Bringing Sports Illustrated and Notorious B.I.G. onchain

Transcript

gmgm welcome back to another episode of web Free Academy it is the weekly doer Spotlight today we are highlighting Chris Seeley the senior vice president and creative director of one of one of is one of the leading curated marketplaces in the nft space and we're gonna dive into exactly what that means to be a curator Marketplace and all the projects that they've worked with you're talking the Notorious B.I.G estate Whitney Houston estate Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Michael Phelps the list goes on these guys are really deep into the music entertainment space of some of the largest IP brands in the world which have communities and they're

bringing them on chain Chris also brings a wealth of experience having worked previously over his 20-year career as a creative director and a chief marketing officer he's worked with George Soros he's worked with the mayor of New York City he's working with Wu-Tang Clan I mean this guy brings the full spectrum and knowledge of business building and how to create value for your users and your consumers and your community we can't tell you how much that came through in this episode it's just so important and we all know that but Chris really nailed that and shows in the ethos of one other what they're building there and just incredible things Chris also has experience as a general partner

at chainland Capital which is one of the leading crypto hedge funds and he also was co-founder previously of cover us which was a health Tech startup in the web 3 space we didn't have time to talk about that today but his bio off the charts you guys are just gonna love this episode so buckle up and get ready to have your mind blown by Chris Seeley from one of where we break down exactly what big brands should be doing in web 3 in order to build community and provide value for your users the future of social media is here and that future lives in web 3 on top of lens protocol web 2 social platforms are broken and right for disruption you see the epicenter of social media is the creators and yet they are the most

neglected web 2 platforms like Facebook Tick Tock and Instagram are all essentially robbing creators of their worth creators are a new type of entrepreneur forming new types of businesses yet with web 2 platforms creators don't own their content to their profiles and that's their product in business instead they are tied to the platforms they choose to create on well just like how crypto is freeing us from Banks web3 is freeing us from these centralized platforms on lens protocol creators own their content own their profile and even their social graphing followers in the form of nfts this allows you to move freely from one social application to another with your content profile and followers moving along with you lens protocol enables self-soverty for your social graph and

interoperability across the internet at web3 Academy we believe this is the future of Social and that's why we've partnered with lens to ensure that the path of social media is heading in the right direction visit lens.xyz to learn more today are you building a community around your brand well listen to this at web3 Academy our motto is Community First profit second why because engaged communities tell you exactly how to improve your product and ultimately Drive growth they act as team members recruiting new customers and providing crucial feedback and they become brand super fans sticking by you through thick and thin but to engage your community you must first understand them that's where Chasm comes in Chasm is our go-to web3 tool for managing and understanding

our community members it combines both on-chain and web 2 metrics all in one user-friendly dashboard with Chasm you'll know things like which other communities your members are part of and which of your campaigns are truly driving results that's why at web3 Academy we use Chasm to launch campaigns optimize growth engage our community members and automate workflows with this all-in-one tool if your community is already on chain get to know them better with Chasm head to chasm.xyz using the link in the description and discover why top brands like a mutable Nifty labs and collab land are using chasm Chris welcome to the show thank you so

much for having me I'm looking forward to chopping it up with you yeah me too me too we had a great conversation just off there before we hit record and I'm really excited about this so we were just chatting about we gotta start with a little bit of background before we jump into one of and everything you guys are building in your incredible nft marketplaces and the clients you're working with with Houston Notorious BIG their estate so many cool things you guys have done but before we get there let's start by giving the audience a little bit of an idea of who Chris is and your background as a DJ and your story of meeting Prince and spending time with him we gotta start there okay yeah I mean listen when you talk about Prince people listen so let's talk about

Prince and I don't mean Prince Harry you know people talk about him enough just to be clear for the audience I mean Prince Rogers Nelson which to me is the greatest Prince of all time as you mentioned you know I've always been a DJ despite working for 20 years as head of marketing for you know various companies and as a career director I've always needed that creative Outlet so I've been a DJ on the side and it's a pretty great side gig that's taken me you know all around the world to play music for the most famous people you can think of and kind of the greatest places and I was never really that nervous right because you just build up experience and it's just what you do but one night I got a call when I was in New York to DJ for Prince at a tiny private club called

Norwood in New York and I got to tell you for the first time I was very nervous you know Prince was my musical hero and here I was gonna DJ in a room that held about 50 people and he's one wow and I got even more nervous when Prince showed up at the very beginning like at the opening when no one else was there except for me brought two dates as Prince does okay and proceeded to sit in the DJ booth with me and this DJ booth was about five feet wide by about four feet long so here I am spinning records in my absolute musical hero is about a foot half behind me and as far as I'm concerned you know absolutely judging every move that I write right so you

know that's a pill to swallow and but a couple hours in the party is going great as far as I can tell you know and Prince is rocking out he's playing the piano to the songs that I'm playing people are dancing it's a Vibe and then Little Wayne walks in and you know what Terry yeah and keep in mind this club is the size of a large living room okay okay little Wayne walks in very inconspicuously but with a group of people and at the time he had the number one song in the world a song called lollipop and I love Wayne but I didn't really like the song Lollipop I always felt like it was a little slow to play in a dancing contest okay and I'm playing like Funk and disco music right yeah party for Prince I'm playing Prince Vibes essentially and then about an hour

in one of the people sitting with Wayne I don't know if his manager agent comes up to me and says hey could we play lollipop and it's a perfectly reasonable request it's the number one song in the world it's a nightclub in New York and he was very polite about it didn't feel great about it it's a very slow song I just couldn't see it working okay I was very nervous and I second guessed myself and even though I knew it wasn't the right song for the moment I did what they asked and I played yeah and when I played it you know I'm not going to say the party ended but the room did lose a noticeable bit of energy okay just as I'm feeling bad about myself and feeling very conspicuous I get these pokes in my back and I don't mean Taps on the

