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b'Avid listeners will have noticed a few weeks without a podcast - that\\u2019s because Alan\\u2019s been hard at work behind-the-scenes building capital for several MetaVRse projects, including the MetaVRse Engine. This gave Alan a chance to reflect on the investment landscape of 2020, and is joined by VP of Marketing Alex Colgan to discuss the new normal that COVID has ushered into the VC world.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special episode. We\'re going to be talking about the investment landscape of virtual and augmented reality as it pertains to investment in startups, companies going public. What is the investment landscape look like between now and the next few years? How are things going to be funded and what can we expect from the markets in terms of returns? And what can investors really count on to drive those returns as high as possible? Today, I\'m joined by the MetaVRse VP of Marketing, our wonderful Alex Colgan. He\'s going to be joining me today and he\'s going to be interviewing *me* today.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlex: Hey.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: Hey, what\'s up, Alex? Fun fact about Alex: he also lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Or near Halifax. He\'s in the eastern part of Canada. So, Alex, thanks for joining me on the show today.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlex: Canadian born and bred. Glad to be taking over the reins today. Thanks for having me on. And, yeah, let\'s flip it around.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: It\'s really interesting, Alex, before we get started I have to really just punctuate a couple of things. Over the last few years, there has been an enormous amount of capital invested into virtual and augmented reality startups, in the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. And it almost feels like we are going through this kind of winter, where investments have dried up in the area. So I\'m really excited to talk about that, because I believe that as much as we\'re going into physical winter in Canada, I believe that we\'re going into a beautiful spring with regards to the investment landscape of this technology. So I\'m really excited to dig into it today.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlex: Yeah, absolutely. Bad economies are often some of the best times to invest, and there are also some of the best times to build a startup. COVID has had everybody scrambling over the past six months, and trying to identify the best path forward for the future. As a result of that, we\'ve seen a lot of different sectors have been getting shaken up as a result. What are some of the biggest disruptions that we\'ve seen over the past six months in some of these areas?\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: Well, I think the major one is that with regards to investment, everybody just closed their wallets. COVID came and people went, "OK, there\'s so much uncertainty, just stop everything." And so pretty much all investment across all sectors dried up in March, and basically hasn\'t really come back until you were starting to see funding rounds happen now in September. And I believe this will continue October-November. Now we find ourselves in a time where there\'s actually a lot of fresh capital sitting on the sidelines that needs to be deployed. And if it\'s not deployed, it\'s losing money. So you have a ton of new startups on the market as well. We have a platform called xrcollaboration.com, and there\'s been over 70 startups that have created XR collaboration tools that allow you to go in VR, go into AR glasses, and communicate with people around the world. And not only if you have the VR and AR glasses, but there\'s new opportunities around using 2D screens like computers to navigate these 3D worlds, almost like Second Life, but kind of Second Life 2.0, if you would. And this is giving a huge opportunity for investors. There\'s a company called VirBELA and they have done really well. Their ma'