Meet Ben Fairbank, the founder, and CEO of RFOX (RedFOX Labs), building a metaverse of opportunities for people through virtual worlds that empower everyone.
Known for being a customer experience, culture change management, and turnaround expert, Ben is a global C-level executive and has worked for several multination companies, including GRAB, Virgin, and Ooredoo. From a very young age, he always had the vision of having a coffee shop on a beach where he didn’t need to sell a cup of coffee to stay in business, and he could have all his friends come and brainstorm business ideas that they would put into practice.
Ben says, “I started in contact centers and thought of this work as a transition phase, while I looked for something more ‘serious’ and long term to get me to my goal. It turns out that I fell in love with operations and numbers, as contact centers were all about metrics. This leads to my love of Customer Experience and collecting data on why customers respond, engage, and remain loyal. I used this experience to become a consultant in Customer Experience and later graduated to cultural change management and company turnarounds.”
These skills and experiences eventually allowed Ben to travel, live and work in 12 countries and consult for organizations like GRAB, Ooredoo, and Virgin. This was the first part of his dreams becoming true, and it gave him the needed exposure to a wide range of cultures and industries. Being an expatriate for quite a few years, Ben started looking for cheaper options to send money from abroad to his home country Australia. At this point of time, cryptocurrency showed signs of promise, but little in terms of adoption, so he started looking deeper into the world of cryptocurrency and understood that he couldn’t afford to miss out on the revolutionary movement.
Ben states, “I began looking at how companies like Red Hat had introduced applications on Linux and other models where better user experiences and products had been added to great technology base layers. This led to my co-founder and I brainstorming how we could potentially build several products, services, and tools that click together to form a metaverse, where they are all on display in one super dApp. This was the realisation of friends brainstorming business ideas and allowed me to focus on several products, services, and businesses that click together, much the same as I had envisioned for the coffee shop on the beach.”
Building a Platform Focused on Digital Inclusion
Ben always wanted to build a platform entirely focused on digital inclusion and borderless applications that can help creators and users work together. Primarily focused on long-term customer experience, RFOX also builds products it wants to use and can be genuinely proud of.
Since its early days, the founding team was told the idea was either lofty, too ambitious, or couldn’t be done, and most commonly, metaverse would not be a thing because no one was looking at it or its use cases. However, the Covid pandemic expedited the adoption of digital platforms and RFOX’s motivation to succeed, as the need for digital inclusion had never been more real.
The Organization
Ben’s company started its journey in 2018 as RedFOX Labs, and since then, it has become popular as RFOX. Once established, RFOX decided to build several click-together products and tools that would form a multi-medium creator platform in the form of a metaverse. Its RFOX Finance deals with token stalking and farming; RFOX Games has play-to-earn games coupled with interoperable NFT collection and a soon-to-be-launched SDK.
On the other hand, RFOX TV is a part of the firm’s media arm offering TV, streaming, and live minting, RFOX NFT is a complete contract farm, site deployer, marketplace, and creator tool for new collections; RFOX VALT is the brand’s VR virtual world and clicks together all the product offerings. RFOX is also planning to launch its RFOX E-commerce streaming, giving artists, creators, and performers a chance to engage in real-time with a live audience while selling products and services.
The Asian Business Environment
Ben believes that the Asian business environment is vastly different in every country. However, as a region, Asia is extremely promising. A tech-savvy young population and progressive tax systems in some Asian countries have made the region more friendly for foreign businesses. With a population of more than 4.5 billion, it’s clear why this region has and will continue to have a big say on how things move ahead as consumers speak with their spending.
Ben states, “We see GDP rivaling China in countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and others fast scaling consciousness and entering the same conversations as China, India, and Japan. It is an exciting time to be in the region and to see its evolution in real-time.”
Preparing for the Better Future
“We didn’t ever do an equity raise, so the importance of community and those building on the platform can’t be understated. We will ensure that the tools, products, and services we offer are part of an unmatched ecosystem and suite.”– explains Ben.
With RFOX, people with great ideas and products that couldn’t get off the ground previously are now able to thrive. It wants to see brands and organizations born within its metaverse platform and a more collaborative approach to launching based on demand, voting, and collective voices.
RFOX wants to build a platform everyone could use to build and interact. It has realised its job is to get the ball rolling and build the foundation; from there, where it goes depends on who chooses to build with the brand.