shoulder I mean like someone would poke you if they were about to attack you and of course conference right who else would poke someone that they didn't even know like that it's Prince right and he is pissed he looks at me and he says what the f you were killing it why are you playing this BS okay he's literally outraged I sort of shrug my shoulders and I say well you know Wayne's here it's this and that and before I can finish he says so Saunders across the club immediately goes over to Lil Wayne and I just see him pointing and making incredibly aggravated gestures and screaming and I can't hear because of the music but I see like a very determined Prince and then he comes back over to me two

minutes later puts his hand on my shoulder you know from like half my height yeah listen we're here for you honey you play what you want no and it's cliche maybe and it's simple advice but it stuck with me I went from that moment of like doubt and imposter syndrome to be like wow my musical hero said that he's hanging out because of my choices and now not only do I have the opportunity to make choices that I want but like that's what people expect and the reason I tell this story is not to flex that I know Prince I mean I'm already married so I've told the I know Prince story many times together worked in the past yeah worked in the past doesn't need to work anymore but it really reminds me not just of our challenge in web3 you know which to me

is as a Creator and as an innovator you want to be aware of what the market wants but you have to have the courage to pursue that Vision but it also reminds me of how web3 grew right you have this very small very tribal group of people who essentially did not have an outlet for their creativity and innovation in the mainstream Tech and art space and so they created it essentially created this massive growth industry from a small community due to their vision and so when we talk now and we see the fluctuation of assets and we see people going to jail and we see Collectibles that we held dear emotionally and financially maybe being only emotionally valuable to us at this point you know I really feel like you got a sort of Channel your inner Prince to the best that any of us could and

keep creating and do what you think is right doing what matters when it comes to Bringing Webster to Everyday People you know that's what I try to do every day in my own life and I really think that's what we try to do at one of Since since the start and that's why I'm happy to be here what a story and keep in mind this guy's my absolute hero of Heroes yeah for that to be an experience was really incredible we're here for you honey play what you want to play yeah but but in a much more aggressive tone like not a supportive grandma like a gather honey more like [ __ ] get with it man come on yeah I didn't I didn't come here to waste my time listening you play lollipop while we're dancing to disco that was the message and it was the right one at the

time into his credit Little Wayne and his team they were totally they got it too incredible what an experience wow yeah uh so we've gotta use that as a I think a great transition into one of and where you guys are at in terms of the conversation you guys are having with these massive IP Brands yeah because I'm sure that some of these brands are unsure if they should enter web 3. you know everybody's heard of all the big Brands you know Starbucks Nike Reddit they're all doing things in the space and they're probably using those as an example but what's it like when you're in a meeting you're pitching these big brands do they need that type of attitude that prints hey let's play This

Record let's jump in do you need to come in with that conviction are they wanting to get into the space is it like a slam dunk when you guys are doing these pitches well let me give a little background on one of which may be context many people you know know us as the leading curated web3 Marketplace you know encompassing music sports and entertainment right but since 2017 we've also been providing software and consulting services to help Brands get into the web 3 game we've been powering rewards for companies like Warner Music Uber Etc and the Natural Evolution of that work was always not just powering public collections that you know get a lot of press and get people excited but helping Brands connect authentically in a space which is very important to them

certainly in 2017 was very foreign to them and even now is foreign to them somewhat right so to answer your question pitching Brands is not a slam dunk if you're pitching the right Brands given how important we understand the future of web 3 to be given the obvious decentralization of audiences who are kind of leaving the big platforms and finding their own online communities given the desire for users to be part of the value chain not just be exploited by the platforms they visit and given increasing awareness of privacy you know from gdpr to just you and I wanting our information kept sacrosanct any major brand is either considering being in web3 or is there and one of you know in

a part of our business that people probably don't see is quietly building tools for a lot of the absolute tier one consumer Brands to do just that having said that though you can certainly have a positive conversation with brands in the web 3 space because they get that it's the future but I wouldn't want to be in partnership with the brand that was not web3 native already where it was at the minute we just talked blockchain because the reality is our job in my view as innovators at the Nexus of sort of software and business and culture is to come up with solutions for Brands right not just have them get into the game because of fomo but give them a reason today to engage because they can

expect a return maybe not the huge return they're expecting over time but they can expect momentum and forward progress tomorrow so I think we are you know having a bull run in terms of Brands getting into the space I think brands are starting to really understand thanks to Starbucks and Tommy Hilfiger and so many other things the value of digital twins to your physical Goods they're starting the value of loyalty but a brand that's not approaching that with skepticism and saying well okay how does this new tool set actually serve my customers you know I want to work with only those Brands so yeah everything is a slam dunk to get attention but I think closing the deal not just for one of but for anyone in this industry history is

really about how can this benefit me tangibly in the near term Beyond just being a thing that we all know will matter in the future where does that typically go then when you're in those conversations you know you mention loyalty is an obvious you know use case that I think really fits blockchain and there's so much potential for better reward systems and better loyalty so when you're working with new brand are you trying to tack onto something that they are already good at and just improve that or are you trying it's obviously a case by case sir yeah from both a strategy side and from a technical implementation side if you

think you're going to go into a Fortune 500 brand and change how they do business so that they can incorporate a web free Outlook I think you've probably got it wrong this means that you want to be aligning with their internal strategy and coming up with solutions that actually benefit them as I mentioned and it means that on the integration side you sure as heck better have your loyalty program tie into their existing database systems are you sure as heck better have a web 2 style onboarding like one of has and has had since the beginning where you can sign up for a pretty complicated crypto identity but do it in a way where you're just giving an email and a phone number and it takes two minutes because I think we need to understand that you know consumers are

