You're listening to the NFX podcast. The NFX podcast is about seeing what others do not and getting at the mechanisms behind people and companies that endure change in the world. If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by leaving a rating and review, and by sharing with your friends you think should listen. You can also discover more content like other episodes, transcripts, essays, and videos at nfx.com. And now on to the show. Hey, guys. What's up?
Thanks for coming, and we're gonna have a really fun time today. So before we get into anything, who's Pete? Who are you guys? Review yourselves and name as much as you wanna share. And then I'll be asking a lot of questions over the course of this podcast. To reveal more, but kick it off. Kai, hit it off. Thanks for having me. I'm Kai Sheffield. I'm the head of crypto at Visa. I'm excited to be here.
Michael Johnson, artists, creator of Aku, former, professional baseball player and, just ready to rock. He's always ready to rock. I'm ready to rock. So, of course, Kai and Micah massively undersold himself which was expected, but we'll get even more of who they are and why they're here over the course of the next hour or so. Okay. So first, let's talk about how we all Pete. There's a longer story.
And Kai and I were gonna have a longer conversation about this on another day, but long story short, I was poking around crypto at Facebook. Kai was poking around crypto at Visa, and we're both kind of rebels from within. So that's where we initially Pete and how we initially bond it and fast forward 4 years for shares. Kai reached out to me a few months ago, a year ago. James a flat circle. And I was like, you need to meet this guy, Micah. You'd have to hear a story.
Mike, we're putting you on the spot. We just want to quickly hear the short version of the story of how you got into NFTs from being professional baseball Beller. And then we're kind of going to use that story to weave in what the hell are NFTs. Why does should anyone care? How does this impact the creator economy going forward, culture. How was that gonna impact? So those are tease for what's to come, but first, yeah, baseball to NFTs. Yeah. Definitely.
I got an NFT that I would honestly say out of, like, pure desperation, I would say. I think I got into it, like, in 2 1009 into 2019, I started covering it. I discovered art in 2016 and did a couple solo exhibitions at Dodgers Stadium and and in Atlanta as well. And then when I retire, I realized were holding those solo exhibits simply because I was playing Major League Baseball. And, nobody was there knocking at my door trying to buy art when I retired.
And so 2018, 2019, I didn't have anybody, you know, I wasn't selling any art. Nothing was happening, and I needed to figure out a way how money, discovered crypto initially, then started going down the rabbit hole of, like, the 3 or 4 articles that were online in late 2019 about NFTs and discovered there was thing here and minted my first piece in early 2020.
And what I realized was, like, the network that was, like, happening with some of the brightest people and, like, the most, like, you know, successful people in the industry were just like, hey. Talk to this person and talk to that person. And then, like, I'll connect you with this person, and I'll connect here. And I was like, this is incredible. And the whole year and a half after playing Major League Baseball, I didn't have that happening in the real world.
And that's what kind of made me fall in love with this community and NFTs. And it really allowed me to learn about what the technology could do and, you know, essentially about what the tech is. Now the tech enables things that you couldn't previously do before, which is what I wanna ask, but just to give the audience a bit more context on what the NFT is that you launch. Like, the whole space nascent, no one's really written the book yet on how to do this, you know, in air quotes, right?
But you're kind of the case study for a lot of experiments that have been run-in NFTs. So Kai, I'm gonna give you the mic in a second, but just what's the one liner overview? Like, what the NFT that you've launched or the series? Or Yeah. So Currier was a digital representation of my physical paintings. My physical paintings, I was painting as a response to my nephew asking a fashion could be black.
And I needed to reach more people with that message after seeing how it resonated with, you know, collectors. And Aku was just a digital representation, and I knew that if I released it as an in that I believed in the community. I was there already for the past year and a half that they would evangelize it or had a better shot of getting that distributed to larger audience and just taking it straight to a production studio and losing rights over my IP Pete so far has worked.
I don't even need to knock on wood anymore if you like the cats or the bag. I think this is a good time to pause and kind of throwing you the mic because, 1, you have seen a ton of projects and a ton of entrepreneurs and a ton of Currier in the space, but something clearly stuck out to you about Micah. I remember, like, feeling your excitement when you messaged me about him. So, like, what made it different? Flint, Micah, yes, we are putting you on the spot a lot. Today.
So we're gonna make you feel uncomfortable, but that's fine. But also, Kai, like, you're an NFT guru or as much as anyone else's. So for the audience who might not be as familiar with crypto, let alone NFT is just why are they interesting? And you might be able to, like, weave that together with why Mike is interesting. Yeah. Sure. So I'd say at first, you know, came across NFTs in, what, 2017, 2018 with crypto kitties.
And before Visa, I worked at a company called CharlePay that was you know, the gaming industry and, you know, we had seen how much demand there really is for in game items and assets. And so it made sense to me that over time, gaming assets could become these, you know, tokens that the gamers and consumers could actually own. So I had a crypto kitty and, you know, played around with it and then concepts seemed cool. And then was just really waiting for what are people gonna build on this?
