Building a Web3 Entertainment Platform with Playbux’s Sarun Vichayabhai

Episode Overview

Sarun Vichayabhai is a seasoned entrepreneur with over 27 years in the tech industry, known for his innovative ventures that bridge technology and user-centric solutions. At 20, he launched a fantasy football SaaS engine serving Southeast Asian portals, marking his entry into the tech world. He then led Wrap-Inc, a full-service out-of-home advertising company, for two decades, demonstrating his versatility across industries. In 2018, Sarun founded myCashback, an AI-driven platform offering rapid cashback solutions, which expanded to 11 countries and garnered recognition as Asia’s top e-commerce startup by TechNode magazine.

In 2022, Sarun co-founded Playbux, a multifaceted Web3 entertainment platform that integrates gaming, e-commerce, and blockchain technologies. Under his leadership, Playbux has achieved significant milestones, including backing from Binance Labs and participation in VISA’s Accelerator 2023 program. The platform boasts over 17 million registered users and has recorded more than 20 million on-chain actions, positioning it as a leader in the Web3 entertainment space. Sarun’s vision for Playbux centers on mass adoption of Web3 technologies by simplifying user onboarding and enhancing engagement through gamified experiences.

Sarun’s entrepreneurial journey is marked by a commitment to innovation and user empowerment. He emphasizes the importance of balancing value among clients, end-users, and merchants, a philosophy evident in his ventures. His approach to leadership involves fostering passion, hard work, focus, and continuous improvement within his teams. Sarun’s dedication to leveraging technology to improve lives is evident in his efforts to make Web3 more accessible and entertaining for a global audience.​

Episode Transcript

Sarun Vichayabhai: To have a proper business, you need to have a balance of both. And this is what’s so hard about the word marketplace. You need a market and then you need consumers. And the cost of acquiring both sides is extremely high. And then that’s just the beginning of the journey. Right then.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Hey, welcome to Pay Pod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist. Thanks for listening. My guest today is Sarun Vichayabhai, the founder and CEO of Playbux. It’s a platform that integrates blockchain, e-commerce and virtual communities into a seamless Web3 experience. You can shop and play to earn NFTs and cryptocurrency, all while having fun and becoming a part of a growing community. Sarun is a fascinating person with a ton of knowledge and insights on Web3 and blockchain technology and where it might be heading. We chat about the metaverse, the future of NFTs, and even Neuralink, and we wonder if we’re all destined to become Neo in The Matrix. So if you’re ready, let’s plug in and welcome  Sarun Vichayabhai. Hi. I’m sure you get this question all the time, so I apologize, but I’m going to ask it anyway. What we’ve been hearing about the metaverse for a while now. Many people found out about it when Facebook became meta, obviously. Why hasn’t it exploded? Maybe in the way people thought it would?

Sarun Vichayabhai: That’s a very good question. I mean, I don’t claim myself to be, you know, the world expert or the authority on metaverse, but from being in this, particular industry for the past 3 to 5 years, you know, meta has started really pushing metaverse. About four years ago, the metaverse arena started, I think, way back, you know, when we played SimCity civilization.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Oh, yeah, I loved those games.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Long, long time ago. But we didn’t really call it metaverse. Right. But it was the beginning, I think. And then we had roadblocks, which is I think roadblocks can be considered one of the world’s largest metaverse. Right. But I think it’s not so famous because it’s mostly ten year olds. Right. So yeah, and nobody our age really goes on to Roblox and talk to people your age. It might seem a little bit weird, right? Yeah. So, yeah, I think Mark or meta saw this hole, this gap, you know, marketing gap where he thinks, okay, let’s bring the metaverse to the masses, to people who can afford it because, you know, you need glasses, you need equipment. So the thing is, I think the reason that it hasn’t really caught on is because people want to escape. You know, when you mentioned metaverse people really want to escape, you know, from real life into a metaverse, you know, another life, like a new life or a second life, you know, an imaginary life, right? But right now, I don’t think anyone has done such a good job. So that your food that you are not you.  Does that make sense? It does.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Right. Yeah. You right now what you get from metaverse is basically a blurred vision and like a headache. Right. So I don’t think the graphics I graphics card I mean from Apple I think you know with the Apple Lens and what do you call it, the Apple Vision Pro and then the new meta glasses. I think they’ve really stepped up the game. They’re getting there. Definitely. But the brain human brain is so smart such that it is very tough to trick. Right. So i think with the acceleration of AI and visual graphics, you know, once you reach that, I think we have reached that point where you cannot tell, you know, AI from human. Right. So once we’ve I think we crossed it this year actually we crossed the I don’t know what, I don’t know the technical term for it, but the difference between AI and human has we’ve crossed that because if you if we think back 20 years ago when we watched, you know, heavy CGI graphic movies, you can tell the dinosaur is fake, you can tell, you know, you can tell the bad guy is we sometimes we laugh at the bad guy because the fake is so bad.