not people who engage in Long debates on Twitter those are people looking at the future and we need to look at them now it's funny the first project we ever did with one of in many ways feels more relevant than it ever did so we're working with I Heart Radio which is a huge you know Radio Entertainment Network and they had something called the iHeart Radio Music Festival and it was basically a giant concert you know Coachella like any of these things and every artist you can imagine was performing this was early 2021 and they wanted to get into the web 3 space but you know they didn't have the visual rights or the represent writes the artist it's not like I could have made a million Dua Lipa nfts and sold them on iheart's behalf and so we essentially started a loyalty thing where we gave

away a million ft's literally one million one million and this is in 2021 yeah basically in one day we minted them at an unheard of cost a bit basically zero marginal cost when at the time you know you had 150 plus fees on each people were paying 5 000 in gas yeah and that's why you know at the beginning of the commercialization of digital Collectibles the prices were high it wasn't just that you know artists should and I do believe should get paid commensurate with the value they create which I think is priceless at times it was just the economics and the engineering prevalent in the industry didn't allow scale and didn't allow regular people to participate and when

you look at our Founders you know Lynn Dye Joshua James and Adam fell from the very beginning they had thought the world does not need another blockchain marketplace where you have to be a crypto expert or a maximum or a rich person to participate the underlying technology of blockchain and really using that technology to bring people closer to the brands the celebrities the icons that they couldn't get otherwise you know to go from a personal social relationship where you just think someone is awesome or love a brand to a relationship where you're interacting that was the point and what seemed like a crazy thing to do giving away these million nfts minting them you know our amazing production Department actually got them all out the door attacking sweepstakes to them what it did was it

set the foundation not just for of course a press moment for iHeartRadio because they're afraid to do that but it set the foundation for a loyalty program and then after that you know our next drop was with Doja cat who was and in many ways is the most powerful and popular artist in the world and we got a big lesson in what it's like to create a sold nft for the most popular person that exists and all the expectations that come with that and we put sales records on tezos and blah blah here we are you know two years later and somehow that initial nft where we had to Mint quickly we had to do no harm to the environment we had to get essentially a loyalty mechanism in the hands of in this case a million people and Leverage The Brand Equity or

leverage a moment in time and event that feels like where blockchain has always been but where more recently is more publicly going very interesting so has the I Heart Radio drop turned into loyalty in some way yes I mean they use it we did a bunch of things with The Breakfast Club okay promotions of drops you know they The Breakfast Club is just like a seminal a morning talk radio show that yeah mostly touch with the hip-hop community so yeah you know the great thing about one of is that even through sort of the ups and downs and Market fluctuations we've sort of set about to have longer term Partnerships with our clients you know even if it's one drop and one drop only

in the contract we absolutely plan for it to be 100 drops for the next hundred years you know yeah and that's allowed us to sort of stay with these clients over time you know we've got more stuff coming up with I heart now it allows them to sort of gain an understanding because remember you know the other thing Brands need to understand is the brand you want to work with have tremendous brand equity and they want to be futurists and they want to get into the space but we all know how opinionated that web free space can be we all know how passionate it can be and I think these Brands need to work with companies like ours and other companies who can keep that in mind because we're not just here to sort of deliver a drop and say see you later we're here to

empower these Brands whether it's through SAS software or through managing them through an initiative to get business results because at the end of the day art and commerce always have a tricky and anytime's fraught relationship but UD of blockchain right is that it deals with rewards and it deals with Commerce incredibly well and if we can apply creativity and business strategy to that that's when these big Brands really start to pay attention yeah totally why do Brands say no what's the fear I mean obviously like regulation would be something that would appear from the outside to be a fear of getting involved until we figure out more regulation maybe some brands are worried about yeah potential scrutiny down the road what are the reasons why a

brand would say no we're not ready we'll talk about regulations separately because I think it's an incredibly important question okay we're at a legal level but not at a humanistic level and I think we should talk about that in terms of why Brands say no I mean to be honest we have a pretty good batting average at one of and I think we're lucky to have brands that come to us more Southern outbound but the reason Brands say no I think is brands are large companies right and large companies are not able to move as quickly as small Innovative marketers like me and you and the folks watching and so they often will start this Battleship moving in a direction and when they started the campaign they wanted to make a lot of Revenue off of Collectibles and have a really wonderful PR moment right and while they're still

Pathways to revenue as we're finding also still Pathways to good PR it's not free money and there's a lot of backlash for doing it wrong so I think Brands say no because when the original initiative was approved it was a different world and the incentives were more attractive to that brand the other reason Brands can say no is just usability I mean like you know everyone talks about how important it is for the user and certainly we do right that was the Hallmark of our company you know let's make web 3 easy let's make it easy for consumers in two minutes you should be able to buy your Doja cat nft with your debit card if you really want to right that was our sort of central insight and the other Central Insight which we've also been pursuing and which I think is becoming more talked about is

