Spark of Ages
In every episode, we’re going to do a deep dive with our guest about what led them to their own 'eureka' moments, how they went about executing it, and perhaps most importantly, how do they get other people to believe in them so that their idea could also someday become a Spark for the Ages.
Spark of Ages
Build a World Faster, Better, Cheaper/Banks Boutte - Kitbash3D, Gaming, Community Led Growth ~ Spark of Ages Ep 20
Join us as we sit down with Banks Boutte, the visionary co-founder and co-CEO of KitBash3D, to uncover the secrets behind the booming gaming sector, now more influential than music, movies, and publishing combined. Banks offers an exclusive look into how 3D technology is revolutionizing various fields, from automotive to fashion, and breaks down the monumental shifts that have democratized content creation, making high-quality production accessible to all.
Get ready to be inspired by KitBash3D's incredible journey since its 2016 inception. We explore how the company is transforming 3D asset creation and distribution, providing tools that empower both major studios and solo creators. Banks delves into the critical need for standardized, reusable 3D assets and highlights the game-changing impact of real-time technology on virtual production, as seen in projects like "The Mandalorian." This conversation promises to spark your creativity and demonstrate how these innovations are opening new doors for artists everywhere.
But the excitement doesn't end there. We also explore Banks' transition from acting to entrepreneurship, revealing how his past experiences and personal influences have shaped his approach to business and leadership. With anecdotes about the roles of his parents, mentors, and team sports in his entrepreneurial development, this episode is a treasure trove of insights into the human side of tech innovation. To top it off, challenge your perceptions with a lively round of "Two Truths and a Lie," tackling some of the most intriguing technological innovations in a fun, engaging way. Don't miss out on this enriching and enlightening discussion!
Email us with any feedback for the show: spark@postion2.com
Banks Boutte X: https://www.instagram.com/banksboutte/
Kitbash3D: https://kitbash3d.com/
Producer: Anand Shah & Sandeep Parikh
Technical Director & Sound Designer: Sandeep Parikh, Omar Najam
Executive Producers: Sandeep Parikh & Anand Shah
Associate Producers: Taryn Talley
Editor: Sean Meagher & Aidan McGarvey
#gaming #kitbash #3d #entrepreneur #innovation #growth #sales #technology #innovatorsmindset #innovators #innovator #product #revenue #revenuegrowth #management #founder #entrepreneurship #growthmindset #growthhacking #salestechniques #salestips #enterprise #business #bschools #bschoolscholarship #company #companies #smartgrowth #efficiency #process #processimprovement #value #valuecreation #funny #podcast #comedy #desi #indian #community
Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/
Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/
Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/
Email us with any feedback for the show: spark@postion2.com
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast, where we're going to talk to game changers of all kinds about their big, world-shaping ideas and what sparked them. I'm your host, Rajiv Parikh, and I'm the CEO and founder of Position Squared, a digital marketing company based in Palo Alto. So, yes, I'm a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, but I'm also a business news junkie and a history nerd. I'm fascinated by how big world-changing movements go from the spark of an idea to an innovation that reshapes our lives. In every episode, we're going to do a deep dive with our guests about what led them to their own eureka moments and how they're going about executing it. And, perhaps most importantly, how do they get other people to believe in them so that their idea can also become a spark for the ages. This is the Spark of Ages podcast. In addition to myself, we have our producer, sandeep, who will occasionally chime in to make sure we don't get too in the weeds, but in this one, you're in my wheelhouse.
Sandeep Parikh:I'm in your world. Today, you're in my. Yeah, welcome to my world, just like I bring you to the Spark Tank. This is my world, very excited about this episode. We're going to learn about video gaming. We're going to learn about 3D modeling, about VR.
Rajiv Parikh:This is going to be a Unleashing the creative world of gaming for everyone. My guest today is Banks. Boutte Banks has been at the intersection of media and technology for two decades. He's the co-founder and co-CEO of Kitbash TV shows such as Halo, star Trek and Love, death and Robots, and video games, including the Last of Us, the Elder Scrolls and NBA 2K. Before Kit Bash, banks worked on high-profile projects with Apple, google, xbox and Twitch with cultural icons such as George Clooney and Taylor Swift my daughter loves you and Twitch with cultural icons such as George Clooney and Taylor Swift my daughter loves you. In 2017, he executive produced Sleep Tight, the first Nintendo Switch game to port from Unreal Engine. He produced the first movie made by a single social network with Sony in 2013 and acted in the first movie within a casual video game in 2009. Banks, welcome to the Spark of Ages.
Banks Boutte:Thanks so much for having me, guys. This is very exciting.
Rajiv Parikh:To help a lot of my friends who come from technology and innovation space. I'm sure they play with games or deal in the gaming world, but the gaming industry is estimated at about $185 billion, which is bigger than the music, movie and publishing industry combined. It's that big and so it's something that a lot of people live in and a lot of people do, but to those who are maybe past their 40s, maybe a little bit less so, so it's really interesting. And, banks, you play in this. If I think about what I do in my company, where we do creative for various companies, we play with ways to enhance our systems, you're basically doing that for the gaming industry in the 40 plus range.
