Dan Barry (00:01.89)
The star of this Trailblazers episode is Olivia Lee, a highly regarded expert within the digital fashion industry. She is co-founder of Livium, a Web3 consultancy, head of digital fashion at All Stars Women Dow, recognized in the top 100 global women of the future of emerging tech, ambassador for the first ever Metaverse Beauty Week, and of course,

as a member of the prestigious Metaverse Fashion Council. Olivia is based in Hong Kong, where I lived for seven years. So on a personal level, it is exciting for me to see how vibrant the Web3 and Metaverse space is in Hong Kong. So happy you can join us here today, Olivia.

Olivia Lee (00:52.254)
Great to be here Dan, thank you so much for having me.

Dan Barry (00:56.658)
I’m honored actually. So tell you what, let’s dive in. The first question I’m gonna ask, and it’s actually a question I love asking, as the answers can be so diverse. What single event or person inspired you to enter the Web3 and Metaverse marketing space?

Olivia Lee (01:17.826)
That’s a great question, Dan, and actually is also one of my favorite questions because essentially this one single event and this one single person really just changed the trajectory of my career. So my previous job, I worked for a private investment company and he’s well known in Hong Kong. He has a great eye for really interesting…

technology and his portfolios all alternative assets. So he invests in like quantum computing, carbon neutrality, naturally crypto, and he had quite a bit of investment decks that kind of comes through my desk. And the first one I came across and I literally it was the first week on the job. It was this beautiful holographic looking deck, all colorful compared to like

Dan Barry (02:02.135)
Hmm.

Olivia Lee (02:14.01)
standard DeFi looking decks and it had this beautiful world of metaverse and it had digital avatar shopping, it showed it in a 3D way, it had a lot of brands and immediately I gravitated towards it. So I have to say it was through a single investment deck that really opened my eye what is this term metaverse and then naturally on my own time I looked it up.

and slowly I built my world around Metaverse because I truly believe in it. So, and then the single person, naturally you would imagine, is my ex-boss. His name is Lawrence Chu. He was such an inspiration because he brought so much excitement to the world of Web3. He truly believed in it. He advocated it. He explained it. And he really helped me understand what it meant. So without him, I might not have been as excited.

Dan Barry (02:48.137)
else.

Dan Barry (03:12.206)
Cool, cool, yeah, that’s a good story. It’s like we all have our stories and you have to kind of like dig in a little bit. Let’s like afterwards, it’s like the deep dive that never ends, right? So one of the qualities that I see in you that I can totally relate to is your passion for what you do.

Olivia Lee (03:23.682)
Yeah.

Dan Barry (03:35.038)
So what motivates you every day to keep that passion going and to do your work in Web3 and Metaverse?

Olivia Lee (03:35.085)
Thank you.

Olivia Lee (03:44.042)
Oh, thank you so much. It means a lot. You can feel it if it’s just reading my articles and stuff. I do love this space so much. I think what motivates me, and I’m active and doing this every day, is my affinity for learning and for just being a curious person. I think all my life, I’ve loved all different kind of topics across art, culture, history.

Dan Barry (03:48.567)
Hmm

Olivia Lee (04:11.27)
I even have an obsession with dinosaurs. I want to dig in. These are all of just really random things I love but with like my motivation is Really just changing the space and having this time having after maybe like 15 I have over 15 years of work experience across different fields different industries in different roles and It all kind of accumulated to this

point where all of my skill set all of a sudden became an asset. So the variety of things that I’ve done across operations, supply chain, when I worked for a bank before, marketing, education, I’ve done quite a bit and all of which just kind of made it this beautiful sort of understanding in terms of what I want to do. So I’m motivated by that. And I’m also motivated by

just the abundance of opportunities. You know, it’s just sort of the right time and place for me in my life, as I said. I remember in the late 90s when I was still like, you know, in high school, I saw the kind of mass adoption of the internet. And I’m pretty sure I was one of the first to just kind of jump in. I credit my parents for kind of like.

knowing the usage of technology and bought the desktop, the PCs and such, and got us the internet and everything, the modem and everything. So I always saw the beauty of it and wanted to be a part of it, but at the time I was kind of too young and it wasn’t the right place to join. So this time around, you know, you just have, you just know, you have all the skillset, you have the time, sort of the knowledge, you know, and the…

Dan Barry (05:44.726)
Yeah, yeah.

Olivia Lee (05:56.042)
the curiosity to see this through. Like I don’t wanna miss this one this time around. So that’s one of the motivations for me as well.

Dan Barry (06:00.811)
Yeah, I gotta go.