And several years, you know, went by and it wasn't you know, following the space closely. We're focusing on a number of other things in inside of Visa and crypto. And then the people sale happened in December, I believe, of 2020. And I remember the people sale just being this major moment and turning point where it was like, woah. Like, a digital artist you know, sold 1,000,000 of dollars of this NFT crypto art in a matter of minutes.
And I wasn't familiar with people, but I knew he had a reputation as the a popular artist. And, you know, I looked at some of people's work and and I respected, you know, everything people done, but it wasn't really my taste. And, you know, my mom happens to be an artist and I grew up, you know, around, you know, art. I have no talent. I have zero talent, but I used to go to my mom's studio. I used to go to galleries.
And to me, it was always about, like, you only buy art if it resonates with you. And then it's an emotional purchase has to be something that's meaningful. And so then I said, okay, I gotta learn about crypto art and and let me see what's out there. And I was really it in, I'd been spending time around this intersection of crypto and Black economic empowerment and opportunities for crypto to help close racial wealth disparities and help, you know, Black creators and entrepreneurs.
And so I was looking for, okay, are there black artists that are leveraging crypto art and NFTs? And I started asking Pete, and they'd send me links to different artists on these platforms. And I came across one of the pieces from Micah. I think it's called a 11 k, which was the first piece that I saw. And the moment that I saw it, I was like, I have to own this. Like, it was like that feeling of buying art that's like, this, like, this is what represents things that I care about deeply.
And so I tried to buy it and I reached out to the collector. You know, I was reaching out to all of Micah's collectors, you know, early on. And I was like, I have to buy a piece. Like, who is this Micah Johnson artist? And no one would sell one to me. I was like, how long? Like, how can I buy it? They wouldn't sell it. And I remember one of the collectors He literally laughed at me. And he was like, I'm gonna pass this Mikea Johnson piece down to my kids.
Like, there's no number that you could have. Like, I am going to pass this down And so that was, like, the real turning point where I was like, there is something here where, you know, this feeling of art and collecting and the relationship with an artist. And so I ended up, you know, connecting with Bika. I just tried to say, like, do you have any new pieces coming? Like, what's going on?
It ended up discovering other, you know, amazing black artists and creative across the world and started collecting, you know, what I could and really just figuring out, you know, how can I support and help artists and help raise awareness about space? And that's where, you know, Mike and I started talking a lot more about, you know, his project.
And I think that it's incredibly powerful to where there's a black crypto art movement happening with creators that are, you know, bringing amazing work and they're capturing the value of this work and collectors get to decide what work is valuable, and it's really democratizing art as an industry and as an asset class. And I think that's an amazing thing for the world. Here's a lot there. That I'm taking notes I wanna come back to.
And the black crypto art movement, it should be its own podcast episode, but I wanna get into that also because thank you for being me into that. And I wanna talk about the party Dow that you invited me to a few weekends ago at some point, but it's popping off for sure. So, but first, you mentioned, like, with your mom that only wanna buy art if it resonates with you, and I completely agree with that. That's how I feel also.
So do you think that the same rules apply to NFT teas as far as buying art? Like, so what's the same? What's different about buying, you know, quote are like traditional physical art versus buying NFTs? Yeah. For me, I've always approached crypto NFTs is, you know, a lot of people, they see the headlines around prices and resubmit people Flint. I've always purchased it like you would purchase art.
It's something that resonates with you that you wanna associate, and it gives you an opportunity to Beller, like, a digital cultural identity where you can say a lot about who you are based upon the art collection that you have. However, with physical art, people have to come into your You know, that's the only way they see the art that you have. I had never purchased a piece of physical art as an adult. I wouldn't know where to get it. And then how do you ship it to me?
How do I hang it, like, what room, like, it was just a lot of work. And so to me, it just made a lot more sense to collect digital and do art, you know, in this environment where I'm on zoom and virtual interacting with people virtually on the internet, I wanted to start building a crypto art collection that I could then display, you know, online that were pieces that were meaningful to me that could be a part of my, you know, online identity.
And then knowing that if for whatever reason in the future, I wanted to sell some of that art or it became more valuable. It's much easier to do than having to package it up and put it in a box ship it. I wouldn't even know how to sell a piece of his art.
And so I think that there's, you know, culture is becoming more of an asset than it ever has before because of this ease of transacting, and the ease of holding and the ease of displaying when it's entirely digital rather than, you know, I wouldn't even know where to start you know, if I wanted to get into physical art collector. I would say too, like, I think that we're super early in this.
And so, like, everything's lumped together as NFTs, but I think crypto art is its own you know, subcategory of NFTs similar to, you know, I think these PFP projects we're seeing with, like, brands, you know, building built from, like, board and some other use cases ticketing and things like that. So I do think, you know, crypto art is this own subset of that. You know? Like, if you think of it as like a piece of paper, Right?
You know, I could make a really beautiful painting on a piece of paper, but you can also write a resume on it or use it, you know, for a vaccine card. Right? So Yeah. There's definitely subsets of it. And that's a really important call. Like, an NFT, you know, non fungible token can be digital representation of anything from art to a marriage certificate to what have you. So it is an important clarification and distinction that today we are mostly talking about NFTs in the context of art.
