The old adage about going into business with your friends is tantamount to bridging politics and religion at a neighborhood picnic. Conventional wisdom, some might contend, along with countless Hollywood depictions of business tales, supports the classic script.

Today’s entrepreneurs, especially those who check the Gen-Z or Millennial box, are unabashedly partnering up with family and friends and challenging business sectors yet to be fully formed.

There is always a risk to working with friends, but according to SurveyMonkey, 59% of those surveyed recommend working with someone close to them who is family or a friend. There’s an ease to being oneself and built-in trust with shared goals of success attached that act as a benefit. As is often the case, successful partnerships receive a chance if expectations and decision-making are well-managed.

The U.S. Census reports that 90% of businesses in North America are family owned. In addition, new data from Clutch reveals that almost one-quarter (22%) of business startups relied on capital in the form of loans or investments from friends and family within the first three months.

Furthermore, those on the north side of the younger generations were taught that a ladder existed that had to be traversed to experience some level of professional success. Therefore, it would be understandable if those who followed this professional prescription scoffed at careers and businesses where the outcomes were yet to be defined, let alone experienced by paying customers.

Enter the metaverse or the new and very wild west of the 4th industrial revolution. In fact, the metaverse might be the bridge to the 5th industrial revolution, whereby humans and technology interlace in harmony. Mark Zuckerberg, Deepak Chopra, and others have opened their doors to the metaverse. However, additional explorers are keen to disrupt the experience for early adopters and creators within the metaverse.

Danny Mozlin and Zach Hirsch are putting their cards on the table and betting that their friendship and complementary skill sets will achieve success in their version of the metaverse – Mozverse.

Their development of ultranode technology is a performance and scalability accelerator designed for the Web3 development platform. A key product for Mozverse is LiveStadium, which allows users to become immersed in live concerts and events to see and hear the performance or game as if they are part of the audience.

“I have been lucky enough to be on stage or backstage at the biggest shows and music festivals and to be on the sidelines at the biggest games. I want to give every kid, and everyone, for that matter, the same experience. I want them to feel every beat and every hit and be able to reach out and interact with the biggest stars like I’ve been able to,” says Zach Hirsch, Mozverse’s co-founder on Fox.

They aim to democratize the metaverse by "providing a virtual platform that's compatible with more hardware and not limited to users with high-performance desktops."

According to Hirsch, they differ from other metaverse projects that commonly involve acquiring just a piece of “land” in the metaverse. “Mozverse differs from that because we allow companies to build their own presence in the metaverse, where they control their brand identity and benefit from their brand equity. We also provide all the import technology, data, and infrastructure to power businesses in the new meta economy,” he says to VentureBeat.

Entrepreneurs First

McKinsey estimates that the metaverse’s potential is on track to generate up to $5 trillion by 2030 across consumer and enterprise use. “In 2021, metaverse-related companies reportedly raised more than $10 billion, more than twice what they did in 2020. In 2022, more than $120 billion flowed into the metaverse,” reports McKinsey. There is a palpable momentum building and engaging aspiring entrepreneurs. “The large corporates might invest billions, but startups have the benefit of speed, agility, and courage to innovate,” says Eze Vidra of VC Cafe.

Bigger operations like Meta, Microsoft, Epic Games, and Unity are well entrenched in the market, with Newzoo reporting 500 established companies entering the fold in 2022. Moreover, the numbers are growing with a wide variety of startup entrepreneurs shaping the direction of the immersive and engaging world.

Hirsch and Mozlin, as entrepreneurs, are steadfast in their approach to acquiring market share through creative means that sidestep traditional capital investments instead focusing on the viral nature of relationships and storytelling.

Recently, Mozverse was awarded the Best in Business for 2022 by Inc. and positioned itself to impact the live event sector with industry partnerships from the likes of famed music producer Scott Storch, rapper Jadakiss, and NFL football star Tyreek Hill.