Banks Boutte:video games may or may not be as important to you as they are if you grew up playing video games, but here's some crazy stats for your niece or nephew who's now 18. When they were nine to 12, three of every four kids in America were playing Roblox, which is an open world video game platform. My niece at the time she's the same age as yours video game platform. My niece at the time was a she's the same age as yours was building, had her own house.
Banks Boutte:She worked as a pizza delivery person and then was throwing parties in her virtual house with all of her friends and they say kids never get jobs, that's right and you know, we really might see the workforce shift into what feels like a video game, and I really believe that is the trend we're seeing in so many different places that the technology that is used to make video games has quickly become the technology that we use to make movies over the last decade, and that same technology is now, which is 3D technology, is spreading into just about every vertical, whether that's automotive, architecture, retail, fashion, live music.
Banks Boutte:We're seeing this in so many different ways that the way we build on the Z-axis right, because most people think that 3D content means like putting on a virtual reality headset or I'm looking at AR, but it's actually most of the 2D content, the video content that we are seeing, was created using 3D technology.
Banks Boutte:So if we talk about 3D technology as one step removed from the end user experience, we're really talking about how do we make forward and backward work for you, because most of what we see today on screen is two-dimensional and if you look at where 2009 really took us to now, we had an entire revolution of video back before, in the early days of of, before actually the last writer's strike we had, we were shooting on film. You'd shoot a commercial, you take the film, it would cost you forty thousand dollars just to see what you shot, just to process the film. And then came the red camera revolution, which for 20,000 bucks, you could shoot cinema quality. And then came DSLRs. And today, with a cell phone, everyone has a movie studio in their pocket, the ability not only to capture super high quality content but to distribute it across the planet.
Rajiv Parikh:Right In such a short time such an incredible transformation in a super short period of time? That's right. So the so the economics of the smartphone being able to capture images and the super low cost of storage and processing, or the incredible capabilities within that enabled this revolution?
Sandeep Parikh:And we're wondering why the industry is struggling. Right Because the change was so rapid.
Banks Boutte:And it makes a ton of sense. Right, when we all harnessed the distribution model of that, we went from Hollywood and shooting on film and making movies to be a very, very select few who were able to achieve it with millions of dollars and hundreds of people. To now, every business shoots their own video, every business is distributing their own content and we have the proliferation of, like the personal brand, where every individual is now able to be a business and distributing their own content, where each human has the ability to be both a creator and a consumer. That same tip is happening right now with 3D, because the natural appetite, now that we have infinite amounts of video content that you can consume at the ready and there's a wealth of it the natural progression for people is to want to interact with that, is to want to things like I know, sandeep, you've done with Heaven Funny, where you make a choose your own adventure right, I'm now able to be there live or doing a live stream where you can live communicate.
Banks Boutte:Those are still two interfaces, but what the numbers really show is that video games and the mechanics of video games are being mass adopted in crazy numbers. We have more than 3 billion people on earth would classify themselves as a gamer. The stigma is this is 15 year old boys in their parents' bedroom and 15 year old boys in their parents' basement are actually playing a lot of video games. However, the average age of a gamer today is 34 years old and 48% of them are women. So it is encapsulated the globe on just the mechanic of. I want to interact, I want the agency. I like to think of it like I grew up watching Indiana Jones so that I could pretend to be Indiana Jones, but today I can inhabit a character in Uncharted and live that experience and make the choices for them.
Sandeep Parikh:Let me look at what New York Times is even doing with their stuff. They bought Wordle. My time that I spend on New York Times is spent gaming more than it is consuming their reading I think the same case is.
Rajiv Parikh:My wife's is definitely the same case. To your point, banks, about gaming and families right Before, like you said, there was a 15-year-old thing, but according to some of the folks in the gaming industry they say that in the surveys that they ran 83% of parents say they play video games with their kids. Yeah, and 50% play with their kids at least every week. So it's actually a way for them to do something together.
Banks Boutte:Truly that you know many people will will connect. I know a single dad who plays with his kid and he plays with all of his kids' friends and he gets to to enjoy in the process of doing the thing that kids are really into. I came from actually having a youth sports program and I did it on the weekends with my best buddy and it was 2016 and it was a really hot day. In Encino. We taught nearly a thousand kids in 11 markets in LA leadership and community development.
Banks Boutte:But what happened was we came off the field and I was really pumped up and the dads were really pumped up and we're talking about how little Jimmy was improving. And then Jimmy and his buddy run over and they're like dad, dad, dad, can we have it, can we have it? And the dad kind of sighs and rolls his eyes and hands the phone to the kids and they, they run off and that's they're really into that. They're more into that than than the peak moments of what we were doing. What is this? And he's like, oh, it's this new thing called like Pokemon Go or something.
