In this interview, you will learn exactly how to launch your Crypto Token project step by step through the eyes of Michael Wagner, the founder and CEO of Star Atlas. Learn the secrets of how he launched a record shattering token sale on Solana and FTX for a metaverse gaming company.
How did Michael Wagner build a massive community of gamers and creators to launch this AAA title metaverse game within the Solana ecosystem? At the time of the interview, both Atlas and Polis now have a combined market cap of over $6 billion dollars. Their IEO reached an oversubscription rate of 5,000% on FTX, and an oversubscription rate of 3,400% on Solana’s IDO Raydium.
Star Atlas is also a client of Crowdcreate. Listen and you’ll learn how he did it in this interview.
What is Star Atlas?
Michael Wagner is the Co-Founder and CEO of Star Atlas. He is a serial entrepreneur and founder with a formal background in capital market analysis and has founded multiple companies in the emerging blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. Star Atlas is a grand space-themed video game metaverse built on Solana.
Launching an ICO, IDO, and IEO
Star Atlas launched 2 tokens in their Initial Coin Offering (ICO) worldwide. The two tokens ATLAS and POLIS represent different functions to Star Atlas, but both are key to the Solana-powered Star Atlas metaverse. Choosing to launch the Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) on FTX, and an Initial DEX Offering (IDO) on both Apollo-X and Raydium.
Which Blockchain is Best? Solana, NEAR, or Polygon
When we conceptualized Star Atlas in the middle of 2020, we closed on some relationships with Solana and Project Serum. Once we got to know the crew behind Project Serum which includes Alameda Research and FTX, and once we got endorsement of the project at the end of 2020, we made the announcement.
We saw that as an opportunity when we were forming the relationship early on because back in August of 2020, Solana wasn’t very well known. There were maybe 20 to 25 projects building on the platform or in the ecosystem. We saw the potential of the ecosystem, but we also saw that we could create this synergistic, mutually beneficial relationship from the start where we could not only attract users to Solana, but they could bootstrap our publicity and communications to the public to attract the existing Solana user base.
How do you make money with NFTs?
Scaling the company while we were generating revenue and funding all started with the NFT marketplace we created – it was the first delivered on Solana. We developed that platform exclusively for NFTs that would be sold from Star Atlas, but really for the Rebirth Campaign. That was the digital art multimedia meta poster campaign that was over 14 weeks, and that event generated some six and a half million dollars of revenue for us.
That was the first opportunity to present to the people, the immersion and the experience that would be in the metaverse of the future … They were the first experience of Star Atlas and people absolutely loved them.
How to get more NFT Gaming Users?
Alongside the brand new website, we released our cinematic teaser trailer that’s immersive and draws you into the metaverse. I give a lot of credit to Danny Floyd, our chief product officer here because he’s really, really good at balancing the masculine and the feminine. You would be surprised how often that comes up in our conversations behind the scenes.
Games tend to be generally over-weighted towards males because more men play games than women. But that demographic is and has been shifting. I think he found a great balance in the production of that cinematic trailer and in attracting the attention of women as well.
Gaming Strategy and Project Management
It was a lot of strategy and well-orchestrated execution of all of these concepts and just a lot of planning. The stuff that people that don’t see are the tens of hours, or hundreds of hours per week that we’re all putting in. A lot of us have been pulling all-nighters when we have a major launch. It might be a week at a time where we are sleeping two hours a night, making sure everything’s dialed in and getting done. But again, that’s not credit to me, that’s to all the people on the team that are just so passionate and enthusiastic about what the potential of what we are building will actually become.
The other cool part about that is that as much as it is grit, it’s hard work, it’s dedication and a lot of time, but we actually love it. We all love what we are doing.
NFT Gaming PR and Marketing
It’s nonstop. I’m really happy to jump on interviews and discuss it because I want to make sure we are disseminating information appropriately. It’s too easy for misinformation to get propagated across not only cryptocurrency, but games and the whole ecosystem itself. It’s definitely heavy on the interview schedule and the conference circuit for me. This is the opportunity for us to share the vision and talk about the roadmap and talk about the possibilities.
