Charlie Fink has spent 35 years at the bleeding edge of the intersection between entertainment and technology. He was a VP of Creative Development at Disney, where he created the concept for the Lion King. He went on to be the COO at Virtual World Entertainment in the early 90s, which was the first company to bring VR experiences to retail locations across the world - what we call today, location-based VR.

Charlie was later Chief Creative Officer at AOL studios during their rise to dominance, where he launched a number of brands including the Motley Fool and Love@AOL. In 1999, Charlie started a company providing email newsletters, which was acquired by American Greetings Interactive. Charlie then took over as President and Chief Creative Officer and drove one of the most popular websites at the time to profitability and success.

More recently, Charlie has been focused on VR & AR as an author and columnist, and he recently published Charlie Fink’s Metaverse - a guide to what’s happen in the space today.

This is the first of two parts of my conversation with Charlie. In this first part, Charlie and I dig into the harsh economic realities of location-based VR - both in the 90s and today. We also discuss where we are in the current VR adoption curve, and some of the hurdles to overcome broader adoption of VR in the home.

Charlie shares how he induced people to pay for content online, and we kick off our discussion about Augmented Reality. (Which we continue in Part 2.)

You can find the show notes, including a link to Charlie’s book, at our website, thearshow.com.