The NFX podcast is about seeing what others do not. And getting at the true mechanisms behind people and companies than door change in the world. If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by leaving a rating and review and by sharing with friends you think should listen You can also discover more content like other episodes, transcripts, essays, and videos by following us on Twitter, at n effects, and visiting effects.com. And now on to the show. Hi, everyone.
I'm here with the Stoner Katz team, which we will get into what Stoner Katz is. But first, I Flint introduce I'm here with, we're gonna play a bit of a game since it's more than one guest on the show today. So when I say your name, just say hi. Pete know whose voice is, whose. So going in order of who I see on my screen. We have Lisa Sterkakoff. Lisa Say hi. Hello. Lisa is the woman behind a production company called Orchard Farms, which she's a partner with Milakunas in the head.
And Mia will come into the story later as well. Lisa's the one who James sure this train is running on time. Make sure we have all of our eyes dotted. All of our keys crossed. And makes us all laugh. So, Lisa, thanks for being here. We'll come back and hear more about you later. Mac. We've got Mac Flaville. Hey. That is what he sounds like. That started a company recently called Bighead, which they tuned for more from Bighead, but NFTs, like, the world has never seen them.
Previously Mac was at Dapper, the brains and creative genius behind top shots, crypto kitties, and a lot of things that the world will be shocked and odd by. It's a Mac that you've been here. Yeah. And we got Morgan Badra. Mario? Hi, everyone. Hey, Maria. Mario's at Sound Ventures where I wanna say leads. It really leads, like, all of their crypto, everything, and they do a lot of crypto everything.
So she's lemon behind all of the interesting things that they're doing there, and she's also the lemon behind most of the non big head team's NFT knowledge on Stoner Cat. So Omri is the NFT expert adding. NFT fan girl. NFT fan girl. So What's Stoner Katz? Who wants to answer? Stoner Cat is a new animated short series that we're releasing through NFTs. We're releasing 10,420 NFTs you purchase 1 of the NFTs, you get access to watch the content and watch the first episode of content.
The 10,420 NFTs, so there are 7 characters in the show. Is that right, Lisa? Yeah. Okay. The 10,420 NFTs are around the 7 characters in the show. So there are 6 cats and then Missus Stoner. Each cat has varying rarities. It's all algorithm generated our animator as she hand drew every single piece of art, and then we kind of combine them together to create one of one unique and tees for each cat and for each character. And so if you buy 1 of these cats, it gets you access to watch the content.
And so we're releasing all 10,420 at once. If we are success and we do decide to make future episodes. We have an entire season written. And for every new character that is introduced, we'll release another 1000 We believe that in the 1st season, we'll have 3 new characters introduced, which will introduce 3000 new NFTs. Each thousand is around that once big character.
So in total, we believe if we're successful, there'll be 13,420 NFTs that Pete you access to watch all of the stoner cats content that we create. And that is stoner cats. I guess to kick us off what is an NFT. We might have some people here who don't know what it is, or we might have some people here who know what it is, but don't know how to explain it to their grandma. So Yeah. Happy to. And if I butcher anything, just, you know, people jump in and correct me if I'm wrong.
So an NFT, it's a non fungible toe in, it lives on the blockchain. Essentially, what non fungible means, and non fungible is different from fungible. We're fungible. Like, if you have a dollar, a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. Same thing ever. Where. What non fungible means that, you know, you have one thing and different from another thing. And so it's not the same. So it's not, you know, composable. It's not fungible. NFTs are non fungible tokens.
They're unique assets that live on the blockchain. They can be anything from digital art and collectibles like, where kind of mainstream NFTs have come from to, you know, you can track plots of land as NFTs. It can be any individual unique item that lives on the blockchain that you wanna track in perpetuity. Great. Ma'am, it's a great definition. So you heard from Maury. We've got this NFT DNA on the team, but we also have this enter payment DNA on the team.
So we Pete you're up next because I think you can explain, I guess, how these two worlds merged and not only how these 2 worlds merge, but why these 2 worlds merged? Because I think from the outside, people will see stoner cats or they'll hear about stoner cats or like, you know, I roll. It's another NFT project from celebrities. You know, a money grab celebrity is trying to use their names to sell things to nerds on the internet, but that's not the case Pete.
I guess there are, like, quote celebrities involved, but I think what's really unique about sonar cats is we came together with a problem, and it just so happened that the only the right technology choice to solve that problem happen to be NFTs versus trying to retrofit the other way of like, okay, we wanna do something with NFTs. Right? We got this thing. And so I'm gonna pause and not to your new ish to the crypto world. Brand. Brand speaking.
Your perspective, yeah, how did this all come to me? Because Stoner Katz was in your mind's laptop before really any of us had heard about it. So Yeah. You know, the why is the really big part of this and the real exciting part of it for us. And when I'm speaking of us and speaking of me and Mila together who have been developing this project for well over a year, we initially met with are 3 creators, Ash Brannon, Sarah Morgan, Chris Gardagania.