Banks Boutte:And that was the first time I ever saw it.
Banks Boutte:And then that same week I went home and saw my nephew, who was four at the time. He's nearly 12 now and while I was having a conversation with someone just like this, he pulled my phone out of my pocket and, before I could turn around and see what he was doing, he had downloaded a game called rednecks versus zombies and he was four years old and was running around splattering blood on my screen and I was like, first off, give me that, what are you doing? And my second thought was like how did you know how to do that? You know, if you're already natively in a 3d immersive environment, either I'm going to be the old guy on the stump saying in my day we ran around and played with our buddies, or I'm going to understand at least how the mechanics of this are changing. And so, since back then, 2016, I started making our first video game, which we made a Nintendo Switch game about really about kids. We build pillow forts and fight monsters that come every night. I'm aware.
Rajiv Parikh:I was in it.
Banks Boutte:Sandeep did a voice in it.
Sandeep Parikh:That's right. I played like a cowboy kid or something like that it's my superhero theme song.
Banks Boutte:Thank you for that, by the way, that was incredible.
Rajiv Parikh:So you started way back in 2016 and then you went from there. But before you go there, I want to start you from what your firm is doing today. We're going to go backwards Love it. Let's start with, like what does Kitbash do? So your company today is Kitbash 3D. It looks really interesting and cool, but if you're not in the industry you probably don't know what it is, so explain it to your mom.
Banks Boutte:Great, great, great question. Great framing too. I'm still working this out. I'm trying to explain it to my mom. So we believe that the internet itself is going 3D and that today you scroll up and down and swipe left and right, you're looking at text and watching 2D video. But tomorrow you'll go forward and backward, and when that Z axis comes to the internet, fundamentally the fabric of human connectivity will change.
Banks Boutte:So, with that idea, we believed back at the beginning that game engines were the gateway to this, and it was video games today and back then, as well as movies, were the business model that existed in 2016, 17, 18, and today that were the people who were using 3D technology, and so we thought the people making movies and games were disproportionately well-positioned to have an impact on where we eventually go by 2025, 26.
Banks Boutte:And so the first thing we did. My business partner is a visual effects artist. He worked on everything from Halo and Game of Thrones and Far Cry and Iron man and pretty much anything big. In the summer he was building worlds in, and so with him we knew he and I Max is the name. We were good buddies for nearly 10 years before we started Kitbash and we knew that 3D assets were a massive problem for studios. So, to take it even one step back, a 3D asset you can think of like a virtual Lego it's a castle or a spaceship or a road or a traffic cone that you can use to build a virtual 3D environment, something that you'd see if you think about it like a video game, something you'd see in a video game, but that same technology is also-.
Banks Boutte:A virtual proper set right, a virtual proper set exactly. And I think what you're alluding to is virtual production. In these last few years has really taken off with things like the Mandalorian, where instead of shooting against a green screen, you can shoot against an LED wall. The same technology that we use to make video games is now the same technology that we use to make movies live environment. In a virtual environment, you can put actors there and you can move the sun, you can move a mountain if you want, and you can see what's happening in real time, because that's really what the technology of video games is called is real time, because it's rendering what you're doing, as you make a change, different from a movie, where it's pre-baked and you put the camera on rails and it's here's one shot that you're going to see.
Banks Boutte:In video game technology technology, you have the ability to change it in real time. So that fundamental technology is what we thought was the most important piece that we wanted to focus on. So we knew that 3d assets were a massive problem for studios. They are still to this day. It's a mess with. How do you organize, use, reuse and share a 3d asset? Because if you think about this, um an analogy, think of if you have an iphone and I have an android and you want to send me a photograph, you're going to send me a jpeg, right? Or if you have a you want to send me a document, you're going to send me a pdf. That standardization of files doesn't exist yet for 3d so moving 3d assets.
Banks Boutte:Studios are taking, you know, 30 to 50 percent of their budgets and spending it on building assets, but then they can't reuse those same assets from movie to movie. It'd be as if you had to build the back lot of paramount's new york set every time you wanted to build a movie. So we knew it was a problem for them. But when we made our game we recognized that it would be a completely prohibitive barrier for individuals trying to get into the space. So if you were a team of five, we were very lucky because we had a lot of friends in the movie business who could help us build the world of our game. But if you didn't have that network assets would be a completely prohibitive barrier for you realizing your vision. That's right. So Kitbash set out to build a library up to the standards of the largest movie studios and video game studios in the world and then proliferate that library to individuals around the world.
Rajiv Parikh:So you created a standard, so you're basically, in a way, you're democratizing. You're enabling greater creativity by taking what a big studio can do and enabling almost any creator who wants to create their own game to have their own studios by reusing elements that have been built with your capabilities.
Banks Boutte:That's exactly right. We are like the largest prop house and movie backlot studio for making movies that you can also use to make games, and that was where we started and really what was important to us is making a premium quality asset. We wanted to make something that just worked content Like is it that you're finding that you're?
