holoride x Terranova AMA — 14th Sept, 2021
Another great AMA session with Terranova and some very interesting community questions. It’s always great to see how excited people get about our technology and the new worlds that we’re opening.
Enjoy reading this one!
Terranova: Hi Everyone! Welcome to another Be In Crypto AMA!
Today we have Nils who’s CEO at holoride. It’s not a surprise that I’m a fan of the project, I have their token ticker on my name for a few months now, so I’ll try to not be a fanboy today haha.
Here is how things will work. I’ll have 10 questions for him and after these questions, I’ll open the chat for you to drop your own ones. Please have your questions written on your notepad already, the gates will be open for no more than 1 minute. Make sure you have everything prepared!
Nils Wollny: Great to be with you today!
Terranova: Let’s start with some basic info about your background in crypto and a short intro on the holoride core team (what they’ve already achieved in the crypto space, etc)
Nils: Sure thing!
I’m the CEO and co-founder of holoride. My two co-founders and I worked for Audi in digital business, immersive technologies, and autonomous driving development.
After having the idea for holoride and working on the project within Audi for a while, we managed to convince the Board of Management to spin-out the technology to give it a real shot. That was back at the end of 2018. Prior to that, I co-led one of Europe’s largest digital stock-listed agencies.
We entered the crypto space last year to explore the potential for our platform that goes live next year. It’s an exciting space with an unbelievable pace of innovation! We’re learning a lot from the opportunities that blockchain technology can add to our platform and where crypto could come into play.
The best is yet to come! 😉
Terranova: This is really cool. The crypto space is a great place and I think you’ll like it a lot.
A really nice idea can definitely boost any project and I’m quite sure you envision something great for holoride. So, what’s the reason for its creation? Could you please briefly describe what holoride is?
Nils: Agree. Ideas and the drive to follow through with them can create something great. And that’s what we are doing at holoride 😉
Our purpose is to turn transit time into valuable time.
Therefore, we’re revolutionizing in-car entertainment. We take everyday journeys and transform them into hyper-immersive experiences by combining route and car data with Extended Reality. We want to turn vehicles into moving theme parks!
We are creating a completely new content and media category, which we call Elastic Content.
We believe that our technology has the power to change backseat entertainment forever. It will open a new layer of immersion in games, educational content, and many more use cases, and it can also help reduce motion sickness.
Terranova: I’m so excited about this. I have a friend who’s a pilot for drift races. I asked him to take me to a race, so I can play the game at full adrenaline…but that’s me being crazy. With crazy friends.
Cool! You guys basically take everyday journeys and transform them into hyper-immersive experiences by combining navigational and car data with XR (extended reality). This may be kind of hard for some of our members to understand so would you like to share any media files (images, videos, etc) in which we can see holoride in full power?
Nils: Yeah, of course!
Sit back and enjoy this one:
🍿
Terranova: Damn, I never get tired of watching this one. ❤️ sorry…I’m watching haha.
Nils: Same here 😉 But trying it is even better.
Terranova: I WANT TO! hahaha
Nils: Let’s arrange for a test ride!
Terranova: 🤩🤩🤩
That video is amazing. We can see holoride is creating a completely new content and media category: Elastic Content. Could you please elaborate a little more on this?
Nils: Absolutely!
We all know that entertaining yourself while commuting is not easy.
Existing entertainment products are not really made for transit and usually more enjoyable outside the vehicle, e.g. it’s better to do gaming at home or in attraction centers such as arcades.
That’s where holoride comes in as we have developed a technology that has created something radically new and entertains backseat passengers in a way that is totally seamless. Look at it as a new media format specifically made for moving vehicles.
It’s “elastic” because the content is processed procedurally. Meaning: content adapts to travel time and route.
So, for example, if you turn right at an intersection content is being processed in a way that it’s taking this turn into account. Our software is able to adapt in real-time to the respective route.
Making content elastic allows for many use cases and the experience is always different depending on the actual route.
By that, we transform the car from one of the worst surroundings for entertainment into one of the best spaces to enjoy content.
Does that answer your question?
Terranova: My Uber driver when I start to scream “I’m gonna destroy you” to the spaceships while playing it.
Nils: HAHA
Terranova: The concept of adapting the game to the route you’re taking is really cool. Thanks for this explanation. Well, we all know that partnerships are a really important milestone for all the projects. I must admit I was shocked when I first heard about some of your partnerships in this industry (including Audi, Mercedes, Disney, Discovery among others). Please tell us about such partnerships as well as awards you guys already have!
Nils: We’ve been lucky enough to have already done projects with global brands and feel humbled to have had the opportunity to work with them.
In addition to the companies you’ve already mentioned, we’ve also partnered with Porsche, Universal Pictures, Ford, and EvoBus. Along with many others we haven’t talked about yet.
Have a look at our joint showcase with Universal Pictures and Ford during Halloween Horror Nights at CityWalk LA.
That was also the first time we made holoride available to the public, which was very important as we wanted to understand how potential customers experience our technology and this new entertainment format.
🍿
🧟♂️👻
You’ve also asked about awards:
TechCrunch has hailed us ‘Best of CES’ in 2019 after our inception in Las Vegas.
That same year the TIME Magazine acknowledged us as “100 Best Inventions of 2019” along with other innovators and pioneers.
In 2020 we received the Auggies Award from AWE for “Best in Location-Based Entertainment” for the Bride of Frankenstein showcase.
Earlier this year we won the prestigious SXSW Pitch in the category of “Entertainment, Gaming & Content” along with an award for “Best in Show.”
