Today we’d like to introduce you to Travis Frick.
Hi Travis, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I have been obsessed with technology my entire life.
I remember playing the first Super Mario Brother’s game with my younger brother in a bowling alley, where we had to use quarters and could never pass more than a couple of levels. We would sit there for hours pumping quarters into that machine, so when we got the first Nintendo for Christmas, it blew our minds.
I remember getting one of the first PCs. In high school, while other people were playing sports, I was in the computer lab writing text adventure games in BASIC, and when I got home, I was trying to program games on my Intel 486. Back in those days, y0u had to write data directly to the video card to get anything to show up, and you had to work with the underlying device drivers and battle DOS memory issues just to get a game up and running. My younger brother still makes fun of me for the “Cowboy Killer” game I made on that old PC. It was just this little cowboy that could only jump over things, inspired by the original Super Mario Brothers.
When I was a sophomore, I got the very first TI-85 graphing calculator. Those calculators have 5 buttons across the top to use as function keys, and growing up, I had seen several Vegas-style poker machines with 5 buttons to hold your cards. This calculator also introduced the ability to program it in a language called TI-BASIC. I already knew the original BASIC, so I set off to write a poker game for the calculator instead of paying attention in Geometry class. Once the poker game was complete, I moved on to blackjack and built an entire hotel/casino concept into the calculator.
When the world wide web became popular in late 90s, I was immediately writing HTML and created a website called “Billabongs House of Wavs.” I plugged my VCR into my PC and ripped audio clips from the movies I loved, and put them on the internet. I did Tommy Boy first, followed by Billy Madison, and then Black Sheep. In those days, these clips did not exist on the internet, and I would get around 100 hits a day. I put up a little ad that paid me 1 penny for every hit, so I was making 1$ a day. I still joke with my friends that I was the 2nd person on the Internet and should be a billionaire.
After high school, I studied computer science at Arizona State. When I graduated, I went to work for Lucent Technologies to build a voice-over IP gateway. It was a great opportunity because the project for was a brand-new product, and we designed everything from scratch. This gateway was connected to a class 5 phone switch on one side and an IP network on the other side. I wrote the firmware for the ether switch.
At this point, the dot-com bubble burst, and I think I went through at least 6 rounds of layoffs. I was the last person they hired and the most junior person left. I was a top performer, so it was only me and big-wig engineers. The days when people were laid off were depressing days. They would let the rest of us off early, so our tradition was to go play golf and have a few beers. Anyone laid off did not pay.
Finally, the day came when they shut the whole place down, and our gateway work was outsourced to Brazil. They wanted people to go, and I volunteered, but instead, the Brazilians came to us, and we taught them how to do our jobs. The last day of work for the rest of the team, including my boss, was the day after St. Patrick’s Day. We were supposed to come in at 8 am to do the exit interview and sign off on paperwork, but I pulled my boss aside and negotiated a 10:30 am arrival. I knew our team would be celebrating that holiday with extra enthusiasm.
After that, I went to work at General Dynamics on a satellite communications system called MUOS. Also, a cool project because it was from the very beginning. We were building a new satellite communication system for the Navy and DoD where we took commercial 3G technology from Ericson and changed it to use geostationary satellites instead of terrestrial cell towers. I worked on that project for 6 years before deciding the bureaucracy of defense work was not for me. I also decided that I wanted to move more to the business side of things. So, I went to work for Visa in Product Management.
