CEO
Jamie Thomson started a typical bootstrapped company with a simple idea and two employees, but it wasn’t an easy ride but rather a crash course in understanding one’s weaknesses. Through his experience, Jamie guides budding entrepreneurs and those around him, sharing his knowledge and story. According to the CEO of Vulcan Forged, having business knowledge and technical knowledge are two separate beasts; the second was a given as the initial company was set around the technology of which he already had skills involved, but the business side? It’s an entirely different world: project management, sprints, deadlines, hiring, firing, and team management. “These are skills I certainly hadn’t honed before I started the company, and it took a good half a year before I even understood the meaning of the roles. That is when I learned a core lesson: “ delegate as much as you can, as early as you can, and understand your strengths and weaknesses,” says Jamie. “Mine was certainly marketing and being creative, and I believe that propelled the company into the limelight initially, but what sustained it was hiring people who knew how to grow businesses methodologically.” Today the company has grown to 113 staff and over 100,000 community members.
As the pioneering leader has experienced all the growing pains that come with fast growth and have managed to sustain it, Jamie always reaches out to those who are starting a business to see if there’s a collaboration to be made amongst themselves, especially in the blockchain gaming industry which is incredibly small. “One thing I learned very early on was collaborate and not compete, again especially when the industry you’re competing in is so new. I advise those who are starting out in a new industry to make as many friends on the way up as opposed to letting ego and stubbornness getting away of growth,” asserts Jamie. “Truth is, one of the big mistakes I made along the way was not making the distinction between personal relationships and professional ones strong enough from the outset. Everyone wants to be the friendly boss, but long term it’s not sustainable.”
As Jamie states, business should always be the number one priority. The staff needs to know that there are criteria to be met and milestones to be made; personality has zero relevance to performance. That said, respect amongst employees and being approachable are also two key factors. “If I could give one piece of advice to a startup CEO regarding culture, it would be setting out the terms and regulations of the company ethics, culture, and expectations from the first week, as to not convolute personal and professional relationships further down the line and backtracking on what is expected from an employee,” he elucidates. With his incredible knowledge and life experiences, Jamie has been taking the company to new heights.
Vulcan Forged is an established non-fungible token (NFT) game studio, marketplace, and dApp incubator with 10+ games, a 20000+ community, and top 5 NFT marketplace volume. Thus, the PYR economy is designed to fill numerous use cases needing their tokens. Some of our games, specifically the upcoming VulcanVerse, have specific terminologies and can be understood in more depth by visiting their social media platforms.
Designed as an easy-to-play and easy-to-build ecosystem, Vulcan Forged is a community-based project promoting world-class blockchain games’ development by supporting developers through its development programs, incubation, and crowdfunding. For blockchain game enthusiasts, Vulcan Forged is a one-stop shop where they can access popular games and a vast NFT marketplace to buy and sell digital assets in-game. The entire ecosystem is powered by its own PYR settlement, staking, and utility token. The ERC20 compatible PYR is a cross-platform currency that can be used in game titles that are part of the Vulcan Forged ecosystem. The native token used within the ecosystem is $PYR. The secondary token $LAVA acts as a play to earn tokens. This dual token economy structure is ideal for play to earn. Scholars will earn $LAVA while playing the Vulcan Forged games and will be able to forage special NFTs while in-game. These can be sold on the Vulcan Marketplace for $PYR.
As blockchain gaming and the metaverse industry is a new technology, Vulcan Forged has taken it upon themselves to promote these two technologies through the business. They started with one product and moved to 12 products and now realize that with the technical base they have created, the next step is opening that up to other developers, third parties, and the public. “When you create a game or product you’re very much caged in that product’s scope but the minute you open up your technology to the world, that’s when development sees real growth and that’s the next step in Vulcan forged timeline: MetaScapes: the ability for anyone to create their own metaverse using our technology,” explains Jamie. “Our clients are our users and community. Remember, these are people that trust your business, support your business, and fund your business. Being transparent, open to evolve, always available, these are traits rarely found in management, so having a direct link between yourself and the users makes the community, or clients, feel part of the whole development process, and whether or not products are developed perfectly first time around, if they can see your constant development, update and evolution, they will stick around no matter what, as long as they see your building.”
VulcanVerse is a revolutionary game, and it’s the first Metaverse that allows MMO functionality. “We were the pioneer in combining gameplay with NFTs, long before it was a trend. The idea of blockchain ownership is complex, but it’s going to be the staple of all future games. And making our game stand out as the first and biggest of its kind was The Start of our Recognition,” elucidates Jamie. “MetaScapes Is without doubt the product that will take us from the small blockchain community and into mainstream. Games such as Minecraft and Roblox rely on creativity as opposed to Play to earn models, and MetaScapes allows anyone to create beautiful plots of land and explore with others, very much related to the outsourcing of our technology.”
" One thing I learned very early on was collaborate and not compete, again especially when the industry you’re competing in is so new. "
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