The 3 of them are just like the best of the best in terms of animation. I mean, directed Toy Story 2. And between the three of them, they have worked on every kind of animation that you've ever heard of. And they were bored working on some kids stuff and had this amazing idea for these cats who become sentient when their owner hot boxes them with their medical marijuana.
And their owner is an old woman named Missus Stoner, and she's got all these cats, and she smokes them pot, and they become sentient, and then, you know, hilarity ensues. We've loved this project forever. And we're having a hard time actually kind of getting it launched off the ground in traditional Hollywood ways. I think the combination of it being drug content, which actually is really challenging surprisingly in Hollywood. They don't want a lot of it actually less than Beller.
So that was a real challenge. And then there is just a lot of animated content out there, particularly in the adult animation space. And we were unexcited about the options that we had in terms of putting it out there. And wanted to think out to the box, and it's one of the wonderful things about Mila is she's like, is this the best way for us to do this.
We had an option of doing it in a more traditional animation route, and we had a real conversation of, like, is this the best way And so as we're sitting there with our creators, she yelled over to Ashton and said, hey, hey. Could we do this as an NFT? Also, what's an NFT? And so We really went all the way back to, like, we knew nothing. Neil and I had heard of NFTs sort of knew what it was, but, I mean, like, really only the tiny that. And Ashton was like, absolutely.
And you know who you need to talk to and immediately said, Maria and Morgan, 2 of the smartest women I now have ever met my life who knew so much about this space, and we're so gung ho to help us make this show. And to be really fair, you know, there's a lot of, like, Beller Cash grab thing, nobody's made $1 on this. Our incredible animators have done this for free. We have all done our work for free in hopes that we can make enough to make more.
Like, our whole goal is to make more and to not have to take notes from company that has a corporation that has a legal Instead to be able to make the show that we wanna make, even if that means that we have to make it in 5 minute bursts in order to be able to put it out there to the world. So that's how we started that. And then Morgan and Mara came in and made it better.
The one amazing thing about Ashton, and I've been working with him for the last four and a half He's so good about bringing together the right people and also, like, empowering them in the best way possible. Like, he recognizes what what people are good at, and then he the run with it and for him to bring, you know, Morgan and I into the loop Pete. I mean, it was pretty incredible. It was definitely the right time, right moment, right opportunity. So, Mac, your Genesis story is up next.
So, you know, you're some NFT hotshot. You know, crypto kitties was arguably really the first mainstream. I put mainstream in quotes, but NFT that the world had heard about. So you've got celebrities and agencies and you know, everyone knocking on your door saying, please Beller, please help. And I know that when we first reached out, you're like, you know, viral celebrity cash grab, and you weren't just like, oh, shiny names. I'm in.
So what was it for you that ultimately made you decide to bet your time and your team's time, which is so scarce and valuable because you guys are starting this new venture on this project. There's a story that I don't know that is true, but I'm gonna tell her like it's true because That's certainly the truth. And this is the story of, the old Hasidic rabbis. And the idea was that if you were curious about Judaism, you would go and you could approach. I mean, where would you start?
Well, maybe you would see a city rabbi. You would say, sir, like, can you help me understand the world as you see it? And they would say no. And that was that. And it was three times that you have to go back. And if three times you go back and you are committed to the journey, then they will begin to peel back the veil and let you see what is behind the And I always thought it was a really neat way to best commitment.
So I like the story because I get to be the old Hasidic rabbi and Mara gets to be the spiritual quester. And Morgan and I were becoming friends as we were talking about Pete. She works at sound. They invest money in company that I'm gonna change the world. I own a company that is going to change the world. And to be honest, we'll get why I bring this up. But at the time, we've finished air quotes our seed round. And I looked around, and I was like, wow.
Literally Beller single person at the table has a penis. That's the one thing we have people of every creed, but there was no gender interesting things happening at all. And so I talked to a guy named Beller, who is an investor of ours, and he's a football player, NFL player, Calvin Beach and Beller guy. And I was like, dude, I need to do better.
Like, z exactly this moment where the forty year old straight white man with lots and lots of opportunity like, an opportunity following up my wazoo needs to do something about it. So how do I do that? Who do I talk to? And he introduced me to some incredible Pete, and one of them was named Sabrina Han, and she's really, really Pete. And she introduced me to Mario. And so I I got talking to Morgan, and we talked about our company and our business That was really Pete.
But along the journey, Mike kept saying like, hey. We're working on this and a few things. We're working on this and a few things. We think there's an opportunity to change how content creators content consumers connect that there's an opportunity to burn the bridges in the middle and let the horses out. And I go, yeah. Yeah. You're right. Lot of people thinks of what are you gonna do about it? And we continue to argue about what that could be or what that should be.
And after the 3rd or 4th time, maybe being like, I don't know. Like, I don't really see it. She was like, dude, shut up. Come back to my people. And, thus, I Pete the gang, and I bet the knee. And now I serve the 3050 James in making stunner Just for context, Mac Pete, he listened a lot and then was like, that's terrible idea. That's terrible idea. That's terrible idea. Alright. Well, here's some better ideas.