 Kevin Rosenquist: I know I’ve been kind of anti CGI for a while just because of that, because I’m like, this doesn’t even remotely look real.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Exactly. But right now, what is scary is that it is too real.  Right now there are so many scams. We’ve heard scams about CEOs calling that even their own employees and the employees being fooled. Right. You’ve heard that scam right there. It’s made up a fake AI CEO ordering the CFO to pay millions of dollars. And they believed it. And it was an AI. Right. So we’ve definitely crossed that boundary of that fence of fooling the human brain of we can’t really tell anymore. And right now, once we’ve crossed that because of the graphics card of I definitely I think we’re, we’re, we’re going to very soon, we’re going to get the proper metaverse we all have been waiting for.  That’s the only reason I don’t think we’ve got it last, I mean 2 or 3 years ago of this particular issue. But I think we’ve solved it right.

 Kevin Rosenquist: I tried, I did a thing at a, at some sort of local fair or something. They had like a Stem bus and I did a roller coaster, like I put the thing on and I was on a roller coaster and I did not like it. I had to shut my eyes a few times. I started to feel nauseous, like it was just like I did. It’s really my only experience with that. And I was not a fan.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Exactly, but I think in the future you will definitely be transported. You have like wind. You feel like definitely you’re in the role of proper roller coaster ride. I think that’s just a matter of time before we get there. Yeah.

 Kevin Rosenquist: So let’s talk playbooks. You are an entertainment platform that combines decentralized finance and blockchain services with gaming, e-commerce and entertainment. You can shop to earn or play to earn NFTs and crypto. Tell me a little bit about what the user journey looks like from the time they first enter the platform. And can you kind of walk us through how users can start earning and spending rewards?

Sarun Vichayabhai: Sure, sure. So it’s a pretty simple platform, so we try to make it so seamless that you can’t even tell if it’s a block, you know, if it’s a Web3 or Web2 company. Right? Because a lot of issues with Web3 companies is the onboarding. Or you get like a 95 usually the rule of thumb, I think is a 95% drop off rate, meaning let’s say you spend $100 on marketing, you get 9100 people onto your platform. Only 5% actually use it, right? So it’s a massive loss because of the technical issues with blockchain. Blockchain is quite difficult. So what we’ve done is we’ve designed like a very simple interface where two people can come play and enjoy blockchain without knowing you’re even in a blockchain company. And then you just all you need is click with Google, sign in with Google, and then you do all the shopping, all the gaming,without having to, you know, download MetaMask or all the wallets. That’s quite technical. I think it.

 Kevin Rosenquist: It’s confusing and it seems I think a lot of people are put off by how weird it seems like. It doesn’t seem like you’re doing something legal or right, or what you should be doing, you know?

Sarun Vichayabhai: Exactly. Because if you remember when you first used your, your, your MetaMask or any wallets or off, I mean, like proper Web3 wallet they ask you for a seat. Face. Right. It’s very intimidating because it says that’s.

 Kevin Rosenquist: A good word for it. Intimidating.