“The power of the masses that you can reach and being a part of the new technology and the experience is incredible,” says Jadakiss on WSFL-TV. “That would be next level, man. It’ll just be another opportunity that I'd be blessed with. I'd be thankful and I’ll just thank the great Lord,” adds Hill.

Younger inventors and partnerships provide a glimpse of how new advancements in the space offer individuals and companies a way to monetize their brands and expand. With unique environments come new opportunities for career paths enticing Gen-Z and Millenials looking to carve their tracks in a world blossoming. As an Addeco study reflects, 46% of Gen-Z conceive working in the metaverse in the future.

Explorers Now

While the younger generations have had their fair share of stressors forming a risk aversion to conventional landscapes, they are more willing to embark on new adventures in environments that are creative, compelling, forward-thinking, and affect change. They are eager to put their efforts toward wide-open business models with possibilities where they have a stake in the results from the outset.

“We are constructing worlds from scratch. Consequently, there is a substantial amount of art involved, even the underlying technology. With some of the scales we're trying to achieve, there's a lot of art and creativity, not just science. Putting this together is an art unto itself. We're trying to make the Metaverse a possibility today, not in five to ten years, which is often the timeline of many others. It’s also important that we make it accessible and cost-effective for businesses, especially given the state of the market we're entering,” says Hirsch.

Messaging is essential in conveying the dance between the art and science that is taking place in the development of metaverse offerings. For Hirsch and Mozlin’s LiveStadium concept, engaging at the ground level remains key.

“It’s definitely a challenge to find the right words. I believe being on the ground floor has helped me the most. Attending the events has been driving me recently as part of our LiveStadium. Producer Scott Storch plays a significant role and will be the case for both musical performances and sporting events. It’s an experience in which the audio drives the visual, and the visual drives the audio, to the point where you feel it in your bones as if you were at the 50-yard line on the field or through the lens of a boxer.”

In an interview with Deepak Chopra in 2022, he noted to this reporter that many youth and early-career professionals are becoming annoyed with the physical world because they cannot manipulate their surroundings like they can in the digital realm. A poignant observation from a globally recognized spiritual leader who sees the future of digital therapeutics through the Metaverse.

Like Chopra, Hirsch and Mozlin aim to support their fellow ‘man’ through restriction-less environments that promote creativity and expansion of opportunities through the pixilated platforms of our future.

Building a tech ecosystem with unique brand experiences is part of their live event plan. “That's the experience I want to share but in a hyper-real environment with the most realistic avatars and a few things nobody's done to date,” says Hirsch. Unsurprisingly, Hirsch and Mozlin wanted to integrate Tyreek Hill, Jadakiss, and friend and supporter, music producer Scott Storch from the onset of the process. "I've been approached by so many Web3 and metaverse projects, and I chose Mozverse because I only want to work with the best,” reports Storch.

The pace of innovation and interface adoption of the metaverse has the potential to lap customer acquisition timelines of yesteryear. Environments that provide equitable opportunity for engagement and entertainment support healthy experiences that further the position of explorers like Hirsch and Mozlin. They’re banking on your desire for entertainment that creates otherworldly experiences in the present with future journeys.

“I've known Danny, and I would say that he is the most knowledgeable individual I've encountered, blockchain-savvy, and always on the cutting edge. It’s energizing and exciting to see concepts come to fruition. We did something contrary to what others were doing in 2021. Then, in 2022, the metaverse environments enabled brands and individuals to build their own companies and identities. Now we are in 2023. And our direction appears perfect for where the metaverse is heading with our product Ultra and its high-speed indicators,” says Hirsch.

Staking a claim and thinking of the individuals and personalities within the concept is a growing trend that looks to further evolve a metaverse with technologies that keep the universe flourishing.

A trusted partnership has Hirsch and Mozlin positioned to build a business and a story together as explorers and, most importantly, friends. They plan on meeting you wherever you are in the world, in the Mozverse.

Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.