And sometimes we went, nope, you're wrong Morgan, and sometimes we went, nope, that's a good point, but he is not has not been a yes man in any sense of the board. Amazing sort of facilitator for our vision and rather than imposing his own vision, which is like, great part of the team. And so for me, that was what was one of the things that was so compelling about this is it was like, oh, we're genuinely gonna have a fresh respect.
We're gonna have people who think differently, who lived it differently, who experienced differently, and they're going to bring that on top of this incredible, incredible Pete of professional accomplishments that these people have because we haven't really gotten into it, but every of the three women that are on this stage air quotes on this podcast with me have accomplished exceptional fucking things on their own as professionals.
And so you take this unique perspective that comes from a bunch of women who's saying, we are going to change, how content is created, and how crypto interacts with muggles. And then you add professional experience that they have got together, then you sprinkle me on top of, like, a little bit of sugar on your funnel cake, and you're like, oh, man. It's gonna be delicious. Let's eat. Quick glossary check. What is 3050 gang. That was you. That was one of your best contributions.
Probably number 1. Probably number 1. If you hear a 3050 gang thrown out, what's 3050 gang? So to be fair, Lisa already told you about the 3 creators of Stoner Cat. There's three people who are, again, exceptionally accomplished in what they've done in their field. Like, Oscar winning directors and animators and, like, people on that scale. Okay? Amazing people. They go to or to try and production. And I wasn't there for any of this, so I shouldn't be telling a story, but they're like, yeah.
Okay. We wanna do this thing. And so in a very honest to god centralized manner, there is currently a huge number of individuals working on this project with a live incentives on a world that we want to Pete And so that's really cool.
It's also confusing a shit in the email chains and the Discord and those are trying to, like, have meetings and communicate in And so my name is Morgan, and I have a friend John and Christy who I work with, and we are big head, and it's very easy to talk about big head. We know the big head, does that make when we talk about the creator, is Roslyn talking about Ash and Morgan and Chris, and that's really clear.
But this is other group of people in the middle is the group of people who are really behind putting this together. And that is Mila Martin and Morgan and Lisa. And if you were not me, but if you referred to a giraffe as camel leopard. And I say that because in Latin, a giraffe, it's called the James leopard. And if you refer to a giraffe as a camel leopard, then you would refer to MMML, which is Mario, Morgan, Mila, and Lisa. That's 3050, 3050. So it's the 3050 game.
That's where the name came from. It was as we tried to notice those. That's why you need to have me shut up, and I listened to 3050 game, tell you what, how they got Pete. So 3050 Gigi back. What's up? It means a good album title name. To rewind. Because oh, go ahead, Lisa. Well, I was gonna say to sort of to go back to so we had this, like, need and desire, which was to put out this creative content that Mila and I believed so much in. And how are we gonna do that?
And Morgan, like, let me tell you about all things NFTs. And, like, she owns a 1,000,000. She's, like, sharing, showing, excited about it, and we're, like, What? And now here is how Mila and I can understand it the best. Back in the day before we had kids, Mila and I played a lot of World of Warcraft. And so we both had little characters and we ran around and meet 5 man rate all the time. And with our own group, it was quite a group, but we also had, like, you know, you level up your armor.
You level up your clothes. And so I can understand getting excited about this, like, virtual thing that can do something. And so what we love is this idea that there is this and everything that I'm gonna say about NFT is gonna be totally wrong and from the most normie position ever.
But the idea that I can have a virtual thing that provides me access to other things, the same way my, like, fancy shoulders in World of Warcraft increase my DPS, our artwork, our virtual thing is going to offer you access to be able to consume really great fun content. And that to Morgan to me, that that was really exciting. And once again, going back to creative control in the creator's hands, them making more money than anybody else on this. And by the creators, that's not us.
That's been the most kind of satisfying, exciting part of this. And Marry is like, here's how this is gonna work. Here's how the art works. And thank god. We have an incredible artist. One of the amazing things about NFTs is, like, let's go back to, like, what NFTs are. They're non fungible token. There's typically a smart contract behind it. What's really exciting about NFTs, at least from the creator perspective, right, is it kind of gives you back a lot of control power.
Guy, one of our partners that are fun, he, like, loves to talk about smart contracts and that he's been in entertainment Flint entire Currier. So he's managed with a daughter for, like, the last 30 years. He may you too, the red hot chili peppers, all that good stuff. And when he negotiates a contract on the behalf of, like, the artists that he manages and the artists that he represents, he's able to negotiate the best contract in the world because he's guy, but he's not scalable.
And so what smart contracts and NFTs kind of enable, which is really exciting, and one of the reasons why we wanted to go down avenue is whether you're Madonna or Madonna, whoever you are with an NFT, you can get one of the best contracts in the world. And that's pretty magical. And the idea that instead of a studio or someone else generating most of the revenue from someone else's actual property now that value can go back to the creator themselves.