Terranova: So far so good! We’ve already learned about the basics of holoride’s tech but there’s still something else to ask you: Where do both blockchain and NFTs come into holoride’s ecosystem? What’s the main structure you guys have in mind to mix all of that into your product?
Nils: Finally you have asked this question! 😉
We are using blockchain to make our platform fully transparent.
We want to distribute revenues to each value-creating party within our ecosystem in a fair and transparent way, including content creators, car manufacturers, and other major stakeholders that help in creating great experiences.
We will also use it to offer content creators additional opportunities to commercialize creations on our platform.
Finally, it will allow passengers to individualize their experience and trade items they have earned or bought on their rides.
Does that answer your question?
Terranova: Yes it does. I think a comparison with Pokemon Go transforming the city into a huge pokemap is inevitable. However, I’m sure Holoride offers some exclusive features and innovations that we won’t see anywhere else any soon. You already showed us many cool features. What are the main unique aspects of holoride that you haven’t mentioned yet?
Nils: Great example!
What holoride does is unique! Not only is our tech but also the revolutionary approach we have chosen by bringing XR content into the car.
Combining motion and location data with XR content is truly unique.
At the same time, we are building an immersive media platform and ecosystem that connects automotive, media and tech, which currently does not exist!
We also have lots of ideas for how passengers can personalize their holoride experience through the use of NFTs.
However, I will not spoil the surprise to much now 😉
Terranova: What development stage are you in right now? How can one invest in Holoride at this point?
Nils: We’re in a very focused development phase right now preparing our next steps before holoride-enabled vehicles will hit the streets in summer 2022.
Regarding investment: we have recently raised a Series A. If an additional raise is planned, we will inform the community about it. Make sure you follow us on our social channels 😉
Terranova: We’re almost there with my questions. What about your roadmap for the next few quarters? What type of deployments/updates are you going to look for in the next few months?
Nils: Spoiler alert, again!
Terranova: Spoilers…cars…jokes…
Nils: While I would love to get into detail here, I’m sure you guys can understand that we can’t disclose everything that’s happening behind the scenes at holoride.
What I can tell you is that the next months will be heavily focused on the development of our core technology as we prepare our market launch next year.
We will continue to work on our Elastic SDK which we have just recently announced at the Game Developers Conference along with the holoride Creator Space.
If you’re interested in more details about this, check out this Unity blog post about the Elastic SDK:
Terranova: That’s it! I’m quite sure we’ve covered the main topics today.
Thanks @NilsWollny, now I’ll open the gates. Once I close it, you can pick 5 to 10 questions you want to answer. (depends on your time, just type done when you’re finishing answering them)
Sound good?
Nils: Sounds good!
Community Question: Do you have any future plans to integrate your tech with other transportation vehicles, not just cars?
Nils: Yes, we do. Hyperloops would be a great thing for holoride in the distant future.
Community Question: In case of several passengers, would it be possible to have individual experiences or only shared ones?
Nils: Both will be possible. Multiplayer is a big thing. Maybe even across several vehicles?
Community Question: At this moment, which community are you focusing on, what’s your area of interest? Can everyone access your project?
Nils: We are currently focussing on the developer and content creator community
W A: Reading through holoride’s vision it seems you could have carried out this project without getting involved in the crypto space. What made you focus and get involved with crypto?
Nils: Tried to answer that one before: transparency for all ecosystem partners. We want to be transparent by design. Moreover, we would like to offer content creators more upsides — via NFTs.
Community Question: Who are your potential customers and which markets are you targeting?
Nils: We’ll begin with a focus on gaming and entertainment content which is primarily targeted to teens and tweens. Gen Z, basically. As we start to build up our content platform, we will expand the user base by targeting a more diverse audience with additional use cases, such as educational or well-being focused content.
Community Question: Awesome project, my kids will be so happy on long car rides 😁! One question though, In-car WiFi can work out expensive especially if streaming lots of data. Would Holoride require lots of bandwidth and GBs of data to run or can games be downloaded prior to a journey?
Nils: Thank you. No, there’s not much data needed.
Community Question: Until what corner of the world do you plan to arrive? That is, to what extent in the world do you think your Project will be solving people’s problems with their infrastructure?
Nils: I won’t disclose all countries yet. However, holoride will help to transition to sustainable mobility and plans to establish a “Ride-to-Play-to-Earn”-cycle that incentivizes users for their engagement with holoride experiences.
So many great questions. I’d like to answer more. Some of them would require another hour. But I will try to answer them in the course of the next few weeks, when we will disclose more about our token. Thank you!
Terranova: Thank you @NilsWollny
Nils: Ride on! 🚀
About holoride
The German startup holoride creates an entirely new media category for passengers by connecting XR content with data points from the vehicle in real-time. These data points include physical feedback like acceleration and steering, traffic data, as well as travel route and time.
Open to all content creators and car companies, the technology has the power to change backseat entertainment forever; holoride technology significantly reduces motion sickness, opens up a new layer of immersion in games or educational journeys, and creates a stunningly immersive experience.
The tech startup was founded end of 2018 in Munich, Germany by Nils Wollny, Marcus Kuehne, Daniel Profendiner, and Audi, which holds a minority stake in the startup. It was hailed four times “Best of CES” (Las Vegas, Jan 2019) and has been acknowledged as “Best Inventions of 2019” by TIME Magazine. In 2021, holoride went on to win the prestigious SXSW Pitch and was also named Best in Show.
