The Future of Avatars: Allison Sturges of Genies Avatar Ecosystem Shares Insights

I had the opportunity to interview Allison Sturges, the Head of Marketing at Genies. Genies allow creators to design and create their own avatar ecosystem. An avatar ecosystem consists of avatars, fashion and collectibles, spaces and venues, and social experiences.

They are a web3 company, and its digital assets are NFTs minted on the Flow blockchain.

Below is an edited transcript of the interview.

To start, I love to hear about how you got started with Genies, what you were doing before, and what got you excited about this space.

I'm part of the founding team at Genies. Currently, I’m the Head of Marketing. I've actually been with the company since I think my sophomore of junior year of college. I actually went to high school with Akash, our CEO. We didn't really know each other that well in high school.

I heard through the grapevine that he was starting a company. At the time, it wasn't even called Genies. We were working on a different social consumer app. I ran into Akash at our local gym.

So I walked up to him and was like, "Hey, would love to work for you as an intern this summer. Do you have any open roles available?"

And he put me through a full resume interview process. They told me they were interviewing hundreds of people, but I swear I was probably the only one they were interviewing.

Over the years, we worked on a couple of different social apps. Some of them were around photo sharing, video sharing, even got into the chatbot space for a bit. And then we landed on the avatar space around 2016.

Can you talk more about what led to the transition of the work from the previous company into Genies? What was it that you saw with the avatar systems and the tools that made you guys think, "Ok this might be it"?

We've always been obsessed with the next form of communication or social interaction in digital form. We were working on different social consumer apps at the time. We pivoted a few different times as we were iterating, failed fast, and kept iterating and learning from that.

Over the years, that provided us a lot of learnings to get us to where we are today.

At the time, the only social avatar was Bitmoji and people used to say we were the better Bitmoji.

We got into the avatar space around 2016. At the time, the only social avatar was Bitmoji, and people used to say we were the better Bitmoji.

Other than that, people knew avatars from a gaming lends, like Sims back in the day but there wasn’t many that were used as a kind of social communication.

We saw avatars as a tool for communication and really a tool for self-expression.

Our philosophy behind avatars is that it can be a representation of your truest, most authentic self, kind of like your inner emotions, thoughts, and behaviors that maybe you don't feel comfortable expression in the physical world.

As a result, we spent a good amount of time perfecting how our avatars look and I believe we have the best-looking avatar on the market.

Can you elaborate more on the avatar space for people like myself that's aren't familiar with it?

There's definitely a lot of players out there that are looking towards the avatar space or trying to build an avatar world. You have companies like Zepetto, or you could even say Roblox, where that is a form of self-expression.

You're able to create that identity layer and use that within those kind of gaming type experiences.

With Genies, we're focused on the aesthetics of the avatars. We've really studied Gen Z to understand what they care about, how they want to express themselves, and what kind of tools they might want to use to create that kind of identity.

With the Genies Studio app, that is our first experience in providing the ability for people to create their own avatars, but then also providing tools that allow them to customize and create whatever they want in our ecosystem.

Fashion is really interesting when you look at Gen Z and culture. They grew up on the internet. They have access to everything. They want to be unique and be able to stand out.

Fashion is really interesting when you look at Gen Z and culture. They grew up on the internet. They have access to everything. They want to be unique and be able to stand out. And so fashion has been a form of that self-expression that you see in the physical world.

In our tool, we let creators design their own patterns or textures to use on their assets. Eventually, creators will be able to upload their own patterns and creations.

We even have kind of like cropping or stitching type tools where you could take this shirt here and take the sleeves off and combine it with another shirt.

And creators will be able to sell, trade, or thrift them within our ecosystem.

Can you walk us through how the technology works?

We're an avatar tools company. In the app currently, you're able to design and create your own avatar. We'll be rolling out more customizations where you can change your body type, create your own makeup, and even tattoos.

In the coming months, we'll be rolling out more tools that will allow you to create your own looks, spaces, and experiences. And then once we roll out the developer kit, you'll be able to create your own avatar ecosystem as well.

What kind of features do the creators want in an avatar tools company?

Right now, we have a big focus on the uniqueness and customization of the avatar itself as well as creating and designing your own fashion. When we rolled out our limited beta, that was the kind of feedback we were getting from our users.

We're even exploring things where the avatar doesn't necessarily have to be human. It can be an animal or it can be a teacup with floating arms. These things get really playful and expressive and allow people to innovate on that identity.

And as we look towards the developer community and the experience side of things, the tools will be more around how you can have your avatar interact with others around you. Maybe it would involve motion capture or embodiment.

Or maybe take an object in the real world and turn it into a 3D object.

Do you find that Gen Z are open to NFTs, or are they against it?

I think there's kind of mixed feelings on NFTs. When NFTs got their boom, it was all around digital artwork. That and NBA Top Shot is really what accelerated the NFT space. And that is a great use case for what the power of NFTs can do.

Digital artists have never had a way to monetize their digital artwork and NFTs provided a way for them to do so the same way that physical artists have been able to. I would say over the next year or two, people will start to be more educated on the power of NFTs.

But I think there's still a lot of work to do around the branding of the technology.

For us, we really view NFTs as a great empowerment tool for creators. We're seeing creators leave platforms like Instagram because they're not getting paid for their creations. They don't own them.

With a platform like ours and us announcing full ownership, all of our creators and users have that full ownership, that full access.

For us, we really view NFTs as a great empowerment tool for creators. We're seeing creators leave platforms like Instagram because they're not getting paid for their creations.

In your opinion, what makes someone feel like they have true ownership?

It's the ability to trade it, to control it, sell it, or thrift it. It's being able to exchange that asset. It's also about attributing it back to the original owner.

I can fully create an outfit or shirt in the Genies ecosystem. Now when I sell that to you, it's always going to be attributed back to me as that original owner and creator. Over time, maybe that asset gets traded to someone else. So monetarily, that attribution gives you the split in the future as well.

Lastly, what do you envision where Genies the company will be in five years?

In five years, assuming all goes well and we continue to stay on track, we definitely envision hundreds, thousands of creators, artists, and developers being able to build their own avatar ecosystems that the mainstream users adopt.

It starts to get really exciting when you think about how Apple first rolled out the app store and now they have millions of apps on the app store. That's what we're definitely excited about and hope to see in the future.

To watch the full interview, check out the Hello Player One Podcast .