And that, like, has the potential to change how so much art and content and everything is created. That's one of the things that we're most excited about with this. I wanna talk a bit more about how we got here and what the journey has been because I think it's a case study on using NFT. At 9 PM. It's a case. Oh my gosh. 9 PM. For daily. And now multi weekly or 2, three times a week.
Calls are start at 9 Pete Pacific time, and they last I also think that The journey has been a case study on using NFTs for something that at least we haven't seen done yet at kind of at every step in the road. We've okay, what's the standard for this? What's the standard for this? And recognizing that there are not standards. So we kind of have to make we all like math and numbers. We have to make decisions with the data that we have, but it's limited.
So I thought we could, I guess, highlight some of the choices we've made that have turned into what Sona Cats will be and why we made those choices for people to learn from what we've done or for people to critique our choices or whatever it might be. So starting, it was like, you know, why use an NFT for this in the first place? As Lisa mentioned, because I was brought in. I was like, will you join a meeting with my partner and talk about NFTs when I got to me at least I remember our 1st date.
And the whole time, I just remember, like, I kept writing down my notebook. Does this need to be an NFT? Does this need to be an NFT? Why does this need to be an NFT? Because I do think in the NFT space, you see a lot of a hammer in search Morgan nail. Like, everything is known in NFT. It doesn't necessarily make sense. So what unique properties of what we were trying to do required this to be an NFT.
And there were a few reasons in, like, everyone please chime in, but one is we do think the art itself is really special. I guess Lisa and Mac have alluded to the artist behind the show is award winning in every way, and it's not just a show. Like, it is art that people might want to own, or we hope people want to own. So Ash's hand drawn all of the animation for the show. Every single one. What's the crazy stat? How long does each minute of animation take He can do 10 seconds a day.
He's doing this hand drawn old school by himself animation, like old school, Disney, doesn't even have a team. Doesn't even have a team. Just himself. You engineers and designers out there. I don't know what, like, the code equivalent is of 10 seconds a day, but it's wild. So we're like, okay. Like, that's art. He is an artist. Like, we should be able to let people own a piece of that if they want, but then it's like, okay. You could just sell prints. So why does it need to be an NFT?
What does the NFT get you? And Marry has really been counting the table from day 0 that you need to get more value than you put Flint the purchase So what value does it unlock? And that's where we had the idea of, okay. If buying the entity solves the purpose of funding the show, then from the people creating the show, it solves the purpose of getting them paid. As Lisa mentioned, everyone's working for free right now, hoping that this works.
It also allows people making the show to maintain creative control of the show because if they sell it to someone else, they don't necessarily gain that. And it allows the buyers at the NFT to be involved in the process. Like, we hope to allow the buyers have some creative control maybe in the future. It might get killed for saying that. What if you can't see the show unless you buy 1?
And Well, it's not the next bullet point, but it's extracting the last one you said, which is that you can't x unless you own 1 and x you filled in that blank with. You can't watch the content. But I think what's really interesting about the NFT spaces is emerging is it's not just you can't see the content because people will find ways around that is that you can't be a member of the community, not in the truest, realist, and most authentic sense of that word.
And that's not even just about, like, oh, the community today, but that's about the option to be a part of the community in the future. And this could all go to heck mean, many things do. This could also be a transformative new way that incredible amounts of really, really, really neat content get waived. It does not have another way to come to life and to be on the inner circle of people who are creating who are directing and who are supporting that kind of content. That is a privilege.
So not only do you have access to that because you have the NFT, but this is where it gets weird. If we do our job Pete, you have the ability for that thing to row. So that thing to change in value as the community expands and the power of that community, both the size and the power extend and expand. If you have the grandfather or the grandmother's key. If you have first access to that, that's a very powerful interesting thing.
And so the idea that these NFTs become essentially the trellist that communities grow. Communities are like plants, they're roses, and they can blossom and be beautiful, and they go to Beller, and they can just like, rock. Roots can get wet. Nothing good happens. But the content is, like, very obviously an extrinsic reward you Pete. For owning this NFT. The community is possibly even more significant as an intrinsic reward for saying, I believe in this.
I see a future that these people see, and I know it's a long shot, but I wanna help these people get there, not just because I believe in it, because if they're right, it's going to be very good for me and all of content I'm gonna create. Notice, Lisa, I did not say anybody was ever gonna make any money because I would never begin to imply that.
I'm simply saying that there's a lot of great content coming, and you would have the earliest of access, not only to consuming that, but to being a part of bringing that to fruition. And that's a really neat place to be in. So the NFT as that lattice, the NFT is the framework by which not just content, but communities can blossom. It's a really neat thing about what we're doing. If we manage to do it right. And, Morgan, really frankly, is the genius behind How many? How much?
How what does it get you all? I mean, the lady loves a spreadsheet. I understand some of them. And she's extrapolated out every number you could possibly think of. If this project is successful, I will take that credit. It goes to head. I'm washing my hands. It wasn't her. I think we're very eyes wide open that it might not work and we're taking a risk. And we all generally believe that there's something there with this concept of using NFTs as access tokens.