We have a super supporting community of KOLs or Influencers (whichever you want to call them). So many people are producing content on Star Atlas right now, oso I do feel like we’ve reached the critical mass where enough want to talk about Star Atlas itself. Between myself providing interviews, but also the different people producing content on YouTube, it’s almost unavoidable at this point. That is amazing for us to see internally, and it’s really rewarding.
What is a Crypto Launchpad?
I’ve been in the crypto space for a long time, so I’ve gone through a lot of these opportunities starting with ICOs in 2017. The current model is that all of the launchpads have a token with native token staking requirements. So for FTX it is FTT, for Raydium it is the RAY token, and for Aollo-X it was the paid token. It’s kind of a new world though. If you want to call it a crowdfunding platform that works too because these are pretty common mechanics.
The reason we split it up across the three venues is that we really do care about providing fair access to everyone. And there were different mechanics for each one: lotteries through FTX and Raydium, and a dedicated pool for people who had purchased posters in the rebirth campaign.
Crypto Token
Who is the Target Audience for Crypto Tokens?
We tried our best to share all the instructions and information to participate, but what we underestimated was the amount of interest we had from the nascent gaming and crypto community or user. These people have never interacted with a Metamask or a Phantom wallet. They don’t understand that they have to purchase these secondary tokens and stake them for ticket access.
Featured on This Episode
Summary
Learn how and why Star Atlas decided to launch their crypto token with a dual IDO and IEO token generation event to make the experience more fair for the community, and what were the actual marketing techniques that moved the needle. If you’re thinking about launching your own token, you need to listen to this episode and learn from Michael Wagner who has successfully launched the Star Atlas token.
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Show Transcript
Ivan Kan: Star Atlas, the record shattering token sale on Solana and FTX. That’s building the metaverse gaming economy, both Atlas and Polis. Now have a combined market cap of over $6 billion. Their IDEO reach an over subscription rate of 5000% on FTX and oversubscription rate of 3400% on Solanas radium. How did Michael Wagner to CEO and founder at star Atlas build a massive community of gamers and traders to launch this triple a title metaverse game within the salon ecosystem Stat Attlas is also a client of Crowdcreate listen, and you’ll learn how he did it in this interview
Michael Wagner: Because Michael Wagner co-founder and CEO of star Atlas, it’s been a really wild year. I mean, we just formerly announced the, the company back in January. So like January 9th, and this was following a couple of months of pre-production planning. So really towards the tail end of 2020 and mid 2020 is when we conceptualize star at the tail end, we kind of closed on, on some relationships with Solana and with project serum and, and, you know, the kind of the crew behind project serum, which includes Alameda research and FTX. But we were able to get the endorsement of the concept at the end of 2020, that took us into the announcement in January. But to your exact point, I mean, we’ve already delivered a number of products over the course of the year, and this took place while we were scaling the company while we were generating revenue and, and, and kind of funding.
And so that all that started with the NFT marketplace that we created, it was the first delivered on Salona. And we developed that platform exclusively for NFTs that would be sold from star Atlas, but really for the rebirth campaign. So that was the digital art multimedia Mehta poster campaign that was over 14 weeks. You know, that event generated some six and a half million dollars in revenue for us. But I’d say more importantly is that was our first opportunity to present to people, the immersion and the, the experience that would be the S the, the metaverse in the future, right? So we started to reveal some of the background of Laura at the game. We had the, these posters were all augmented with augmented reality or enhanced with augmented reality. And we collaborated with a number of mainstream musicians like audition based jackers and dead mouse to produce audio soundscapes behind these.
