Vince Kadlubek is one of the co-founders of Meow Wolf, and at the time of this interview on March 24, 2019 he was the CEO (but he recently resigned in October 2019.)
Meow Wolf’s flagship House of Eternal Return museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico has become a model for what can be done with an immersive art location. It’s been wildly successful, making millions of dollars of profit, and helping catalyze an expansion plan that includes as many as 15 new locations over a five year period thanks to being able to raise over $158 million in investments.
They’re on the bleeding edge of the experience economy, and potentially starting to pioneer experiences for the following transformation economy (as predicted by Pine and Gilmore). Rather than scraping by on non-profit donations and grants, Meow Wolf has embraced business as a form of artistic expression, and I had a chance to unpack it with Kadlubek at the end of the Immersive Design Summit 2019 (which has since rebranded to the Here Summit & Festival and will take place March 27-29, 2020).
We had a chance to talk about the complicated dynamic between artistic integrity and avoiding the pitfalls of capitalism. Kadlubek found it easier to raise money as a business than writing grants, and he hopes that Meow Wolf hopes to serve as a model as to how they can work from within the structures of capitalism to transform it from within using their artistic temperaments.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. So I'm going to be continuing on in my series of looking at the VR for Good movement. This first part specifically is looking at the different economic models. So I'm going to be talking to the co-founder and CEO of Meow Wolf, Vince Keblubek, because Meow Wolf is an entity that is taking a completely different approach to funding the way that they're doing their immersive art. And they're also trying to give back to different aspects of social impact and social change just as a part of their own business practice. But they're also trying to give out a number of different grants and artist grants and trying to really foster a larger immersive art ecosystem. So Meow Wolf, if you're not familiar with them at all, they're this immersive art collective that started out of Santa Fe. There's a documentary that I actually saw that premiered back on Thursday, November 29th, 2018. It was called Meow Wolf Origin Story. It's an amazing documentary that kind of recounts the evolution in the history of Meow Wolf. There were a bunch of different immersive artists that were just looking at the different Trends and immersive art which were like these big installations where people were selling out these different galleries that they would go and see these art installations They were creating these different one-off installations and putting all this money and time and energy and then it was so ephemeral that it just would come and go and they needed to have a flagship location to be able to really invest and build something that wasn't just going to go away within a short run and So they ended up convincing the writer George R.R. Martin of the Game of Thrones to donate over a million dollars for them to buy this bowling alley in Santa Fe, and they transformed it into this whole immersive art installation, the House of Return and Return. I personally haven't had a chance to go there yet. I'm gonna go there here later this year. I'm looking forward to actually experiencing it myself, but just from what I hear is that it's just this immersive art installation that It has different aspects of stories that are embedded into it. People from all different ranges of young kids to adults. There's so much to enjoy, so much embedded into these different immersive art experiences. And it was so wildly successful and popular that they've raised over $150 million to expand out to other locations. There's a place called area 15 that they're gonna have like a section of in Las Vegas That's gonna be opening up later this year and in 2021 They're gonna have like a place in Denver that I think they're gonna have a lot of different immersive art projection mapped augmented reality when I was at the Magic Leap Leapcon actually had a chance that's the first time I met Vince and I They had an amazing piece there where they had built out this whole mech where you get onto this mech and they had integrated a lot of haptics into the Magic Leap. It was actually one of the most sophisticated demos that I saw at all of Magic Leap's LeapCon. And so they're just a bunch of artists that are really trying to push forward what's possible with these immersive technologies. So they're going to be experimenting with projection mapped and augmented reality and virtual reality, trying to integrate it into their larger immersive art revolution that they're trying to start here. So they raised over $150 million to be able to expand out into all these different locations. And so Vince had told me that they have plans for over 15 locations for the next five years. So they're really at the scale of these immersive art theme parks and really excited to see where they're taking it. And they're really creating these entirely new business models where at the very beginning, Vince was trying to raise from nonprofits and grants and He abandoned that at some point and just said, okay, well, we're just gonna turn this into a business. And so he says in this interview, that it's actually easier for him to raise money under the auspices as a business, rather than trying to get the grants or donations as a nonprofit. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Wyssa VR podcast. So this interview with Vince happened at the end of the Immersive Design Summit that was happening in San Francisco, California on Sunday, March 24th, 2019. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:03:59.171] Vince Kadlubek: So yeah, I'm Vince Kadlubek, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of a group called Meow Wolf. We're in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and we create large-scale monumental immersive storytelling experiences. So it's like we want to create worlds and kind of stories that you go inside of rather than stories that you read out of a book or watch on the screen.