Ease on the brand side I'm a huge brand I've got an audience they mean a lot to me Chris from one of us telling me all the right things strategically oh but wait what I have to have all my users go get a web 3 custodial wallet and seeing all this complicated movies and spend 20 minutes after they've decided to make that decision and half of them yeah and they call me and I don't really have the customer support to guide them through it and wow you know I've just leveraged my trust to get them to take a step they've taken all these complicated actions and now they're Square want well Brands say to themselves with all that Goodwill from the consumer I could have gotten a lot more out of that so why am I down this pathway and so I think it's

really ease of integration into the Brand's existing brand strategy into its existing business objectives in a real way and into its existing systems I mean that's the boring part that people like me don't want to talk about but you know like I said if it doesn't work with your current database setup you're probably not going to replace your entire company's CRM just to have a web 3 Program you're probably not going to replace the entire way you communicate with folks just have a web 3 Program maybe in the end it'll have been worth it but you can't ask so much of Brands and so much of users and expect adoption as innovators we need to work to make the passion point where either a brand says yes we're in it or consumer says

yes we're in it and then we have to do the hard thinking to make that as seamless as possible yeah I want to come back to your Point around user experience and the pain that you can cause for your users if they have to figure out custody and get a seed phrase and all these different things so out of all the projects you guys have done which one's your favorite at this point it's going to be a cliche answer but the biggie project is okay for so many reasons you know I started my career as a hip-hop journalist in the late 90s early 2000s I had the chance to spend some time with not biggie as much but all the artists he was with actually spent some time with his mother in various contexts and you know just grew up sort of idolizing this guy as a

contemporary and as a hero and then you know we get contacted by Biggie's estate by Wayne Barrow who manage biggie in real life and now manage the estate and works with Biggie's mother Valletta they said we want to make the most famous freestyle biggie ever did where he's famously rapping on in front of a bodega on the streets of Brooklyn right what do you want to say that I'm 17 years old yeah 17 years old and he's rapping on the street corner and at that time you know he was already being talked about in hip-hop media circles and people knew what it could rhyme but this was kind of that moment where you thought oh wait this guy has something special this is the start of something way bigger than a great rapper rapping on video and so this magical piece of hip-hop history

the estate comes to us and says hey you know we see how you move we see how you take care of iconic Brands they felt that was even more important given that biggie was no longer with us so we want to make biggie connect with his fans even while he's not here and we want to do that by giving what we think of as the most dear asset and a foundational piece of hip-hop history to fans so they can figure out creatively you know how his legacy carries on and it was amazing and it was an incredible challenge right let me just frame this for people so that everyone gets this so this project was a 3000 yeah so we did a 3 000 piece generative pfp collection the art is

awesome it's all like poses of Biggie and his sweaters and in his hats it's very big every single piece in the collection matches exactly something he wore in life okay and the stories behind even the names A lot of the stuff are inside stories from Biggie's neighbors Biggie's family like every single piece of editorial stuff that you could dig for another 10 years and not even get into all the stories that are just hidden in that collection so like any generative collection right there's various elements you know the application Expressions they all had names tying to Biggie's history they're even included in collections for reasons

I'll give you a great example so one of the things that your biggie can be holding if you get it is a stack of cash right a bunch of bills yeah and obviously biggie is known for being flashed he had the song Get Money him with a swad of you know biggie bills is not exactly unfamiliar yeah the reason we included that though is because I have a friend who's an older guy probably in his 70s and he grew up on the same street as biggie when I called him and I said you know what extra stuff can I put and he said you should give him a stack of money and I said well that's kind of obvious you know sure I'll give him money that's the best you got for me and he said no no no no what you probably don't realize is that when

Biggie was successful even when he wasn't the global icon he would regularly go to people in the neighborhood and give them cash to pay their rent because he was from a pretty tough part of Brooklyn yeah and he's like so when I see him throwing cash in there I actually see the Christopher that I knew who was just a great young guy so there's stories that go on forever very cool it's the most personal expression you know I said I started as a journalist it's like a way to tell his story more deeply than any interview could wow and so there's 3 000 pieces even during a time when literally hundreds of millions of followers are struggling to sell collections we sold in seven minutes even more interestingly than the Fantastic art done by a group called seriously fun and amazing creative

Studio was that we called it sky's the limit now sky's the limit is a biggie song and you know when you see that video you definitely think sky's the limit for biggie but we call this guys the limit because we thought that this collection was really a trojan horse for a way to put fans and artists on the same side of the table in a real way by giving them Collective ownership of that freestyle so when you bought your sky's the limit nft you got a randomly generated collectible some of which trade for tens of thousands of dollars on the secondary Marketplace even today and you had a one three thousandth share in the ownership and revenue that can come from using this freestyle in a music context and we

thought that this was a great model indeed you know sky's the limit type of model for how fans can participate as creators and again that was brought to us by Biggie's team with arms open and so what's happening right now we have you know a little under 2 000 members because of course people bought multiple biggies we limited you could buy but folks wanted to stack up in certain cases and they are part of a collective which people would think of as a dow we'll get together they engage you know we have metaverse events with our partners at spatial we do everything you could imagine that a community would do but right now they're actually in the process of determining who they want to license this song to either as a quick sample that some house music producer like David getter Diplo could take and

make a big song or a verse in its entirety that an upcoming artist could take and use the entire verse critically with this right they make that decision not Biggie's family not one the holders the only restriction that we have on them literally only is that they can't use it to make a disparaging work about biggie but they could do it with anything else and that was the point any Revenue that comes back which as you can imagine you know if they license it to an upcoming rapper whose label pays a hefty licensing fee in that song the album and streams a lot you've got recurring Revenue that goes entirely back to the collective to use for future projects and potentially to do things

like this with future artists yeah so it really you know a lot when I was doing interviews for the process people said they kept calling it apostamus nft drop or the drop from a dead rapper and it really wasn't it was the beginning in our view at least in our world of the way that musicians and fans can interact in only the way web3 could provide yeah today we have Community leaders I go to their meetings not important I just sit there and participate as a biggie holder you know yeah and they make decisions and decisions that surprise me decisions I agree with decisions I don't agree with and it's awesome it's unbelievable amazing this is exactly what gets me so excited about web3 and why I'm dedicating my life to it is there is

something so powerful about having a vote about being able to have your say control outcomes that most people don't get those opportunities day-to-day especially not for one of the biggest rappers of all time and one of his most cherished and famous people yeah I mean and it was something you know listen this has been the most famous freestyle in rap history since 1994. the family's been sitting on it you know yeah and told him out some money probably thrown their way because they wanted to find the right way to have his legacy live on and they were very simple about it if you asked Wayne Barrow I mean he's got many beautiful things to say but it