And there were a ton of people to sharing them on social media. So that was one of the coolest things for us to see is, you know, these were digital collectibles. They were the first experience of star Atlas and people absolutely loved them. So that felt really good. That kind of propelled us through July and July was just an absolutely massive month. We released our game economics and token ops white paper. We released a brand new website. That’s also really immersive and draws you into the metaverse the cinematic teaser trailer that you referred to. You know, I’ll, I’ll give a lot of credit to Danny Floyd, our chief product officer here, because he is really, really good at balancing the masculine and the feminine. You would be surprised how often that comes up in our conversations, kind of behind the scenes, you know, because gamers tend to it like generally is over-weighted towards males, right? Men play more games than women, that demographic is shifting. But yeah, I think he found a great balance in the production of that cinematic trailer and in attracting the attention of women as well, you know, in a very subtle way. So anyway, that came out and then we launched our TGE token generation event that was across FTX and radium and Apollo. That was a massive success. And most recently
And so that all that started with the NFT marketplace that we created, it was the first delivered on Salona. And we developed that platform exclusively for NFTs that would be sold from star Atlas, but really for the rebirth campaign. So that was the digital art multimedia Mehta poster campaign that was over 14 weeks. You know, that event generated some six and a half million dollars in revenue for us. But I’d say more importantly is that was our first opportunity to present to people, the immersion and the, the experience that would be the S the, the metaverse in the future, right? So we started to reveal some of the background of Laura at the game. We had the, these posters were all augmented with augmented reality or enhanced with augmented reality. And we collaborated with a number of mainstream musicians like audition based jackers and dead mouse to produce audio soundscapes behind these.
And there were a ton of people to sharing them on social media. So that was one of the coolest things for us to see is, you know, these were digital collectibles. They were the first experience of star Atlas and people absolutely loved them. So that felt really good. That kind of propelled us through July and July was just an absolutely massive month. We released our game economics and token ops white paper. We released a brand new website. That’s also really immersive and draws you into the metaverse the cinematic teaser trailer that you referred to. You know, I’ll, I’ll give a lot of credit to Danny Floyd, our chief product officer here, because he is really, really good at balancing the masculine and the feminine. You would be surprised how often that comes up in our conversations, kind of behind the scenes, you know, because gamers tend to it like generally is over-weighted towards males, right? Men play more games than women, that demographic is shifting. But yeah, I think he found a great balance in the production of that cinematic trailer and in attracting the attention of women as well, you know, in a very subtle way. So anyway, that came out and then we launched our TGE token generation event that was across FTX and radium and Apollo. That was a massive success. And most recently
Ivan Kan: What? It’s like a pause here, cause you got a lot there. So I want to talk about early on. So you gotta, you got a CoLab, you said with some of those artists, how did you get those collaborations? So early on, because you know, you didn’t mean you do your token generation event you’d even launched the ships yet. How did you get so much excitement? And from these like big, big artists, how did you do it?
Michael Wagner: You know, it’s, once again, it’s going to be a lot of credit given to my team here. So Pablo was leading up publicly ragas is our chief revenue officer, and he was leading up a lot of the business development and outreach. Now we happen to have a great connection through one of our third-party marketing providers, magic few to, to contact Marlin with base shakers. And that was kind of the first deal that we cemented. But, you know, Pablo landed up, landed relationships with grouplet groups like, like CMG, right? And CMG was the entity behind the Neil Armstrong estate. So when we launched the legends poster that was dedicated to Neil Armstrong in collaboration with space X and incorrect collaboration with the United States space force, like that was all driven through that relationship. So it helps, you know, we, we definitely had a revenue sharing models included in all of those, but I’ll tell you beyond the money, the people that we did collaborate with or so supportive. Right. And they love everything that we’re doing. And so I’m just looking forward to us producing events in the future, like in game music festivals or in metaverse music festivals with, with some of these artists
Ivan Kan: That is so cool. Yeah. So it sounds like relationships are a big part of that. And I think you mentioned, you know, these augmented art pieces, you know, I don’t see that very often. I think the last person I talked to Trevor Jones, so Trevor Jones actually, that’s someone you should, you should collaborate with. I’d love to connect you, but he makes these, I think it’s called a Bitcoin angel, but he makes these pieces where you point a phone in it, similar to what you have with your augmented pieces. But like, I’m surprised more people aren’t doing that, but it’s like, it’s awesome.
Michael Wagner: That is so cool. Yeah. So it sounds like relationships are a big part of that. And I think you mentioned, you know, these augmented art pieces, you know, I don’t see that very often. I think the last person I talked to Trevor Jones, so Trevor Jones actually, that’s someone you should, you should collaborate with. I’d love to connect you, but he makes these, I think it’s called a Bitcoin angel, but he makes these pieces where you point a phone in it, similar to what you have with your augmented pieces. But like, I’m surprised more people aren’t doing that, but it’s like, it’s awesome.