I was at Visa for nine years as a Director in Product Management. My time there was split between the Network Processing group and the Dispute Processing group. When I worked on the Network Processing team, I managed several products related to authorization, clearing, and settlement of transactions on the Visa Network. After that, I moved to the Dispute Processing team to work on a multi-year project called Visa Claims Resolution (VCR). This project radically re-engineered how disputes are processed globally for all issuers of Visa cards. I designed and managed a new data analytics platform for disputes that captured thousands of data points in real-time as disputes are processed everywhere in the world. This became a very useful data platform when COVID hit because it allowed us to see just how dramatic the slowdown was in various areas like airlines, travel, hotels, and cross-border transactions when everyone stopped going anywhere. During the lockdown, I used the enormous amount of extra time we all had to work VR software and build Threebeerhonesty Studios LLC. I decided at the end of 2022 that I would leave Visa to work on the company full time, so I chose my last day as Feb 4, which was the exact day I had started 9 years prior.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I suppose my only struggle has probably been the underestimation of the work required in some cases. For example, the current app in development for launch later this year in 2023 or early next year in 2024 is an app called __TRANSCEND__BUDDHISM__. This product is meant to be the most comprehensive reference on Buddhism ever published, and the various versions of the app present the information in different engaging ways. This app will be launched on mobile for iOS and Android, then followed by AR and VR versions on both platforms, as well as a PC VR version on Steam. Initially, my development plan had some of this happening simultaneously, but pragmatically that was just not possible without ramping up staffing and things like that, which I did not want to do. So, the scope has now been reduced, and the more advanced features will follow on as continual free updates.
As you know, we’re big fans of Threebeerhonesty Studios LLC. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about the brand?
Threebeerhonesty Studios LLC is a software company specializing in Virtual and Augmented Reality. This includes AR apps on Android devices, iOS devices, and any other headsets supported by Unity. For VR solutions, this includes high-end PC VR on powerful machines, but also applications built for the Oculus Quest2 and Quest Pro devices from Meta, as well as other headsets soon to be released like Apple’s upcoming AR/VR device.
All software developed by Threebeerhonesty Studios is built based on a proprietary framework I created called __TRANSCEND__. This framework is built on top of the Unity Gaming Engine and incorporates various 3rd party assets published by other developers. It provides custom editors in Unity for various tasks and abstracts out the underlying complexity of the software underneath, providing quick ways to do common things easily during development. Most games or applications have the need for similar functionality, and this framework facilitates rapid development and agile iteration of the most common application features like character control, artificial intelligence, user interface design, open-world construction, level design, and many others.
Together with that, I have created a vast library of resources for use with the framework during prototyping and development. This includes things like a huge library of motion capture animations for humanoids and animals, a vast collection of world-building tools and resources for every environment you can imagine, a giant library of visual effects, and library of over 70 thousand sounds effects.
The current app in development for launch, later this year in 2023 or early next year in 2024, is an app called __TRANSCEND__BUDDHISM__. This product is meant to be the most comprehensive reference on Buddhism ever published, and the various versions of the app present the information in different engaging ways. This app will be launched on mobile for iOS and Android, then followed by AR and VR versions on both platforms, as well as a PC VR version on Steam. This app would not have been possible 2 years ago because a lot of the information and amazing connections made between the vast amount of data in the Pali Buddhist Cannon was done with AI. Things that are impossible to do manually, like drawing connections between the history, the places, the people, the discourses, the philosophy, the psychology, and the cosmology. All of this would take lifetimes to do manually. After 30 years of passionately following technology, I have never been more excited. Virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence will forever change almost every field. ChatGPT4 is my research assistant, my design and coding assistant, and the best way to learn or troubleshoot anything new. We are at the beginning of this next revolution, particularly with AI, and I wake up every day inspired to create amazing products with these technologies.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk-taking.
I am definitely a risk-taker. Leaving a lucrative corporate job to start a software company where a couple years of development are required before you can launch a product is a risky endeavor by any definition. Unlike most of my friends, I don’t have children to think about, so obviously taking risks like this when others depend on you is a more difficult proposition. Certainly, the risks I’ve taken in the past are what allow me to do what I am doing today. With great risk comes great reward.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://threebeerhonesty.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/threebeerhonesty/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tfrick/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/3beerhonesty
- Other: https://opensea.io/threebeerhonesty
Image Credits
Threebeerhonesty Studios LLC