[00:04:26.950] Kent Bye: Yeah, I saw the Meow Wolf documentary, which came out in November. And what was really striking to me was to see the timeline of how this was coming up, and then there's Sleep No More, and then there's virtual reality that's sort of coming up. And so for you, how is that timeline for your experience? Because it seems like there's a little bit almost like an independent innovation. Or were there other things that you were tuning into what was happening with this larger zeitgeist of this immersive entertainment revolution?
[00:04:52.828] Vince Kadlubek: Yeah, I mean, you know, we were we were looking at because we were coming from like the art standpoint, you know, the art viewpoint we were like really thinking that the future of Meow Wolf was going to be inside of museums or inside of galleries, you know? And so our perspective, we were watching Kusama. We were watching Terrell. Terrell's LACMA show was a big deal. Kusama came to New York, and her show in New York was a big deal. TeamLab. So we were watching it from the art perspective and seeing how popular immersive art was. And then I think that we've always been much more of a populist company and like a company that wants to be something for general population, for the little kids, you know, for anyone really. And so storytelling ended up being something that was significant, you know, but we don't really come from an immersive theater background or from a perspective. It's mostly immersive art.
[00:05:46.082] Kent Bye: Well, I think the thing that's really interesting about watching the documentary was that there's a bit of, like, the storyline of you deciding the most artistic thing you could do was to study the business side of things and make it sustainable. So I'm just curious if, like, what was the turning point for you to kind of go from that more artistic, starving artist mindset to trying to figure out how to create these new models?
[00:06:07.787] Vince Kadlubek: Yeah, I mean, it was a big point for me was, like, watching the artists around me make such incredible work and realizing that my value to this group is not in my artistry. My value is in supporting their artistry. That was a big moment for me because I was somebody who felt like I was the artist, or I was one of the artists. But I took a step back and said, I'm going to commit myself to trying to raise money, basically, one way or the other. And at the time, it was writing grants. At the time, it was sitting down and writing grant applications and finding funding that way. And then when that started to fail, my turn to the for-profit started saying, OK, maybe I should look into business and what it means to raise money into a business. And it actually turned out to be a lot easier. The funny thing about it is everyone is so scared about Business protocol, you know business legalities like, you know all these things that feel like such big amorphous question marks but at the end of the day like business is a lot easier than Not-for-profit activity, you know and raising money for a good business is a lot easier than raising money for a not-for-profit So it just clicked at that point, you know for me and now it's just been on the business side of things like the whole You know for like the last four years
[00:07:25.703] Kent Bye: Well, a thing that's come up, I think, over the course of the Immersive Design Summit is just sort of the basic capitalistic tendencies where people have access to the money. Maybe they have, in some ways, to get most of the spoils for the result of the work. And then the actors that are involved get just a small share. There seems to be this disparity. And so how does Meow Wolf approach trying to create a more equitable solution, whether it's from the structure of the entity or how you kind of philosophically think about how to sustain a larger, vibrant ecosystem of immersive art?