Like, there's something there, like, the whole point of removing the middle man from a funding perspective, allowing the creators to maintain creative control perspective. Like, there's something there. So we're running experiment with new content? Are there experiments to be run with archival content? Are there other experiments to be run with new content where maybe it's an access token to a different facet of the production cycle.
You know, we wanted to make sure that our NFTs were not just an access token too. That was like a really big thing that Mila yelled a lot about Like, she's, like, yelling about this. No. She didn't yell. She just kept saying, oh, no. Screamed at us. She screamed at us. But early on, it was like, it needs to also be its own piece of art. And so, you know, you get this wonderful piece of artwork on the block that lives in the blockchain that that also provides you this other us.
So in and of itself, it is a wonderful thing, and it is unique in it. It's, you know, you can do all the fun things that you can do with that. It can be your Twitter picture or, you know, all the things that people do with these things. Morgan knows. Yeah. They make their Twitter picture. It's like a nod to, you know, what we're seeing already within the ecosystem of all these, like, avatar based projects, but then there is an additional utility to it, which is really exciting.
And, like, I haven't seen a lot of other projects that added something like that. I think going back to a little bit what Max said earlier just around, like, the community piece, which also really interesting about this model is if you're NFT collection. And if this all works, right, and this is gravy, and we're gonna do it a million times again, and this is just how we're gonna produce content. Now the way that you can spend your Beller. Right?
You can spend it on the content that you want to watch, and it almost becomes, like, your own little badge of honor or your own little what's the word I'm looking for? Like But you're curated sort of identity. Your entertainment idea. Like, these are the projects that I like. This is the content that I want to see. There's something really magical about, like, being able to create that, and I haven't seen that with a lot of other projects, and they're amazing community driven projects.
Like, board a yacht club is a great example of, like, building an incredible community around teas. And I think we can do something similar because now people are funding the content that they have to wanna watch. They wanna watch donor cats. Like, you're gonna participate in this NFT. Mhmm. And, I mean, all our creators, we have our Discord up and running, and our creators are in there every day, interacting with the community and hearing.
And, I mean, we're doing a fun thing right now where, you know, it's like a naming game of, like, what are the names of these cats? I mean, I'm, you know, we already have the name that's already made, but, like, having that sort of fun rumbled silskin game is it's just, It's a really fun place to spend some time on the internet, which there aren't a lot of those around.
We generally have this philosophy of and and and so you're getting a piece of art and you're getting community and you're getting access to watch the show and you get to interact with the creators and, like, we Beller the ellipses after the keeps going. And over time, we add more and more to what you get for buying the cat. One of the things that I can't really meet about this process so far and I don't know a lot about making classic entertainment.
I I I don't have a lot of experience with that, to be honest, but I've become very fond of Lisa through this process. I would dare say we'd become friends, and I've learned a little bit about that journey and what's interesting to watch is the lessons that we've learned in software that are possible in software being applied to the entertainment industry. And one way that that taught to me before I ever showed up here, but seeing it happens interesting.
And I'm gonna loop back to this and then contradict myself. Is this idea of the launch we can? Like, if you screw up the 1st 72 hours after your movie goes live, you don't have a movie. Like, you're done. If you strip your launch of a piece of software product, that's called, like, day 1. That's exactly what you're gonna do, and that's Flint. And then you're gonna do things like iterate, and you're gonna, you know, no product survive first contact with the customer.
Like, all these things we know about building software, gonna try and capture as many of those lessons we can and as much of that experience we can. And then as much as the experience of the unveiling gets to be clear, I think 9 of the last 10 NFT projects that really sold out that you really care about. We're like, bam. That was freaking amazing. Actually, I can think of 2 that didn't sold out in 8 hours. So we're back to lunch weekends. Suddenly, we're like, oh, yeah.
No. We'll just update website. I was telling the gang earlier. Don't worry about spelling mistakes on the website. They all care about spelling. I don't care about spelling I'm like, don't worry about spelling mistakes. Put you update it later because it doesn't matter. It's software. You just copy paste and push it up to the server, and that is true of almost everything. Accept your NFT. And so all these lessons of, like, no match, sit down and shut up because we have to get this right.
Like, this matters on this day, on this time, this has to be good. And so I don't know that this matters that much the consumer as far as like, oh, that makes this product cool, but is the creators of this It's been really interesting to see, like, these 2 worlds zippering together as they layer together and you have to get the best lessons from both sides for us together in one cohesive track.
You know, and it's interesting because I think that the melding of those 2 things, I mean, this this team is awesome. And we're like, go team, and we love each other. We really do. And we all get along, and it's, like, this has been fun. There have been really intense challenges combining entertainment and NFT. Can we talk about that a little bit, Lisa? Like, about all of the stuff that you It's true. I mean, like, our group chat is literally called sorry, Mac. This is a girl's group chat.
It's called the safe zone because Lisa will be like, we're all going to jail or this isn't gonna work or whatever it is. It's like, this is a safe zone. This is where we're all freak out. Yeah. So, Lisa, what keeps you up at night? Or, I mean, everything. I mean, thank you. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is and by the way, I have passed the baton of the biggest Currier to marry up this week. So that's great. I'm hoping to pass it off to someone else next week.