So, Kai, you gave a great on what appeals to you about NFTR versus more traditional art as a buyer. As an artist, Micah, you were a traditional artist, and now you're an NFT artist. What our similarities, what our differences are any of the rules the same, what rules don't apply. If there's traditional artists listening or thinking of getting into NFTRs, What should they be aware of? I figured everyone's still trying to figure it out.
Everyone's still trying to figure out their lane and how to get in it. You know, I got in it with animating paintings, physical paintings, a photograph. And now, you know, I, you know, doing Aku as something a little different as more of a almost like an animation studio. Right? I think there's a different lanes for for that you could enter and just, you know, a chance to be creative, a chance to collaborate as I think it's a big difference here.
NFTs, the real unlock of web 3 and in particular NFTs is the the nature of collaboration. You not only can collaborate with other artists or 3 d artists, but you can also collaborate with the audience. Right? They have that collective alignment, and it's very power for. And I guess that's the difference between, you know, NFTs and, you know, as a physical artist, my connection is, you know, sometimes very minimal with a collector. You know, I have representation.
So like, collect through my representation, and they might evangelize it on their social media, and that's that. But with what we see here, and with my work, like, Kya's reference my work early on, those people have, like, basically evangelized it, but also are holding it near and dear. And so they're helping each other drive the value of that work. And with Aku, it's at scale. You know, it's you have more people collecting, with these additions.
And that's the biggest difference to me is if you're a physical artist trying to figure out how you can collaborate, and then you'll see you'll be able to learn a lot more than you would have trying to do on your own.
I think this notion of these bidirectional relationships between creators and consumers, it's incredibly powerful and, you know, benefits, you know, both where, you know, I have this experience, you know, when I bought one of my first pieces of crypto art and I purchased it from Latabo, Huma, amazing South African artists, And she tweeted out, thank you to my amazing collector. And I felt so cool. I was like, this is incredible.
Like, most times when you're interacting with a creator, someone that you look up to, someone that you appreciate, they may not even know who you are. If you I just went purchased a print from her e commerce store. Like, it's very much just a one, directional relationship.
And so I started to see how, you know, you could start with collecting a piece of art and then, you know, have that turn into a friendship, have that turn into a community, into a partner into other opportunities to work together where it's not just about, you know, the artist and the, collector. It's now about all of the collectors of that artist getting to know each other in a community with that artist and maybe with other artists.
And so it's almost like these new social networks and social clubs are emerging in a virtual environment that I think, you know, there are just these really authentic human interactions between people that it's very hard to have in traditional, you know, open social media platforms where there isn't this bond in connection of, you know, starting with some principles or a piece of art or a mission that these communities have.
And we've seen this with the PFP projects, the port James, and crypto pumps, and others. And I think over time, you know, all of the, you know, organizations and associations that exist in the physical world that are membership based, that are close knit communities could be recreated in the digital world, you know, with some type of NFT or some type of asset that is really a membership into that club.
And so you think about NFTs Flint entirely different way if it's just you're buying or selling something and there's a price versus It's a membership into a community of people that, you know, become lifelong friends. And the price you're willing to pay for something for a membership into community with lifelong friends is very different than, you know, a JPEG that you're gonna show someone.
That is a huge difference, and I've been you know, I'm in some of these communities and through Stoner Katz, which is a NFT project that I worked on, which is a different type of art, you know, as an animated show, we're seeing the power of a community in a way that I don't think we fully understood. So from the creator's perspective, Mike, I'm curious. Like, these are all the attributes that appeal to the buyers. Right? Like, I want a community of lifelong friends.
I wanna be lifelong friends with Kai. I would buy it if I could. But as a creator, that's a different job. Like, right? Like, you're not just making art. Like, you also are managing a community, and you're also in Discord, whole other set of skills. So what is that like? Is is it more than you thought you were signing up Morgan? And are there any downsides?
And when I think of downsides specifically, I'm thinking, like, so for donor cats, we're so grateful for community, and there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen. And we're admittedly trying to balance, like, we want the community's voice to be heard. We feel that a very important aspect of this new world is the community feeling and knowing that the next iteration or future products are different because of their input.
Like, what comes next is because they had to say in it so that they choose your own adventure aspect. But what we're battling with is at the same time, it's like you are a professional artist. So what point does the community, like, I guess, step on your tools of creative control? Morgan, honestly, that's a great perspective. You know, transparently how we are building out Aku has been building it as a media company.
And similar to what you're talking about with Stoner Katz, the whole idea behind this is the community Pete. And what is very difficult to do is when you talk about decentralizing IP, it becomes very challenging because creativity very difficult. Yeah. So many people with all these different inputs. Right? The most important thing about this current time we're living in for creators there's an opportunity to build real enterprise value as a creator that never existed before.
That happens through engaging with the community being open building in the open. And you don't have to necessarily go to the community with every single question about the direction of IP or question about the direction the company. And I don't think they want that. I think they want to see leadership. They wanna know, like, these people are experts. This is what they do. When you come to them, it, oh, it's genuine.
