The only time during the interview when Alexander Heller is genuinely lost for words is at the very end, when I ask him where he plans to go on his next holiday.
After a long pause, he explains: “I think that when you build the best version of your business, you build something that you want to run for the rest of your life. When you do that, you throw yourself in the trenches with a group of people that are just as committed as you. I don’t want to trade it for anything else in the world.”
And why would he be? The co-founder and CEO of HyperSpace is on the kind of roll and rush experienced by hundreds of thousands of his customers each day.
HyperSpace, founded in January 2021, is on a mission to bridge the gap between the allure of AAA video games, social media, and digital entertainment, and the timeless appeal of in-person social experiences. The inaugural entertainment attraction, AYA, located at Dubai’s Wafi Mall, spans 40,000 square feet and comprises 12 immersive experience zones.
In its first nine months of operation, AYA sold 480,000 tickets.
HyperSpace is now opening two larger parks: House of Hype at Riyadh Boulevard and House of Hype Dubai Mall.
Their parks sit at the convergence of social media arena and real-world video game, engaging their audience meaningfully through an IRL physical experience and through digital engagement and gameplay. HyperSpace’s multibrand offering spans portals to digital immersive worlds to parks powered by tokens and digital assets, run on game economies that mirror AAA video games. They are purpose built for mass market entertainment seekers, content creators and gamers/Web3 audiences.
But it isn’t just customers lapping up the action, with investors queuing up for a slice of the cake of location-based entertainment like no other.
Heller has secured a $55m Series A financing round, headlined by Galaxy Interactive. This funding initiative, consisting of both equity and debt components, also includes significant contributions from Riyadh Season, SEGA Ventures, and Apis Venture Partners.
And if opening up in Riyadh wasn’t enough, Heller is planning to make the Saudi capital his global headquarters.
“Never in the history of the world has there been so much ambition to build the future of the entertainment sector as [what] is happening in Saudi Arabia today. When we started in January 2021, there was some forward movement in opportunities here, but we were still in a post-Covid world. When we look at the sector in the region you have this underserved audience and enormous ambition,” he says, adding: “You look at Dubai and you have this extraordinary existing tourist and resident population both with spending power. A real appetite for consuming our form of location-based entertainment.”
The new round of funding will help open another venue in the US, with details to be unveiled soon. An IPO could happen “someday in the future”, but right now Heller is focused on opening the biggest and best entertainment arenas anyone has seen in this sector.
“This is the joy economy, large groups of people chasing more thrill, fun and adventure. Being in the entertainment business is a great sector to be in today. We really operate in this social media sphere. AYA just passed 1 billion user generated impressions on social media. We know that 65 percent of our consumers learn about AYA from user generated content. Our audience is our largest marketing pool,” he explains.
As for Dubai Mall, simply getting a space there is a massive achievement, never mind a massive space that could revolutionise the mall’s consumer appeal and widen its customer base. Most people visiting the AYA venue spend an average of just over an hour there. It means they are likely to move into the rest of the mall’s retail and F&B attractions after their HyperSpace experience.
“I think Emaar is a very forward-thinking company, they have seen the transition in retail especially post-Covid, so this is an opportunity for us and hopefully for them as well,” he says.
It’s been quite a journey for Heller who founded HyperSpace after seven years working between creative/arts arenas. He founded AM Fund in 2015, an investment vehicle focusing on art market arbitrage opportunities in the low to mid-market sector of the contemporary art and design markets. Simultaneously, he was the managing director of Leila Heller Dubai, one of the Middle East’s largest commercial arts venues.
For HyperSpace, he teamed up
with industry experts Desi Gonzalez and Rama Allen as his co-founders – just as impressively, his entire core team pretty much decamped from New York to Dubai to get the business going.
He says: “I’ve always been very interested in the commercial creative
space and the way people consume content. Social media consumers are the largest population on earth. When I looked into this in early 2019, I understood the future of retail quite well and I saw an opportunity to bring in capital from our partners…There was never a moment when I thought this isn’t going to work, we knew the idea was just too good.”
With 55 staff already on the payroll, $55m in funding raised, and the mega Riyadh and Dubai parks coming to life, few would argue with him.