The quiet rise of a startup that sold $2.5m of virtual land

Josh Settle’s soon-to-be-launched store is listed online as an art gallery, but he sees it as more than that.

“It could be a space for events and a conference room. It could have a recording studio for podcasts or music. I’m also trying to get a film theater placed in the store,” says Settle, an IT professional based in Okinawa.

Settle’s store is in the metaverse. After getting access to it this February, he regularly pops into alternate reality to walk into his shop or to take a stroll around it to admire the scenery.

His shop has the distinction of being the very first store in the art quarter of the RFox Valt, a metaverse built by Vietnam-headquartered company RFox (formerly known as RedFox Labs).

RFox’s gaming-inspired quarter in its metaverse / Photo courtesy: RFox

Brian Cu, co-founder of transportation firm Byahe and the former country president of Grab Philippines, says the metaverse company “has been under the radar.” Cu is an advisor for RFox, which was launched in 2018.

One reason the metaverse firm has been out of the media spotlight, he says, is because it was launched right before the crypto boom.

This is likely to change soon considering RFox is opening its immersive retail and entertainment-centric metaverse to the public sometime “in the middle of this year,” says its founder Ben Fairbank.

RFox aims to tackle all forms of the metaverse by plugging in stand-alone “moving parts” into the Valt and having a focus on gaming, finance, and media, says Fairbank.

Enter stage left

By 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse for work, shopping, education, social, and/or entertainment purposes, says Gartner in a recent report.

It’s no wonder companies want to cash in.

So at a time when firms like Meta, The Sandbox, and Zepeto are building their metaverses, RFox has set itself apart by fitting the classic definition of a metaverse, says Fairbank.

A metaverse has to be interoperable, immersive, and interconnected, he says. “I think of it as a big box with hooks, and anyone can plug any application, any blockchain, into the box. That’s how we’ve built RFox.”

The company has a VR-first approach to the metaverse, which fits the original design of the concept. The non-VR version of the Valt will be rolled out by the third quarter of this year.

Plug and play

Whole is greater than the sum

The long game