essentially boils down to Biggie made music for his fans if he was here he'd be engaging with his fans and this is the best way to do it so just never know where this goes right like this is what gets me so excited is like Community is so powerful because Community has the ability to create rapidly to create what the community actually wants not what the big company tells the user that they want and so when was the drop again the drop was about nine months ago it's all such a blur so it's still yeah I mean crypto yeah it was really at a down point in the market I mean we felt good the biggie people kept saying don't worry we're fine but we had some real trepidation I mean I won't Name the artist but there's a very popular r b and hip-hop artist who has almost 200

million followers Who Sold three percent of his collection the same beak that we dropped and sold out in seven minutes yeah and you know what's interesting too you talk about the community and that's what's so interesting so you look at web 3 pioneers and you look at the Pioneers in hip-hop and if you put pictures next to each other it might look a little bit different right yeah but really it's very similar you know hip-hop was an art form born out of the black and brown people in the Bronx creating an art that spoke to them and creating a culture that spoke to them to mainstream that they couldn't identify with in many ways that was where the original nft artist came from you know the work that there were barriers to their work being appreciated there are all sorts of barriers and to your point one vote they

created a world where they had agency by the way this is also why certain music goes in and out for a while it was all about hair bands and then Nirvana came in and killed the hair bands and then the Grunge music faded out right hip hop what happened it never faded why is that because it's a culture not just a music it's a Christianity and that's why I've got hope for web 3 and when people say to me what are you doing in web 3 couldn't you be doing so many other things and I say to them well I could but this is the only industry where I can do all of those things as part of my daily job I'm so excited for this biggie thing because Community is so composable over time right so the community is just as you mentioned starting to get

together and they're having votes it sounds like and trying to figure out how they're going to sample or use yeah and they've elected leadership and now right so those things can lead to so much more right like now that you have leaders you figure out how you communicate who knows what they do I mean it'll be exciting you know with your well be in a situation where some incredibly famous artist wants to use the sample and they say no you know in any other business you'd think my God you know what are we doing but that's the magic right we are essentially putting our faith in the power of community in the power of everyday innovators who come together because they love Biggie and we think the net result of that Collective enthusiasm in gene genius is smarter

than something I'm gonna think of and I'll take that bet any day yeah that feels like a great bet yeah wow super powerful okay let's move on to some other projects because you guys have so many that I'd love to chat about yeah sure I know you guys have done some work with Duke basketball for those listeners who don't know Duke is a American college and their basketball team is one of the greatest basketball teams of all time my favorite my personal favorite team I grew up loving Duke loving the old teams of Carlos Boozer and Jay Williams I'm an 80s baby so it was like in the mid 90s through there many runs and Coach K their coach who just retired last year is in total icon in the sport and definitely a leader that I look up to as well and I

know you also a big basketball fan so let's talk a little bit about what you guys did with Duke and tell us about that project yeah so as basketball fans know Duke is an iconic program it's been helmed by Coach K who for the past you know 40 plus years has essentially been arguably you know along with perhaps Bill Belichick the most successful example of leadership and success in American Sports to say he goes beyond the game as an understatement and he was ending his career at Duke and retiring and his very last game in the regular season was with North Carolina which if the folks are familiar is the arch nemesis of Duke and everybody they are just a few miles apart and they could

not be more different in terms of culture in terms of students and it's a brutal brutal rivalry and so you know Joshua James who is one of our co-founders and really is the one that creates so many of these relationships for us he was actually connected to Paolo bencaro who is now the Atlanta magic and the number one player Duke and therefore add some visibility into the Duke program and we just started chatting and Duke said you know we want in on this nft thing we want to honor coach in his final game but this is a 70 year old man who does not need nfts to be popular and who has the biggest game of his life and let's not bother him but let's celebrate him okay so what we learned about nfts in this case are digital Collectibles was you can create

a moment by issuing a collectible but if you create a collectible or a loyalty token that celebrates a moment it become even more powerful so long story short we spent a lot of time with the Duke program I mean for a basketball Junkie like me getting to see all these hidden parts of the locker room and seeing all the trophies and seeing the history I mean it was unbelievable we got to go to a game you know when you're in the crowd I mean it was wild you got to immerse yourself right story and we essentially issued commemorative Collectibles tickets using some really incredible 3D art commemorating that game almost like you know people save ticket stubs from notable events yeah upgraded by you know Collectibles companies like PSA and SGC and then we also did a series of

one-on-one championship rings many colleges when they win a National Title will make commercially available a replica of the championship ring okay I know that boosters Friends of the program or fans like you and I can buy one Duke famously does not do that so in addition to these tickets that we sold you know this commemorative 3D very beautiful tickets that sold out immediately and some of them had utility you know to students that were part of the fan section and it was really embedded in the campus um we did these one of one nfts where we did these championship rings where if you were a collector and you're the ultimate booster you could buy one of these and originally unfortunately we couldn't get it through the NCAA licensing department we actually had the Duke announcer recreate the famous calls from the games

and with these championships we bundled that in there the final Collectibles didn't have that and what's interesting about this is you know you spend all this time with Duke and from start to finish we had about six days to do the project by the time we were through all the red tape and you know the game is the game right there's no way they're going to say well hold on let's reschedule the Carolina game yeah the first can have a little more time on the creative ideas but we pulled it off you know when we spoke to the NCAA later they mentioned it was Far and Away the most successful college sports digital collectible of all time at least at the time it was I think it probably still is yeah a testament to leveraging a moment you know that's the thing if there's 13

