How I became a… metaverse pioneer

These days it seems impos­si­ble to get away from the con­cept of the meta­verse, but how many peo­ple under­stand what it is or the poten­tial it has to trans­form mod­ern life and busi­ness? One, for cer­tain, is Daniel Corazzi, meta­verse pio­neer, founder and CEO of eye­o­ra. The social VR plat­form allows cre­ators of all kinds (from art to music to film and beyond) to share their work across any vir­tu­al real­i­ty plat­form in the meta­verse. 

Which, when it comes to secur­ing invest­ment, is no easy sell. Par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that the term ’meta­verse’ has real­ly only been around since 2021. 

“I was very, very ear­ly in the game,” says Corazzi. “I was one of those crazy peo­ple that sat in front of cor­po­rates 10 years ago and said, ‘One day, we’re going to be putting this vir­tu­al real­i­ty hard­ware on our faces and trans­port­ing our­selves to new, dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences.’ And they’d all look at me very strange­ly.” 

Exploring possibilities

Corazzi’s jour­ney to the meta­verse took many twists and turns. At school, his inter­ests lay in media and enter­tain­ment with ear­ly dreams of work­ing in the music busi­ness. He would go on to become a singer-song­writer and the front­man of a band before build­ing his own record­ing stu­dio and work­ing as an audio engi­neer. 

It was at this point that his nascent inter­est in tech start­ed to resur­face. “When I was at school, tech­nol­o­gy wasn’t real­ly at the fore­front of anyone’s focus,” he says. “But then we saw the birth of the inter­net.” Both of Corazzi’s par­ents were entre­pre­neurs and his father was one of the first to bring in pro­gram­ming for busi­ness­es. “Help­ing my dad out in his busi­ness, I learnt about going from paper to dig­i­tal. I saw that tran­si­tion hap­pen­ing.”

Lat­er on, while work­ing with artists in his record­ing stu­dio, he realised how time-con­sum­ing and man­u­al a process cre­at­ing music could be and start­ed look­ing for ways to mod­ernise it. “All I want­ed to do as an entre­pre­neur and a devel­op­er is cre­ate tools that I nev­er had.” He start­ed to explore what was need­ed to be suc­cess­ful as an artist or a cre­ator that did not cur­rent­ly exist and devel­oped from there. “One thing led to anoth­er — and we went from broad­cast­ing and stream­ing projects – which led us to the meta­verse.” 

Almost entire­ly self-taught, Corazzi devel­oped his engi­neer­ing and soft­ware skills and start­ed work­ing on web­sites, appli­ca­tions and CRMs for oth­er com­pa­nies before he start­ed run­ning his own tech­nol­o­gy projects in his for­ties. 

The cul­mi­na­tion of these projects is eye­o­ra, a VR plat­form that Corazzi first pre­sent­ed to poten­tial investors 10 years ago. When these investors couldn’t see the poten­tial, Corazzi start­ed to fund the project out of his own pock­et and by 2019 he had secured an impres­sive board and exec­u­tive team of high-pro­file tech entre­pre­neurs, musi­cal artists and man­agers (includ­ing Chris Her­bert, founder of both the Spice Girls and the boy­band Five). 

“I love the excite­ment of build­ing a new indus­try,” says Corazzi. “I love see­ing the reac­tion from peo­ple when they see some­thing they’ve nev­er seen before. Build­ing web­sites is great, but it’s not excit­ing.”

The oth­er best part of build­ing a com­pa­ny from scratch, he says, is see­ing that organ­i­sa­tion grow and devel­op. “We start­ed with two peo­ple and today we have near­ly 30. I’m see­ing peo­ple get­ting mar­ried, hav­ing chil­dren and build­ing careers around some­thing that I envi­sioned. That’s very reward­ing.” 

The draw­backs? When you are a tech enthu­si­ast and vision­ary ideas guy, hav­ing to run a com­pa­ny takes away from the time you can spend on those pas­sions. “I was nev­er a CEO. I’ve always worked for com­pa­nies,” he says. “Now, I’m respon­si­ble for mak­ing deci­sions that will have an impact – pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive — on the whole com­pa­ny. And it’s not that I don’t like that, it’s just not as excit­ing as com­ing up with new fea­tures and devel­op­ment!”

Universal effort

Beyond the respon­si­bil­i­ties that all CEOs share, Corazzi says there are cer­tain skills which are essen­tial for tech entre­pre­neurs. To dri­ve a suc­cess­ful meta­verse project you need to be able to assem­ble an abun­dance of tech­ni­cal­ly able peo­ple, from front-end devel­op­ers to app-devel­op­ers to 3D-devel­op­ers. Most impor­tant of all, you then need to be able to under­stand them and their needs. “It’s not a one-per­son job. To cre­ate some­thing like that you real­ly do need a team of peo­ple.”

To push for­ward in a new area when every­one else is con­fused by your prod­uct, it’s cru­cial to have “that entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it to face chal­lenges and cre­ate new con­cepts and strate­gies in an emerg­ing mar­ket”. And this requires an instinct and dri­ve that Corazzi says you are born with. 

Final­ly, you have to be able to work with investors to give your plat­form the best chance of suc­cess. “The most impor­tant thing in that set­ting is hon­esty — you don’t want to over­promise and under­de­liv­er. You need to believe in your­self and make sure you’ve done your home­work.”

Should you be up to the chal­lenge, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are as excit­ing as they are end­less, says Corazzi. “The meta­verse is what is going to con­nect every­one in a dig­i­tal way.” Fol­low­ing suc­ces­sive lock­downs dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, he believes the meta­verse offers peo­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect and enjoy life’s expe­ri­ences in a much more afford­able, acces­si­ble way. “The meta­verse can put peo­ple back into that social envi­ron­ment, even though it’s dig­i­tal, and allow peo­ple to have more expe­ri­ences than they would oth­er­wise.” 

If that sounds far­fetched to you, Corazzi knows it’s just a mat­ter of time before you can see his vision for the world your­self.

Read more from the “How I became a…” series here