Ivan Kan: I do want to chat there. So I guess this is cause a lot of people, they see, you know, how successful you’ve been. They see these, you know, these ships selling out, they see your token generation event, but I feel like, you know, I’m always on these calls and people are like, Hey, I wanted this yesterday, but you know that today doesn’t happen without the grit and the time and the effort and the team. And can you kind of tell us, like what, what happened behind the scenes to get you where you are today? Like, what was it like?
Michael Wagner: I mean, it, you know, it was just a lot of strategy and kind of well orchestrated execution of, of all of these concepts and just a lot of planning. I mean, you know, the stuff that people don’t see are the tens of hours and, and, you know, per day or, or hundreds of hours per week, that we’re all putting in. I mean, a lot of us have been pulling all nighters when we have a major launch, you know, and it might be a week at a time where we’re sleeping two hours a night, making sure everything’s dialed in and getting it done. But again, that’s not credit to me, that’s to all of the people on the team that are just so passionate and enthusiastic, physiatic about what the potential of what we’re building actually will become. So, but the other cool part about that is as much as it’s Brit, you know, and it’s hard work and it’s dedication a lot of time, we actually love it. You know, we all love what we’re doing. So it’s, it’s, it sounds cliche, but it’s like, if you like, what you do, you don’t work a day in your life. And I think in many cases we just, we see how disruptive and transformative the concept can be for us. This is, it’s not about the money it’s about introducing this technology and the potential of this product to the world that really excites us. It keeps us, keeps us going.
Ivan Kan: Oh, that’s awesome that I can feel that energy from you, even though you might be a little bit low on sleep, but I can tell you’re passionate. I was just looking on YouTube and I actually bring up store outlets a lot. And I have to ask like, how many interviews did you actually do
Michael Wagner: There? Nonstop? I, my, you know, our marketing and comms team is very effective at, and, and a PR team at Waxman is very effective Atlantic. These, these interviews and, and, you know, people want to talk about it and I’m, I’m really happy to jump on interviews and discuss it because I wanna make sure that we’re disseminating information appropriately. It’s so easy for misinformation to get propagated across not only cryptocurrency, but games and the holy, like the tech ecosystem. And so it, it’s, it’s definitely heavy on the interview schedule for me right now and conference circuit for me. But you know, this is important. This is, this is the opportunity for us to share the vision and talk about the roadmap and, and, and talk about the possibilities.
Crypto Token
Ivan Kan: So you have account
On your wall, like how many, how many interviews you’ve
Michael Wagner: I totally lost, I totally lost count your, my parents love to see them. And I, you know, every once in a while, I come back with a huge backlog of links, you know, that somebody on my team prepared and I’m like, here you go. Here’s 15 hours of me talking about mostly the same thing, but you know, you’ll get to hear it slightly differently.
Ivan Kan: Thats’s Incredible. I can’t tell you how many founders, like, they’re like, Hey, I just got one or two of these influencer videos. I’ve got it. And I’m like, I always pull up starlets, like, look at how many interviews Michael did like two X speed and interview those happen at one X speed.
Michael Wagner: Right, Yeah No. And we have a super supportive, you know, if you want to call them, the K-12 are influencers as well. They, so many people are producing content on Star Atlas right now. So I do feel like we’ve reached the critical mass where enough people want to talk about the, you know, about star Atlas itself. And so between myself providing interviews, but also, you know, the, the difference people producing content on YouTube, it’s, it’s almost unavoidable at this point, which is just amazing for us to see internally, you know, it’s just so rewarding.
Ivan Kan: Yeah. That’s, that’s awesome. Hold on. So, okay. So now, now we’re finished talking about like how far it was. because that was a really big topic I wanted to touch upon. And then you were talking about your token generation event, and you’re even talking about your collabs of like FTX. And I know you had some, I just, I just talked to someone from FTX last week and he’s like, yeah, I love star, but I saw the ship. You have a ship that has a unique skin that has FTX and it’s like this super sweet teal, a teal blue, like, yeah. How did those collabs come through and talk to me about actually the token generation event? Cause there was a lot of questions like from radium. I did a deep dive. Like I’d love to hear from you.