Banks Boutte:these 19 year olds are using your your stuff to create TikToks and we had a six year old in the office who was a son of a friend, who came by, never used a mouse before and built a world in an hour, um, but, but we are seeing this at scale, we're seeing it, we're seeing it in every channel and this is, for us, has been the last five or six years. You know, we've, we've seen it across industries, um, we've seen it at all levels of production where we do a challenge called mission. Well, our last challenge we do frequent challenges, but our last one was called mission to Minerva and we created a fictitious galaxy that we found and we built a kit that was kind of like Star Trek and Buzz Lightyear very much about space discovery and said take the free kit and build a world within the galaxy.
Rajiv Parikh:So this is like your version of the hackathon, right.
Banks Boutte:Exactly, yeah, we built a user-generated galaxy together, that's super fun and we had people who worked on the largest movies uh and games contribute to that as well as people who've never done it before.
Rajiv Parikh:Um, it's really cool to see what you can do, you know, just intuitively, like playing with legos I I tell you, when I go to your website it's just really stunning the kinds of images that are there. And then I had to try to understand it. Now I think I truly understand it. Like these are reusable components that you can then modify and build off of, as opposed to building from scratch. So it's really amazing. So if you were to characterize what your innovation is, are you helping folks reuse content? Are you helping folks by creating a common standard? Are you creating a marketplace? Is it all these things?
Banks Boutte:Everything except the marketplace. So there are other open marketplaces Think of them like Etsy or YouTube, and what we think of Kitbash is kind of like HBO, where everything that we works with every single material and materials like wood or glass, so you can swap the entire library with itself. And this becomes really important as we get to the next chapters, because that's where we started and then we built. The innovation is really underneath the hood and, without getting too technical, we built a pipeline for how to build these types of assets, so we built a lot of software around that. And then we built a pipeline for how to distribute these assets. So we have software where, like when trying to send a JPEG to multiple different devices and open it with different software, we can send you one asset file and you can open that in any 3D software that you're using.
Banks Boutte:So we built proprietary technology that will help us move assets across the pipeline, because what's happening for many studios and even individuals is they're using multiple different software that they have to either rebuild assets for themselves, which is nearly impossible to do from the time side, or or they can't share assets from one department to the other, or when you're making a transmedia project and you've got your movie and you want to make a video game and you want to do some marketing for it. We're seeing the same problem if you think about building a car. The designers will design a 3D model of the car. Then they will send that into production and rebuild it. Then, when they want to market, that're rebuilding the assets, as I'm sure you guys are seeing left and right, and they're not able to share that model or that same asset in a way that would save you 30 to 60 percent of your time right out the gate would you characterize that as the biggest benefit?
Rajiv Parikh:it's? It's is this a? You know, if I boil it down to a few top benefits, it's usually like some kind of efficiency benefit or some kind of effectiveness or productivity benefit or maybe some kind of creativity benefit as a result.
Banks Boutte:It's a good question. It's certainly an efficiency play. It is also a massive boost in what you're able to do if you're a small team, and so it allows you to take different pieces of it depending on who the customer is is because we've been able to build a singular type of product and serve it to a number of different customers.
Sandeep Parikh:Say you're I don't know a small team like FNFunny and really wants to create some stuff with 3D. I'm just throwing that out there as an idea, just a random off-the-cuff example yeah, just a random pull.
Banks Boutte:Yeah, the play would be there, that, with using Kip Ash, you'll be able to build a world faster, better and cheaper than ever before. And for a small team, that really means breaking down many prohibitive barriers that would have stopped you and forced you to make something flat, forced you to make a video, forced you to make something much more passive. The things we hear from studios of that size is without Kip Ash, they never would have been able to do it.
Rajiv Parikh:That's awesome.
Banks Boutte:So if I'm a big studio, my benefit is probably save 80% of the time in your initial blockout phases. Your teams will work faster together, they'll be able to share and be much more cost saving and in myriad ways across the pipeline, and you will have access to so much work that's already been done for you how do I deal with the licensing?
Rajiv Parikh:I made something unique.
Banks Boutte:I don't want someone else to have it really good and important question, because in uh, particularly in the movie business, the product is seen right. So you can't just put spider-man on the chrysler building, because there are copyrights even to architecture, and the copyright laws of architecture are nuanced, but they are very specific. If you have an asset in the foreground, if you're shooting something, that becomes part of the story. So what we do is, instead of building a one-for-one of Manhattan, we take inspiration from all the buildings in Manhattan. We have architects and concept artists on our team who will look deeply at what does it mean to feel like Manhattan? And then they'll build wholly unique structures within that, so that when you use our Manhattan kit, you can feel very comfortable that you're going to have the license to do it.
Rajiv Parikh:So I don't have to worry if I buy from, if I, if I take my team and I say, hey look, I want to create some really cool new video assets for my clients. I want to because we're doing 3D work for folks who make actual devices. We make it really cool and approachable. I can now put them into this very cool game universe and I can just go to Kitbash 3D and my client is not going to get stressed out about licensing problems.
