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If YouTube is the world\u2019s compendium\nof videos of cute cats and unboxings, then the Sketchfab platform is\nwell on its way to becoming the equivalent cultural database of\nuser-generated 3D objects. CEO Alban Denoyel discusses the origins\nand the future of the service with Alan in this episode.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlan: Welcome to the XR for\nBusiness Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today\u2019s guest is\nAlvin Denyuel\u2013 I screwed it up already. How do I say it?\n\n\n\nAlban: \u201cDeh-Noh-Yell.\u201d\n\n\n\nAlan: \u201cDenoyel,\u201d OK. Today\u2019s\nguest is Alban Denoyel from Sketchfab, the world\u2019s largest platform\nto publish and find 3D content online. Imagine it\u2019s like the YouTube\nfor 3D. Prior to Sketchfab, he worked for four years in the 2D world\nof photography. He loves making 3D content with photogrammetry or VR\nsculpting. He\u2019s a graduate from the ESSEC Business School in Paris,\nFrance. If you want to learn more about the wonderful work they\u2019re\ndoing, you can visit sketchfab.com.\n\n\n\n\nAlban, welcome to the show.\n\n\n\nAlban: Hey, Alan, thanks.\n\n\n\nAlan: It\u2019s my absolute pleasure.\nI\u2019ve been looking forward to this episode for so long. I\u2019ve had a\nSketchfab account for about four years now and I\u2019ve only managed to\npublish a couple of things on there. But it\u2019s so cool. I mean, you\u2019re\nliterally making the YouTube of 3D models. How did you guys come up\nwith that concept? Where did that come from?\n\n\n\nAlban: Actually, it initially\ncame from a technical challenge, I guess. My\u2013 So, Sketchfab is built\non top of WebGL, which is the first web-based framework to display 3D\ngraphics in the browser and WebGL was initiated by Mozilla back in\n2011. And my co-founder and CTO, Cedric, had been a 3D programmer in\nthe gaming industry for 15 years, was hired by Mozilla to make one of\nthe very first demos of WebGL for the launch of Firefox 4. And then I\njust started peeking around the tech and started building an MVP to\nessentially help the people he was working with in the 3D industry to\nbe share and display 3D assets with just a euro and a browser.\n\n\n\nAlan: Incredible. I mean, you\nguys have come a long, long way. How long have you been doing that?\nWhen did it start?\n\n\n\nAlban: Cedric started in 2011, I\nmet him early 2012, and we officially launched in March 2012. So it\u2019s\nbeen more than seven years.\n\n\n\nAlan: Wow. Seven years. And how\nmany 3D models are hosted on Sketchfab today?\n\n\n\nAlban: I stopped counting at\nthree million. [chuckles]\n\n\n\nAlan: So there\u2019s over three\nmillion 3D assets hosted on Sketchfab today. And I would assume over\nthe next 10 years, as everything moves to 3D, that number is going to\nprobably end up at 3 billion, at some point. So why do people need\nSketchfab?\n\n\n\nAlban: So people use this mostly\nin two ways: either to publish content or to find content. So\npublished content means sharing, embedding, displaying, hosting 3D\nfiles that they have. So these are as 3D creators, or brands, or\narchitects, or any number of industries. And so they have 3D files\nand they need a way to embed them on a web page or share them with\nsomeone who doesn\u2019t have 3D software to open them, or use them in VR\nand AR and so on. And then other people come to Sketchfab just\nbecause they need content. Either regards to presentations, or it\ncould be to build video games. It can be to build AR/VR experiences,\nit can be to make a video or two-dimensional learning. Again, the use\ncases are pretty diverse as well.\n\n\n\nAlan: Let\u2019s start with the way\u2013\nwhere you guys came from, because up until recently it was a free\npla