000 people that fit in that stadium and not one more and tickets are going crazy how can you use web3 to bring people closer to something they love whether it's a brand whether it's a moment whether it's a game and so that was amazing it was the power of a moment I think is how I think about that and it's so interesting how much you're using the language digital collectible as opposed to nft we need to erase the use of nft for Mass audiences if I was going around and I was telling you about my SMTP setup for my email rather than referring to it as email it makes no sense right it's like Tech talk but we love to collect as a culture and as a society you mentioned tickets I'm a

massive Dave Matthews Band fan right and I've seen them over 60 times and I have the tickets from every show I've been to but what happened at one point in the last decade was people stopped printing tickets and you just started getting these lame PDFs right and a PDF isn't a collectible like what the heck am I gonna do with that so now we have this opportunity where you can create something digital that is collectible that you could potentially sell later which is right through a liquid market and create Community through right I mean exactly and it's a massive opportunity on both sides if you look at how tickets work they are run through

Live Nation Ticketmaster so just as you are seeking something that has emotional value to you because you love Dave Matthews right and you don't have that ticket anymore well if you're the biggest Dave Matthews fan guess who doesn't know it Dave Matthews yeah because streaming platforms are collecting the data of you streaming Dave Matthews when you go to see Dave Matthews Ticket Masters collecting your information Dave Matthews has no idea you're the number one Dave Matthews fan and this goes for Brands as well in many cases the platforms are the Gatekeepers of not just Commerce but data and engagement and if you're a Creator whether you're Dave Matthews or an independent artist you know we're to launch a really interesting program for Independent Artists that I can't talk

about the number one collateral the most valuable thing you have is to know who your fans are and who's right that's what the incentive is for these Brands to jump into web3 it is a actual direct to Consumer relationship where the give and take is you have to give some value to Consumers but in return you're really connected to them and you're connected to them no matter what platforms become popular or less popular in the future you're traveling with them you know you are essentially giving them an asset or in our case sort of a very complex blockchain wallet that doesn't feel like it and you're going with them as they move around the internet and being able

to provide value to them and they're feeling closer to you so that is the essentially the bargain it's so obvious to me sometimes I wonder if everyone else sees it because it makes so much sense it's an opportunity that we've never had before to as you mentioned go direct to Consumer create Community one thing that stands out to me just to go back to the Dave Matthews example is there's certain shows that I've been to that have become famous who knows why to be honest I don't know maybe Dave you know was in a good mood or you know maybe they all had a puff before the show who knows what happened that allowed them to be in that zone but it would be super cool to be able to connect with who else was at that show right and knew that you were

there when you talk about our Founders right you have Adam fell who runs Quincy Jones Productions and and has been next to the biggest names in music working at the side of the most successful music producer literally since Mozart right yeah we've got Linda who's been building this blockchain software since 2017 and running large media companies before that and you've got Josh his one of his more prominent Ventures prior to this is exactly what you're talking about with Dave he was working with Pearl Jam who famously was no friend to Ticketmaster and who were this band that would play shows and the fans were and are obsessive did you play this version of porch it was like they couldn't get enough much like Dave Matthews Grateful Dead BTS you know the list goes on and so his business which he proposed to

them was hey you've got all these amazing shows you're playing with all these live versions and at the time they were bootlegging their own shows on CD and selling them Josh went to them and said hey why don't you do a thing where if someone goes to the Pearl Jam show they can then sign up online and receive MP3s of the entire live show for free for free their ticket price but now Pearl Jam knows that you're the Super Fan and it was different a successful business that expanded Linkin Park many other artists and what you're talking about right this very simple non-web-free way of saying wait a minute you're passionate about me I don't know you let me give you something of value so that you can announce yourself to me and we can now be in Partnership

creating value together right that was base camp Productions and it's web 3 and I think its most purest form today yeah yeah I love that any other projects you want to mention quick before I want to move on to talking about your Marketplace and the focus on ux and wallets and how you're getting people onboarded and when you work with somebody like Biggie and somebody's never had a wallet before what it's like for them but before we get there yeah two projects come to mind one that's ongoing and one that's more in the future you know working with eBay you know we were the first company to release an official nft with eBay exclusive official nft partner in doing so we worked with our friends at Sports Illustrated and talk about bucket list you know the first digital collectibly we released with eBay was Wayne Gretzky

or Canadian so you may have a more Canadian point but pretty hard to argue that he's not the most iconic hockey player and then our second nft collectible was Muhammad Ali and the list just goes on and on and on and so we've been able to go through the Sports World with our partners and really have these incredible moments you know Michael Phelps just dropped and you know we're spending time with these athletes telling their story so that was amazing both to sort of be at the Forefront of digital Collectibles with a giant like eBay and do it with the biggest names in the industry and also like Sports Illustrated as well and then something unfortunately you know one yet another one of these it's going to be great but you can't hear about it you know the brand stuff that we're doing now you

know we're not just working with any brand we're working with Brands who are consumer brands that really have something of value to give to their users you know we recently were invested in by American Express Ventures that is the dream in many ways for us because MX is not only at the Forefront of you know credit and banking sort of globally if you have an Amex all of your important purchases you put on Dynamics and you do that because they're trusted they are implicitly the most trusted probably Financial thing that exists and working with them in very smart ways to to help leverage that brand equity and trust and help them engage with users in the web free space and also support all of the Myriad of businesses and Ventures that

work with Amex use MX and sit under Amex that's been a really exciting thing and it's been happening for a while we're sort of just at the beginning and that's exactly the type of use case I'm talking about the consumer-facing businesses who have value to give and realize that giving value to your members pays itself back tenfold to your business I would love to push you more into MX but I know you can't know that's totally fine we'll come back to that in the future when people use one of right now yes are they using their Amex or XYZ credit card to buy yeah what are you seeing so like I said you know we're building software since 2017 using it for Brands and then also for our own use cases we have our