Sarun Vichayabhai: It’s very. And then you, once you lose it and then, you know, there’s like 20 different blockchains. Now there’s even more. I think now we have like 100 blockchains. You have to be on exactly the chain. It took me probably like a week to really get the flow of it right. So it’s quite cool. Hence, you know, the huge 95% drop off rate. But I think we’re everyone’s doing a much better job. So back to the point of Playbox. You know, you come in, click one, click email, you know, sign in and then you can choose all the services we have,banners like one banner for shopping, one for gaming, and then different games like Conquer to Earn. And we have like,uh, Walk to Earn. We have watch to earn many, many entertainment options. So you can just click and choose and then do very much like Web2 activities. And you don’t need any Web3 knowledge until you do. Meaning, at the very end of the journey, do you need to learn about NFTs or, you know, putting NFT on chain and then selling it, or going to what was this site called? You know, the NFT sites now, OpenSea, the Open sea, OpenSea, those sites, and then just selling it. And so we intentionally, intentionally left the Web3 part to the very end of the journey. So users need to earn first and then learn about making monetization later. So it becomes like gamified or they have incentive to learn about okay, what’s a blockchain? What’s like a wallet? How do I get my NFT out of the system to sell? Or how do I, you know, win lottery tickets? And because we have lotto and stuff, you win like digital lotteries and you can convert it to USDt. So only when you win do you need to execute on chain transactions. Hope that makes sense. It does. Yeah.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. No, it makes total sense. It’s smart too, because you kind of get people kind of familiar with what you’re doing and what you’re doing on the platform, or what they’re doing on the platform before you kind of show them the technical stuff. That might be a little bit scary. So at least now they’re like feeling more comfortable on the platform so that there might be more willing to go out of their comfort zone.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Exactly.

 Kevin Rosenquist: That makes sense. So you mentioned NFTs. It’s a big part of playbooks. So beyond collectibles, how do they function on your platform?

Sarun Vichayabhai: That’s a very good question. I mean, NFTs is a core component of our platform. We have one of the first innovation in the industry called the Stamp to Earn program. Right. So we get this from a lot of ideas you see on playbacks we get from real life situations. For example, I’m in Thailand at the moment. Right. So we have 7-Eleven. I believe you have 7-Eleven. I think you’re in America, right? You have 7-Eleven? Absolutely.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Slurpees?

Sarun Vichayabhai: Yes. Slurpees. Yeah. You have that in Thailand, too. And it’s delicious because it’s so hot here. Yeah, I bet, but the cool thing is let’s give Slurpee as an example. In Thailand, once they buy the Slurpee, right, we get stamps. So we get a coupon like a stamp to collect. And then you more you collect stamps, you can use it for money. And then you can buy more Slurpees for free. So I love the concept. So I put that on chain. So basically we convert that idea from 7-Eleven to on chain uh stamps. And you can collect your NFT as stamps. And then the more NFTs you collect, the more points you get. And then from these points we give airdrops, we give,we give lottery tickets, we give more NFTs, we give prizes, and then we had like every day we have thousands and thousands of people come on and just, you know, show the playbacks NFT what they have and stamp. So that’s how we use NFTs in our system. So it’s not just your typical JPEG because a lot of companies or a lot of projects, they just sell the NFT. There’s no real utility. But here you keep the NFT and then every month we have new promotions, like this month we’re giving away lottery tickets and then these lottery tickets there’s valued. The price is add up to about $300,000. So it’s quite a lot of money. But the NFT you already own, right. So it doesn’t cost you anything. And it forces I mean, it incentivizes current users to come back every day, you know, because you have to come back every day and show us your NFT. And we have, like all the AI to count, how many NFTs, how many points you get and then you collect and then you exchange exchange points into raffles, lottery tickets and other goodies. Soon, I think next month we’re doing airdrops, like for new projects. So actually this is the first place I’m releasing the information. So I think that’s going to be very interesting.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that’s really cool. Yeah. And I, you know, we saw NFTs kind of boom as collectibles and then they sort of faded away from general conversation. It probably was kind of around that same time that the whole crypto world was kind of like turned on its head with, you know, SBF and Silicon Valley Bank and stuff like that. Where, where do you see NFTs evolving in the context of Playbook’s ecosystem, but also the larger blockchain? You know, conversation.