[00:07:56.166] Vince Kadlubek: Yeah. Well, you know, first and foremost, we do not have volunteers. We don't have anyone getting paid less than a living wage. Like these are things that we commit to. And that has to be the starting point is like we are starting with equitable pay for the artists and we need to make a business model that can sustain that. And so then we start thinking about size of projects, what our ticket prices are going to be, what our throughput needs to be in order to sustain equitable pay, you know, and like proper living wage. So, you know, I think that like profit share, revenue share, those are things that those in the creative industries should also consider. Hollywood has done a really good job of doing royalties and of paying people for their successes. And that's something that at Meow Wolf we also are doing. Building in intellectual property, bonus programs, really trying to reward people for work that we feel like it's making the company money. But we're still in the midst of that. There's such a disconnect between creatives and businessmen. Like the business world and the creative world have such a disconnect, you know, on both sides, creatives need to trust business and be willing to communicate with business and be willing to embrace business and simultaneously business needs to embrace creativity. And right now there's like such a valley. And what I, what I'm afraid of is that the creative class is going to just outright denounce business and capitalism Altogether wholesale and it's like not gonna get us anywhere if we do that like like the creative class will remain the poorest class if that denouncement happens there has to be a sense of evolving capitalism, of being part of the evolution of capitalism, the betterment of capitalism, and not the complete denouncement of it. And that's where it's really interesting to watch, like, so many artists both complain about capitalism and complain about being poor. It's like if you're gonna complain about capitalism you then sort of have to like embrace the fact that like that grudge with capitalism Isn't gonna make you money like, you know, because you're never gonna want to make money because it's a system You don't want to participate in so then embrace the fact that like you're living a simple life You're living a life that doesn't need as much money as the next person, you know And so there's it's a funny dynamic right now, you know, and I think that Hopefully, I know that we raise a lot of red flags for people because they're like, oh my gosh What's this art group doing trying to make so much money, you know being such a business, but it's like, you know I hope that we're a conversation starter for people and that we cause Dialogue in the art world and in the world of creative communities and then people can fall where they want to fall but you know if anything else we're trying to instigate some amount of shifted perspective around the value of creativity and
[00:10:55.065] Kent Bye: Well, I think one of the other dynamics within capitalism is that there's a lot of incentive to have capital. And then if you have more capital, you get more and more capital so that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, essentially. And I think a big open question is, how do you have the best method to redistribute that, whether it's an individual cultural shift or whether it's through taxes? But it seems like that Meow Wolf is taking a little bit of a different philosophy in terms of how you are taking your successes and trying to spread the wealth in different ways. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what you're doing there.
[00:11:24.713] Vince Kadlubek: Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, there's a few different things. I would say that like the way that we think about employment, the way that we think about the artists that we're employing and the artists that take part in projects that are successful, you know, we want to create opportunities for passive income. So whether it be revenue share or IP bonus, we want to be able to create a platform that allows for, you know, like a royalty platform that allows for passive income for creatives that come up with good stuff. Also, as part of our brand and as part of just being a business at all, just being a good business, the concept of philanthropy is something that we embed into who we are. Philanthropy And social impact, doing social good is not just like a bucket that we put off to the side. It's like it's integrated in the very core of who we are. And I sell that to my investors. I sell that to my board. Like I make sure that they know, yes, we're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year on giving back to creative communities, to initiatives that are fighting poverty, initiatives that are fighting gender bias, initiatives that are supporting LGBTQ rights, that we're going to do that because that's who we are and our brand is more valuable for it. And I think that more people, more creative businesses or businesses that want to be more creative should consider how they engage with social impact and their social mission. You know, because the creative world, the world of creative communities are hyper sensitive and aware of social issues, almost like on a different level than many other kind of class. And so there's a lot of value to be found if you can respect that sensitivity, and if you can support that sensitivity.
[00:13:19.547] Kent Bye: Well, I know that on that thread of the social impact, there is a panel that happened on the second day of the Immersive Design Summit from the 13 EXP, which had a diverse representation of 15 different companies and entities. And one of them was from Meow Wolf, and so it sounds like Not only are you giving money to these initiatives, but it's potentially actually creating immersive experiences that are trying to directly address some of those social change issues. And so what can you say about 13EXP and the potential of actually creating immersive experiences that are trying to bring about some sort of larger change?