Michael Wagner: You know, I think, I guess just to touch on the, the complications it’s you, you, you know, from our past conversations, I’ve been in the space a long time. And so I’ve gone through a lot of these let’s call them opportunities that get presented, whether it was, you know, ICO’s in 2017 or various ways to participate in the earlier years. And more recently ideas to me, it wasn’t very complicated. We, we tried to share all of the instructions and information necessary to participate. You know, the current model is that the, all of the launch pads have a token, the native token staking requirements. So for FTX, it lists FTT. And for Radium, it was the Ray token. And for Apollo X, it was the paid token. You know, it, this is kind of the new world though, of, of these. If you want to call it a crowd funding platform, these are pretty common mechanics.
But what we underestimated was the amounts of interest we have from the new, the nascent gaming and crypto community or user, right? So people that really have never interacted with a metal mask wallet or a Phantom wallet, you know, an in browser plugin, and don’t understand that they have to purchase these secondary tokens and stake them ticket access, things like this. So in hindsight, there’s a few things that we would have done differently for the IDEO. It really on paper looked pretty straightforward. And the reason we split it up across the three venues is that we really do care about providing fair access to everyone. And so there were different mechanics for each, you know, two lotteries through FTX and through radium. And then one that was, we actually had a dedicated pool for people that had purchased posters in the rebirth campaign. So we, we created this ticketing system that meant that they would get guaranteed access to that, that one isolated pool. And then the other one was the, you know, for the paid community. So yeah, you know, I think, I think again, room for improvement, great lesson for us. It’s still obviously sold out. I mean, it, it blew out, but we want to make these experiences friendly, seamless, and, and kind of like better response moving forward,
But what we underestimated was the amounts of interest we have from the new, the nascent gaming and crypto community or user, right? So people that really have never interacted with a metal mask wallet or a Phantom wallet, you know, an in browser plugin, and don’t understand that they have to purchase these secondary tokens and stake them ticket access, things like this. So in hindsight, there’s a few things that we would have done differently for the IDEO. It really on paper looked pretty straightforward. And the reason we split it up across the three venues is that we really do care about providing fair access to everyone. And so there were different mechanics for each, you know, two lotteries through FTX and through radium. And then one that was, we actually had a dedicated pool for people that had purchased posters in the rebirth campaign. So we, we created this ticketing system that meant that they would get guaranteed access to that, that one isolated pool. And then the other one was the, you know, for the paid community. So yeah, you know, I think, I think again, room for improvement, great lesson for us. It’s still obviously sold out. I mean, it, it blew out, but we want to make these experiences friendly, seamless, and, and kind of like better response moving forward,
Ivan Kan: You broke it down. So, so, you know, simply, but I know the amount of time and research it took to get those put together. It must have been, oh, you must move moons to get there.
Michael Wagner: Well, we are. Yeah. I mean, we’re, we’re planning probably six months out ahead right now through to six months out ahead right now. So things that are actually being implemented right at the moment. Well, I would caveat that. So things that are being implemented now were definitely considered and strategized on months ago, we keep a pretty dynamic mindset in terms of execution, if anything changes as things frequently do here. But you know, the other thing that makes it challenging for the engineering team is that not only are we rolling these products out, but they need to produce hot fixes and patches and, you know, take into account user feedback. And so while we’re continuously developing, developing into the future, we introduce a little bit at this tech debt where we have to resolve all the past issues, but we also have to move forward at the same time. So, but our team is great. Again, I cannot commend the team enough because we just have super talented people that are very passionate and they are driving this forward. For sure.
