Nwanyinma Dike
Welcome to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. I am Nwanyinma Dike, the new Managing Director of Startup Runway. I am excited to welcome Yolanda Barton, co-founder of Revere XR. Thank you so much for joining the podcast today, Yolanda. I know I’m excited for this discussion. You are an incredibly dynamic and passionate leader and I want to share with our audience our vision for Revere XR. Tell us more about what you’re building.
Yolanda Barton
I’m the CEO and Founder of Revere XR. I mean, ultimately, I think the grand vision is to be able to preserve history and to make it accessible in a variety of ways but we’re using artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, extended reality, mixed reality, all of the above, to consider ways to reimagine what experiencing history could look like. And so in a city like Atlanta, where we have so much civil rights, history, and music history, and just profound, rich heritage in this city, what can we do beyond just reading about it? We can have a recreated version of Dr. Martin Luther King in front of his home, or in front of the King Center, actually teaching history, we can use AI to make that a conversational experience so it’s not just pre-recorded, right? We want to see Interactive History simulated in the real world. We want to put it on the Beltline. We want to put it in museums, we want it in schools, we want it in airports, all the ways that we can experience the grand history of this city, and preserve it so that future generations can have access to it through their education, and even teach future generations how to be immersive storytellers themselves so that they can preserve history. That should just become a part of our identity in this city, that we respect those who came before us, that we honor the history that paved the way for us, and now let’s revere it, relive it, revisit it, and recreate it for everyone.
Nwanyinma Dike
I love that not only are you being a part of a very important function for our society, which is retaining and sharing the history of the city, but you’re doing it in a way that’s super cool, and super engaging, especially when we think of younger generations. Can you share a bit more about how you deliver in this space with that in mind?
Yolanda Barton
Absolutely. I think there are a lot of ways to answer that. I’d say education is really important to us right now. The education system is dealing with some serious challenges and COVID wasn’t “it”. It wasn’t just it, we weren’t prepared for virtual learning, and now more than ever, students feel disconnected. The King Center is right here, literally around the corner from my home, but even my youngest daughter is like, I feel like you and grandma are excited about this and I’m not sure how to feel about it. What does it mean to future generations if they feel disconnected from the Civil Rights Movement? I recently went to Washington, DC, and stood in front of the White House and then, of course, I went to the memoria. Now I know impactful history took place there but how do we engage with that? I think on an entry level, we start with education. We bring this history into the classroom. We’re teaching kids to interact with XR, VR, and AR because it’s a futuristic technology that’s leading the world anyway, right? So why not give them an opportunity to experience it in the classroom long before they graduate high school? Let’s give them the tools to understand what it means to create 3D models but let’s also engage them in preserving their own city. What does that mean if they’re creating more ownership in connection with their city by preserving history by researching the amazing things that happen, and then being a part of the discussion to bring it to life? We want to give students the opportunity to become immersive storytellers. Education is primary. And then we look at Atlanta’s airport and museums, really high-traffic areas. People come to Atlanta for a lot of reasons. People move here for the film industry, people visit here for the culture and the events. I mean, this is the hub for everything. So why not give people the opportunity to experience and unleash the future of what it means to engage with our history through museums? High-traffic airports are a great chance for people who are on layovers in Atlanta or visiting to experience the history of the city right there in the airport. We think it’s easy to make this accessible. We need the city’s buy-in, of course. We need the city to want to be ready to unleash the future in this way. We’re not 10 years out. We’re not. It’s today, right now we can use technology. In this way, it’s going to be about prioritizing how we want to redefine humanity’s engagement with technology. I believe that we can really promote conscious technology in our lives in a way that’s more than just about our calendar, our emails, and what’s going to make our businesses savvy, but how we want to view each other and interact with each other and value each other’s stories. I think storytelling is one of the most impactful industries and we don’t talk about it in that way. Can you imagine what it was like for the first movie to be dropped? What that vision was like when companies started to create movies and support that industry, it boomed because it gave us another opportunity to experience people’s lives and stories. Well, this is the same thing. We can do so much more than 2D now we can experience the world in 3D and that doesn’t mean giving up the power of who we are, specifically to digital worlds, but it means finding a really amazing positive human interaction that promotes technology in our lives. That can be successful and it can also be an amazing successful business application. It can create amazing revenue and even boost the economy here in Atlanta. Those are things that we can be doing right now.
Nwanyinma Dike
That is an incredible and exciting vision. As you said, it’s not 10 years out, it’s right now. It’s something that we can be really realizing now. But I did want to pivot to get to know you a little bit better, and how you find yourself building this, what brought you to entrepreneurship and then specifically to solving this problem?
