Genies CEO Akash Nigam On Identities, Passion Economy And Leading With Avatars

The need for unique and engaging experiences is rising in tandem with the rise of the digital age. At the vanguard of the industry shift toward virtual worlds, tokenization, and digital avatars is Akash Nigam, spearheading the forward-thinking organization and avatar company Genies. The Passion Economy opened new life trajectory opportunities and creator "careers", and seeing first-hand how the world rapidly became more digitalized by growing up in Mountain View California, Akash found an interest at an early age for ‘digital identities’ and how we bridge the physical and digital world through technology. Digitalization has been crucial for the Passion economy to thrive, and traditional career paths have been reshaped when new technologies have allowed new professions to emerge, and middle men to be circumvented.

The way we live is evolving, and our self-presentations and self-understandings are evolving. Online personas, which don't always correspond to who we really are, are also becoming increasingly integral to who we are. Many argue that the era of social media has produced unrealistic standards, leading us to believe that we must act and appear a certain way to be accepted.

Genies is a company that allows users to make unique avatars for use in social media and messaging services. The team behind Genies believes that avatar ecosystems will impact Web3 the same way that mobile apps impacted Web2. An avatar ecosystem is someone’s “virtual world” that includes avatars, avatar fashion collections, avatar homes, and avatar interactive experiences In addition to customizing their own avatar, users can also show off their fashion sense by selling their wares in a marketplace. Celebrities like Offset, Cardi B, Shawn Mendez and Justin Bieber helped kick off the company's popularity, which was quickly picked up by many other stars looking to ride the wave. Additionally, companies like Gucci and New Balance have partnered with Genies to integrate the avatar creator into their own infrastructure. The company also recently announced access to their UGC technical and avatar docs to empower creators to design and sell their own digital fashion collections.

CEO and co-founder Akash Nigam is from an Indian household that settled in the heart of Silicon Valley. He had trouble fitting in since, despite his outgoing demeanor, he was actually socially anxious and felt out of place. This feeling eventually led him to build a series of social apps and during senior year of college, his app Blend started to go so well that he dropped out.

However, the app's success was short-lived and being inspired by Bitmoji, Nigam instead recognized the potential in avatars: “We realized what this could do for everyone in the physical world. Everyone is dealing with something and can’t fully be themselves in certain situations. An avatar and digital world could change that” And so, Genies was born.

Gustaf Lundberg Toresson: Were you entrepreneurial already from an early age?

Akash Nigam: When you're born in Silicon Valley, it's kind of hard not to get bitten by the bug. Pretty early on, I used to make this joke, I played soccer my entire life, and the right forward's mom was this VC and left forward's dad was this CEO and the center back's uncle was the director of engineering.

And so through osmosis you just learned so much. When you're around that type of energy, I think you get addicted to the hustle and you get addicted to the concept of being able to create something that a lot of other people can also enjoy. So it doesn't seem that far fetched to be able to create a company that could disrupt so many people, because you know so many people in the area that have done that, that are just like you and you've seen them at barbecues and school and so on.

So the barrier to entry was low and I started at the age of 14 to build a bunch of different apps.

Gustaf Lundberg Toresson: Did you learn yourself to code at this age or how'd you get started?

Nigam: My dad, he came from India and had one rule: you need to learn how to code. Arguing that it was gonna help you the most. Having a technical background helps a lot: If you wanna build it yourself, you can. Or, if you want to hire people to help you execute this, you have a better sense of what to ask for and less risk of being tricked.

Lundberg Toresson: How do you connect the dots with the projects you were trying out at an early age to what you’re doing today?

Nigam: At the age of 21, I got deep into social and consumer, and I've always been really fascinated with the way that humans behave. The one thing that's been really consistent in my life is the obsession around how humans interact. And at the end of the day, that’s one thing that has never lost its relevance in society. The ability and earnest desire to communicate with other humans and cultivate new connections is always going to remain.

Back then, the internet was entering a new phase. I wanted to able to communicate in nuanced ways with people without having to be there in person. I'm introverted in so many different ways, that made me build different social apps that would allow me to express different segments of my emotion and my personality other than my physical self.

That's why I started with messaging apps. Then I went into photo messaging, and video messaging. Those were still not encompassing enough of who I was until I started digging into avatars.

With Genies, we asked ourselves: "can we create different tools on the internet that allow you to utilize or express different sides of your personality?" It felt like the very first time that I could do something meaningfully without using text, photo, or video.

Lundberg Toresson: Some of the first adopters were big name celebrities. How does Genies fit into the passion economy/creator economy world and how did you gain the first traction?

Nigam: I often find that the product you’re building ends up being used in ways that you would've never imagined. Our first celebrity that ever got onboarded was probably Offset from Migos. And the way that a lot of the celebrities traditionally leveraged the avatar was really just to showcase a different side of their personality. It was less for the monetary outcome.

That came later in the form of "Oh, I can use it in a commercial, Instagram promotion, music video" and so on. When it came to digital goods and wearables, that was closer to what we’re doing today, and now we're offering the opportunity for their fans to be able to create their own avatars.

Lundberg Toresson: How does it work in the back end of this? Are you giving them the tools to be able to code themselves?

Nigam: We're an avatar tools company. At our core, we have no code tools, and then we also have tools that are available for the technical community. So some of the different avatar experiences can just use no code tools. We've been able to release tools that somebody who’s not technical can create both those aspects. We haven't released our developer kit widely yet, but we will be releasing our developer kit in its MVP stage by the end of this year.

Lundberg Toresson: As a consumer in a few years, what can you tell me about how my experience will be like?

Nigam: Very simplified, let's assume that you have Apple's AR glasses in 2025. And you're one of the early adopters of this. We might have our own app store called the Genie's Avatar Ecosystem. In there, you can look at all the different genies and avatar experiences for instance within games such as like hide and seek, beer pong, or making music together.

Lundberg Toresson: You previously talked about 10 step plan for Genies. Where are we in that and what does the future hold?

Nigam: We’re in step three of the Step 10 plan. Step one was to make people understand that avatars enable people to express themselves. Step two was: "how can we start to offer a lot of the tools that we've already been giving to celebrities, to users for the very first time, and allow them to be able to create an avatar?" Step three is now letting them create those experiences.

This year is all about executing for the masses, hopefully in its first stage this summer. So we're really excited.

The conversation has been edited and shortened for clarity.