Sandeep Parikh:This is awesome. You can put them right into the city of New York, New.
Banks Boutte:York, new York, but to to feel confident about them, that net copyright is becoming such a major issue that we want you, we need everyone to be able to do things without ripping someone else off, and so that just comes down to a licensing and legal issue.
Rajiv Parikh:How do you, how do you do? This I mean how big is your team?
Banks Boutte:We're about 70 now, um, and the team has, team has. We built a very rigorous process. So lots and lots of documentation, lots and lots of software to help the team work in between the cracks. And to the other point, you asked you know, how do we make every building? If, if, how do we not have every scene look the same? And there's, there's numbers of things you can do. First, you know the buildings are entirely modular, so if you want to change the doors, you want to change the roof, you can swap them out very easily. But also the it's, it's. Think of it like shooting in paramount. You know, we we shot a hundred different productions on the new york backlot in paramount. But you change the lighting, you change the foreground character. You change the foreground character, you change the narrative and all of a sudden you have a different story.
Banks Boutte:So there are 10 to 25% of what you need is bespoke to your project and the other 75% you could reuse as we've done for decades in the real world.
Rajiv Parikh:Wow, now there must be other competitors doing similar things. Yes, no, maybe so.
Banks Boutte:Definitely, definitely. 3d assets is an enormous industry. Um, because if you think about the way 3d technology is proliferating into, every vertical you can imagine is trying to adopt 3d technology, very similarly to the way every vertical adopted 2d video in the last decades. Many, many people are building 3d assets. You know, if you think of like wayfair, the furniture company, they're producing like,000 3D assets a month. Usability and standardization of assets is a whole different story, but every single object in the virtual frontier is a 3D asset. There are lots of people doing this in different ways, serving different industries. What Kitbash is specialized in is being a premium asset, if you think of that HBO type model. And then how do we help other industries? Now is a big conversation for us around the automobile industry. We've worked with Porsche and Ferrari, helping them conceptualize what the future of their cars will look like. Or the live music space the Super Bowl is using our assets. Or Taylor Swift or Childish Gambino at Coachella, or BTS, coldplay are using this to expand and build much more interesting and interactive spaces.
Rajiv Parikh:So you've talked about your technology, your capability. How many people are using it? How do they find you? Do you reach out to them? Do you have a sales team? Do they just find you on the internet? It's all by reputation. How do you do it?
Banks Boutte:Great question. I love this. I think our mission has never been to make 3d assets or to sell 3d assets or to work on movies or video games. Our mission has been to enable and inspire the creators of the virtual frontier. And it's literally on everything. You know, you can see it on my, my coffee cup here.
Rajiv Parikh:I like that mission, though. Thank you?
Banks Boutte:Yeah, it's. It's been really important to us to start with why and to understand what it is that we're actually doing. So the very first thing we did and this is this is at launch was connect with the community, and so we because my business partner was a visual effects artist and my background was in production we had a lot of friends in the space already, and so at launch we built like a Coachella style live stream festival. We call it the Kipesh 3D Festival and we got artists from Star Wars and Blade Runner to come on and do sets where live with the audience. They build a world in an hour and then we'd interview them while they were going. And we partnered with a school who had a community of artists already, and so we connected the star wars art director to their students and and built community that way, and we've done that same thing in a hundred different ways.
Banks Boutte:over the last couple years. We partnered with uh really, actually, this is this is in 2007 to 21. We partnered with twitch and we're on the front page of twitch for lots and lots of different things. We had nearly 5 million live viewers. At one point, we did a tournament where we had individuals from an 18 year old in the Philippines against a 19 year old in Germany being live coached like the Voice, with the Spider-Verse art director and the Blade Runner team, and they were like stick figure drawing, as they built worlds in real time.
Banks Boutte:So for us, it has always been about how do we bring value to this group of people and finding where those people are and connecting with them.
Banks Boutte:We, of course, have, you know, a marketing team and we we, you know, performance plays into that and uh, and email marketing is is stable for us, but we we have a subscription product today, but we always sort of acted like we were a subscription business. We actually didn't realize the difference when we were an e-commerce business, but we were always treating people, treating our community, like the point was to bring them value and have them go along for this ride, because we believe that this space doesn't even really proliferate until 2025 is what we've been talking about since 2016. And so our thought was let's just buy credibility and trust and build a community with this group of people. And then, truly, because we did that, that group of people has grown with us. They've all been able to do a whole bunch more things than they ever would have been able to before, and then they continue to show up and participate with us along the way.
Rajiv Parikh:So you're going community out, you enable the community, you give them something free to play with you. Let them play with their own. They almost teach themselves about how to use this. You create challenges, you get awareness and then eventually they'll say I need to do this in what I'm building, and that's how they end up learning about you and buying from you. So it's really cool.
