Munich Startup: What does Atopia do? What problem do you solve?
Annabell Vacano, Atopia: While access to culture is essential for psychological well-being, inclusion and even a human right, 12 percent of Europeans and 34 percent of Americans lack it. Atopia is a metaverse for arts and culture, a platform – accessible via VR glasses or from any web browser – where all museums, galleries, attractions, and cultural events can be experienced immersively from home.
Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!
Annabell Vacano: There are already two-dimensional platforms like Google Arts & Culture or Europeana that make knowledge and learning about art accessible. However, the experience factor is missing, which is the main reason for most people’s cultural engagement.
There are already many virtual (VR) productions in the cultural sector. What is missing is a platform to enable their discoverability and distribution. Existing metaverse platforms are not suitable for the complex target systems of arts institutions – they are often speculative markets, visual quality is not a top priority, and important features are missing. In addition, valuable network effects can only be created if a platform has a certain degree of specialization – there is no suitable platform for this in the app stores of the common VR glasses.
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Annabell Vacano: Valentin Diehl and I have known each other since we happened to move into the same shared apartment several years ago. We worked together on almost all of our projects. The idea for Atopia came to us during a joint brainstorming session on how to design digital culture in a way that creates actual experiences.
15 cultural institutions cooperate with Atopia
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Annabell Vacano: As a platform, we faced a typical chicken-and-egg problem: we needed partner institutions to develop our platform and attract users, but at the same time we needed a platform and users to be interesting for institutions. With a lot of effort and numerous favors, we managed to attract 15 renowned cultural institutions as launch partners already in the first few months – this not only showed us that there is indeed a need for our solution, but also gave us the necessary tailwind to close our pre-seed round, which we recently closed with funds like FOV Ventures, a renowned fund focused on Metaverse investments, as well as Heartfelt (formerly APX) and several angel investors.
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Annabell Vacano: In one year, we want to have launched, generate our first revenues, and have a recurring user base. In five years, we want to be one of the top 10 entertainment platforms in the XR sector.
New XR Hotspot Munich
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Annabell Vacano: Munich is currently becoming a hotspot for XR – Apple has set up one of its only two European test centers for the Vision Pro here in Munich, and Meta also announced a few weeks ago that it was setting up a significant location for immersive technologies here. We have received immense support from TUM Venture Labs with Antoine Leboyer, but also for example from Wavelab with Antonia Wach – a culture tech oriented incubator – and UnternehmerTUM. Therefore, I could not imagine a better location to found an XR startup today!
Munich Startup: Outsource or do it yourself?
Annabell Vacano: I don’t think you have to reinvent the wheel, and if there’s a good software development kit somewhere, we’re very happy – but we develop all the essential components of our technology in-house. This gives us agility, freedom and security – and ensures our high quality standards.