Ivan Kan: That’s so cool. And I, you always give thanks to your team and I really, I really commend you on how you made sure that all your previous supporters, you know, they got, they got a piece of that and you spit it out between those making a pool for those people that got a specific, you know, RPS that’s. I often see projects overlook this and they just launch it because it’s about the token, but I can feel in there could hear from you how the community is that important. And that’s something I wanted to touch upon. Like, how did you create this vibrant community? It is probably one of the strongest, and I can tell you, as we talked to investors, even on the investors side, a lot of them are like, I love, sorry, it’s different. And how did you do that? That’s Incredible.
Michael Wagner: Well, many things to you guys, you know, we were, we worked with you early to establish some of these relationships. So the, you know, the, the crowd creative relationship was helpful. It was beneficial. You know, I, I think the product concept itself is something that’s attractive to people and we can ignite the imagination and what’s possible so that, you know, that’ll help. But I would also give credit to the salon and FTX and project serum teams. You know, we saw that as an opportunity when we were forming the relationship with them early on, because, and I talk about this frequently, but back in August of 2020 Solana, wasn’t very well known, you know, and there were maybe 20 to 25 projects building on the platform or in the ecosystem. And, and we saw the potential of the, of the ecosystem, but we also saw that we could create this synergistic, mutually beneficial relationship from the start where we could not only attract users to Solana, but they could kind of bootstrap our, our, our publicity, if you will, to the, and communications to the public in attracting the Solano user base existing user base, that’s our outlets.
So that was really the kicking off point. But everything that we’ve executed on has been tailored towards also forming and solidifying the community and making sure that people feel valued. We hear their feedback, they’re able to contribute. We listened to people when we implement changes like quite rapidly when we get feedback, either positive or negative, but, you know, from the value equation, once again, looking at what we accomplished with rebirth, that wasn’t just about making money for us. It was about getting people interested in what star star Ellis would be common, rewarding. Those people for kind of taking the chance of purchasing a piece of digital art from us. So I think having, and I would also add there, you know, I’m, we all are very transparent with the public. We host regular town halls in our discourse, and this is an open Q and a for anybody in the public, we bring people on stage, they can ask any question they want, and then we address those questions. We address concerns. And we also, you know, we, we certainly appreciate any of the positive feedback that they give us, but I think it’s just largely, we’re interactive. We’re there, we’re talking, I’m in discord with, with the community I’m on telegram with the community. And, you know, we just make sure that people aren’t ignored and, and they appreciate that. And it’s, it’s certainly helped us bro.
So that was really the kicking off point. But everything that we’ve executed on has been tailored towards also forming and solidifying the community and making sure that people feel valued. We hear their feedback, they’re able to contribute. We listened to people when we implement changes like quite rapidly when we get feedback, either positive or negative, but, you know, from the value equation, once again, looking at what we accomplished with rebirth, that wasn’t just about making money for us. It was about getting people interested in what star star Ellis would be common, rewarding. Those people for kind of taking the chance of purchasing a piece of digital art from us. So I think having, and I would also add there, you know, I’m, we all are very transparent with the public. We host regular town halls in our discourse, and this is an open Q and a for anybody in the public, we bring people on stage, they can ask any question they want, and then we address those questions. We address concerns. And we also, you know, we, we certainly appreciate any of the positive feedback that they give us, but I think it’s just largely, we’re interactive. We’re there, we’re talking, I’m in discord with, with the community I’m on telegram with the community. And, you know, we just make sure that people aren’t ignored and, and they appreciate that. And it’s, it’s certainly helped us bro.
Crypto Token
Ivan Kan: The biggest projects I know like Celsius, you know, Alex mission ski, the founder, you know, you are extremely involved in the community. Like he’s hosting these EMS weekly and you’re hosting. Like I just see this like similar vein where like the strongest entrepreneurs today have this, like they give the community very close access to what’s actually going on in the team. And so that’s, that’s so awesome and bike. I know we’ve had you at our conferences before. And I always say like that this guy has, this guy has something different about him. He’s going to make it happen.
Michael Wagner: I really do care. Like I care about the integrity of the company about, you know, my personal integrity and, and it’s, it’s something that weighs heavily on me is, is people’s perception. Just because, you know, again, having been in the space so long, having narrowly avoided some scans and having, having been compromised by some scans myself and losing money and losing people that become or losing because people become disinterested or incapable of continuing to develop a product. And it’s very, very important to me that everybody kind of understands where we’re coming from, that we have this long-term perspective on this. And again, the passion it’s, it’s the fact that it’s not about the money for us. It’s about the product. I think it goes a long way and I have no problem communicating that with people and, and want people to get the info that they need because it instantly just calms emotions. Right. So, yeah.