[00:13:51.047] Vince Kadlubek: Yeah, and it's an interesting question, I think, that when people are inside of immersive experiences, they're outside of their norm. They're in an environment that allows them to, their mind is open, their imagination is open, and given that they're in a new, unpredictable space, they themselves can think in unpredictable ways, and they're open to new thought. And so I think it's an incredible platform for education and an incredible platform to just, I would say, bring forth tolerance and acceptance of the other. And so I think that immersive experiences across the board are going to increase in our world, in our society, in the world of commerce. And I'm hoping that we can continue the organization, the type of organization that happens at IDS. We can start to think about business practices, business platforms, and that at some point here soon, we're able to all kind of come together with a stronger nucleus or stronger integrity around our business viabilities. Because like still at the end of the day, like none of these immersive experiences are going to be able to Sustain they're not thinking about it from a business perspective and it's not gonna be funded by grant money It's not gonna be funded by government money It's not gonna be like handouts like the rest of the art world is used to getting you have to like detach from the art world Detach from the way that the art world does things detach from the nonprofit world because that's not the path forward, you know And so if we want to do this, we have to like embrace Capitalism and I hate I have to say that but it's the truth, you know It doesn't mean we have to become greedy bastards Like it doesn't mean we have to become total assholes about how we use our money But it does mean that we have to like care about money, you know And I think that like that shift is it was a tough one for me personally in my life tough one for our collective and for our company and I think it's a tough one for the industry because we're all so rooted in wanting to break the system and That's like why we do what we do is to break the system, you know, but I think that like We have to see ourselves as an agent of change within a system. That's not going anywhere. It's like capitalism ain't going anywhere You know, I mean, it's gonna evolve and we need to be part of the evolution of it, you know
[00:16:14.161] Kent Bye: Well, part of the capitalistic dynamic is the growth. And it seems like that you're going through a huge amount of growth right now. So maybe you could just catch me up a little bit, because you have the House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe. What else has been announced? And what's the timeline for when we're going to see these new locations and where they're all going to be?
[00:16:31.806] Vince Kadlubek: Yeah, we have, gosh, a lot of things going on. We announced a Denver project. A Las Vegas project, Washington D.C., and then just a couple days ago announced a Phoenix project. We're not exactly sure the order that those are going to open. I mean, Vegas will be first, most likely Denver will be second, and then probably D.C. and then probably Phoenix. But it's up in the air. They're big projects and they can move in any which way. We anticipate doing 15 projects domestically over the next five years. So we're in the process right now of securing opportunities from a real estate and financial perspective and then building a company that can deliver on those opportunities. And so, you know, kind of two different things, like finding the opportunities and then delivering on the opportunities. And, you know, it remains to be seen. Like it's it's daunting. You know, it's the scale of theme park scale, it's a Disney scale. It's like, that's kind of the company that we now are committing to growing into, you know? And I think that immersive storytelling experiences are at the heart of that, but I think that we will also expand into more traditional forms of media. VR, definitely augmented reality, headset wearability stuff. Immersive theater is something that we've talked about a lot. Food and beverage, I mean, we just, we come from a place of a, like an art collective. That's like, that's where we were born. And the art collective mentality is that like, kind of like one of like anything you want to do. Okay, cool. Let's try to do it, you know, and that still sort of remains true now where like anything's possible. We have to get a little bit more, we have to be more strategic. open up projects that we know have a good financial model around them. But the hope is that once we kind of get our legs underneath us, we can start to experiment with projects that are not so focused on the bottom line.
[00:18:27.473] Kent Bye: Well, and I guess the risk is that you expand so fast that, like, where do you tap into the artists that have something that's really vital and important to say, rather than kind of churning stuff out? I think that's the risk, is that it starts to lose the artistic soul of the deeper intention that goes behind it. So how are you recruiting all the different artists to be able to actually make the art in all these different immersive spaces?