Sarun Vichayabhai: NFT is definitely here to stay. I mean, but it’s not going to be initially, NFT was a meme coin. Basically. Right now we’re in memes. Last season, NFT was the meme coin, right? I mean, it was like equivalent, but right now it has evolved to a more utility, like a more membership cards membership program, similar to what I’m, you know, what we’re doing. So I don’t think we’re going to see NFTs trading, you know, like a Bored Ape anymore.maybe maybe not. But not widely as before. You know, people are not going to blindly aping into a JPEG anymore. Right. But that was.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Crazy. People were going nuts for those things.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Well, lucky I didn’t, you know, go nuts for those things because right now it would have been worth a jpeg, right?

 Kevin Rosenquist: Right. Yeah.

Sarun Vichayabhai: But definitely we did a good job of putting utility real world. So it does work. You know, these NFT does actually work as a membership card membership program and its blockchain is provable is proof of ownership. Right. So it works and it’s fun. So definitely you’ve seen I think Starbucks doing it and definitely a lot of big corporates onboarding NFTs as membership programs, right. So I think it’s definitely the way to go because I think it’s fun, it’s on chain and it’s accountable. And I think that’s how it’s evolved and that’s how we will focus on using it, not as a speculation tool, but more of a just a what blockchain was supposed to do, you know, just a fun way to collect points.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, I’ve heard, I’ve heard like,like sports experiences, concert experiences. That’s another use case for NFTs where you can have like a, you know, if you have some sort of special VIP thing or you get some sort of special bonus or something like that, that you and then you can trade those or, or sell them or whatever. And, andyeah, it’s interesting because I think I think you’re right. I think there’s a really good use case, many use cases for NFTs, but I’m not sure cartoon drawings of apes are the one is the way for it to go.

Sarun Vichayabhai: But who knows. I could be wrong. This bull run could be even worse, right? I mean, people can be spending like 100 million on a bored ape. And I would sound stupid right now.

 Kevin Rosenquist: And it’s true. We just don’t know. I mean, it’s so. It’s so crazy how that works. Yeah. I bought a couple of NFTs just to try it out a while back, and. Yeah, they’re I mean, I didn’t spend much money on them, but they’re not valuable. They’re not valuable.

Sarun Vichayabhai: But they just keep holding on to it. Who knows? Right. You never know.

 Kevin Rosenquist: There’s no reason to get rid of it.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Crazy business we’re in. You know, we have I, I just saw a program before I came on here. We have an AI meme coin now, so we have, like, AI generating. I think there’s it’s called goat or something that meme coin, you know, it’s now valued within a week. It’s now like 700 million. So who knows what can happen. Okay.

 Kevin Rosenquist: All right I got yeah. We’re not going to try to predict. We’re not going to get it right. Yeah. You’re our AI engine that powers hyper personalization on Playbux. Can you explain how this AI works behind the scenes to sort of enhance, you know, a user experience, a user’s experience, and what kind of data it uses to make recommendations?