Ivan Kan: So I want to look forward a little and I know we’ve kind of talked about kind of step back, look at it, look at what’s happened, but I want to like step forward and say like, Hey, what’s next, what’s next for stylus? Because you’ve built this amazing foundation. You have the community, you have the epic ships. I wish that I had a ship like that today, but I’m going to have to probably wait a few more years in the metaverse.
Michael Wagner: So I want to look forward a little and I know we’ve kind of talked about kind of step back, look at it, look at what’s happened, but I want to like step forward and say like, Hey, what’s next, what’s next for stylus? Because you’ve built this amazing foundation. You have the community, you have the epic ships. I wish that I had a ship like that today, but I’m going to have to probably wait a few more years in the metaverse.
Ivan Kan: So I want to look forward a little and I know we’ve kind of talked about kind of step back, look at it, look at what’s happened, but I want to like step forward and say like, Hey, what’s next, what’s next for Star Atlas? Because you’ve built this amazing foundation. You have the community, you have the epic ships. I wish that I had a ship like that today, but I’m going to have to probably wait a few more years in the metaverse.
Michael Wagner: Well, yeah, we have some really cool stuff. So, you know, I kind of left it off at the TGE. So moving forward just the past two weeks, we’ve been executing on our galactic asset offering. So that was the first drop that we executed on where we sold game assets to the community. And we’re selling ships now because they are going to have utility in the upcoming mini game release. Not before I talked about that, we actually have an enrollment process. That’s rolling out on September 21st. It’s a, it’s a week from today, but September 21st, we’re flipping the switch on user registration, user profiles, faction selection. You know, we have those three factions in the game. And so you’ll be able to choose your faction Guild registration, our own unique take on star out of this naming service, which is kind of like the Ethereum naming service or salon and naming service.
But it’s for securing your, your handle inside star Atlas. Those things are all coming online next week. And you know, within four to six weeks from today, you should see the rollout of ship missions in the mini game. Now the mini game is the in-browser experience that we’re delivering early. So people have the ability to utilize their assets and start earning right away, should still be very fun as well. Denny’s put a lot of work into, into the design of the ship missions with, you know, different ship type requirements. And, but from ship missions, we’d lead into land development. That will be the next phase where you can actually place mining equipment or you can place farming equipment. And that creates a crafting gameplay loop. Following that we’ll have orbital space stations rolling out. And then finally the three-dimensional star Atlas, the namesake of the game, which is the map of the, of the universe.
And so that will be a web GL in browser map with geographic coordinates of all of the assets across the game. So that’s all kind of rolling out through the end of this year and into the beginning of next year. Now, concurrently we’re we’re, we’re already building an unreal engine and we think that we’ll be, might have an unreal engine experience by the end of this year, this would be a showroom. So it’s kind of multiplayer based. You can enter the showroom, you can complete ship configuration, you can purchase and sell assets on the decks and you can deploy it missions there, but it’s in 3d and possibly VR enabled too. So it’s also a place for social interaction with other people. And, and, you know, there’s not much to do except for configure your ship and, and walk around the showroom, but that would be the first experience.
And then, you know, we have a longer roadmap ahead of us with unreal engine, but the, the core ideas that we can deliver fund gameplay via the web browser, and people can start earning and start participating in governance and staking and yield generation and defy integrations that that’s all expected to take place, you know, by the end of this year and going into January, but unreal, engine’s a much longer road ahead, but we will be rolling out iteratively with these modules. So there’s new experiences that people can participate in and continue with that earning process.