And entertainment lawyers don't know crypto legal stuff. Is right. Our regular entertainment lawyers, the wonderful Morgan Pete us in contact with a crypto lawyer, and we made them talk to each other. So, like, literally West Coast East Coast on Google Meets trying to figure out a way to make one contract that satisfied both parts of this, which took too long. I mean, it took forever in my mind, which really the reality is it was only like 4 weeks, but those 4 weeks were very stressed full.
No. It's out in the world and we have something to work from, and that's very exciting. And similarly, you know, creating all the other legal language that we need on this. You know, part of us was like, we're scrappy. It'll be all be fine. And then it's like, oh, but we should probably do all of these other things. And we have, like, grown ups.
Despite sort of wanting to not wanting to just sort of, like, put it out there and, you know, consequences be damned, but instead we're being grown Lisa's the grown up of the crew. The rest of us are children. Oh, like, we can ask for forgiveness, not permission. It's totally fine. Just because I'm old with everybody doesn't make me the most grown I think to that point and to Vax Point, we're merging the worlds of software and entertainment.
However, I would say software crypto and entertainment. And in some ways, I actually haven't thought about this until now, crypto and entertainment might be more similar than traditional software in that what we're learning is an entertainment. You've got one shot, one opportunity. So whether it's the launch weekend as Mac alluded to or even the launch Pete. Like, with the launch date, I'm like, traditional software projects.
If you have a lunch date, but it's not written in blood because something might happen last minute, you might push it a day. So when we were even picking a lunch date, you know, the team was like, okay. It's gonna be this day, but, you know, plus or minus 3 days. At least it's like, no. Like, we have to go tell the today show, or, you know, we have to, like, we have to a day and run, what do you mean to pick a date?
We don't have to pick a Pete, but crypto is similar where you've got one shot, one opportunity. You launch the thing. People are putting their money into it. You really can't we could change the color of the website or, you know, but we can't. We have to get it right the first time, and it's stressful, but stakes are high, but it's fun. I'll also add on the talent front And on that world, generally, there's some places where we're meeting in the middle.
There's some places where we're going further at the crypto side, and then there's some places where we need to go further to the entertainment side, but something that I think is pretty freaking awesome. The money is going to go directly from the buyers of the NFTs, split a million ways to all of the people who are involved in making this There are a few positives that come from this. 1 is the money is saying in crypto from this sale. 2 is a just a right thing to do.
We're doing it for this reason because we believe in this technology, and it's the right thing to do. And 3 is it teaching us how to speak to moguls. I think this whole experience has taught me at least. I'll speak for myself that I live in a bubble within a bubble where I throw out acronyms and words and phrases and we take for granted that we think everyone knows what these things mean. But, I mean, Lisa and Neil have really been sober monitors.
Like, for example, we were in one of our 9 Pete calls, and we're talking about gas Pete as in how it's expensive. And how do we, like, minimize that for the user? And Mila is like, can't we just call Ethereum and ask to waive the fees and completely legitimate question. And we all laugh. And if I will, I mean, Morgan, I laughed. Ashley, Thank you. And I was like, wait, that's a really smart quote. That's a good question. That is a completely fair question.
If you're new to this world, that's a fair question. So I think one of the many takeaways has been we've got a long way to go to educate non crypto native people on this world if it's gonna extend beyond the crypto native Pete. And even just getting the talent on board, I think, is one step in that direction. You're listening to the NFX podcast.
If you're enjoying this episode, feel free to rate and review our channel and share this conversation with someone you think would benefit from these insights. Follow us on social at nfx and visit nfx.com for more content. And now back to the show. You know, there was a lot of education to be done. About even one in NFTs. I mean, you know, we were doing the all the education that we had to do for ourselves a week before suddenly we're having to educate our creative on that.
And including our, you know, our composer who, by the way, is, like, amazing. That's been really an interesting part of it. That's all. I don't wanna get you in trouble, but we're talking about merging these 2 worlds, maybe they become 1. So let's say it works. We can talk about separate like, if it works for roadmap of sonar cats. Okay. Fine. Like, in the bigger picture, it works. People buy these cats. They get access Flint the show. Lots of people do it. Everyone really gets it.
We have a successful case study for this model. Leaf, I don't wanna get you in trouble because I know you still work in Muggle Land, but using your imagination What does this mean for Hollywood? Well, you know, I don't know that I can speak to although everyone I've talked to in Hollywood, every lawyer I've talked to, they've been like, everybody's asking around. Beller studio is asking around anybody who holds a piece of IP is asking around about how do we then monetize our IP through this.
Which is an interesting question. It it isn't totally the stoner cats part of this. The stoner cats part of this came the other way, which is how do we make more content through this? How do we create? How do we be, you know, creative? How do we have creative control through this? So it's sort of a separate question. So for, like, for me, as Orchard Farm, for me and Mila, we have, like, a bunch of projects that we love that for one reason or another, we don't see a traditional outlet for.
