https://youtu.be/kiaY0bw-4KQ

Vasily Petrenko, CEO of Another World, is passionate about making immersive free-roam virtual reality accessible to everyone. Guided by Why-Who-What-How Management, a scientific mindset, and a relentless pursuit of continuous improvement, Vasily has grown Another World from a university escape room startup into a global VR entertainment company with more than 400 signed locations across 50 countries.

We explore Vasily’s Scientific Entrepreneurship Framework: Learn How to Delegate, Hire People Better Than You, Figure Out Your Sales Formula, Grasp the Big Picture and Manage the Why, Who, What & How. Vasily explains why entrepreneurs should treat business like a scientific experiment, using failures as data to improve future decisions, and why delegation is essential to overcoming founder bottlenecks. He also shares how hiring specialists who outperform you accelerates growth, why scalable communication systems are critical for global teams, how Another World is democratizing immersive VR for communities of every size, and his vision for partnering with major entertainment brands to create the next generation of immersive experiences.

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Why-Who-What-How Management with Vasily Petrenko

Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today my guest is Vasily Petrenko, the CEO of Another World, a company that offers a solution for opening VR arenas all around the world. Vasili, welcome to the show.

Hello. Thank you for the invitation. Yep.

Yeah, it’s awesome to have you. You’re calling in from Miami, and you just showed me through the window the beautiful weather and the skyline, which is quite impressive. So what’s your story? How did you end up here, on this side of the ocean?

Yeah, thank you for asking. Actually, I started my first business in 2014 with my friends. We were thinking about starting something new, some fresh idea, and we thought about what we could do. At that time, we were writing different scenarios, participating in comedy shows, and searching for different business ideas. We found out that, at that time, classical escape rooms were very popular. We thought, “Wow, it’s entertaining people. It’s something about puzzles.” We were studying at the university at that time, and we were like, “Okay, it’s something scientific.

Make some electronics, puzzles, and so on. You need to think, you need to be smart, you need to be funny.” So it was a perfect match between me, my friends, and the business idea. The thing is, we built our first escape room, and all the money that we collected from our parents and friends—we got back all of the investment in two months. I cannot imagine a business right now where you invest money and get all of that back in two months. The thing is, that’s the main thing that allowed us to evolve in the future: we did not stop at that moment. We decided that we would invest all this money back into the business, and we started searching for new ideas.

First of all, we continued to build the best escape rooms in our city and in our country. Other owners saw that and were like, “Oh, we see your success. We want that too.” So they started calling us, like, “Can you build that business for us in another city?” So from one little business, we opened another one at the same time, which was the B2B solution—opening this type of business for others. Again, we were searching for new ideas, for new products.

Two years later, we thought, “Okay, let’s add a new product: virtual reality.” It wasn’t trending at that moment. The thing is, we hadn’t found anything that would be good for us. We were like, “Wow, this is low quality. We don’t like this.” Basically, there were so many dislikes about everything on the market that we decided we needed to make our own product.

It took us about two more years to think about this idea, and in 2018 we came up with the idea of a free-roam virtual reality arenas.
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So I want to correct you a little bit here. In the introduction, you said Another World VR arcades. It’s not exactly arcades. It is virtual reality arenas. And free roam, for those who might not know, means that you don’t have any limitation with wires. So it’s not like playing VR at home, where you put on the headset, sit on the couch, and play. No. Our VR arenas are from 1,000 to 2,000 square feet, and the player can explore the whole arena from one corner to another. They can run, they can jump, they can interact with each other, and there can be up to 20 players simultaneously. We started this business in 2018 as an additional product for our escape room owners. It was an additional game for them. But again, over time, more and more of our partners—and we realized this ourselves—decided that this could be a separate business. Not the escape room, but the VR arena could be a business by itself. And we started doing that.

We did a rebranding, and we started providing not only the best games in the world for our partners, but also the design, brand, website, booking system, and all of that.
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So basically, we packed our product into the franchise. By now, this year will be the eighth year of the company, and we have 400 signed contracts all around the world in 50 countries. That means our partners either already own and operate our locations or they’re in the process of opening. They’re doing the construction and opening the business, and we’re helping them with that. So yeah, that’s the story.

That’s fantastic. So are you a licensing business, or are you a franchise business?

That’s a really good question. Right now, we’re registering the franchise. I know that in some countries there are strict regulations. So today, we’re licensing our technology and games to our partners. But we want to become an official franchise, so we’re working on that right now and preparing everything for it.

That’s super exciting. So let me ask you my favorite question. What is your personal “why,” and how are you manifesting it in this business?

