[00:00:00] - (): Okay, this is Eathan Janney here with the Future Education Podcast, and I have this wonderful opportunity to sit down with, Sebastian Borget of Sandbox. wonderful company that's been building and growing for years and. reaching wonderful levels of impact, tell us maybe just a little bit for the listener who's not familiar with you, a bit about your background and, how you got to the point of starting up Sandbox.
**** - (): Hello, my name's Sebastian Borget, I co-founder and a global ambassador for both Sandbox and, SANDchain. I've been a serial entrepreneur for 18 years now, together with my business partner, Arthur Madrid. We had multiple startup, always pioneering new technology and several exit. around 2011, I was able to turn one of my childhood dream, which was like to make video games one day, into a reality when we co-founded this mobile game studio, and we were one of the first in free to play.
[00:01:00] - (): But at that moment, I also realized that it wasn't enough for just myself to make game. I wanted everyone to be able to make games. So, the idea of Sandbox was born at that time. We leveraged like the new feature of smart phones, like the touch screen really gave this feeling of magic as you played around with your finger on the screen to create two deep pixelated world that you can share in an online gallery with others, and it turned into a massive success. We had 40 million downloads over, eight years, and 70 million player made creation. so we are really proud that we've been empowering dozens of million of people to make, actual games and share them. And fast forward, stepping into this like, user generated content world and gaming at the intersection of gaming, we also realize that empowering people to create is great, but that's not enough. Like technology make it very easy and accessible to get started, but many challenge still exists, such as like how to be discovered as a content creator, how to actually build an audience, a community, and make a revenue so then you can have a sustainable way to pursue your hobby, your passion, into an actual job.
[00:02:00] - (): And even maybe hire people, create your business from it and so on. So, around 2017. we found about blockchain as we, found about Bitcoin and then CryptoKitties. We found that the technology could help the creators, not just with, creating content, but also like owning the content they create and have the freedom to choose how they use it, whether they use it in Sandbox outside of Sandbox, they could sell it on the marketplace and they could monetize it directly. That was the first foray into like as well, the balance of financial education for content creator and helping them to monetize and make a living from their activity.
**** - (): Some of our content creators, they actually, earn six figure to seven figures in SAND token back in the days from their activities. So it's been exciting time. We brought over 8 million users, to Web3. We had over 400 major brands partnership, and very recently on the October 1st, we announced SANDchain.
[00:03:00] - (): the next chapter for Sandbox 'cause we feel like everything we do, empowering creators, Why limit it to gaming? And actually we want to provide solution that works for every content creator, no matter which platform they actually are. So SANDchain comes as a solution, like the financial backbone for culture and the creator economy, empowering content creator who are on existing platform like YouTube, Twitch, Discord, et cetera, without them moving their origins and offering them solution for engagement with, loyalties and point on chain.
**** - (): A solution for monetization with why not launch their own token or have access to advanced financing. So it's still incredible today to know that at on average it takes 30 to 60 days for a creator to actually receive their payouts from the platform, like the ads revenue and so on. and so during all that time, they cannot actually reinvest to improve their production or, I don't know, whatever expense they have, like for traveling or even hiring people.
[00:04:00] - (): So we're looking at providing solution that use, for example, blockchain to advance payout to creator, and eventually as well for them to not just rely on donations, from their audience or fandom, but also work with them and offer them an opportunity to support them while, getting back, a good value for that.
**** - (): For somebody who's not so deep into it, it seems like a whole complicated new world, you know? And one of the things that I'm focused on here is the future of education. And, so I'm curious, take a step back and think about, you know.
**** - (): what kind of education do you think that the children of today, somebody maybe high school age, college age, what do they need to be learning to be prepared for a future in which, I don't know, they might be earning their living making six or seven figure in Sandbox. Right. what kind of tools do you think they need and how do you think we go about educating for the future?
[00:05:00] - (): Well, I think education isn't anymore like what we think. Like it doesn't happen in a classroom where you sit and you just listen to the teacher. Of course it's needed. The world still work like this. You have to build a curriculum and pass some exam and so on. But most of the most valuable skills you will learn, you actually will learn outside of the school.
**** - (): For example, financial literacy, but you don't need to take a complicated financial course to do that. Like playing video game, making choices in games where you choose wisely, where you're going to spend your virtual coin or your digital assets to maximize the outcome on your decision.
**** - (): So you can progress faster, you can load it faster, you can fight against that boss, or you can jump further and so on. Gamers have been doing that forever, you know and that's I think like an example of how gaming actually has been a great, a driver of financial education. The second thing I think is like, what many people didn't realize is with crypto, in general, it's been one of the largest driver to educate people throughout.
[00:06:00] - (): the game. Financial literacy very complex concept around like staking and yield and loans. A hundred of million of people have started to learn, start saving and became much more informed and able to make decision based on that. And they gain a lot of freedom from that knowledge as well.
**** - (): so I also think some of the important skill has been coding. Every kid from primary school should start to learn programming language and coding to start to understand logic essentially.
**** - (): Education, STEM related initiative, including Minecraft EDU, Roblox EDU, Sandbox EDU as well. We work on it to push that. I think now with ai, the paradigm is a little bit shifting and we don't necessarily think the same.
**** - (): So right now, I think like with ai, some people think you don't really need to know how to code, you just need how to prompt. With the ai, my personal belief is like Like you need to know how to code,, that's my personal belief.
**** - (): I've always been driven by curiosity. The notion of curiosity is what always motivated me to learn more things. That's why I chose to be an engineer.
[00:07:00] - (): That's why I chose to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to learn and understand the thing I didn't understand, and I wanted one day to build my own always. So let's infuse that feeling into the new generation of. Why don't you build your own and you will understand better how it works. So playing with practice, whether it's doing physical, do it yourself, kind of kit, playing with electronics, making games as well.
**** - (): There are very important skills that, that new generation should acquire. And, financial literacy, again, very important, skill they need to have. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Now, we know you have a flight to make. We appreciate you taking a minute to chat. Any final words for the listeners, place you wanna send them to get involved or learn more?
[00:08:00] - (): Absolutely. Well, I think again, there's no better way to learn than by experience. So if you're curious, you want to get started making your game, go to Sandbox dot game, download, experiment. Show us what you create with it. Don't be ashamed. We always have to start and we'll never be good at something when we start it, but with practice we get better.
**** - (): so you need to have the confidence and the courage to start. Thank you so much.
