Meet Antony Tran of Foundry Six in Little Tokyo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Antony Tran.

Antony, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Foundry Six got started about three years ago when my Co-Founder Jon and I met at one these new fangled co-working spaces. We both were into tech and gaming, and at the time augmented reality was starting to enter the scene with Apple putting it on their phones. We started making AR games and experiences using this technology but not many people knew what it was, many still don’t. We then joined a startup that was building an AR social network with Kenneth and Max. We were all fascinated with what this tech could be used for in the future, like having instant information to anything you looked at or having an immersive global game, like Pokemon Go on steroids. But still the tech was too novel for most people to adopt. We realized that people were using AR in marketing to give their customers mini immersive experiences that were fun to do. At this point, Chris joined our team to lend his marketing expertise. One example is AR face filters that let people look like their favorite characters instantly or play a game where they are the star of the show. This is where we found people using AR, with 100s of millions of people having played our AR filter games. Today we still have a big focus on AR filters on social networks since that is where the users are, while still experimenting with the technology to see what exciting new experience we can create.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The road has never been smooth and still currently isn’t. To be honest, I expect the road to continue to be bumpy for many years to come, but that is kind of the point. To create something new that people love is a difficult task and is always changing. When we put out our first games barely anyone played them, and we are constantly worried that we are going to run out of money. When we put out our first filter, we got about 30 plays and were going to ditch that direction, but we thought we should see it play out. We made a few more and luckily we were patient. Every few months we are revisited with cashflow problems and chasing down clients for payment, but when we see all our users truly enjoying our products, it makes it all worth it.

Please tell us about Foundry Six.
Foundry Six builds Augmented Reality products and experiences. A lot of that work is face filters on Instagram or custom applications for clients where they can use their phone/iPad to see 3D objects in their actual space. This industry is still very young but growing as AR tech is getting better exponentially. You might have seen some of our filters on Instagram. Recently, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) used our Star Wars filter, which was a game to see which character he was. He got himself and the video went viral. We are proud that our filters have now been viewed over 700 million times which is still something we can’t believe. We now how 130K followers who love our work and we love seeing their funny videos of them using our filters. I think by creating truly interesting experiences using cutting edge tech, we will carve out a space for Foundry Six.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have started with the customer. I know it’s an obvious thing to say, but it is common when building new tech products to imagine some crazy amazing things that you think people will use. It is much easier to look at what they are already doing and see how you can use your specialty to make what they do better. I also would have simplified a lot. At one point, we were building five different things and trying to cram them into one all-inclusive app. I think it is a lot better to do one thing very well, and if you master that for your customers, only then can you add on to it. Maybe you don’t add either and just keep making that one thing even better.

Pricing:

• Instagram Face Filter – $1000-$5000
• Custom AR Application $10000-$20000

Contact Info:

• Website: www.foundrysix.com
• Phone: 5104105710
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/at.augmented

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