Popins
Entertaining and Lucrative Augmented Reality
My Dear Friends,
It’s been quite a while since I’ve caught up with many of you. I hope this process will allow us to reconnect.
To provide some context, after several decades in corporate life I embarked on an entrepreneurial path many years ago. Like most, I’ve had some successes and some failures. But mostly I’ve had fun.
Since my current venture is in the college sports vertical, I’m extending this broader-than-normal outreach to loop in old high school, college and other friends. Whether we root for the same teams or are bitter rivals, I think you’ll have fun learning about what we’re up to.
I have a Seattle based technology company called Popins that I co-founded in 2020. Popins uses a technology called volumetric video to efficiently create fully 3D, lifelike holograms. Thus far we have created dozens of holograms in the traditional media verticals of music, comedy, dance, etc.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with lifelike holograms such as Popins, there’s no way to adequately explain it to you in text. The best way to appreciate the experience is to try it.
I invite you to scan this QR code to bring Sir Mix-A-Lot into your world for a 3D Music Video he created with us of his #1 hit “Baby Got Back”.
The recent changes in college sports resulting from the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in NCAA v. Alston altered college recruiting forever. College athletes may now earn compensation for their name, image, and likeness (NIL). Popins’ technology is ideal for this marketplace. I’ve posted my views recently on how digital collectibles can bring tremendous value to NIL as well as how new technologies like AR can drive deeper fan engagement. We are adding a new vertical and creating holograms of college student athletes at scale and offering them for fans to enjoy and collect.
No one has done exactly what Popins will be doing. However, recently the Dallas Cowboys and AT&T partnered to create “Pose with the Pros”.
Working with our partners Forma Vision, Popins’ technology is much more advanced than what was used in the example above. Our content streams seamlessly to nearly all of the 6B smartphones in use around the world today. This allows us to untether the experience from a physical location like a stadium and empower fans to enjoy holograms of their favorite athletes anytime, anywhere.
We sometimes refer to this opportunity as trading cards meet Pokémon Go. We have a blast imagining how they will take tailgating to the next level.
Additionally, Popins has proprietary technology that allows us to create customized editions of our AR experiences that we monetize as digital collectibles. We emboss the owners name and photo directly over the AR. Not only will fans get to collect Popins of their favorite college athletes, whenever they use their Popin to take mixed reality pictures or videos their ownership will be memorialized forever as it is watermarked into the new content.
Reception among university athletic departments and their associated collectives has been terrific. We will be in market this fall with a small group of launch partners (probably including at least one pre-season top 10 football programs). We will expand our partnership base through the 2023/24 school year. Our launch partners anticipate adding seven figures of NIL revenue from this effort each year. And if we are successful in proving our value to the market, we anticipate that essentially all universities will be reaching out to partner for the 2024/25 school year. We intend to introduce a trading marketplace in 2024 to allow collectors to trade their holograms with other fans harnessing any appreciating market value of the collectible.
I am reaching out because normally at this stage I offer my technology friends an opportunity to participate in a small friends and family round. The effort is less about raising funds — we are generally sufficiently funded — and more about a concept validation phase. The feedback I have received at this stage has been invaluable.
Given the nature of this effort, I thought my high school, college and other friends might find it intriguing.
To be clear, this communication does not represent a solicitation of any type. Rather, consider it an update regarding what I am doing and an invitation to contact me if you would like to learn more. In order to participate in any unregistered security, investors are required to be Accredited Investors as defined by Reg D. In this scenario our minimum investment in this round is $25,000.
If you would like to learn more email me at bryan@popins.io or reach me at 425-443-8100.
Regardless, I know that you wish us the best of luck in this endeavor and that all of you will be rooting for Popins.
Thanks,
- Bryan Lee, Popins Co-Founder