But it’s for securing your, your handle inside star Atlas. Those things are all coming online next week. And you know, within four to six weeks from today, you should see the rollout of ship missions in the mini game. Now the mini game is the in-browser experience that we’re delivering early. So people have the ability to utilize their assets and start earning right away, should still be very fun as well. Denny’s put a lot of work into, into the design of the ship missions with, you know, different ship type requirements. And, but from ship missions, we’d lead into land development. That will be the next phase where you can actually place mining equipment or you can place farming equipment. And that creates a crafting gameplay loop. Following that we’ll have orbital space stations rolling out. And then finally the three-dimensional star Atlas, the namesake of the game, which is the map of the, of the universe.
And so that will be a web GL in browser map with geographic coordinates of all of the assets across the game. So that’s all kind of rolling out through the end of this year and into the beginning of next year. Now, concurrently we’re we’re, we’re already building an unreal engine and we think that we’ll be, might have an unreal engine experience by the end of this year, this would be a showroom. So it’s kind of multiplayer based. You can enter the showroom, you can complete ship configuration, you can purchase and sell assets on the decks and you can deploy it missions there, but it’s in 3d and possibly VR enabled too. So it’s also a place for social interaction with other people. And, and, you know, there’s not much to do except for configure your ship and, and walk around the showroom, but that would be the first experience.
And then, you know, we have a longer roadmap ahead of us with unreal engine, but the, the core ideas that we can deliver fund gameplay via the web browser, and people can start earning and start participating in governance and staking and yield generation and defy integrations that that’s all expected to take place, you know, by the end of this year and going into January, but unreal, engine’s a much longer road ahead, but we will be rolling out iteratively with these modules. So there’s new experiences that people can participate in and continue with that earning process.
Ivan Kan: That was a lot, literally, that was like a massive roadmap. Michael, you summed it up in such a, such a short amount of time, but I could see like behind that, that is a lot of thousands of hours to do that. That is very ambitious.
Michael Wagner: Yeah. And I mean, just to give you some other metrics kind of circling back to success, you know, we’ve, from the beginning of the year, we had the four co-founders back in December, really over the course of this year, we’ve grown the team to approximately 120 people. Now, those are not all internal employees. We do work with some third party contractors because we want to expedite development of this game in the short term, while we continue to grow and scale. Now through the year, we’ve also so far generated about $50 million in total revenue in eight months, which is pretty amazing for a startup to, to accomplish. But all of that capital that we’re just looking at reinvesting right back into the company and continuing to grow it. So we, we just brought on an amazing new head of HR. Who’s going to help us with all things, compliance international employees with talent acquisition, and then, you know, various perks and things like this. But the talent acquisition side, we are already looking to scale by another 300 to 400% within eight to 12 months. So I’d like to see us with a team of approximately 400 people internally building star Atlas by this time next year, a little sooner than that.
Ivan Kan: Wow. Mind blowning, Michael, I love, I love the way you paint your vision and I’m going to support you all the way through that is just absolutely awesome, but I know you’re busy, but I wanted to thank you for sharing your time, your story with our community. And we look forward to hearing you on our stage at our crypto com that coming up at the end of this month. But Michael, thank you. And we’ll definitely bring you back on for a multiple, if you can spare the time. I know you’re super busy.
Michael Wagner: Of course, of course, anytime, man, I, like I said, I love chatting with you. I just want to mention one thing. Cause because you had some reticence about being able to buy one of those five or $10 million ships, I want to point out as kind of a closing point that those ships aren’t intended for everybody to own first and foremost, those are aspirational, but we see enormous potential in the formation of guilds, large guilds, like ygg, you know, who we have a great relationship with 50,000 players, right? And they were looking to purchase these capital assets that are in the millions of dollars range because it provides a home base for them all to operate out of. So even if you’re not buying that yourself and you know, you can join a Guild that can buy one of these bigger assets and you know, be a dominant force in the metaverse. So I hope you see, I hope we see you there.
Ivan Kan: Are you, well, I’m looking at those shifts. I actually know the yield Guild teams really, really well. You’ll go games like Gabby and barrel and there yeah. You, you, to you, your team and their team is definitely on a mission.
Michael Wagner: Yeah. I, I’ve taken a number of, can have interviews or any of these with Gabby and we definitely think very similarly in terms of what is possible here. So love it. But yeah. Ivan, thank you again. I really appreciate the time.