Sarun Vichayabhai: Sure. This is a very important subject because AI now has become the future. I mean, it’s not actually now. Right? It was like where, you know, where everyone thought we were going is AI, but. Ai is actually now. And we luckily, we got government sponsored sponsorship about five years ago to study AI.and we call it our AI because it’s real intelligence. AI is more artificial, meaning it’s you’re not sure what you’re actually building compared to the human brain. I,just to get everyone on board, I. What the goal. The ultimate goal of AI is actually to replicate the human brain, right? So I think that’s something a lot of people forget to understand. Okay. Why? Why are we doing all this? the ultimate goal of AI is basically to replicate humans. So how do we replicate human? We have to reverse engineer how human brains actually work. And how does human brains actually work is, it’s actually quite, very tough to understand, but luckily I’ve studied quite a lot of Buddhism. And in Buddhism you have to study how your brain works. And that’s the foundation of how we build this engine is basically we reverse engineer how we think. Well, I, I think the human brain actually functions. So we call it real intelligence because it actually is based on the reverse engineering of our brain. And luckily we’ve taken about five years to develop it. And it’s done quite a good job at improving, For example, improving conversion rates. Yeah.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Okay. So let me ask you this. In your virtual marketplace, you know, users are shopping for digital goods obviously. Was it, was it difficult to build a marketplace that lives in, you know, the kind of the metaverse or what the metaverse was or lives in that place? I mean, there’s got to be some unique challenges there.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Extremely difficult, extremely difficult, I’m telling you, because it’s a business, right. And as a business, you know, any business with two sides is called a two sided marketplace. You have buyers and sellers. Most businesses, all you need to do is find seller, find buyers. Right. And then you’re done. I mean, you have a website, but this marketplace, you have to find merchants, 10,000 merchants. And then once we found the merchants, we need to define the right side, which is the consumers. So to have a proper business, you need to have a balance of both. And this is what’s so hard about the word marketplace. You need the market and then you need consumers. And the costs of acquiring both sides is extremely high. And then that’s just the beginning of the journey. Right. And then you have to continuously provide service. You have to provide. So provide superior service to other people. Like why do they come to your site versus your, you know, another site. So that’s why AI is so important. It personalize it knows what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to predict what you need before you even know it. So that’s, I think, the end goal of what we’re trying to achieve with our AI or AI system. Yeah.

 Kevin Rosenquist: That’s ambitious. It’s an ambitious project. I mean that’s cool. I mean it’s not like that’s not already kind of happening obviously with, with like predicting what we want and stuff. We get it all the time on our phones and all that. So you’re just of amping it up into your world, into the playbooks world.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Exactly.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. So as playbooks is blending gaming, shopping and social interaction and the, you know, how do you see digital communities evolving in the playbooks world?

Sarun Vichayabhai: So for  playbooks we have a very big community. You know we have like half a million on Twitter. We have like 150 on telegram, 150 on discord.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Wow.

Sarun Vichayabhai: So it’s very, very big. And,community is the backbone of all projects, right? Because essentially you’re you’re they are your customers. They’re like your family, right? So,it’s very difficult to manage communities because it’s like managing 100,000 humans. You know, how do you. It’s like traffic controller. You’re the traffic controller. Like, who gets to talk and how do you manage all the spam, all the rude words there’s a lot of. Yeah.

 Kevin Rosenquist: I was going to say the hate and the trolls and all that.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Yeah. Fortunately.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Definitely. In this business, Web3, for some reason, because maybe a lot of people use JPEG as, you know, they’re hiding behind,they don’t they don’t use real names. Right? So when people do not reveal their identity they can often release that dark side or they become angry easily or they tend to be a little bit more aggressive. So that’s, that’s I think the, the issue everyone’s facing with community, you know, management and spams bots and stuff like that. So, you know, there’s many aspects that our community, the what we’re trying to do is first, you know, through the funnel, we first have to ban the bots, you know, so we, put in bot deterrents. And then once we prove that you’re human, okay, you have to control the atmosphere, you know, by moderating, moderating. So we have a lot of moderators. We have a lot of moderators who are taught to control all the spams, you know, all the negativity, all the swear words and stuff like that. So it’s really tough work, but it’s something we need to do. But luckily I think we’ve seen back to AI again because AI is everywhere now. We’ve seen chatbots and AI agents that can manage spam manage, you know, they we can target banned words and stuff like that so they can quickly ban it or see where it’s from or delete it before. Like if it’s human, there’s humans. We have lunch breaks. We have dinner breaks. You know, we have all kinds of breaks. So I think in the future this is going to be a big industry, the AI, chatbots, community management. And definitely we haven’t done a good job yet of implementing AI. We use live agents now. But definitely I think we’re, we’re going to see humans have less and less roles in community management soon.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Your platform is very much a virtual experience. Do you see a future where physical and digital products or experiences sort of blend more?

