A new San Diego startup is sending people on a wild goose chase of sorts. That company, GoMeta Inc., has crafted an iPhone app-powered adventure that will take the curious on a scavenger hunt through downtown city streets on Saturday. The game will conclude with one person finding at least $500 in cash.

GoMeta isn’t giving away money just to be generous. The motive is to get the town buzzing about the startup’s just-launched app, Metaverse, a kind of parallel universe that employs augmented reality in the same fashion as Pokemon Go. So just as Pokemon Go players can point their smartphone camera at the world around them to capture so-called pocket monsters, Metaverse users on Saturday afternoon can scan the streets with their phones to track down virtual clues on a quest to find free cash.

“Pokemon Go showed people that it’s fun to walk around and discover things in the world,” said Dmitry Shapiro, 47, who is CEO and co-founder of GoMeta. “And we’re saying, ‘Yes!’.”

Those who want to play need only download the Metaverse iPhone application and make their way to the downtown area around noon. Then, they just await a ping from the app with instructions on what to do next.


Dmitry Shapiro, GoMeta CEO and co-founder, near his Spring Valley home. (Nancee E. Lewis )

For now, Metaverse is just a one-time scavenger hunt app. While the local company behind it has raised an undisclosed sum of seed funding for a grander vision around augmented reality, it’s not ready to reveal the full scope of its machinations. In fact, until now, the startup has sought to keep its identity unknown, orchestrating the scavenger hunt through a Facebook event where nothing is revealed except the cash prize. The promise of free money has resulted in about 4,000 strangers on Facebook expressing interest in attending the event.

Before its official launch, GoMeta plans to orchestrate similar secretive out-and-about adventures in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Then, when Halloween rolls around, the real Metaverse will materialize.

The ambiguity is intentional. Shapiro, who recently spent over four years at Google before returning to San Diego, loves the idea of surprising people. Because that, he insists, is what gets people’s serotonin pumping. And that also seems to be the overarching goal of Metaverse — to stimulate the senses in a real-slash-virtual game that kind of, sort of resembles life.


Dmitry Shapiro (left, front), CEO, with the GoMeta team: (from left) co-founder Sean Thielen, Tom Charytoniuk, Mark Doody, and co-founder Jonathan Miller in the company’s working lair near the grounds of their Spring Valley home. (Nancee E. Lewis )

For said purpose, Shapiro, a repeat entrepreneur, has teamed with two first-timers, Sean Thielen and Jonathan Miller. The latter are both 23-year-old graduates of Chapman University, and they built the Metaverse app before recruiting Shapiro to the fold. Now the three men comprise an atypical family, cohabitating at Shapiro’s expansive compound in Spring Valley, with Thielen and Miller living in the large garage.

The three co-founders are just starting to build a bigger team and are recruiting from big Bay Area tech companies, including Google. Right now, they all work together out of their neighbors’ “room,” though it’s not just any room. The neighbors run a 13,000 square-foot bed-and-breakfast, called Vineyard Hacienda, and Shapiro likens their rented space to a castle. They’ve nicknamed this office, “The Lair.”

The GoMeta team also keeps more traditional office space at EvoNexus downtown.


Despite being publicly cagey about the true intention of the Metaverse app, Shapiro is more than happy to boast that his master plan involves building a San Diego-based startup large enough to defy our sleepy-tech town reputation and perhaps even redefine that reputation altogether.

Free money is quick way to get attention. The true test, though? Once the money runs out, will anyone care?


jennifer.vangrove@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1840 Twitter: @jbruin