Yolanda Barton
That’s interesting. It is a unique story. I’m not from Atlanta. I’m originally from a part of Seattle, Washington. In the central district where I was raised, that’s where Jimi Hendrix was, and Quincy Jones was raised, even Ray Charles, who’s from Atlanta launched his career in that neighborhood, sitting side by side at the piano with Quincy Jones at 15. There’s so much impactful music history where I’m from. If you went there today, you wouldn’t see it. It doesn’t exist anymore. It was paved over and 90% of the people living in that city are completely disconnected from the history that took place there. After living in Texas for quite some time, I moved back to Seattle for grad school. I left my corporate career to go back to grad school to focus on the future of storytelling, something that matters to me. I decided I wanted to focus on my passion in life. At some point, you make enough money and you’re like, now what, right? And for me, that was like what matters to me. Okay, I’m going back to grad school. I want to be a part of what the future of storytelling looks like, but I was faced with a huge dilemma. Like going back home and trying to show my children the neighborhood that I was raised in, and the history of the Black Panther movement and the music history, except it was not there. It had completely vanished and it was just condos. There was no more of the connection to the community that I grew up in and that was not something that I could just graze over. I know a lot of people were like, get over it, Yolanda. Yolanda could not do that. I was not gonna swallow the fact that the history was erased. My grandmother was the first black woman in that city to own a beauty salon. My grandfather was one of the first black men to work for Boeing. He designed airplanes. This is history. I’m not just willing to look over it because it’s also my history. It’s part of my legacy. It’s part of my children’s legacy. On a grander scale, you have all these youth who are feeling disconnected from that community and they’re not in connection with their legacy either. I went into grad school with the idea that I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I was going to solve this. I did two Masters in Communication Leadership and Digital Media Storytelling, and Communities and Networks and got really involved in tech. What is the future of technology doing? I realized when I put the VR headset on, listen, if we can simulate any environment, I can put this on and I can be anywhere that I want to be in spaces I no longer have access to. I want to experience history. I want people to connect with my neighborhood and see what was so incredible and amazing about growing up in a home down the street from Quincy Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and so many other amazing people. I want everybody to have access to that. We look at that now and we say, every culture has stories. Every country has stories, every community, every city, and even companies have stories. Everybody wants to leave a legacy or be a part of a legacy, so how do we tap into that now? I went on to do a doctorate or part of a doctorate, and then Oculus invited me to speak at their headquarters because I was getting some research awards and some media attention. I spoke at their headquarters about my vision of their technology beyond gaming. You can do so much more than shoot zombies. We can actually create spaces that we don’t have access to. What does that mean? For me, it meant maybe seeing Prince again, or Bob Marley at the Roxbury. I was too young for that, or the Beatles, or whoever, right? Why don’t we use this opportunity with this technology to give people access to things? I mean, not a lot of youth have the opportunity to fly to the Louvre in Paris, right? But if you can put on a headset and experience that, or the Smithsonian, how exciting could that be? Oculus invited me to Oculus Launchpad. I created a prototype, which means listen, if they said prove it, I said, okay, I’m gonna prove it. I built a team and we built an immersive storytelling experience. We recreated my entire neighborhood. We filled it up with all the historic landmarks. We put the history of Jimi Hendrix and a lot of other music legacies in there so people could experience it. You can do a scavenger hunt and explore historic businesses. I thought about what that meant for every city and that’s when the entrepreneurship journey kicked in. I didn’t initially intend to be an entrepreneur. I was following my passion. I was following what felt like it gave me great purpose in life and what I felt my children would be proud of for me to leave for them. And then they got really involved in the vision. My children, my 13-year-old, created an immersive marketplace for historic businesses and said, we should do this in every city. It’s not enough to just put a door and a logo in a building, I want to walk in, Mom. I want to see their business, I want to hear their story, and we did. She did that with our developers. My oldest is involved in a lot of ways, too in shaping the vision. We realized, okay, we did that for Seattle, but other cities need that too and the vision just keeps expanding. While we created our MVP with VR, right now, we’re creating an augmented reality immersive experience that we can offer every city as well. That is the vision I see for Atlanta. If that means being an entrepreneur, okay, then. Then I’m a CEO of a startup and we have a vision to unleash on the city that’ll change the way people live, change the way people interact, and even change the school systems.
Nwanyinma Dike
We got a bit of this last week at the Startup Runway Showcase Edition 23. And you, which is not surprising, was a winner of our Women’s Empowerment Prize. The crowd was wowed by your passion, the vision, and your ability to deliver that and to see the impact. I would love for you to share a bit, how did you find the Startup Runway? For those who might not know, the Startup Runway is the leading platform that introduces underrepresented founders to capital and investors. We have a pitch on a quarterly basis, one of which Yolanda was the winner for Revere XR. So back to my question, how did you find your experience at Startup Runway?