Banks Boutte:The way you phrased it. Teaching themselves is is literally what happens. You know, we have um our discord community entirely run by community members. We have people out there who are building and making tutorials and teaching one another all the time. One of the things we love doing is is tag teams, where one artist starts something and another artist will finish it and you get to connect with someone around the world.
Sandeep Parikh:Yeah, yeah, a stitch almost, yeah.
Banks Boutte:Yeah, Cool. The community is unbelievable, and that's literally all this has been about is we believe these people who are using 3D technology are going to have a disproportionately massive impact on where we go next as a society. So our thought was can we help, enable and inspire them to build better worlds that help other people? We first thought we believe this is an inevitability, that the internet's going to get at Z axis, so should we make a theme park? And then it was no, let's, let's. Actually, instead of that, let's, let's try to enable, inspire each other and a small team to enable inspire community who's their output will then enable inspire the rest of the world.
Rajiv Parikh:Is that how you seek to scale further, like at some point, like you must have started, usually you know. Have you bootstrapped this or is this venture funded?
Banks Boutte:We're entirely bootstrapped.
Rajiv Parikh:Bootstrapped and then, as you're scaling this, are you going with the community to scale it or are you going to try to, you know, sort of drive it even further, Is it? You know like you can go with your community, but then sometimes, as a founder, I find I get impatient. I'm like I want to skip steps and I want to get it to more people. So I need to either raise or create a marketing team or a sales team or something to get it further.
Banks Boutte:It's a really good point the constant velocity and gas question. We have been very fortunate to get to work with amazing partners and get to bring value in today's market in different ways to different people, and so we're in a fantastic industry with incredible other companies who all are really looking forward as well, and so getting to make collaborative partnerships and find the right way to bring different value has made it so we've been able to pour gas onto what we do, expand into new markets and serve new communities, while still being able to stay very mission focused.
Rajiv Parikh:We always want to find out. You've built this business. You built based on what you know and you love and you've been able to follow with it and go with it and create something. I know you have a great co-founder, you have a great team. What drives you? What got you to this point? Like, what made you go into this business Like you've been in you've been an actor before right Like what got you into this damn good actor too?
Banks Boutte:I appreciate that stage.
Rajiv Parikh:You're hearing it from the director.
Banks Boutte:Well, you know, acting is we can talk about that for just a moment. Acting is is wonderful training for how to be an entrepreneur or for even how to just get a job. You know the world.
Banks Boutte:I mean to be a person really right Is the is the practice of an actor, um, but you're. You're put in situations constantly where you have to understand your product, which in in that business, I think one of the toughest parts is the product is is encapsulated inside your own body, but then you have to go out and you have to demonstrate the value of that product over and over and over again. You have to deal with shifting and changing and fielding lots and lots of feedback and understand what your market is. For me, why this is important is very, very specific.
Banks Boutte:I believe we are at one of the most important inflection points in technological history, and I think this type of technology is changing the way not only people's attention and not only what people do with their time, but how people feel, and I think that is really deeply important that we look at this as a society and that we get as many people with missions larger than bottom lines to focus on this and help improve this, because I think we have a very slim window in history here where this is somewhat niche, and tomorrow it's going to be completely ubiquitous and if we build it like we built some of the last versions of this type of transformative technology. We are going to continue down a pretty precarious path, and so I feel like it is responsible, or at least within my ability to respond with the very best of my efforts and anyone else who sees this, to get involved in this and understand how important this moment in history is and the opportunity provided to people who are early on the wave.
Sandeep Parikh:So just talking about being proactive versus sort of reactive, I mean, I don't know that that's necessarily our nature as human beings, with the world competing against each other constantly for the bottom line and for resources and for for each other, but I, I it's. It's inspiring to hear that said out loud, and I and I do hope people follow that vision. I do wonder, going back, though, to younger banks, like I understand you wanting this now with everything that's going on and where you've been. But where did it all stem from? Was it your parents? Was it a role model?
Banks Boutte:Great, great question. I had wonderful parents and incredibly high achieving parents who believed that real change was possible. My mother's an architect. My entire life was spent. We'd walk into a house that we were looking at and she'd draw it in a new way and then I get to live in that room.
Banks Boutte:My father was on the business side in many different ways, quite transformative in how he worked in environmental law and spent time at the Pentagon and the Supreme Court. I, from a very early age, was instilled with a belief that you can make things better and that you have a responsibility to if you see it. And then I got into team sports and team sports when we talk about mentorship. My father was very sick at a young age and my coaches became pivotal figures, and specifically my seventh and eighth grade coach, which was, was during the years that my dad passed away and he really showed me what a group of people can do and the sport I played. I played defense and what's really cool about it is you have one extra player with a goalie and the whole process is can this group of seven be an outmaneuver through communicating that group of six who knows what they're going to do? And so feeling and understanding the value of teamwork and the value of what something much larger than myself could do was very early, just born into my brain, and from that idea that we can together build something better than the place that we're on supersedes the competition.
Banks Boutte:Competition is inherent in all of life and I think that's important, that's fine and that's a really important piece to drive us all forward.