Marketplace we keep a very tight rain on it because the brands we're using you know they expect a curated Marketplace we work on multiple proof of stake coins because obviously artists and businesses care about environmental impact Etc they care about ability to scale you know at low cost and I was there when we were doing the logo for the company everything was based around usability so as I said when you go to one of you sign up and you give your email and your phone number and that's it and you have a very sophisticated multi-sig multi-wallet web3 identity that is now supporting you doesn't feel like it you don't need to know about anything you don't need to have ever bought crypto or even know what coinbase is but you have a lot of power behind

you if you are a crypto expert you can export all your assets out in into cold storage and whatever wall you have you know you can really tweak it but we built this for everyday consumers so in two minutes right You've Got The Power of a web 3 identity and you can buy like you said nfts in many ways over 100 credit cards and debit cards worldwide and also crypto you can even collateralize your crypto so you could buy and you know a digital collectible with multiple different types of crypto rather than just one so for power users that ability was there but we were always focused on Regular People fans customers but I thought you know at the beginning we'll have a lot of people buying crypto and some buying credit card and at this point it's high 90s

buying a credit card almost since the beginning will probably end up at 89 except for the true whales who are essentially diversifying assets yeah and I think it speaks to the need for the beauty of the technology of web3 the Privacy the value going from a one-to-many approach as a communicator to a peer-to-peer Universe where creators and Brands can be at the center but not always shouting at people but be in conversation with the conversation you know none of it works if it's too hard to sign up for and I think exactly you just sign up for I mean and that's also pricing you know we very easily could have sold our biggies or a hundred dollars we could have five x that and sold out just as easily right not many

reasons one biggie didn't make music for Elites he made it for regular people but two we want the value we want the ride to be something that everyone gets to participate in if you buy something for a hundred and it's an emotionally valuable thing to you or appreciates financially you're a more loyal one-off customer if you've seen the benefits you know we sold a Whitney Houston nft that came with an exclusive access to a song no one had ever heard except for Whitney's sister Pat who managed her and Whitney we sold that for you know a million dollars and so obviously for high-end collectors you know at the time when that market was robust and in many ways it still is we have stuff for that but in that same Whitney collection there was a 10 Whitney nft and that was

important so average mint prices they range but what we want to do is we want to grow with our audiences and we want to with Brands and artists who want to do the same this is not a rent seeking mechanism this is not a value extraction mechanism it is investing in the people that you want a relationship with who are your customers just looking at I think the floor price on the big nft is 300 now 300 US dollars so worst case scenario you 3x you get to tell everyone you own the best rap freestyle of all time and you have this super cool biggie where I spent dozens of hours getting the sweater fabric right everyone should probably give my wife like ten dollars for all the time I

missed around the family obsessing over those details so if you hear me if you're out there and you own a biggie I'll have my PayPal at the bottom of this screen yeah exactly uh fund that's going to be one of the only assets that actually appreciated in value in the past six to nine months I mean well you know it's funny there was a question you had asked me earlier just informally and it was so something you bought for under a hundred dollars that you really love right I am very happy that crypto is now becoming part of institutional Finance I'm happy that it's being regulated and we can talk about why I'm happy that a ton of people made in most cases way more money on crypto than I did I'm

happy of all this even through the ups and downs but at the end of the day as someone who's a Creator and a marketer I cannot control Market fluctuations if I could we'd be talking from my gold helicopter hovering above my gold mansion right but what I can do is put my hard work into creating something that's emotionally resonant so yeah I run a crypto hedge fund of funds called chain link it's the most successful hedge fund of funds in the crypto space since Inception and it does well I'm a founding General partner with Andrew hoppin and Paula orgill and a bunch of other great people and had a good year the most successful investment I have made easily in the past three years is buying a Jason Tatum Panini prism basketball rookie card for ninety dollars proud to report proud that it is

now probably about 230 dollars maybe two hundred dollars I feel like a combination between like George Soros and Nostradamus I love the Celtics I love Jason Tatum yeah who he was going to be great I knew it but I saw it former Duke player too yeah I put down a not insignificant hundred dollars on a piece of cardboard and here I am up 200 right and I don't care if that thing goes down to two dollars yeah I would because it would mean he was injured and I'd be sad but it's the emotional resonance it's that I'm a fan it's that I can feel like a kid and if we can create things that are Collectibles that bring a childlike Joy or an emotional thing or for brands that bring loyalty

that is more than Skin Deep that is more than transactional that is value creation Now yeah business people can take that very visceral very humanistic value creation and scale businesses on top of it and create economic value but all you can do is create human value and from there you can build businesses so when you're creating something try to create something that you love and that other people will love because let's be honest right if you have a lot of money yes investing in crypto is a great way to make more it's also a great way to lose it you could just park it in Vanguard and do fine over the past few years why are you engaging in web3 it's about possibility it's about loyalty and it's about engagement so there needs to

be those feelings that go beyond what you see you know on your coinbase or etoro account when you log in it's the biggest thing that I don't think anybody can understand until you play in the game is ownership is fun and it's difficult to make that leap for digital because we don't own any of our digital stuff currently thanks web too and not to hate on web 2 because look of course web 2 connected the world gave us incredible social platforms that allowed us to learn and to speak to each other and incredible communities they built as well so I'm not hitting on them at all but once you own a digital item for the first time the emotional residence as

you said similar to your basketball card that feeling that you get it's hard to describe and then that roller coaster of it going up or going down and that it continued emotion you also get to experience like but that aside you feel about part of it right the up the roller coaster doesn't make me feel less passionate it may upset me on a day when it's down but I'm invested right and this sounds very trite but I think it's really true brands have that same opportunity like obviously I think that basketball is more fun to me than benefits I may get from my coffee company or my bank or something else but I still have chosen those businesses to work with for a reason and they can still Inspire emotional and emotive