[00:18:50.646] Vince Kadlubek: Yeah, you know, we have a team in Santa Fe that has grown from about 100 people to 400 people in the last two years. And so those are a lot of people from the themed entertainment industry, from the maker communities. And people have moved to Santa Fe to work for us in New Mexico. But then when we look at Denver and Vegas and D.C. and Phoenix, these cities also have creative communities already there. So we're sending out RFPs and those RFPs are coming back and we're going through like thousands of responses and then finding 10, 15, 20 percent of those as ones that we want to work with and then starting the dialogue and building a team that is there to interface with local artists in these communities. And, you know, it's tough. We're putting ourselves out there. We're definitely opening ourselves up to be a big target. Because without that outreach, you can kind of just slip by, ignore any sort of scrutiny. But the moment you open yourself up like that, then you have to, at least I feel like, you have to answer to the scrutiny. And so that's been a big thing. We are a corporation going into other cities, and then we're employing artists, but We're still a corporation, you know, and so we end up kind of just being a target, but it's all good. Like I said, if we can open up dialogue and if we are a punching bag or we are a target and it creates nuance, it creates dialogue, it creates like a gradient of thought around capitalism versus authenticity or something then so be it like then I'm happy with it, you know, and honestly like somebody's got to be the punching bag because Capitalism needs it like the way corporations have been growing Needs to be challenged needs to have discussion there needs to be somebody willing to take the punches around it because just growing into a market and ignoring these sorts of issues is not going to make the world a better place in any way, so Yeah, anyway, you can see where my thought is, especially at a conference like this. My thought around business versus creative authenticity or something, or creative communities, is such a big topic. And it's like a bridge that has to be built. It's like we all have to sit together in a room. Let's all get in a cuddle puddle, business and creative, and let's figure this out. That's how it feels.
[00:21:18.762] Kent Bye: So for you, what are some of the either biggest open questions you're trying to answer or open problems you're trying to solve?
[00:21:25.466] Vince Kadlubek: As a business or myself? Or you personally, either way. I mean, I think the baseline of it is that more people in the world need more access to creative experiences. So it's like the vast majority of people in the world do not have access to creative experiences. And it's because the majority of creative experiences have been carved out and bogarted by the museums, institutions, galleries, intellectualists, you know, and the 5%, the top 10% of our world. And so there's become a huge disconnect between the general population and creative experiences. And that's like the thing that I'm all about is trying to bring forth more creative experiences into the world for average everyday humans and kids and those who are less well off than others, you know, and That, I hope, when you provide creative experiences, provide accessible creative experiences, then I think the imagination starts to provide, an instigated imagination provides more tolerance, more openness to possibility, less rigidness around what is right, what is normal, what is, and the other quote-unquote just the general weirdness and queerness and otherness of the world becomes more possible and respected and tolerated. And so that's the hope, is that creativity and art makes the world a better place, I think, is really what it comes down to, I guess.
[00:23:08.439] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of immersive experiences are, and what it might be able to enable?
[00:23:15.631] Vince Kadlubek: Yeah, I mean, it's it's transformation, you know, there's a book called the experience economy that was written by pine and Gilmore and they basically outline like the evolution of the economy from basically over the last couple hundred years and The experience economy they had identified as being sort of like the pinnacle or like yeah, like the ultimate form of the economy they actually then like amended their paper and added another level which was called the transformation economy. And it's basically that not only do people want to have experiences, but they want to have experiences that transform them. That's what actually they want. People want to escape themselves. The thing that holds people back is their identity. It is who they think they are. So if they can be provided an experience or an environment that allows them to be something that they haven't ever thought that they could be, that's the transformation that so many people are looking for. And I think that immersive experiences allow for that because you're basically like allowed to play in an alternative reality and one where like You have agency and you have the ability to sort of choose who you are Which then when you leave the immersive experience and get back into quote-unquote reality You realize that you still have the choice to be who you are that like you still have the agency that like the world is still just as magical as it was when you're inside of that immersive space and that the world is an immersive space everywhere you go. And that's kind of the irony of it. It's like, create that little meta sub-world, and you then kind of open up people's eyes to what reality actually is. And so, yeah, transformation is really the power of immersive experiences.
[00:24:58.095] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the immersive community?
[00:25:02.418] Vince Kadlubek: Oh man, keep creating, but also partner with people who know how to do the things that you don't know how to do. And trust those people. So whether it's business, or business and finance, or real estate, or insurance, or legal, or whatever it may be, there's an instinct from creatives to want to control everything. And I have found that by hiring people around me that can do the things that I can't do, and they're really good at doing the things that I can't do, it has empowered mine and our company's creativity tenfold. And so it's like, bring people around you that do the things that you aren't good at doing. And that's the biggest word of advice that I would put out there.