Banks Boutte:But the actual reason of the game isn't to win.
Banks Boutte:The reason of the game is to play, and so, of course, we are trying and keeping score and you need dollars to run your operation, but that's not the point, and so if we can handle the dichotomy of that, then we can go forward towards things of much higher ideals and build things much better.
Banks Boutte:So for me, I I, as an adult started the kids program on the weekends with my best friend from growing up with the idea that we were going to help teach leadership and community development to tomorrow's leaders through the sport that we grew up loving. Then I realized kids like video games more than they like sports today. I don't think that's they like sports today. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, I just think that is a fact if you look at the numbers, and so I thought the best way that I could participate in helping making larger change was to go to the people who are creating these experiences and build on top of that, and that is a never-ending mission. There is no finality to that. It just keeps stacking on top of itself. In types of things, types of products, we can build, people in verticals that we can reach and more and more impact that we can have.
Rajiv Parikh:That's beautiful.
Sandeep Parikh:I love it. All right, given your love of sports. Uh, let's see if the competition still burns brightly within your soul. Uh, if competition still burns brightly within your soul Banks, I'm throwing you right into the spark tank. The spark tank, that's right.
Sandeep Parikh:In this thrilling round of the spark tank, we're going to find out what is real. We're going to play some two truths and a lie, no-transcript. And in another we've got my brother, who's really good at marketing. So let's see if your skills stand up. Let's see if your skills stand up in this world. It's all about Look, and I guess maybe has played Smash Brothers once. He couldn't even deny that. Okay, anyway, so what I'm going to give you is two truths and a lie. It's going to be three statements. You have to determine which one is the lie and I'm going to deliver that at the count of three. After I read them, you're going to have to lock in your answer and then put up one, two or three so that you can't cheat off of each other or be inspired by each other, and we'll see who's gonna. Who's gonna figure this out. Are you ready to separate fact from fiction here, you guys?
Rajiv Parikh:good, let's give it a go round one.
Sandeep Parikh:number one a company in japan office offers a service to create a virtual reality duplicate of a deceased loved one, allowing for simulated conversations and interactions. Two, a video game development studio in the United States has partnered with the Bird Sanctuary to design an augmented reality bird watching experience where users are given notes and instructions on bird calls, a la SingStar, so that you can attempt to communicate with the birds. You can attempt to communicate with the birds. Number three a 3D modeling firm in the US is working on a project to digitize historical artifacts and create virtual reality museums where users can interact with objects from the past using photogrammetry techniques to capture detailed models of artifacts that are too fragile to handle physically.
Banks Boutte:Now I'm just looking for clues in Sandeep's delivery.
Rajiv Parikh:He's very good. He's got the ultimate poker face.
Sandeep Parikh:I was kind of stuttered in that one. We'll see how it goes. I hope so. So you guys got your answers mentally locked in here we go Three, two, one Okay, you both went with two. The bird sanctuary. So, yes, while vr bird watching experiences do exist, I have not found one where they have been when you've been able to coo so perfectly that a pigeon um falls in love with you. So, yeah, yeah, you're right it was number two.
Rajiv Parikh:Okay, I'm just going on the the notion of people who are birders, actually want to be around birds and they don't want to.
Sandeep Parikh:No, but there are virtual reality bird watching experiences.
Banks Boutte:Oh, it's coming, Not yet, is right.
Rajiv Parikh:We're going to be able to talk to our dogs very soon.
Sandeep Parikh:I find the first one in three more believable just because, yes, that is right there's the Japanese company is called Digital Shaman, and so they're able to provide these digital afterlife experiences for grieving families, and the Smithsonian Institution is the one, of course, creating 3D models of artifacts. Real innovation yeah, it's really cool and we can see objects that we may never have been able to see in person because the stuff is so fragile or whatever.
Banks Boutte:Can I just add to that for a second? I think the most exciting area is in education and I think the most important places that we can develop our skill set and improve upon is using new tools, things like video game mechanics, to engage with kids in wholly new ways and get them much more interested in improving and growing in a way that doesn't feel like the industrial revolution, like you're waiting for the bell to ring, but rather you're engaged in things that feel like play and.
Banks Boutte:I think we're going to see that in really exciting ways in this next chapter.
Sandeep Parikh:It's very sweet and hopeful and kind, and nothing of that is what the Spark Tank is about. This is cutthroat, okay. So I don't want to hear this.
Rajiv Parikh:All right, ron Beggs, you got you gotta beat me. I'm two and 17. Yeah, it's true, he's on a two-game winning streak.
Banks Boutte:I don't want to be, I don't want to be that three so we'll see.