This is a really good question. For anything that you do, for any of your daily tasks, you should ask yourself: “Why am I doing this and not that?” So why will this idea work? It’s a really good question for you to ask yourself all the time. I’m kind of, in this case, a perfectionist. That’s both the good and the bad side of my personality. I’m also into marathons and triathlons. I’ve already done many ultras. So the good side is that

I'm very intense when it comes to working hard. I will do everything so that my business succeeds. I will do everything so that I finish this marathon.
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But after I finish the marathon, the next second I’m asking myself, “Where can I be better? Why did I do this or that?” It’s always about balance. It’s not about work-life balance, but even inside your work, you need to find the right balance between good and bad. I’ve been learning that over the past few years, trying to get better at it. So I think that’s the question. But still, asking yourself, “Why am I doing this and not that?” is always important, in my opinion.

So your “why” is to always get better?

I would say yes. Well, okay, let me also add to that. To get better—and there’s no ideal—but there is a way to get on that path. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is that your “why” also describes how you feel about what you’re doing. It might be your work, it might be your business, it might be whatever you’re doing. Actually, my graduation was absolutely not about business. I started at the university studying cytology and genetics. So I used to be in molecular biochemistry, biology, and all of that. I was the kind of guy who was doing research for PCR tests. You might be familiar with them from the Covid..

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, the Covid era of those PCR tests. So I was developing stuff like that. I know how to do that. I know all of that. But right now I’m in the entertainment business. The thing is that I really like to consider business with a scientific approach. What I mean is that business is also something where you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. So there are a lot of hypotheses. There are a lot of ideas that you get when you’re brainstorming, alone or with your team. The thing is, first of all, there might be mistakes. There will be mistakes, and that’s absolutely normal.

Like we say in science, a negative result is also a result. So it’s all about experiments. You change one factor, you test one hypothesis, you run the experiment, you see the result, and you make a conclusion from that. If it’s a negative result, okay, don’t do that anymore. If it’s a positive result, okay, how do we scale that and do it better? Again, we might consider that as a “why” question.

342: Why-Who-What-How Management with Vasily Petrenko
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Yeah. I saw your post about the five things that you learned as an entrepreneur. That was pretty interesting. It kind of shows your scientific way of thinking about business as well. So, talking more about the science of business, this podcast is called The Management Blueprint, and what I’m looking for in every conversation is a framework that you’ve discovered while building your business that you could share with the audience, so they can maybe apply it to their own business. So think of something like three to five steps, or a mental model, or a way of thinking about things. Anything come to mind?

Yeah, actually, as I said, first of all, the scientific approach—and don’t be afraid of mistakes. I think this is mostly for young entrepreneurs. Even right now, my little kids are going to some sports, and sometimes they’re upset if something goes wrong, right? I’m trying to teach them not to be afraid. If something goes wrong, it’s just a way for you to get better. That’s the first thing. The second thing is, when you’re trying to scale, I know it’s also a mistake that many entrepreneurs or managers make.

You always think you know better how to do something, and you’re afraid to let someone else do it. I know that from my own experience. As I said, I’m a perfectionist, and if I see some task, I’m thinking, “Okay, nobody will do that better.” So

first of all, try to teach yourself how to delegate. Because without that, you cannot evolve. You cannot scale. If you're doing everything by yourself, you'll be a solo entrepreneur.
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You can do only one thing, and that might be enough for somebody, but you cannot build a big business that way. At some point, I realized that if I hire people and they do those challenges—those tasks that I’m giving them—even if they do them at 70% of my ideal, it will still be okay. Because five of them will do five different challenges. I’ll just check their work, save tons of my time, and give them feedback. Yes, maybe it won’t be 100% ideal in the end, but it will get closer to 80% or 90%, which is already very good. For me, it would take weeks to finish those five challenges by myself. With five different employees, it will be five times faster.

Okay. So learning to delegate—that’s important. So what else is in your framework?

About delegation, the other thing I learned is to hire professionals. That’s the next step: hire those people who know better than you. Why would you hire somebody who knows less than you? Hire professionals in their areas so that they can bring value into your company. So that’s the second step after delegation. Again, for me, it’s always about finding a new idea, experimenting, and if it’s a positive result, scaling it. Then back again to a new idea. So it’s always constant loop of coming up with new hypotheses. Again, don’t sit in one place just doing what you’re already doing.

Okay. So experiment and scale what works. That’s great. That’s it? So: delegate, hire people… technicians, I think you called them? Or specialists?