We don't see a way that somebody's gonna let us do what we wanna do with it. Both of us have a tendency to want to jump on to something that nobody's seen before. It is really new, and it's really hard to get traditional Hollywood who has a lot of money up against it want to green light those things. So for us, we have, like, a treasure trove, a drawer that will open up and say, let's look at what exciting creators we can put out there. And that's what we wanna do is make more content.
But, you know, how will it change Hollywood as a whole? We haven't, in our conversations with anybody, any of the other studios at this point, we have not heard any of them talking about the possibility that we see in it. I think they've more talked about how do we help service the fans by giving them a little Pete, giving them something It's more like merchandising of the show, and it feels like the actual show. And that is a separate thing, and it's fine.
And I think for some fans, that's gonna feel really good, but it isn't what we're to do. What we're trying to do is use NFTs to create more content to give the power back to the creators. We give power back to the creators and the fans. Right, and the fans can And the Flint. Yeah. Just participate in the content. Like, instead of a big studio exec deciding what content is created, right, like, the fans can actually decide what content gets created too.
I mean, you know, we've been developing and hauling forever, and things get homogenized. And that's the kind of antithesis of creative freedom out of exciting things. And I'd rather take our guidance from our fans and to hear to be able to end, to be able to, like, we're not gonna start making episode 2 because we can make it pretty fast until we hear what you like about episode 1. So that's gonna affect, you know, we don't have to make an entire season before we make the second episode.
We have a lot of ideas. We have season broken out. But, like, if you guys love, you know, Missus Stoner and want more of her, great. If you guys love Hammy and want more of him, let's do it. Choose your own adventure. I mean, we love James. So why not gamify it? People love games. People love having opinions. It's like, this all just, like, James sense.
And I think for us, it's just like, again, this is obviously a content's going to be funded or subset of it in the future just, like, makes so much sense, which is why I think we all happily get on 9 PM nightly calls that are working for free. And my partner is of James. He says that at Silicon Valley was all crazy uncles in the basement working find ideas for free on nights weekends, and that's what this whole revolution evolution feels like.
We all have other full time jobs, and this is really a passion project. It's a it's a labor of love. That's why we're jumping on calls at 9 Pete. Until midnight, which is way past all of our bed James, and we really, you know, made this project come to life. We have a lot of founders who listen to this podcast Hello. If you are listening to this podcast. I'm curious. At least I keep putting you on the spot, but you're unique to this audience because you're not a tech person.
What else in entertainment is a pain in the ass to the point that it might be solved in some way via this technology. And, Mack, I know you're speaking to a lot of muggles as well. And Morgan sound is you have a lot of friends on the other side of the line also. So what are products that you see the muggles asking to be Beller or problems that you solve solve 3 of you? The way that this can service talent To me is, I mean, that's a huge solution. I mean, I think that we use celebrities.
Yeah. So musicians and actors and, like, you know, all of that kind of big talent who I from a regular person's point of view feel like they have the most power in the room. In Hollywood, they don't necessarily have the most power in the room. And they certainly don't have control over the final product very, very often. So, you know, an actor is in a thing. They've read the script. They know who the director is.
They know who the pieces are, but they don't have control over how their performance will ultimately be. There's an editor in there. There's a lot of pieces that will control how their piece of art will see the world, how the world will see it. And to me, they get super exciting the idea that they can cut that part out and have the ability to have more creative control to have their vision that they see it hit the world. I think that's a huge exciting thing.
I wanna zoom in on that for a second because there's been a question I've been trying to figure out how to articulate too bad. I said trying to figure out, like, it's really hard, but I actually have been thinking around this for a while. Decentralizing the entertainment industry isn't that sounds like a first world problem. Bunch of people like, man, like, you know, there's all these other problems that really matter, and that's true.
And we can have this startup argument of infinite ad nauseam, which is the work you're doing matter in these things. But if we assume that we care about decentralizing major western entertainment, which is kind of an interesting button to have. What I've come to understand and I'd love for you to correct me if I'm wrong, is it your job as owner and operator of a production company in Hollywood? Is people like Ash and Sarah and Chris come up with a concept.
They managed to get themselves in front of you, which is probably pretty hard to do, but the good ones do They meet you. You're like, yes. Eventually, you're probably like, no. No. No. No. Maybe. No. No. Eventually, you got a yes. Once you have a yes in your portfolio, then you have to go.
And I I remember hearing you describe, like, hot LA days just driving back and forth across town, going from one studio to another, trying to convince and this may be my interpretation, but Richard Whiteman to let you make the movie that you need to make, if all of that is true, then how many people are choosing the content that we get to watch. Is there, like, 6 guys at Netflix, 3 guys at CBS, one due to NBC, two people at Sony, and one asshole of Fox that are choosing the content?
Way more female than your business. So it's shockingly. There are plenty of men, but there are also plenty of women, especially in the last 4 years. Women, particularly in Hollywood, have been really raised But, I mean, are there a small number of gatekeepers? Yes. Is there a huge amount of attrition? Yes. Is it just as hard to make a crappy thing as it is to make a good thing.
