Eric Pulier is a prominent entrepreneur, innovator, and technology leader known for founding over 15 companies and pioneering advancements in digital evolution, cloud computing, and blockchain. He is currently the CEO and founder of Vatom, a company specializing in Smart NFTs and Web3 solutions, enabling businesses to enhance customer engagement through innovative digital assets. Pulier’s ventures have spanned diverse industries, including media, enterprise software, and technology services, raising over $1 billion in funding.
- Projects
- Vatom Company Overview
- Signal 360 Interview With Eric Pulier
- ASU+GSV 2023 Summit Interview
- Edge of NFT Podcast Interview
Projects
His notable projects include ServiceMesh, Akana, Media Platform, and Desktone, many of which achieved successful exits through acquisitions or public offerings. Additionally, Pulier has contributed to the development of platforms for companies such as Verizon, PepsiCo, and Intel, incorporating gamification and personalized user experiences to foster brand loyalty.
Beyond his entrepreneurial endeavors, Pulier is an author and philanthropist, committed to leveraging technology to improve lives globally. His innovations have revolutionized how businesses interact with customers, making him a respected figure in the tech world.
Vatom Company Overview
Vatom is a technology company specializing in creating a platform for digital engagement using augmented reality (AR) and blockchain technology. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Vatom’s solutions enable users to create immersive experiences and transactions in the digital realm. Their platform facilitates the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and digital assets, enabling businesses to engage customers through personalized and interactive digital tools.
The company’s offerings include a digital marketplace where users can buy, sell, and share digital assets, leveraging AR to enhance experiences. Its applications are particularly valuable in marketing, customer engagement, and virtual events, helping brands build deeper relationships with their audiences. Vatom’s Uber-style functionality empowers decentralized transactions and experiences, reflecting innovation in the Web3 space.
Vatom is backed by notable investors, including GSV Ventures and iHeartMedia, and has raised approximately $10.3 million in funding. Its leadership team is recognized for pioneering advancements in tech.
Signal 360 Interview With Eric Pulier
In this March 3, 2024 interview, Lauren Baric of Signal 360 spoke with Eric Pulier, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Vatom, discussing the company’s role in reimagining customer engagement through advanced technologies like AI, blockchain, and digital wallets. Pulier explained how Vatom provides brands with tools to foster ethical, value-driven interactions while gathering first-party data transparently. He highlighted a successful campaign with Lay’s during the FIFA World Cup, where users engaged with QR codes on snack bags. These interactions seamlessly created digital wallets, enabling brands to establish ongoing, personalized connections without users needing prior technical knowledge.
Pulier offered a nuanced view of the metaverse, distancing it from its common portrayal as a 3D virtual space. Instead, he sees it as a “meta-layer” that enhances the digital world by enabling richer personalization, social interactions, and a sense of ownership across online and offline domains. This approach aligns with Vatom’s mission to bridge the gap between physical and digital spaces, redefining loyalty programs and customer experiences.
For innovators, Pulier advised a practical approach: rapid prototyping, soliciting real-world feedback, and forging symbiotic relationships with established organizations. Listening to customer needs and adapting accordingly are essential for sustained innovation, he emphasized.
Looking ahead, Vatom aims to simplify access to emerging technologies, helping brands and consumers connect in meaningful, mutually beneficial ways. By creating intuitive tools and experiences, Pulier envisions a future where technology integrates seamlessly into everyday life, empowering both individuals and businesses to thrive.
ASU+GSV 2023 Summit Interview
This conversation with Eric Pulier delves into the profound implications of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and Web3 for the future of education and human civilization as a whole. Pulier, an accomplished entrepreneur who has founded 16 internet businesses, eloquently explains how these transformative developments are poised to radically reshape how we learn, work, and interact.
At the heart of this discussion is the concept of the metaverse – not as a standalone technology, but as a “metalayer” that will enable a more seamless integration of our digital and physical realities. Pulier envisions a future where virtual and augmented reality tools empower us with new modes of education, collaboration, and commerce that are more immersive, memorable, and effective than current paradigms.
Crucially, he sees artificial intelligence as a vital component of this evolution, with AI-driven “non-player characters” within metaverse environments poised to revolutionize the learning process. Rather than passively consuming information, Pulier suggests that the next generation will actively teach these AI agents, solidifying their own mastery through the process of instruction.
However, Pulier is quick to acknowledge the profound ethical challenges presented by the rapid advancement of AI. He cautions that systems like GPT-4 have already demonstrated the ability to autonomously devise deceptive strategies, highlighting the urgent need for proactive, industry-led efforts to establish responsible guidelines and safeguards. To this end, Pulier announces the formation of a new association, partnering with leading organizations and experts, to develop voluntary standards that can help steer the development of these transformative technologies in a direction that empowers and protects humanity.
Pulier’s vision extends beyond the classroom, exploring how the convergence of the metaverse, AI, and ubiquitous digital wallets will reshape the very nature of work, identity, and economic opportunity. He envisions a future where individuals can seamlessly carry their achievements, skills, and digital assets across different contexts, enabling new models of just-in-time learning, collaborative problem-solving, and equitable compensation. By harnessing these emerging capabilities with intentionality and wisdom, Pulier believes we can unlock unprecedented possibilities for human flourishing and progress.
Throughout the conversation, Pulier’s deep understanding of technology’s potential, combined with his keen awareness of the associated risks, paints a nuanced and thought-provoking picture of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. His insights underscore the vital importance of proactive, collaborative efforts to steer the course of technological change in a direction that benefits all of humanity.
Edge of NFT Podcast Interview
This discussion provides fascinating insights into the origins and potential of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and related blockchain technologies. The speaker, who was instrumental in pioneering the concept of “smart NFTs,” describes how his early explorations in the enterprise blockchain space led him to a breakthrough realization – that the true power of this emerging technology lay not in top-down, centralized applications, but in empowering individuals with self-sovereign digital identities and ownership.
The speaker recounts how he was inspired by the idea of being able to represent physical objects, like a unique beer, in the digital realm in a way that maintained their individuality and allowed for novel, programmable properties. This vision ultimately gave rise to the concept of the “vatom” – a precursor to the NFT that could seamlessly bridge the digital and physical worlds. Recognizing the profound implications of this, the speaker foresaw how NFTs could enable a radical shift away from the advertising-driven, attention-extracting model of the current internet toward a more equitable, value-based economy where individuals directly control and benefit from their digital assets and interactions.
As the discussion progresses, the speaker highlights some of the use cases that have emerged, from programmable, policy-based currencies to new models of community engagement and creative expression. Particularly intriguing is the speaker’s vision of a future where everyone on the planet has access to a self-sovereign digital identity and wallet, empowering the unbanked and underbanked with greater financial inclusion and stability. The potential intersections between NFTs and AI also hold great promise, though the speaker suggests there are important ethical considerations to navigate as these technologies converge.
Overall, this conversation paints a compelling picture of how NFTs and related blockchain innovations could fundamentally reshape the digital landscape, moving us toward a more decentralized, equitable, and empowering internet. The speaker’s passion for this transformative potential is palpable, and their insights offer a thought-provoking glimpse into the future of digital ownership, identity, and human-technology interaction.