Congratulations on all your recent accolades! First Meta certainly seems to be doing well. So Aileen, how do you feel about your recent media success?
Aileen: Thank you! =) It feels great! I think it is wonderful that First Meta is receiving recognition at the international level. The company has definitely benefited from our recent press coverage.

Gwen: What is First Meta?
Aileen: First Meta provides real financial services provider tailored to virtual economies. The company is the first to provide a full suite of financial products and services, denominated in virtual currencies, to Second Life® and other virtual economies. The company’s first product, the MetaCardTM a Linden Dollar-denominated credit card was launched on 31-July 2007. First Meta Pte. Ltd. was founded in 2007 by Douglas Abrams and Aileen Sim.

Gwen: What were the initial challenges and difficulties that you faced as an entrepreneur? And specifically, as a female entrepreneur?
Aileen: There were several initial challenges and difficulties (though not specific to being female) that we had to overcome. The first was ironing out a lot of the issues that were present in the old business plan where we targeted game-centric virtual worlds like World of Warcraft, which at that time and still is, the largest virtual economy. Those questions were answered when we decided to shift our focus to socio-economic centric virtual worlds such as Second Life.

The next challenge was in finding good people. We needed people who were not only technically strong but entrepreneurial. They had to build a completely new system from scratch, which usually means a high chance of failure, and also risk not getting paid as the company had not yet secured funding at that time. We were very fortunate to have been able to find such people.

On being young and female, it was challenging initially (even before First Meta, during my undergraduate days) to get people to take me seriously. However, that quickly passed when people started to see that I was actually doing something concrete and producing results.

Gwen: Some predict the death of virtual worlds, what are your thoughts on this?
Aileen: I think that virtual worlds are not going away any time soon. Over the last few decades, people’s lives have shifted more and more onto virtual spaces, be it for socializing, business or entertainment. But virtual spaces such as the web, to date have provided primarily a solitary experience in a flat, 2D space. Interactive, immersive, connected, 3D spaces which are the virtual worlds that we know of today is the next logical progression.

There are several trends that indicate that virtual worlds are here to stay.

– Firstly, the increasing focus on entertainment. When the internet and the web first became popular, they were primarily used for work and communication purposes. In recent years, there has been more and more focus on entertainment, with people using the internet for games, music, movies etc, giving rise to sites like KaZaa, YouTube, Joost etc. Virtual worlds with their rich interface provide the potential for more compelling, engaging forms of entertainment.

– Secondly, the rise of social networking. Virtual worlds are the ultimate social networking tools, allowing for rich, interactive and immersive communication and experiences. Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have grown tremendously popular and I believe that that will spill over into virtual worlds.