And, also, I'm in Discord every day, and I'm in the private channels every day because just interacting because you can get a lot of information by just interacting. You don't need to be like, hey, where should Aku go next? You know, a lot of that stuff's in my head or in the document somewhere. Right?
And so just being in there, interacting, you get to know them, like, on a personal level, and you can start to making decisions, you know, subconsciously based on the people that are part of the community. And one thing that I am super grateful for that you guys didn't have the luxury of is, like, Pete grow organically and small. Right? And so over the course of the last couple months, we have a very tight knit community.
Like, I think there's only, like, 5 out of nearly 600 chapter threes for sale on the market right now. So it's like 1% or less are available. And so that's real people that are invested in this project who I can get real information from. And I think it's very difficult when you scale up to, like, a board ace or you have, you know, thousands of unique holders to to have a community identity. We have a community identity. You go to Discord.
You say something that, you know, that is inappropriate or wrong or offensive. You're gonna get told, like, that's not correct. You know, the community is very gracious. It's happening. It's incredible the way that they respond. Right? I'm very confident now we have an identity. And so now that that that foundation has been laid, we could scale. And as we scale, that community ethos stays, you know, the James.
And something that's very important when you're building out Pete, that the community, you know, talking about decentralizing Pete now, the IP that the community has built the identity of what we're building? I think this concept is so powerful, and I think there are a lot of lessons from it that span across industries around just the way that products and businesses and companies are being Beller.
And the traditional logic is you know, come up with an idea, do some customer, you know, development, discovery, talk to some customers, and then build a product and then take that product to the customers and Morgan sell it to. That's how a lot of companies who get built across industries. Now what we're seeing in crypto broadly in NFTs, you know, really as leading the way here is they're building a community first.
You know, there might be, you know, a piece of art or one initial NFT, but it's not a company. It's you know, a symbol that represents some principles and then a community forms around that symbol around those principles, And then through engagement with the community, you know, further products and concepts, and you could see a whole media company emerge out of that community. And so it's just an entirely different model of development.
Yeah. And as I talk to founders, you know, who are, you know, building in fintech or building in a number of different areas, One of the first questions I ask is have you set up a Discord group yet? Do you have anyone in your community? And I don't think that there is really a point that is too early because you're gonna learn so much.
And maybe the product that you wanted to build isn't what your customers wanted, and it's actually a more scalable way to do customer development is to bring, you know, a few dozen or even a few hundred people that are prospective customers or part or maybe future employees or co founders into a Discord group and start to ideate together, you're gonna get a lot of insights that you wanna get doing these one on one interviews with different customers. And who knows where that's gonna lead?
And I think the difference is it doesn't lead to a traditional company. It leads to these, you know, community Beller product And I think those can scale and have greater network effects than, you know, many traditional companies that have a handful of founders. Well, unlike traditional user research, You have a community of owners who are as value aligned as one can be. So to the broader point of working with this community to build enterprise value.
I know, Michael, you keep using the phrase enterprise value. So, like, people who are listening might be like, what does that mean in this context? I'd love to hear you expand on Yeah. I mean, so what do you see is, like, I talk about, you know, the tools that exist now in web 3. You talk about creator tokens. You have and you have NFT. Right, 2 things they can align community and consumers with creators and brands. Right?
Let's say the creator price or the the secondary market price for NFT is a direct metric that can show the value that you are driving as a creator or as a brand back into the audience. Right? And so there's a scoreboard, right, that, like, can keep the brand or the craters in check. And so why I believe that, you know, as a creator, you can build this enterprise value is because the most important thing is a, you know, a 1000 true fans. Right?
As soon as you have a 1000 true fans, and now they're invested. They're not dislike liking something. They're buying it and then telling their friends to go buy it, and their friends are going and are telling their friends to go buy it. Right? So you have this exponentially growing network of invested evangelists and marketers and capital providers to the IP or to the creation or to the brand that they love. Like, that's never existed before.
Usually, like, you know, like, my daughter loves frozen. Like, so I go to the Morgan I'm gonna buy her, you know, a frozen lunchbox. Right? But, like, that's where it ends. But now you have an audience. They can buy an Aku NFT. And then we have a t shirt. They can Pete a t shirt. They can tell their friend to go get the t shirt. And now because they have value there on the secondary market or through a creator token to go evangelize it. Right? That's real value.
Like, that's it's extremely, extremely valuable if you're building a community for anything, but in particular, you know, as you know, starter catch building, you know, Pete and getting that, you know, out and distributed to about to remain, you know, as independent as you can from the distributors that want to own the Pete. Right? We have an ability now to build a large enough audience where we not only are the producers of IP, but we are also the distributors of the Pete.
And that allows us to drive value back into the audience. I think with the internet, it feels like before this, you know, crypto, that Pete were getting shorter and shorter attention spans, and there was just such short term memory. Like, it was like, one of my partners calls fruit Flint. Like, yours always on to the next thing. But that station of fruit flies downstairs right now. Oh, oh, don't even bring those up. I'll call you after this. And I have a death, but NFTs tokens.
