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Sam Dickie: Fisher Funds expert on the decline in interest in the Metaverse · The SME Stream

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Cast your mind back a few years, and everybody was
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: talking about the metaverse, right. The market thought it would
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: be the next big thing, the next big computer platform.
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  Speaker 1: After we transitioned to mobile computing fifteen years ago or so,
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  Speaker 1: what happened to the metaverse? Sam Dickie from Fisher Funds
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  Speaker 1: has been looking into this.
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  Speaker 2: Hey Sam, good at evening here.
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  Speaker 1: Sam, remind me why anybody thought this was going to
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  Speaker 1: be the next big thing.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, well, the most evangelical believers back in twenty twenty
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  Speaker 2: one thought it could be the new Internet. So instead
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  Speaker 2: of interacting via text and video, we would interact in
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  Speaker 2: virtual reality and cruise around as kind of lanky avatars.
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  Speaker 2: And if your children irritating you play Fortnite or roeblocks,
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  Speaker 2: well they are really just dumbed down versions of the metaverse.
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  Speaker 2: And you might remember another virtual world we talked about
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  Speaker 2: back then here the Sandbox, which specializes in virtual real estate,
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  Speaker 2: and a virtual neighbor of Snoop Dog brought a plot
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  Speaker 2: of land back then from a million bucks, and that
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  Speaker 2: early height was a bit like the tea markets, smoke
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  Speaker 2: and mirrors, and the price of this online realistates kind
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  Speaker 2: of collapsed by nine percent.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh, so what he can't do anything with that?
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  Speaker 1: That's real money he's lost.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, it's real money on a on a virtual
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  Speaker 2: plot of land.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, who okay? This was expected to be massive, right,
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  Speaker 1: so who put money into this stuff?
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  Speaker 2: It was expected to be massive, and it's a massive
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  Speaker 2: numbers thrown around, so I think mortgage standing to a
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  Speaker 2: report at the time saying it could be an eight
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  Speaker 2: trillion dollar market. It was the next generation kind of
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  Speaker 2: social media stream in a gaming platform and virtual reality.
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  Speaker 2: And Facebook, remember changed its name, so I went so
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  Speaker 2: far as to change his name to Meta show how
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  Speaker 2: serious it was about chasing the next Internet. It wasn't
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  Speaker 2: just Meta. Apple invested heavily in virtual reality hardware like
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  Speaker 2: it's goggles, and the gaming company is like ten Cent
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  Speaker 2: in China, and Microsoft invested heavily as well.
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  Speaker 1: What's the reality, you know, compared to what they were expecting.
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  Speaker 1: What are we dealing with today?
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  Speaker 2: Not much? Not much. I mean I talked about those
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  Speaker 2: virtual real estate prices, but messily as the poster child here.
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  Speaker 2: So they've been eighteen dollars on a metaverse to date
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  Speaker 2: and they've got less than ten billion dollars of revenue.
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  Speaker 2: To show for that, But they are even kind of
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  Speaker 2: stepping away from that the goggles of the online world,
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  Speaker 2: and they're really just focusing their attention now outside of AI,
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  Speaker 2: of course, which you're not speaking about tonight, on its
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  Speaker 2: joint venture with ray Band, where instead of kind of
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  Speaker 2: picking up your phone one hundred and thirty seven times
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  Speaker 2: per day, you can cruise around with a cool pier
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  Speaker 2: of ray Band glasses on with a heads up virtual
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  Speaker 2: reality display.
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  Speaker 1: That sounds cool. What happens from here, though, Sam?
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  Speaker 2: Is it?
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  Speaker 1: Is it possible that this idea just was before it's
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  Speaker 1: time and it might catch on in the future sometime.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they all known. We overestimate technology in the short
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  Speaker 2: term and underestimate in the long term. Could be, could be,
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  Speaker 2: I think, but even the most evangelical Zuckerberg is kind
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  Speaker 2: of stepping away from it for now. I do think
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  Speaker 2: he's online virtual worlds. I think the market is selling us,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: how unlikely to be anything more than Niche use that
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  Speaker 2: perhaps for gaming, and perhaps remember we talked about the
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  Speaker 2: time head. Perhaps if you had a friend in partstan Boy,
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  Speaker 2: you could team up virtually an attended constant at high Park.
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  Speaker 2: Sounds pretty cool, but I can't I guess we'll sit
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  Speaker 2: around at work with goggles on and working virtually.
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  Speaker 1: No when you want the real life experience, don't you.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, is the lesson in this for investors to
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  Speaker 1: perhaps be a little bit wary of tech nerds getting
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  Speaker 1: extremely excited about things.
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  Speaker 2: I think it is. The metaverse is not in important
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  Speaker 2: per se, but it is a great lean through which
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  Speaker 2: to view that the kind of aggressive spending we're seeing
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  Speaker 2: right now. So remember the scale we talked about a
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  Speaker 2: month ago, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Just for companies, It's been
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  Speaker 2: one hundred and forty billion on capital expendsire last year
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  Speaker 2: and US spend through thirty billion next year, so extraordinary rise.
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  Speaker 2: So meta not alone. So despite the incredible success of
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  Speaker 2: these companies, they're backed under losers. So think of the
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  Speaker 2: Windows phoned by Microsoft, a firephone by Amazon, or the
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Google Glass which was a wearable computer. So the point
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  Speaker 2: of all of this is the biggest rest for these
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  Speaker 2: big tech companies outside of the government trying to split
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  Speaker 2: them up ll givate them, is being out innovated, so
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  Speaker 2: being beaten at their own game. And they do this
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  Speaker 2: or they get ahead of this by throwing tons of money.
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  Speaker 2: Anything with an innovation pulse and that kind of healthy
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  Speaker 2: paranoia is just kind of a foster doing business with
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  Speaker 2: these big companies.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, fascinating. Hey, Sam, that was absolutely fascinating. I really
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: appreciate it. You're talking us through Sam Dickie Aficier Funds