Yolanda Barton
Well, I’m going to back up and say that it’s not easy being who I am in a tech startup, in a space where I look left and right of me and I don’t see very many people that look like me. It’s not easy to be the only one in the room, but I don’t let that affect my ability to show up. I faced a lot of challenges when I moved to Atlanta. COVID happened shortly after, my daughter was in ICU for quite some time. We never really got back out there in a way where networking was at its greatest. You don’t know a lot of people, you have this grand vision for the city, the city doesn’t know who you are, and you’re in a space where it’s pretty male predominant and there’s not a ton of women that look like you. It’s a difficult challenge. LinkedIn has been my source of connection because virtual learning was a lot longer in my household than it was for the standard household due to my daughter’s recovery period. That means that me trying to find allies, me trying to find support, me trying to find a community for entrepreneurship has mostly taken place virtually. I found out about Startup Runway through LinkedIn. I felt like oh, wow, this is something that was actually designed for me. It’s for underrepresented founders. It’s for tech in the city. It’s about unleashing innovation in new and innovative ways. I felt like you guys made the event for me. It felt like a welcoming space. I love that when I first walked in, the sign, said like, I’m the next greatest thing in tech, because that is honestly how me and my family feel. It made it easier to be able to interact. It was great to be able to meet the mayor and look forward to meeting with him and sharing the vision that we have for the city. But it was incredible to see so many people valuing what I was saying and bringing to the table, supporting it, and for you guys to put on that event and give us the chance to talk to mentors and investors up front and get their feedback is priceless. As an entrepreneur who is raising funding, having feedback, an ear, and people giving you direction and helping you make connections is the life source of the growth of your business period. It might be different for other people, but for underrepresented founders, that’s the pathway for us, people willing to open the door or help create a path that makes you successful, because we aren’t always seen. It’s hard to find this. It’s hard for us to be heard when there aren’t a lot of platforms for us to be able to share our message and our vision. I feel like you guys did that in an amazing way which is why I was excited to meet with you again today. Thank you for creating space for us. The Women Empowerment Award was amazing. There are a lot of outdated ideas about what women should and shouldn’t be doing. I don’t live my life like that. I feel like God gave me purpose. I’m living that purpose right now and I intend for it to impact millions of people around the world.
Nwanyinma Dike
I got some goosebumps. Well, one, I just love to hear you represent the individuals we hope to support and showcase at the event. For that to have resonated and meet exactly our goals and to hear from your own mouth, just makes me feel like we’re doing what we need to do and we need to just continue doing exactly that. One thing I would love for our audience or anyone in our audience who might be considering pitching or applying and wanting to be about wanting to be on that stage, do you have any advice around preparation. Given that the audience, you may or may not have been in the room that day, but as was said, a lot of the feedback was in the room that you were one of the most dynamic presentations. I would love for you to share a bit. Any advice you might have around preparation? How did you prepare? Might you give someone who wants to do the same thing? Some tips?
Yolanda Barton
I feel like we need a whole class. I will say, there are people, maybe nine months ago, that would have felt like, her pitch was horrible. It is a process. You have to be willing to evolve with that process. If you’re someone that’s like, no, my pitch is fine. I don’t need to adjust it. Well, your opportunity for growth isn’t going to be that great, not just for your pitch, but in this industry period. You have to be able to pivot and evolve. We started with virtual reality and I realize not everybody has a VR headset, but everybody has a phone. So people are going to be more responsive to augmented reality. That’s a shift I’m willing to make and it doesn’t mean I’m removing my vision, it means I’m evolving it so that it really can resonate with people who will see the value in the work. Can you take feedback? Can you evolve and grow your ideas so that people can see the value in them? Often what’s in our head is hard to translate. You have to be willing to consider like, people don’t understand what immersive storytelling is without me explaining it. People don’t understand the power of virtual or augmented reality without me saying this is what it offers us. I would say get involved in every organization that will help you shape your vision and be willing to be a sponge and soak it all up because I’ve lost plenty of pitch competitions before. I also think competence is huge. I spent a good part of my time as an early entrepreneur looking for validation and for someone to tell me that I was doing the right things. Let that go. It’s either you believe in it or you don’t. If you don’t believe in it, walk away. Go get a job quickly, because you’re not going to go very far if you don’t have the confidence and conviction to explain why this is important. If you’re just looking for people to tell you you can do this and this is a good idea, it’s going to be 10 times more challenging. I think for me, I adopted at some point, a little bit of an unapologetic version of that for myself. It’s okay if you don’t see the value in it yet, I’m still gonna explain it to you. It’s okay