Like, these incentive models are a way to create the fruit fly trap in a way. I have to think of a better way to phrase it, but the whole, no action speak louder than words or something around, like, no NFT to speak louder than likes. I think what you're getting at is the way to interact with brand you like creators you like on the internet pre this was like literally just pushing one button once. Buying something. Now it's like you have to invest. It's more of a commitment.
I think there's this concept of creative ownership where, you know, normally Pete are just passive consumers of content, you know, or of product. And they might like the content or not like the content, but they have no creative ownership in that content. They didn't do anything to make a decision that impacted that content at all. Once you get to the point where even if the decision is small, you know, even if it's, you know, what's the name of the next character going to be.
Even if it's some very minor detail, if you have a community that feels like they have a voice, and they can actually vote or they can decide on what that's gonna be. I think that changes the entire relationship that that consumer has with the ultimate media. Because now they can say even if it's small, I had creative ownership that this media and this content resulted in this way because of a decision that I made. And I think when you give people that it's an powering feeling.
And I think everyone's had that experience of they've watched a show that they've liked, and the show hasn't gotten renewed, or they hated the ending. And it's kind of it's a terrible feeling. You're like, why did they do that? Like, I was a big fan until they did that.
And so if you can start to give the opportunity for consumers to impact and influence the way that content is developed, I think you're gonna see a lot more loyalty and excitement and evangelist around that than when they're purely just passive consumers of it. There's so many different ways to distribute content now, and and for a lot of Beller, consume content.
Play to earn gaming is a way that you could distribute content and distribute story and narrative, right, but it allows people to build that narrative and story while, you know, partaking in the value that you're driving to the game or to the platform. Right? Like, that's a real thing. It's not like I can speak on, like, from, like, the media perspective. It's not, like, TV film is like the only way we have to distribute content. NFTs, played her in gaming.
There's endless ways that you can collaborate on on story that builds a large narrative that just kind of piggybacks on itself. I'm incredibly bullish on play to earn gaming and models like that that allow people to have a stake in the thing that they're participating in on a daily basis because I think that action will bring out a lot of people's desire to make it better and provide their input versus just you know, logging in and playing.
And I think one of the key metrics that's changing is it's not just about eyeballs anymore. Where, you know, for creators and content in most web 2 environments, it's how many eyeballs can you Pete? How many followers do you have? You know, how many views do you because it's purely in a world where the only way you monetize is through advertising. And so it's just how do you get more eyeballs Pete, you know, in web 3, the real metrics are commerce. How many people purchase an NFT?
How many people you know, purchase a social token that gives you, membership, you know, into a community and then how many of them participate in that community and take some action in that community. And I think that that's a much more scalable and more interesting business. And sure creators have been participating in commerce since the beginning of e Commerce, the challenge has always been how do you, you know, solve the supply chain?
You know, how do you you gotta have a relationship with the factory. You gotta produce t shirts. You gotta have a fulfillment center. You gotta have shipping. And there are amazingly talented designers and creative people who could build a brand and build an audience and create a design, but where they struggle is how do you have how do you buy these? Do you have the capital to buy these shirts in Beller? And then do you have the fulfillments?
Like, they're really challenging logistics problems that prevent creators from being able to monetize with physical products. And it limits your reach where you can't sell a $5 product if it costs $10 to ship it to someone across the world.
And so now that the supply chain for creators is getting digitized, and you can mint an NFT instead of having a factory produce a physical item, I think that enables participation in commerce and the ability to build global commerce businesses at a massive scale where the only real barrier is creativity and ideas. It's not even, you know, engineering to some extent as the tools get easier and easier where you can meet NFTs and no code platforms.
And that's what's so exciting to me is, you know, if any individual can build a commerce business and sell to consumers across the world, you know, we think that that's just an enormous, you know, opportunity to grow economies and to help, you know, people, you know, earn livings from their creativity. 100%. 100%. Well, we're all saying 100%. When we describe this world, it seems so obvious, but I'm conscious that people who are listening.
This might be their first time hearing web 3 or hearing people preach web 3. So I'm curious if you have any tangible examples something that was web 2 and is now replaced by web 3 or what do you see as, like, the core properties of web 3? I'm putting in quotes. You can't see me. What do most people not get about it, or what do most people get wrong? Well, I think let's take, you know, what you guys did with Stoner Cass is an, like, perfect example of this.
In web 2, the only way to get that film I mean, the series funded was through financiers or or you know, licensing or selling Pete to hopefully get a green lit, right, and distribute it. You guys basically rallied the community together, gave them value back, for being capital providers, right, and audience is aligned with the creators. And the better, you know, you guys are capitalized. You can go attributive directly to them. The show say Superdove. Everybody's coming in.
Now everybody needs a spot in to watch it, right? That is how you've kind of disrupted the web to, you know, media, you know, financing and distribution. Another example is you look at board 8 Or Dave's has funded themselves to be a massive brand and have the resources and the capital to go really do whatever they want. And not need to, again, license or or do get into a deal where they're getting, you know, splits on their revenue or or anything like that.