Sandeep Parikh:You don't want to be a three, here we go, all right round. Two a japanese company offers a service for 3d printed figurines of video game characters with such precision that the figurines not only capture the character's exact in-game appearance, but also reflect any real-time changes made to the character's appearance within the game, such as different outfits or equipment upgrades. Number two a virtual reality startup in California has developed a haptic suit that has recently become commercially available at an extremely high price point, which allows its very rich clientele to be the first to feel physical sensations while playing popular VR games such as wind, rain and even punches. Number three a 3D modeled company in Germany specializes in creating hyper-realistic virtual models of food that are so mouthwatering and effective. It's led to experimenting with the technology to add haptic feedback so that they can feel the texture and temperature of the virtual food.
Sandeep Parikh:All right, which one of these is? The lies at the Japanese company with the three figurines of video games, the haptic suit. Where you can One, two or three. Here we go. Three, two, one go. Okay, you both say three, let's see. There's a German company called Lemon Pie that specializes in creating hyper realistic virtual models of food. And yes, that's right. They are in fact researching whether they can create haptic feedback to allow texture and temperature.
Banks Boutte:So I'm so sorry, but they haven't done it yet.
Sandeep Parikh:I'm so sorry. Yeah, they haven't done that piece yet, but if you heard how I carefully phrased it.
Rajiv Parikh:It is still true. It is led to experimenting with the technology.
Sandeep Parikh:Umami.
Sandeep Parikh:Try doing umami, but yes, the lie, in this case, the haptic suit. While that has been developed, there's no commercially available haptic suit for rich people. I'm so sorry, elon. All right, so the lie is number two. You guys are tied one to one. Here we go. Final round you guys must choose a different number. Okay, that's the rule of this round, so I'm going to force one of you to change if you guys end up picking the same number. Here we go.
Sandeep Parikh:Number one a video game company in Sweden has created a plant-powered controller that incorporates bioelectrical chemical sensors to harvest energy from the user's touch and movement. Number two a VR therapy company in the UK offers a virtual reality experience designed to help people overcome their fear of public speaking. Number three a 3D printing company in Australia has developed a process to create edible 3D printed replicas of famous paintings using a variety of flavors and textures. Which one is the lie? Here we go In. Three, two, one. Okay, good, you guys both chose different ones. Now, banks, you chose the plant-powered controller, as the lie and Rajiv said, in creating 3D printed replicas of famous paintings using a variety of flavors and textures. They even offer custom designs for special occasions like weddings and birthdays. And guess what? We have to celebrate your loss, rajiv, and Banks' win in Spark Tank. Congratulations, banks for taking it down Down to the wire, down to the wire.
Sandeep Parikh:Down to the wire, but you did it, you did it.
Rajiv Parikh:I'm glad my guest wins. It's very Indian of me to want my guest to win. I know you beat me in the game. Try to inspire me. What is a motto that you live by or that you would suggest for other founders to live by?
Banks Boutte:I want to give you a great answer there. The highest form of human happiness is being part of something larger than yourself.
Rajiv Parikh:Nailed it, nailed it, nailed it, love it.
Sandeep Parikh:Banks dude, thank you so much for joining us. This is wonderful, Great to see you both.
Banks Boutte:Thanks so much, guys.
Rajiv Parikh:Wow, you nailed it. So the banks is really interesting. What an amazing guy. He has an incredible set of experiences.
Sandeep Parikh:See, I can book good folks too man.
Rajiv Parikh:Researching him prior to this. It was so much fun to because my firm does a lot of creative work, but more for companies. Just going to his website, learning about what he does, seeing the rich images, asking my team about what it does, and hey, can we use some of this? It was so much fun. I mean, he's gone from being an actor to an entrepreneur and he builds communities and from those communities drives great creativity and innovation and he's just so mission-driven, so it's a great combination.
Sandeep Parikh:I really love that. The connective tissue was like how do I help? That seemed to be really what drove him. I've known him for years and making that connective tissue. He's always been this lacrosse coach guy, actor, dude, to this, now CEO of a company, but it's still the same. It's still the same spark. It's still that thing of like okay, well, kids are playing these video games. Like, how can I, how can I be most helpful in this space? Um, to them, so that the world that we're living in, whether it's virtual or real, is at least shaped authentically from a place of intention to be maximally helpful.
Rajiv Parikh:Tremendous respect for anyone who bootstraps their own business and builds a great following and follows their instincts on building community and enabling that community to be that point of interaction and play.
Sandeep Parikh:And it's just super fascinating. I know I want to steal that model for FNFunny. I really love what he's doing.
Rajiv Parikh:All right, Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the pod, please take a moment to rate it and comment. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, YouTube and everywhere podcasts can be found. That's right.
Sandeep Parikh:This show is managed and produced by Cindy Parikh and Anand Shah, and our project manager and research is Anand Shah. The show is edited by Sean Marr and Aidan McGarvey.
Rajiv Parikh:Special shout out to Anand Shah for fantastic research for us. I'm your host, Rajiv Parikh from Position Squared, a leading AI-based growth marketing company based in Silicon Valley.
Sandeep Parikh:Come visit us at position2.com. This has been an FNFunny production.
Rajiv Parikh:We'll catch you next time and remember folks be ever curious.