History
First Meta was founded in February 2007 by Douglas Abrams and Aileen Sim, both of whom are actively involved in finance and venture capital, entrepreneurship and Interactive Digital Media.
The founders met back in 2002 at the National University of Singapore, where Aileen was pursuing her degree and where Douglas was teaching. They quickly became good friends and have been working together ever since.
The idea for First Meta, a financial service provider for virtual economies, was conceived in 2004 when Douglas read about an on-line news story about the newly-emerging phenomenon of virtual economies. The duo was passionate about the business but it was, unfortunately, bad timing. The market, they felt, was just not ready yet. Also, Aileen was still pursuing her Bachelors degree full-time.
In Jan 2006, Aileen returned from a one-year entrepreneurship work-study stint in the States, and (finally) graduated. The pair decided that the time was ripe to start the business.
Over the year, the duo worked on (numerous iterations of) the business plan, trying to find the right market, the right business model, searching for investors.
It wasn't until late November 2006 when they finally met Cory Ondrejka and Jean Miller (or Cory and Jean Linden as most of us might know them, by a really fortunate coincidence no less) and the founders realized that they had been chasing the wrong market all this while!
Second Life had everything they needed.
The founders quickly turned the entire business around, incorporated the company, and went out to recruit team members who excel in both their real world and in world jobs. Together, they raised the investment needed with their new business plan.
Today, we have nine very entrepreneurial people on the team as well as group of extremely supportive investors and advisors.
Watch out for us!
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