Yeah, that’s a big part for me too, to be a part of it, but to be a part of it from the beginning until it really becomes like mass adoption, right? So to me, it’s the journey is probably the most fun part. And that’s what we’re involved in right now, right? Is the journey. So I love that as well. So speaking about journeys, tell me about the journey that your company is taking.

Olivia Lee (06:21.431)
Really? Absolutely.

Dan Barry (06:32.534)
besides you, what makes your company so unique?

Olivia Lee (06:36.842)
Hmm. So, you know with livium It started off not with I wanted to make it into a company it just started off with me wanting to take the time to explore the space for myself and also for the people that is within my network because I do believe in the space and I know there’s a lot of mixed messages or maybe to opposite of

you know, like either the big end of the spectrum, either is pro or negative, and it becomes very confusing for a lot of people. So it started off as me just exploring the space, and oddly enough, it’s because I wanted to jump into all of these metaverse platforms. So mind you, like a year and a half, two years ago, it was still a very hot space, you know, and I didn’t want to show my face, you know, now I’m getting more comfortable on camera.

Dan Barry (07:30.838)
Hahaha

Olivia Lee (07:33.386)
But it was because I wanted, I found an avatar to replace me, to explore the space. So it kind of came up with the avatar first, and her name is Livyam. And then through that, over time, I started to build more of a following, and I got a really great feedback. People were really kind of very responsive to the material I sent out.

And that’s when I thought, OK, I can combine it with my skill set, which is the ideation and the strategic side and the marketing side. And that’s how Livium was born. So what makes Livium different from, say, other Web3 or Metaverse companies is that, as I mentioned, I love to deep dive firsthand. The purpose is to really get a good understanding the nuances among all of the different platforms and.

At last count, I think there were something like 200 platforms and I’ve been over on 20 of them, you know, actively go on three activations a week. I still do it. You know, I don’t post it as much anymore. And then another thing is I’m really there as a advocate first. I’m really there to share this information, share new information, to decode and demystify all of these brand activations.

as the main reason. So I think that’s what sets me apart.

Dan Barry (08:59.73)
Okay, no, very cool. So you take a very, very personal interest in, and every project that you end up deciding to do. So yeah, very cool. My, my, my jump into it was very similar to yours. It was just like explore, dive, explore, explore. And, and then it’s like, wow, I’m doing all of this. I’m actually, well, might as well make a business out of it, but yours is truly unique where your business is named after an avatar.

I think that’s quite unique. I don’t think I’ve heard that anybody else mentioned that their business came from an avatar. So that’s.

Olivia Lee (09:27.371)
Yeah.

Olivia Lee (09:33.93)
So can you guess who my co-founder is then?

Dan Barry (09:37.962)
I don’t know. Ha ha ha.

Olivia Lee (09:39.723)
Bye.

My digital team, that is the co-founder. You’re the first to know that, haven’t revealed that before.

Dan Barry (09:48.133)
Well, everybody knows now. The alpha is out. So this is going to be like, this is going to seem like a weird question. So do you like roller coasters?

Olivia Lee (09:52.107)
Yeah.

Olivia Lee (09:59.134)
I do. Not so much anymore I’m used to.

Dan Barry (10:00.706)
See, yeah, I’m kind of same way. I used to do it more, probably not so much anymore. But I would have to say that NFTs have been the ultimate roller coaster experience over the years. But in my opinion, they have never wavered in terms of being an important ingredient in Web3 and Metaverse marketing. So my question to you, where’s the…

Roller coaster going to go in 2024. How do you see NFTs evolving over the next 12 months?

Olivia Lee (10:37.01)
Yeah, I just want to say on the idea of NFTs are like roller coasters I guess I do like roller coasters because during all the ups and down it was absolutely thrilling and emotionally unstable in a good way because Wasn’t much happening in Hong Kong at the time, you know, so I was very Happy to go through the ups and down, you know, but to answer your question. Um, I think

you know, as you’ve mentioned, it’s gone ups and downs quite a bit. And I think that’s where the bulk of the misconception comes from, because everyone’s introduction to NFTs came from massive news, you know, in the media, like including all that, like, Christie’s people sale, which was astronomical at the time. That’s what got it in them.

But I do believe NFTs are going to really shape the way that we interact and engage with one another, how we express ourselves in a personal way on the digital realm, and then also how we manage our ownerships. And so all of these things are going to be the standard, I believe.

Dan Barry (11:26.391)
Yep.