Sarun Vichayabhai: For sure. For sure. I mean, that’s a very good question, I think.as I mentioned early on, the key metaverse didn’t take off is exactly because humans, you know, we want to have experience, right? We want to feel good. We want to be we want to believe what we are doing is bringing us happiness. You know, we want to be,transported to happiness. And definitely, I think in, in, in playbacks, you know, once we once we get this experience, once we can give our consumer consumers this experience. Right. I think definitelyI think we’re going to do a much better job at. You know, I told you, I drop off rate was 95%, which is terrible, I think. But it’s still within the standard industry standards like that. I think a drop off rate would be much better. Our conversion rate will be much higher. The key is just how  do all projects, not just us, how do all projects make it so believable that there’s no difference between physical and mental? It becomes I think we’re heading there. I love this subject because I think we’re heading there. I think the neural link thing that Elon Musk has put on, I think not even it started with monkeys, but lately he’s been trying it on humans and it’s actually working right. You can think and then your arms move and then they would do things for you. So that’s the future of humanity. And I think the movie matrix, I’m not sure if you’ve seen.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Oh yeah yeah.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah I loved that movie. That was great.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Do you remember that humans became batteries? You know, and, you know, we’re just in the pods, right? But the whole movie is basically humans actually thinking that they’re alive. You know, they’re doing things,you know, being Keanu Reeves and jumping around neo. So I think that’s where we’re heading. Actually, some some day the metaverse will become so real that even when you’re home, you can be anywhere you want in the world, in not even in the world, in the universe with this chip in your brain or something crossing that reality crossroad, you know, and and it becomes a neuro experience, a brain experience instead of physical. But your body thinks it will be real, though. So that’s, I think, something to expect very soon, sooner than we think. And it’s something scary. But it could be, I don’t know, it could be good. Because imagine just sitting at home right now, and you can be in Hawaii and you believe you’re in Hawaii, right? But you’re just chilling at home and it doesn’t cost you a plane ticket. There’s no Covid. There’s no, like, gun violence. There’s nothing. But it’s the perfect holiday. But everything is in your brain. So I think it’s something coming very soon. And thanks for the question. you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s going on, what’s going to happen in the future. And I think this is something super interesting.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, it is, it is, it’s you’re right though. It is. There is definitely a scary element to it as far as just, you know, if we get too reliant on that make believe or that that fake life, you know, do we do we get addicted into it to a point where we’re not taking care of ourselves, we’re not taking care of the people around us. We’re not working. We’re not, you know, like, I could see it becoming. I could see it be easily become an addiction, especially when someone is kind of at a low point. Maybe they’re not doing real well, maybe they’re unhappy, maybe they’re depressed and then hook up. And I mean, you can’t be depressed anymore, right? So you could look at it as a way, like, hey, it could help people that are having problems, but it could also become all consuming.

Sarun Vichayabhai: I mean, I think we even the phone, you know, look at the smartphone. How dangerous that is now, I mean, you take the subway, you take the subway. That’s, let’s say a hundred people in the subway. But it’s actually a singular experience, right? Because nobody even though there’s 100 people, everyone is staring at the screen. Everyone’s like on Twitter, Facebook. You feel alone, you know, so it’s going to get worse. But I, like you said it. It’s got definite, definite, you know, positives. But how do we manage all of this?I, you know.

Sarun Vichayabhai: It’s.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Just going to be a crazy world.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Yeah, it really is.

 Kevin Rosenquist: It’s it’s exciting. I mean, it’s fun to, like, think about where it’s going to go. It’s fun to have conversations like this. It’s fun to watch things unfold. But yeah, it is. It is going to get it’s going to get crazy, that’s for sure. Yeah. But all right. Well Sarah, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you talking all about the metaverse and playbooks and what you have coming. And I’m excited to see what’s next.

Sarun Vichayabhai: For sure.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Thank you so much for having me, Kevin. Really interesting. Half an hour and yeah. Have a nice day in America.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Yeah.

 Kevin Rosenquist: You two have a nice night in Thailand.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Yeah.

Sarun Vichayabhai: Thank you everyone. Bye.