They're in control of what they wanna And then what you see is these brands, legacy brands are gonna need to come in and tap into that board a audience, right, or the starter cast audience Morgan enter any other visceral community. These brands need a way in now. And so now they gotta come through the community that's that they Beller or, you know, already versus having to go to them and say, hey. This is a board aid. And and would you want to put this on t shirt. You know?
Now they're in the driver's seat. Kinda, I talk about this sometimes is with this decentralized communities, these big brands should be putting proposals together and saying, well, can we work with you guys in the community should be voting on like, yeah. Like, what's rock with them or no? We don't like that proposal. You know what I mean? The community ultimate will decide what legacy brands are gonna be in be able to enter this new world. And that's super, super dope.
I think one other piece that I'm excited about is if there are a ton of great examples that Micah highlighted in media, but this is also expanding into other industry education, being 1, and Morgan, you and I were just talking about this the other day, there is a study group that is called Crypto Culture And Society. And it is a study group. Here's a curriculum, and here's a group of people that are excited to explore and learn about these concepts together.
And there are a number of different virtual, you know, education platforms. They didn't go through any of those platforms, they wrote a blog post explaining what they wanted to do on a crypto native platform called Morgan they did a crowd fund, you know, in that blog post for people to contribute to participate in the study group and get an NFT for participating in the study group. And now if you're in the study group, then you can, you know, access a private, you know, discord channel.
You can be able to engage with people who will be lecturing and teaching as well as your other students. And so it's a whole cohort based course that really started as just a blog post. And so I think we're gonna see more and more examples of, you know, how these new community based models are gonna be used across, you know, a number of different industries and and sectors.
I do think, Morgan, it is our as we are early here in you know, everybody here in this call and most is early and real thought leaders.
It is very important for us to, you know, hold on to these core values that we're talking about because you know, as these legacy brands and as people and institutions start getting kind of, you know, where the gatekeepers now, there's gonna be some times for us to make sure that, you know, we have accessibility to have governance over our future, financially and to be able to support and share in the upside of the things that we believe in and a creator
believe in, and that's incredibly valuable because now I got people buying, you know, Aku NFTs that, you know, couldn't invest in some of the deals that, you know, other people get to exposure to. Right? But now they have a chance to buy something that's meaningful to them. They can Currier value over time as the IP grows and fans, and that's really powerful. I think that's something that definitely didn't exist in Webb too.
Like, if people were able to invest in a Mickey Mouse when in 19, whenever 30 Right? They would be, you know, doing well. And I think that we're shifting this and we're democratizing access to, you know, have agency over our future financially.
And it's more broadly this concept of giving the people what they want and letting people tell you what they want and, like, laying the web 2 world were these trusted middlemen who decided like, okay, I'm a studio and I think people wanna see a show about cats or I, you know, in some study group where I gave people $10 in McDonald's Beller me if they wanna see a show about cats. But now it's, like, we're asking people directly. Do you wanna see a show about cats?
And instead of, like, filling out a questionnaire, it's like, you are buying a cat. So tell us that you wanna see a show about and with the study group that you mentioned guy like, it's like, okay. Instead of a university coming up with a syllabus and saying, hey, we think you wanna learn about X, Y, and Z, it's like, what do you wanna learn about? Funded and we'll teach you it.
So it's just this broader concept, I think, of letting people tell you what they want and giving people exactly what they want. Or for creator's perspective, there's not as much guessing involved because Pete are quite transparent. And one of my former coworkers and friends, pathology train of us, and he has this phrase he's been saying recently about how cryptocreators are the new internet influencers.
We're not new, but, you know, this concept of crypto creators versus internet influencers where you're an internet influencer, you're on one of these platforms. You might have millions of followers and billions of cumulative likes, but, you know, who cares? Now you're a crypto creator. You get to go directly to your fans. You get to build Beller and community directly, you get to kind of own your destiny there.
And when you say that out loud, you just realize it's just an exponentially more powerful relationship or more mean full relationship. Yeah. More authentic. More authentic. And I think community building is going to be one of the most important, if not the most important skill set Number 1. For future founders, you know, across industries of can you build a community? It's a lot of work.
It's not easy to do, but I think we're seeing a ton of experiments around, you know, best practices, what works, what doesn't, and everyone's learning as they go, but there's not an option to say, you know what? We're gonna skip the community building part just gonna build a product and be successful. You know, you need a community, you know, and you need it as early as possible for whatever product that you're gonna build in crypto in the future. But we are looking at 2 companies.
They're both similar in many ways. Like, they each have two people. They're very early. They're playing around the NFT space. They're both technical teams. So it's as close to an apples to apples comparison as you can get. And one of them has an active Twitter and cord and has a product out there. That's not great, but it's out there. And they're in the discord every day, and you can Pete, and they're, like, getting feedback. And the other one is waiting to launch until it's a bit more perfect.