Olivia Lee (11:47.346)
And I believe with NFTs, you will always have ones, just like in real life, real assets, that is gonna be worth a lot of money because of the emotional kind of feeling somebody gets from it, either as a limited edition artwork created by a very special artist, et cetera. Just like in real world, there’s just always gonna have that vying for one-off pieces.

But the ultimate usage for NFTs, I believe, is that it could pretty much come in as free, like collecting coffee car stamps back in the day when you go to Starbucks and you buy a coffee and you get a stamp for it. So essentially, I do believe the bulk of it will be used in a very like.

stable way where people are collecting things without even realizing that they’re collecting it. It’s just that it is on chain as part of the connected journey and how we’ll be interacting in a decentralized manner. So I think we will see a little bit more stable. And then every once in a while, you’ll hear some kind of great news that will further catapult NFTs into the ultimate Web3 stratosphere.

Dan Barry (12:57.57)
Yeah, yeah, I just think there’s so, so much potential for NFTs. So it’ll be, it’ll be interesting to see what happens in 2024. And I actually feel like the, you know, kind of the market going down or whatever. I think it was actually healthy for overall for the market. So now it’s like, it’s kind of more normal now to me, to me, NFTs is like part of the tech stack, right? It’s like.

Olivia Lee (13:18.114)
Awesome.

Olivia Lee (13:24.45)
more.

Dan Barry (13:25.842)
You know, there’s usage for it, et cetera. But when it was elevated to be like this, you know, oh, it’s worth like a million dollars or whatever. And everybody just had this like high expectation of what it would be. I don’t, at the end of the day, it wasn’t sustainable. So, but it’ll be fun to see what happens this year. So, final question. And being that 2023 was the year of AI,

I have to ask you a question related to AI. So what effect do you think AI will have in 2024 on the Web3 and Metaverse space?

Olivia Lee (14:09.054)
Yeah, so I’m going to go at the angle from a user-centric and a brand-heavy kind of perspective. I think AI definitely will bring brands and their members. I’m trying to refrain from using the word customers now, because I think as we tap into the world of Web3,

so-called quote unquote customers become a part of their ecosystem. So they’re really members is how I like to think of them. It will bring them a lot closer because you’ll find a lot of ways to engage with these members either through like activations like co-creation where previously members that may not have any design skills but may still have the ability to dream as long as they can do a good prompt.

Dan Barry (15:01.131)
Yep.

Olivia Lee (15:01.27)
It would enable that a brand can encompass their members’ creation as part of their overall journey. It may be through that individual members own track in the sub-ecosystem of what they want to do. It could be cross-collaboration with something they’ve dreamt of. And it made into a custom one-item piece. It could be something like that.

But then AI in general for the whole idea of fashion industry, I think AI in terms of data will also enable all of us to make smarter decision in terms of our purchases. Because I believe that a lot of these sort of sustainability factors that’s going on could be due to the fact that we don’t know what to buy. And because majority of our time is buying things online, assuming that.

you know, we buy things that are unfit and then we naturally have to return it. So I do hope AI is going to help sort out a lot of these sizing factors and it will help us enable us to buy things as we need, what is intended for and how it should fit in the context of retail. So I do believe it’s going to make things a lot better and the whole shopping experience is going to be so much more seamless, entertaining and convenient.

Dan Barry (16:23.666)
Oh, that sounds good. Are you familiar with Obsess?

Olivia Lee (16:25.058)
Thank you.

Olivia Lee (16:28.818)
Yeah, I do. I have seen it. They’ve done a great couple of projects like Charlotte Tilbury, their Disney project that they’ve done recently. That was a good one that they’ve done.

Dan Barry (16:39.698)
Yeah, I had interviewed Nihal Singh, who’s the CEO a couple of days ago. So they’re actually, so Taylor Swift has a store on Obsess. I just thought that was just like, that’s crazy, you know? That’s fun. So I kind of feel like I could just keep talking, ask you another 20 questions, but I’m trying to keep these podcasts, you know.

Olivia Lee (16:43.435)
Are you?

Olivia Lee (16:54.614)
We did well.

Dan Barry (17:06.718)
manageable, like around 15 minutes. So maybe one of these days we can jump on and do another chat at some point. So if a brand is listening and wants to contact you to discuss possible collaboration, how can they get a hold of you?

Olivia Lee (17:24.294)
Yes, I think I’m most active on LinkedIn. So that’s majority of how I connect with everyone wonderful in this kind of ecosystem. But they can find me on my website, livium.com, or they can message me on Telegram also at livium.

Dan Barry (17:42.506)
All right, cool, cool. Again, thank you so much and look forward to talking to you again, really, really soon. Take care.

Olivia Lee (17:50.858)
Thank you so much.