if you want to know more about how it’s going to scale, absolutely, I’m happy to share that vision with you. It’s happening is where I came to. This is going to happen no matter what, whether you buy it or not, whether you choose me as the winner of this pitch competition or not, this is where we’re going. This is what we’re offering, there are clients, and there are cities that want this. I mean, this is something that I am going to bring to fruition and we are a reality right here in this city. We can serve the future on a beautiful platter, headset, and AR. I think for the pitching, not everybody has to buy into your pitching, but you have to feel confident and you have to be able to deliver with conviction so that you’re not asking a question if it’s something you can do so that you’re delivering that this is something you can do. Honestly, you have to understand that time is important. I’ve been in pitch competitions where people go over, or people don’t understand why it has to be timed. There are a lot of boxes we have to fit in as entrepreneurs to be able to say who you are, how you’re going to change the world, why it matters, why it’s just going to be a successful business in a certain period of time is important. Doesn’t matter if you think it is or not you being able to deliver what people are asking you to deliver is the same as having to deliver to a client’s expectations. I know a lot of people are afraid of pitching and it can be really tiresome, but if you just kind of really get to the foundation of what your business can do, it really helps kind of outline the blueprint. If you have a strong blueprint, you’ll have a strong pitch. If you don’t really know what you’re doing, or why you’re doing it, or how it’s going to make money, your pitch isn’t going to come across either, right? The more you do in really shaping the future of your business, the easier your pitch gets. But make no mistake, it is work. It is a lot of work. I can’t pretend like it’s easy. It’s not. I’ve done so many pitch competitions, where I’m like, oh my God, I blew that. I really blew that. They ask you a question and you fall apart. The reason why is that if you haven’t thought about those things before going up to a pitch, then you don’t really have your vision outlined yet or those are the things that you need to clarify for your business. I would consider doing accelerators because they really do give you a chance to surround yourself with a community that’s willing to learn and help shape your vision as you go. I’m one of the right stakeholders. I love that community. Being a solo entrepreneur on your own without a village can feel really daunting and overwhelming. I love being a part of a community of other entrepreneurs who are working just as hard as I am. Even if we’re in different industries, we support t each other and say go for it, you know?
Nwanyinma Dike
That’s really good. That was a very quick answer to that question. I would want to hear what’s next for you? What’s next for Revere XR?
Yolanda Barton
We are really excited to partner with Niantic, the augmented reality tech company, to do hackathons in different cities. Listen, we’re defining hackathon a little differently. We’re bringing together community, academia, technology, and building immersive experience products. We’re going to be releasing our first augmented reality immersive storytelling product we’re calling Immersive Footprints. We just got approved by NVIDIA to do a partnership with them. We’re releasing our immersive product on their stage in March at GTC. I would say what we’re looking forward to is sitting down with the mayor of Atlanta, explaining how we can simulate history on the Beltline in airports, and in schools and allow people to interact with the amazing history that this city has to offer. Really uphold the legacy of John Lewis and MLK and Coretta Scott King and even look at all the music history that’s happened. There’s some rich community here and we just can’t wait to show the mayor what we can do for this city. Create a preservation partnership with Atlanta where we bring in all the heritage and archival organizations to determine a nice 10-year roadmap of what it looks like to continuously unleash history in schools. We’re looking forward to revolutionizing the education system in Atlanta, giving students front-seat access to technology so they can use it to preserve their history. We’re looking forward to fundraising and working with investors. We’re at a point where we realize it’s not about every investor, it’s about the ones who want to value the future, aren’t afraid to make billions of dollars in the process, and are willing to invest in a version of tech that can really reshape human interactions.
Nwanyinma Dike
I love that. So any last thoughts, anything that you would like to share?
Yolanda Barton
I want to congratulate you on your new role, and the amazing Startup Runway community. I want to support. I think being an entrepreneur in the city is one of the most amazing things you can do. I’m always going to be a part of this community. And if there’s any way that I can support what you guys are doing, and help with people who want to pitch and need the support to do that, I’m happy to share my story and resources and what’s helped me learn, too.
Nwanyinma Dike
I appreciate that and as with so many things, this entrepreneurship game is a team sport. I appreciate you offering yourself in that way. So last but not least, how can folks get connected to you? How can they find you?
Yolanda Barton
I’m on LinkedIn, Yolanda A. Barton. The company is Revere XR, we’re on Instagram @revere.xr. I’m around and always happy to plug people in. I’ll bring my headset, be happy to show you what we built, and what we are building, and invite you to be a part of this amazing journey.
Nwanyinma Dike
Awesome. Yolanda, thank you so much.
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