From Hong Kong to Silicon Valley: The Rise of Sandbox VR

As the founder and CEO of Sandbox VR, I'm Steven Zhao, a passionate entrepreneur who's been building immersive experiences for friends to play together since childhood, and now, after surviving the pandemic and scaling up from just two months of runway to 47 locations globally.

  • 1. Steven Zhao is the founder and CEO of Sandbox VR, a company that provides full-body VR experiences for friends in retail spaces.
  • 2. Sandbox VR creates its own technology and content, and has 47 locations worldwide.
  • 3. Zhao grew up in San Francisco and was interested in games from a young age; he studied electro engineering at UCSD.
  • 4. After college, Zhao moved to Hong Kong to start Blue Tea Games, where he made PC and mobile games.
  • 5. Blue Tea Games was successful during the PC era but struggled with the shift to mobile gaming.
  • 6. In 2015, Zhao saw the potential in VR and decided to pivot his company to focus on this new medium.
  • 7. Sandbox VR initially built consumer games for the VR market, but these were not successful due to a lack of market demand.
  • 8. The company then pivoted again to create location-based VR experiences for groups of friends.
  • 9. This pivot was challenging due to the "winter of VR" in 2017, when investment in VR dried up and many companies struggled.
  • 10. Sandbox VR had to be resourceful in order to survive, using software to minimize hardware costs and creating a word-of-mouth marketing strategy.
  • 11. The company's first location in Hong Kong was successful, leading to funding from Gobi Alibaba and the ability to fine-tune their business model.
  • 12. Sandbox VR opened a flagship store in San Mateo, California in 2019, but had to downsize significantly due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • 13. The company used this time to fine-tune its business and is now seeing strong demand as the world reopens.
  • 14. Sandbox VR sees itself as the future of social entertainment, providing immersive experiences that cannot be replicated at home.
  • 15. The company plans to continue building better content and expanding its franchising in order to open more locations and reinvest in technology and content.

Source: EO via YouTube

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