[00:25:47.327] Kent Bye: Awesome. Great. Well, thank you so much. Cool. Thank you. Appreciate it. So that was Vince Kadlubek. He is the co-founder and CEO of Meow Wolf. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that first of all, Well, this dynamic of artistic integrity versus, you know, turning things into a business, uh, was a huge topic at the immersive design summit, uh, this past year, which by the way, has been rebranded into here. Now it's going to be happening in the spring of 2020 applications are available now. So if you want to go, definitely try to go. It's like this aggregation of all these amazing immersive designers, storytellers, uh, from immersive theater and. virtual reality, augmented reality. It's a great mix of people that are really trying to push the limits of what's possible with immersive entertainment. So back to this conversation, you know, there's a hot topic at the Immersive Design Summit of this preservation of artistic integrity with, you know, how to actually fund and make your work sustainable. If you watch the Meow Wolf origin story, I think it gives a lot of great context for their evolutionary path, for why they're doing what they're doing. And I'm excited to see how much success they've been having so far. One of the things that Vince said is that they're very committed as an organization of trying to blend different aspects of creativity and business. And so a lot of times, you know, those can be at odds with each other. And so they're really trying to find a good middle ground. But one of the things that grounds Vince is to try to give back to these different social impact organizations and to try to give out a lot of different grants to other immersive artists. And I know that, you know, just within the community of what is happening at No Proscenium, and I know they've supported them over the last year. They're a podcast and newsletter and community that's really helped to foster and grow this immersive space. And actually the ones that are behind the Here Now conference that's coming up here in March. And, you know, I think there's a lot of things to try to navigate there, which is that you're going into a community and are you going to be able to actually work and collaborate with the artists from that community? And, you know, what's a way to actually feel that you're able to do this in a way that's really sustaining and growing a larger, vibrant ecosystem for everybody. And certainly by having these flagship locations, they become these destination sites. So, you know, I'm very excited to go to Santa Fe to check out Meow Wolf. And I think you're starting to see that a little bit more where. You know, they're going to probably eventually go out to these big major urban centers, but, you know, there's a lot of different regional cities that have communities where they have a huge desire to go to a place with your kids and to have these different experiences that can be for the entire family. And, you know, how many different experiences are out there that you can think of that is really well suited for a whole wide range of ages and demographics. And I think that's a lot of what they've been able to pull off so far. So this is within the larger context of the VR for good series that I'm doing. And, but specifically looking at the funding and to me, it was striking to hear then say that he tried to get a lot of money as nonprofit and to write grants. And that it was actually easier to do it as a business and to just make the return on investment arguments of getting the capital that you need. And then to get the people in there to see the experience and then to have these huge millions of dollars of profit of running their business over the last couple of years. And to the point where they have a proven model that they're able to, you continue to draw people from around the region and to hold different events and to really be this community center within Santa Fe. And I'm excited to see where they take this, especially with the immersive art, projection mapping, augmented reality, virtual reality, that's something that they already showed their chops at the Magic Leap LeakCon and I'm just excited to see how they're going to continue to expand that out and push the limits of what's possible with immersive art. And there's a, the final point is, you know, the pine and Gilmore book, uh, they wrote about predicting this whole experience economy that I think we're starting to see the very early phases of, but then Vince was saying after that, they talk about this whole transformation economy so that it's not going to be enough for people to just to have normal experiences. They want to have experiences that are profoundly meaning and potentially even transformational. So how do you actually do that? How do you create these transformational experiences for people? And so I think that's, in the long run, where Meow Wolf is going to start to look at as well. And VR for Good, I think at the essence, is trying to transform different aspects of society. And so trying to identify things that need to change and to try to create art that allows you to open your mind and change your mind. And that's one of the other things that Vin said, is that when you're in an immersive experience, you're open in a way that you're not open in other experiences. you're more open to have your imagination inspired or to be introduced to concepts or ideas that may be foreign to you. And so I think that's what's so exciting about the potential for immersive art, immersive storytelling, is that you're putting people in a bit of this liminal space where they're more open and receptive to take on ideas that they may not have in any other communication medium. So that's all I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast, and if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listeners-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