Not only technicians. I mean, it could be in marketing, it could be in sales, it could be in tech… So yeah, there are so many people in my company right now who know better than I do. I don’t know how to set up a CRM system. I don’t know how to set up a Google campaign. I know, in general, some of those things, especially at the beginning when you’re hiring your first people.

You might need to dig a little bit into the area. But after some time, you just need to… I remember there was a movie—I think it was about the financial crisis of 2008—and I remember one scene. The first employee who found the problem was explaining it to his boss with too many parameters, saying, “Oh, we have an apocalypse here. That’s a crash.” His boss was like, “Oh yeah, that’s a crash.” Then his boss went to his manager and explained it in, like, three sentences. Then the top manager explained it to the CEO in two words, and the CEO was like, “Okay, I got it.”

So it’s pretty much the same thing. It’s always like that. I really like that idea of how it’s structured. In our case, again, I don’t know exactly how everything is arranged in the details, but in general, I keep it all in mind.

You see the big picture. You see the big picture, and you can communicate it.

Exactly.

Maybe that’s also another step: grasp and communicate the big picture.

From that idea, I just realized one more thing—the environment for your employees, your staff, your partners. It’s really important to give them the proper instruments for how they’re going to work. Actually, you can describe the structure of the company this way: The first employees know how to do things.

The next level asks, “What are we doing?” The CEO asks, “Who is doing that?” So at some point, as the CEO, you’re deciding who will be doing those things. Top managers are thinking about what we’re going to do. Employees are thinking about how to do it and working with the tools. In this case, it’s really important to put all of this into a workable… I don’t know how to describe it… an environment that will be feasible for everybody.

If your company is growing, you need to work on the communication between different departments, between different people, and so on. Because there might be a mistake in the tech department or on the website that doesn’t allow sales or marketing to develop future things, and so on. So you need to give your team the appropriate instruments to work with. As you asked me at the beginning, yes, my team right now is around 70 or 80 people. I don’t know the exact number right now. The thing is, about half of them I don’t know personally.

I haven’t seen them in person, or even online, and they’re in different countries and different cities. So we’re working hard to make sure that, for these tasks, we have this type of CRM system. For this one, we have this type of platform. It might also be different depending on what your team is doing. For the sales department, we have one set of needs. For our tech team, it’s absolutely different. So yeah, that also matters.

Yeah. So I was thinking about what you explained—the who. The person at the top decides who will do it, then the who decides the what, and the what people decide the how. But I would say maybe above the who, you have the why.

Why. Yeah, that’s good. Why are we doing it? So this is about the mission of the company, the initial idea. So this is something, okay, maybe not the CEO. This is something the board of directors, the investors—they’re thinking, “Why are we doing that? Why are we investing our time and money into that?” So that’s absolutely true. That’s absolutely right.

Yeah. Love it. Let me switch gears here. So what drives growth in your particular company, Vasily?

We are family-friendly, so we are spreading joy and fun for people. Actually, this was one of our ideas at the very beginning when we started thinking about VR.
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We saw that there were some competitors, and they were doing a pretty similar product. But the thing is, they were selling their franchise for millions of dollars. Moreover, just the equipment they were using to build their arena cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We looked at that and realized, okay, this type of business is still a business. You need to earn money. Of course, it’s fun to give people joy, but it’s a business, and a business should earn money, right?

We realized that if we made a product like that, then you could open it only in major cities like New York or Los Angeles because only there would you have enough customer traffic, market size, and money for people to get their investment back. So that’s millions of dollars of investment that you would eventually recover from this type of park or arena. We realized that our mission would be to make the same quality product—high-end, immersive virtual reality.

Virtual reality is still something that not many people have even tried, so it still looks futuristic to a lot of people. Our mission is for every kid and every adult in the world to have the opportunity to play this type of experience.
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How do we do that? Basically, by opening locations not only in Los Angeles and New York, but also in smaller cities. So we had to find a way for business owners to open our business. Not for millions of dollars, but for tens of thousands, or $100,000 to $200,000. That could be opened in any city—even a small city—with a little arena, a little family entertainment center (FEC), where people come, have fun, celebrate birthday parties, hold corporate events, and spend time together. What still drives us—and I’ll be honest with you—is when we get a new opening.

Just today, I had a call from Vietnam. I had a call from China. People there want to open our locations, and I’m happy about it. Not only because it helps us grow the business. The bigger the market we have, the more games we can develop, and the better we can make our product. But it’s also another point on the map. We can see, “Oh, we’re getting there.” So that’s the first thing—that more people can experience highly immersive, high-end entertainment. The other thing is, from the very beginning, I remember it was my dream that someday we would work with huge companies like Disney and Warner Bros., and develop games based on their IPs.