I'm like, okay. One of these is how you do it in crypto. One of these is how you not. Right. You don't do it. But, like, the decks feel like all the words are very similar, but you do was one of the points I brought up. I'm like, these people are talking to customers before anything Beller, and it just seems like that you can't really do it any other way anymore. Especially the younger generations they want authenticity and can smell bullshit from a mile away.
You're not authentic or open and vulnerable and exposed to make mistakes in the open. Not gonna make it. You gotta be in the trenches, and it's not easy. There was like a 2 week span where if you were famous, you could drop something. You could ride off into the sunset. That's, so you gotta be in the trenches with the people that are invested in you on a daily basis. And they don't wanna see some moderator. They need to see the person that's building it.
They need to show that, you know, we're in Pete, I'm grinding with you, you know, that's what I've seen with Aku. There was, like, a period where, like, I was, like, heads down, and I wasn't in there for, like, 2 weeks. And you can it was reflected in secondary market prices, right, And there was some kind of, like, disdain and and the discord is quiet. I was like, no. We gotta go. And so I've been making it a point to go in there, and we talk about fantasy football. We talk about whatever.
You know, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. How you doing? Get your coffee? You know, what's going on? You know, and it's night and day different. Night and day different. Like, even in the bad James, I've had some mistakes and some things happen on on some drops and people, you know, didn't get access to it. You gotta wear it, man. You gotta be in there first thing. You do have to be in there. You do have to wear it.
The flip side to this is, keep bringing up center cats, but that's the one example I'm the most intimately familiar with. And We had some names that people would have recognized pre crypto involved with the project, but to your point, I think by the time we even thought about starting anything, we knew You have to do this in an authentic real way because to your point, everyone, and their brother and sister in Hollywood is launching some things. You have to be really in it.
And even those people whose names you didn't recognize, but the people associate project. Like, we need to all be at it every day and we're in Discord all the time. But the irony is, like, you know, this is the new world, the internet, crypto, network effects, but like that part really doesn't seem scalable at all. And I don't have an answer, and I don't know if you have an answer, but, like, that doesn't seem skilled. Like, we all need to be able to live our lives.
You need to be able to be with your daughter. So I don't know if you have an answer for that or thoughts on that or Kai if you've been in You're in more of these Discords in DAOs than I am. Like, it's a 20 fourseven job to be a creator and entrepreneur. And it's hard to keep up with all the Discords. Like, and it's I would say impossible. If you want any time with your family or eat or go to the bathroom or whatever, like, new I don't know. I don't get it.
So I think Mike and I were talking about this the other day and, like, it's so early in the space. And, like, the number of people who are collecting NFTs or just, like, it's so small. And so I think every project is experimenting with how to build communities. And I'm really interested to see where escape velocity happens. And the community can live on its own without, you know, the founder, the creator having to drive all the value to the community.
And I think that's at the beginning someone has to drive you know, the value someone has to be committed to it, you know, every day. And I think if you just have a bunch of people that are hanging out and there isn't a leader and there's no one who starting to drive value, it can be tough to get started. But I agree that it's not sustainable if, you know, years from now, the only reason the community is valuable is because of the next thing that one individual is doing.
So I think there has to be some point where it's not even just the size of community and the number of Pete, it's the size and the talent of the core contributors. And that could be six people. That could be twelve Pete. And if there are 6 to Beller people who are adding significant value, then it's less about, you know, the original founder and and the creator.
And so I think you know, board a and crypto punks, you know, those are kind of 2 examples of, I think the projects were so successful that it wasn't, you know, and it was more historic and people were collecting these as assets. It wasn't dependent upon, you know, the founders of the projects every day, but over time, you know, it'll be interesting to see what that trade off is and where the escape velocity happens.
Morgan, how I thought about it was I just said I wanna scale out the team that of executors. And so my role isn't executing on and having to execute on this part or division or this vertical. I just put people in place that execute on that. My role as a founder is to, you know, have the overarching vision, but also be in the discord. Like, Good morning doesn't take that long. GM, you know, responding to, like, someone talking about the Carolina Panthers doesn't take long. Right?
What goes a long way is, like, the simple stuff. Somebody, hey, can I get verified into the private channel? Sure. Tagging Mike is tagging so and so. And, you know, so we can get that done. I see it as more like as a web 3 founder, the important part is to scale the team of executors. And the founders is is the front facing, you know, Heitman. We gassed up. And if all Sunday, we were fired up. Are you kidding me? Like When I closed my eyes and picked your hypeman, it's definitely you.
And you can't see Mike. He's wearing all white, everything. It's great. It feels like this goldilocks where when you close your eyes and you picture the end stage, it's kind of kind of what you're talking. Like, it's no doused distributed. But trying to think about it. Like, the community is running itself everyone is kind of helping out. It's a bit utopian, but, like, that's kind of the vision that we all have.
Like, you close your eyes one day and, like, the ATCO community is going to be doing its thing. But between here and there, it is the goldilocks optimization problem between, okay, like, how much do you let the community just run with it versus how much are you heavy handed in is more of an art than a science today.