feelings in Me by giving me benefits that I want or better yet by allowing me and I think this is where like loyalty programs come in a lot of what we're doing by allowing me to create my own benefits by allowing me to dictate to them hey of all the things that you could give me here's what I find valuable emotionally financially and otherwise and I think that relationship as you say right web 2 brought us all in the same room and sometimes it's happy and sometimes it's terrible web3 puts us on the same side of value creation and it inspires businesses to look at us as not customers or even people they serve but collaborators and valued members of their brand you know

whether their brand is Jason Tatum Inc or Univision yeah yeah couldn't set it better myself okay before we wrap up with a speed round I mean we could go with this interview forever but I'm sure you've got many business proposals if you're saving you know interviews are more fun than meetings but you're right I'm saving you from that right okay I want to give you a chance to give a show for one of I know we've talked about it throughout the episode but where can people reach out to you whether you want to show the marketplace or the client side and the software side of what you guys do tell us a little bit about it yeah so right now you know our public facing one of is at one of.com and that is our Marketplace of digital Collectibles a lot of the brands we work

with have collections on there and we'll have collections on there and in the coming months you're going to see a more public opening of the kimono to show what we've been doing for Brands since 2017. so you know we can include my contact information at the end of it but ultimately you know if you're a collector I think if you're watching this episode you probably already know or one of and where to go and if you're a business I would just say fomo inducing yet true way as I can say you know we are really working with everybody if you wonder if we're working with your arch competitor we probably are but we're really choosy about those we work with because we want good results you know we look at the consumer their happiness and their loyalty as the end marker so you know reach out to us

because there's only so many things we can do well we have the opportunity to be choosy and we are realizing that even in the depths of sort of a Collectibles Market that you know is having a tough time the utility around loyalty around marketplaces around a brand who creates things owning its own resale Market that stuff never left it's more powerful than ever yeah yeah I love it where can people find you connect with you personally sure I mean you can email me I'm old school okay Christopher one of.com also on LinkedIn I have a very poor Twitter presence and if you want to see pictures of my family and various DJ gigs follow me on Instagram I'm not a very interesting social follow but you

know I'm widely available you're a very interesting interview so we all have our mediums that's for sure yeah we'll include some links in the show notes for those listening okay and by the way reach out to me like I'm telling you I've given speeches at colleges and the 19 year old person that reaches out to me we end up working on businesses together like when I was younger and even when I was in business I always thought oh they don't really want to hear from me trust me I want to hear from you I am so busy I need the inspiration from courageous people who are bold enough to reach out it helps me cool I love it it's okay speed round before we wrap let's do it a couple quick questions what's an nft you'll never sell I mean biggie you know

represents months and months of My Life greatest rapper of all time I want to see where it goes like Skye is the limit we chose that title quite purposefully I love it a must read book all right I got two very different one is called a fine balance by rohinton mystery it's a fictionalized book about the cast system in 1970s India I know that sounds weird but really what it's about is the interdependence of humanity and how fragile society and democracy can be especially in tough times and obviously you know we're experiencing some tough times now and I think it's an incredibly poignant book an incredibly tragic book but even amidst the struggle you really feel quite inspired I read it many many

years ago and it sticks with me to this day the other book which takes five minutes to read is the book that I read to my two-year-old daughter pretty much nightly it's called what do you do with an idea I'll spread it to my old son and it's really just about creativity and courage and it's you know 15 pages geared at three-year-olds but it's got more wisdom than most adults myself included well I'm gonna have to get that my wife is pregnant right now there's like five or six books that they're for the kids but really it's like I'm getting more when I read them I'll send you okay cool cool definitely okay last question if you had a billboard that one billion people were going to see what would you write on it I would write stop being scared

this is a little more separate from web3 but it relates so I would say stop being scared on a billboard because as someone with two young children I am very aware and very disappointed by how much fear runs our society you know you have these extremist leaders running countries into ruin running countries into war you have a lot of tech Founders sort of when celebrities who act like children because ultimately they're quite insecure you have young men in America growing up lonely turning to guns and violence you have people that are just afraid of people that are different because of their religion or ethnic Identity or sexual identity or choices and then you have so many people you know myself included at times who are so burdened by their own fear of failure

right and if we could just get past that we could just do so much more for society you know so like if you could just try you know social media is not real everyone is just as scared as you are but creativity is an act of will it's not inspiration it's not an idea it's an act of will and despite the fears that we all have as innovators as creatives as web 3 Pioneers you know there's a lot of Joy on the other side of that fear and I would tell people to stop being scared and find a way to push through the fear and find that Joy I think if we don't do that our industry will suffer and if we don't do that as humans our society is not going to be what we want to leave to

our kids wow mic drop that was very inspirational that's important stuff right but it relates you know we're creating a community in many ways a society in web 3 you know we have to start as we mean to go I think that prints however many decades ago when he tapped you on the shoulder and said those words to you it's clearly made yeah I was scared that day with you yeah it's scared that's the point I'm scared today but you know what you got to push through stop it yeah keep showing up I love it Chris this has just been an absolute pleasure thank you so much for the time thanks for your Insight and thanks for being a leader in the space thank you so much we appreciate you thanks for listening to everybody buddy have a wonderful day thank you for listening to web3 Academy we hope this

helps you along your web 3 journey and if it does please share this episode And subscribe so you don't miss the next one nothing in this podcast was Financial advice crypto and web3 can be risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets and price and focus on utility and implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as Financial advice thank you friends and see you in the next one