Startup of the Week: Realm

• Realm was founded in 2020 by Matthew Larby, Joban Thomas and Milan Gruner.
• The startup enables users to create their own personalised “microverses” (or realms) on its very own NFT metaverse.
• Realm’s first investment round raised a total $2.25m in May 2021.

Aiming to challenge current NFT platforms via personalised metaverses, our Startup of the Week for this week is Realm!

Founded in 2020 by Matthew Larby, Joban Thomas and Milan Gruner, Realm has created its very own NFT metaverse platform, filled with personalised “microverses”.

Players and creators are offered the ability to build their own personalised microverses, each one aptly called a realm. In these realms, users have the freedom to create their own virtual ecosystems, which can be decorated with NFTs as well as genetically encoded living NFT pets.

Users can travel between different realms via AR and connect with one another through live audio streaming – all ultimately achieving innovative new levels of creative freedom and player experience.

The startup describe Realm in their Metapaper as follows: “Realm is a cross chain, community driven open-source project that encourages collectors and creators to express their artistic vision in the purest form: their own magical virtual realm. “

“We want to be the premier blockchain metaverse ecosystem.”

The idea for Realm came out of the three co-founders’ interest in platforms like Cryptovoxels and Decentraland. Realising there weren’t any mainstream consumable experiences within these platforms, the team then set out to build a platform of their own, however found that they were struggling to agree on a set design.

Acknowledging the differences in what each team member wanted to build, and realising that many people out there probably have their own ideas of what they’d like to build within this medium, the co-founders then decided to provide users with the tools to build their own virtual worlds, and break down the barriers to make the metaverse more accessible.

Back in May 2021, the startup closed its very first investment round at $2.25 million, co-founder and CEO Matthew Larby commenting the following on the investment: “We’ve been working on how the metaverse will blur the lines between digital and virtual realities for six months. We’re excited to have some world class investors on board who align with our vision of making everybody the master of their own realm”