Just imagine creating a Harry Potter game. That would be a different level, right? That was my dream, and it still is. Only now am I getting closer to those companies and having some negotiations. That’s what drives me personally. That’s what drives us emotionally to wake up every day and do this business—for me, my employees, and everyone else. I don’t know if this question was about that…

I think that’s more of the “why” question that I asked you earlier.

Okay.

So that’s the why for the company, and that’s very exciting. You’re basically democratizing this whole experience. You’re bringing it to people in smaller cities, and that’s always a huge idea. I had a client years ago who was in the floor-covering and home-decoration business. That was in Eastern Europe as well—in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.

He figured out a way to franchise it to people who didn’t even own real estate, who were just family businesses. He figured out a way to lease them the location and make it a viable franchise in towns with only 10,000 people. He basically cornered the market in that segment. So that’s super exciting. So, Vasily, let me ask you: What’s the one thing that you’re trying to figure out in your business right now?

As I said, this big challenge of getting a famous IP… I just came back from Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, and I had a few productive meetings there with some companies. So I see a lot of business opportunities there, but it also makes me feel… I mean, when we make this kind of game, I feel proud. I feel that little Vasily—the little boy inside of me—feels like, “Oh…” If somebody had told me 20 or 25 years ago that I would be making computer games, VR games, and especially a game based on a famous Disney or other IP, I would not have believed it.

And this is what I really love. I mean, for some people it might sound like a dream. For me, it’s still a dream, even though I’m getting closer to it. So that’s my main challenge right now, to be honest. But also, I’m doing a lot of other stuff in the company. So yeah, distribution is another big challenge. Also, new markets. There are pros and cons. We’ve been growing rapidly. It’s great to have 50 countries on the map with our locations.

But just imagine that each country has a different language, mentality, and everything that comes with it. So you need to prepare additional websites, tools, CRM systems, marketing materials, videos, training—everything. It’s crazy. First of all, we need to help our partners in all of those countries grow their businesses. That’s important. Also, when I get calls and requests from new countries and new regions—like Latin America right now—we have a distributor in Latin America, so that’s a new market for us.

Of course, we’re not starting from scratch. We have some background, right? But still, in that particular territory, you need to build the business from zero. So that’s also a challenge. I gave you a few, but those are the things I’m working on every day.

Yeah, that’s fantastic. So what’s something that you would like our listeners to learn about your company, or maybe do and explore around what you’re doing?

First of all, Google Another World VR. Find a location in your city or nearby. Come and try our games. Your kids will love them. I know that not all adults are gamers or whatever, so it depends on the person. But everybody should definitely try it. I’ve seen a lot of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s playing our games multiple times and having a lot of fun. We have PvE games, which means player versus environment, where you’re on one team. For example, you and I are in one squad, and we’re killing zombies or aliens, trying to survive.

We also have PvP games, or player versus player, where we’re on different teams competing against each other. That’s a lot of fun. It’s also very competitive. We also have features like playing against other locations. Just imagine that a location in Toronto, Canada, can play against Atlanta, Georgia. We have a location there. We already have that technical feature, and we’re adding tournaments. So you can participate in tournaments locally and then play internationally. So yeah, first of all, Google our company and try our games.

You’ll love them. As I said, we’re already in 50 countries, so I think you might find a location near you—or one will be opening soon. The other thing is, if you’re a business owner looking for something to invest in, or you’re looking for new ideas, contact me or contact our company, and we’ll show you what our business consists of. Yeah, we have something to offer you. And the last thing: if you’re in the industry and you’re connected to the big players in entertainment—companies like Netflix and others—call me as well.

We’ll find a way to collaborate, cooperate, and make the best game based on those IPs and trademarks, so everybody benefits. The people who want to play our games will have even more fun playing their favorite characters. That’s what it’s all about.

Yeah, that’s amazing. So, Vasily Petrenko, CEO of Another World. Google Another World VR, check out the locations, and try these VR games. I definitely think the wind is in your sails because the younger generations grew up with games. I was on a Commodore 64 when I was a kid, but the younger generations actually grew up with VR games. So it’s going to be a great experience for all of you. And those of you listening, if you liked the show, make sure you follow us on YouTube, subscribe, and leave us a review, because every week I bring an amazing entrepreneur like Vasily onto the show. So thanks for coming, and thanks for listening.

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342: Why-Who-What-How Management with Vasily Petrenko

Management Blueprint | Steve Preda

342: Why-Who-What-How Management with Vasily Petrenko