Dirk Lueth, founder of Upland talks to Jillian Godsil and explains how he came to make a metaverse The story so far: Aged 16, German native Dirk Lueth spent a gap year in the States and was really impressed with the concept of the school yearbook, which was not common in Germany. When he returned to finish his schooling, he took this idea with him – launching both a love of writing and entrepreneurialism that would mark out his career. While he claims not to be a good journalist, his track record shows a love of the written word both from his PhD research in private and state-controlled currencies or the fact that he co-founded the German edition of the Financial Times. In 2012 he also became advisor to an online publication called Fair Observer, a non-profit media organization that engages in citizen journalism and civic education. How to Make a Metaverse – with Dirk Lueth of Upland Fair Observer is an interesting exercise in neutral reporting. The organisation relies on citizen-curated reporting but emphasizes 360-degree reporting where all angles of a situation or subject matter are collected and represented. An interesting counterpoint to the agenda-led, entertainment-focused, pop-culture shows popularised particularly in the US. His writing began with a typewriter and coincided with the beginnings of the internet. Lueth knew that the internet was going to be big from the get-go. “My first job was with a media company that was also very interested in technology. I knew that the internet would deliver entertainment and information at a fraction of traditional media’s cost and in a much faster way. That was where the idea for launching an innovative version of the FT with a strong online department in Germany emerged.” A proud boast indeed, as it had to be funded via strategic investors namely the publishing houses Financial Times of Pearson and Gruner & Jahr of Bertelsmann as it was also before Venture Capital funding was commonplace. Being an entrepreneur is core to Lueth’s passion, whether in writing or business. He became the lead mentor in the German Silicon Valley Accelerator and helped grow numerous startups in tech. “I could see very clearly that the internet was going to change how we communicate and when combined with smartphones we were going to witness a lot of innovation.” Lueth is not ashamed to admit he made some mistakes – but then that comes with the territory when one is ahead of the party. For example, he opted for Flash technology but was scuppered when Steve Jobs said it was useless for mobile. “Our company at that time actually was just about starting to see product-market fit with good customers such as Lufthansa but I was forced to pivot to continue providing services to them.” For Lueth, he came to digital currencies through gaming, which fed in nicely from his PhD. He was fascinated that games had their own currencies and the fact that value could be exchanged over the internet. In 2011 a friend told him about the Bitcoin whitepaper and while he did not see at this time why this approach to cryptography was more promising than others, he was interested. “I bought some bitcoin in a back alley from someone in San Francisco and the seller literally handed me a piece of paper with all access information written on it – which I misplaced shortly after I tried it out. I’d love to find that piece of paper today but at that time it was more of a learning curve for me.” “It was a little later that I discovered digital money was not limited to Bitcoin and that the concept of decentralisation was key to this new technology.” Back in 2013 Lueth found himself pitching to Venture Capitalists – which had long time become more commonplace in Silicon Valley – but when he started talking about that in the future the transfer of value in the internet will be decentralised he could see their eyes glaze over. “There are many times when I have been early and that was another such time.” Lueth started attending Bitcoin...