High Fidelity’s New Virtual World

In 2003, Philip Rosedale founded a company called Second Life, a 3D world where everyone you see is a real person and every place you visit is built by actual users. Today, Second Life serves over 1 million users, all engaged in a rich, virtual experience that simulates the intricacies of real life in a sky’s-the-limit imaginary world.

Philip is truly a Founder of a movement—his passion for authenticity in our virtual interactions is unparalleled. So it stands to reason that his most recent company, High Fidelity, is building a next-generation virtual world enabling even richer avatar interactions, driven by sensor-equipped hardware, simulated and served by devices (phones, tablets and laptops/desktops) contributed by end-users. Together with Co-Founders Fred Heiberger and Ryan Karpf, the High Fidelity team is creating a version of the SETI system, but with computers powering a tiny piece of the virtual world rather than folding proteins or looking for aliens.

Their vision for High Fidelity—like those of so many True Founders—is mind-blowing in scope and incredibly authentic and real. The engineering requirements necessary to achieve a real-time virtual environment are daunting, to say the least, but we believe the High Fidelity team are some of the few people in the world who can pull it off.

We’re incredibly excited about the High Fidelity team’s vision and capabilities, and thrilled to be leading their Series A round with participation from Google Ventures and a number of angel investors. We think Philip is one of the most creative and visionary entrepreneurs of our generation, and we couldn’t be more pleased to support him, Fred, Ryan and the High Fidelity team in achieving their vision.