It feels like even things such as like putting people on payroll are things that are like poo pooed within some of these communities because like, oh, you're bribing someone to a spokesperson for your community or be full time. Like, even that is looked down upon some way. So I that's where I feel like it's walking on eggshells.
Like, what's, like, the right amount of, like, steering the ship and making sure that the train is running on time and that things are going according to plan because I did not traditional web 2 world. Like, the founder has opinions and jurisdiction over, like, design principles and the tone and how, like, what language is used and all these things versus not letting it be too heavy handed.
And that was a lot of words, but I would argue that the principles are the most important thing that the founder has to set the principles and good principles attract good people. And if you have good principles in good people, it leads to good And I think good principles can scale, but if the principles are not in place, it's really hard for a community to have that north star in that direction that they're going.
So we think talking for a while, but there's one topic that I wanted to ask your opinion on because you both are working on something that's a huge opportunity and challenging crypto right now in different ways, which is accessibility, which is the people that you're trying to target are new to crypto. And but I mean, like, Aku, the Aku audience and the Aku vision and mission and story appeals to more people than our crypto people today and Kai with Visa, which we didn't even get into Visa.
Come back. Like, you're also trying to bring crypto to the masses. And I used to think it was maybe going to be wallets or stablecoins or something that was going to be like the great on border of non crypto people into joke, but I'm more and more thinking it's gonna be NFTs. That's gonna bring the most unique users to crypto over the next, like, 12 months, 5 years. So the one word punch line is quote accessibility.
But more specifically, I'm just curious, like, what learning lessons have there been there? Like, for example, with stoner cats, like, we learned a lot about gas fees and messaging about gas fees and educating people on gas fees, and that was a painful lesson. And, what building blocks are missing to make this crypto Morgan accessible to people that are new to it. Quick. Just thought to that. I think what we're seeing is that culture is becoming one of the biggest on James into crypto.
And, you know, crypto wallets are starting to look a lot more like super apps where it's not just a financial utility. It's where you're holding your favorite art and your songs and your membership you know, into different groups. And I think that it's appealing to a range of people who aren't interested in trading or interest rates but they're interested in art and music and culture.
And so I think it's exciting that, you know, NFTs are making the space more accessible and approachable for people who, you know, could still use a crypto wallet, but weren't gonna sign up for a crypto wallet just for crypto. I think there's a huge opportunity to continue to improve the infrastructure. And so I think as applications are built, you know, how can you have good Pete on ramps and off ramps, how can you have wallets that are secure, but are, you know, easy to use.
And I think we'll keep seeing innovations around applications and communities that then create the demand for new infrastructure. And then we'll see new infrastructure that will lead to new applications and communities. And it'll keep going back and forth, but, there's a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to build in the space, whether it's at the application layer or the infrastructure layer.
And so if you're building an application, create a community and a Discord and, you know, start to brainstorm there. If you're building infrastructure, join 20 discord communities and ask you what their problems And, like, what infrastructure they need, you know, to better serve, you know, the overall mission of that community. And I think there are huge opportunities on Alright, Mike. If you wanna answer it quickly? Well, I just think that how I'm approaching is just approaching it through IP.
I think everybody understands a great story and authentic story. You know? Aku is a very authentic and original story to me, and that's something that you don't need to explain to people. It becomes a responsibility on our end.
If it doesn't exist to create the infrastructure that it's easy for people to onboard, which is partially why we went with Nifty Gateway, and I think I would argue that over, like, probably, like, 70 to 80 percent of Aku collectors are you know, first time NFT buyers or, you know, holding in the custodial wallet on Nifty. Our mission and what we are building is trying to be that first touch Flint for people a very palatable way. They love the art. I love Aku. I love the mission.
I love the message in in some way, shape, or form. And if infrastructure isn't there, we'll just build it people, you know, easily onboard. Well, we can't wait to see what you Beller to help people easily onboard. Mhmm. We stay cooking. Mike and Kai. Thank you so much for coming on today. This was fun. I'm already gonna peer pressure for you because this has to be the first of a series because it's very clear that It's all first getting started, and we're all gonna make it.
Yeah. We gonna make it. There's gonna be many chapters. So a shameless plug. Micah did not ask me to do this, but the way Aku has been dropping or unfolding is there's chapters to the story. So if you've heard in reference chapters earlier, that was in reference to. And he did not ask me to do this, but I am gonna put him on the spot one last time. Any Aku milestones or drops that people should set their alarms for or what's next.
Yeah, definitely the chapters are coming up, but, you know, our basil is coming back in December. So, you know, Aku world is coming to our basil in Miami in a big way. And that's, so, you know, get your tickets to Miami, get sunscreen, Pete your mask, and we're gonna be down there having a good time in introducing more people to Aku and the message and the story behind Aku at at our Oh, yeah. Well, we will see you in Miami. We will talk to you before then. Congrats on everything.
Morgan's always a pleasure. At an effects, we believe creating something of true significance starts with seeing things others do not. Send this episode to any founder friends that may need these insights and framework and rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to the NFX podcast.