Yes. And sometimes a thing that starts out good turns bad and sometimes a thing that isn't so great Pete a great director becomes good. But there are a lot of gatekeepers and, like, being able to kind of tear down the gatekeepers would be really exciting. But I wanna go back to something that you talked about being a first world problem. And I'm gonna say something that you guys can all realize that, so it's fine.
I truly believe that art in all of its forms exists to illuminate what it means to be human. And that when we go into a movie theater and we go in front of a television, sometimes the most we can have really transformative moments as a community and as a people by viewing great stuff And I know that we're doing something called Stoner Cats, and this sounds ridiculous, but the journey of Missus Stoner and her cats is beautiful. And there is humanity in it.
And nothing that we need as a people as a human people to be brought together now more than I think we ever happen. And if we can Pete the power in the artists, we give them the opportunity to do that. So I'll get off my soapbox now, but I really believe that. Mario, when I texted you this morning and said we need a manifesto, that is what I meant.
Okay. So storytelling matters, especially when you have a world as schismed as ours is today for reasons that we don't necessarily know or certainly to talk about now, we live in a fractured world. And our stories are important. I mean, you know, humanity has been telling stories forever. And our narratives shape us. And if we can get rid of corporations that are afraid because they are afraid. They're afraid of they're afraid of being canceled.
They're afraid of, you know, a million moms who's really like 10 moms who are fighting over something. If we can get rid of that, and just bring the content straight without people. And by the way, I don't blame the corporations for being afraid. Their job is to make money. And if something becomes a problem for them and that gets in the way of their ability to make money, that's a problem.
But if you can get rid of that middle Morgan bring the artists and the stories to the people, that's Nirvana. I hadn't thought about that. That makes a ton of sense for why now. I mean, the technology is here, but the studio is being afraid and therefore not being able to give fans what they want. Like, the other day I was talking to a friend. I'm like, when's the last time you saw a funny movie or anything funny?
Like, you can't be funny anymore because it's just not worth the because in order to be funny, you're probably offending someone. So if this somehow just gets us funny content again, I'm all for that. It's also intellectually uninteresting to not push those boundaries. To not be offensive sometimes, to not push it out there, and then let people push back. Homogenizing softening our content doesn't make us smarter, and it doesn't together anymore.
You gotta push them buttons to get people talking. But you can push buttons if you are a big organization right now. That's right. True of technology organizations as well. Now the other side of this, is all the people who have the voice who, in fact, you don't want to have your voice. Right. It's not all good. It's not only good that comes from this. The internet destroyed the write edit publish order of operations. And now we go write publish edit.
In fact, this is what we're not moving forward. The wired guy does his biz. Now, well, this is his thing about write publish edit, write edit publishers online. And that's really neat and really cool. And, you know, when you give powers of distribution earlier in the stack of creation, and this kind of thing happens, and that's cool. But also the Proud Boys come out of this kind of world. And so, you know, we were given a lot of hell for crypto kitties and how stupid it was.
It was at this apex Silicon Valley hype where there was the goddamn cookie delivery Pete. And somehow, those people were getting in all the shit for solving trivial first world problems the week that we launched a Pete. When we announced it in recent Horowitz and Union Square Ventures and invested $12,000,000 in the cartoon cats on the blockchain, it was like the chocalypse to a bunch of people who said, this is stupid. This is stupid.
You have no idea how stupid this is, but you remember the tweet? Greatest tweet of the last decade was we were promised flying cars and all we got was Facebook. And everybody was like, oh, yeah. Like, fuck technology. They didn't give us all this cool stuff. All they did was make Zack little army of, like, light bots or whatever. And a year later, people were like, the most dangerous thing on Earth is Facebook full stop. There's nothing. More dangerous than networked people without constraints.
And so when you talk about stories mattering, I can't agree more with you. When you talk about it's okay to start with stoner cats, you said because the story here does matter because there is something cool Pete. And I'll tell you, my wife listens a lot of my calls. A lot of people don't know that. My wife hangs out, and this is a lot of my calls. Give me lots of advice. And she listened to Sara talking about the story of Stoner Katz on Discord for the first time.
And she was like, man, like, I wanna watch that story. Never in all of the calls that she's listened to. With the four of us plus all of our friends talking, is she ever said it, I wanna watch StoneCast. How much of this movie? I would think Stoner Cat sounds dumb. Until she heard Sarah talking about Stoner Cats. And then she was like, oh, man. So that's amazing.
But even outside of that, dude, I'm in crypto k's, and there's a multibillion dollar industry that is a byproduct of the work that people like I did. Obviously, it wasn't just me or just us. To buster before us. A bunch of other Beller people, Axi Infinity started to wrap up. Like, so many cool things were happening in the space, but Chris Dixon wrote his blog post. The next big thing starts as a toy.
My counterargument to Chris Dixon or my addition to Chris Dixon is that it's not just technology. It's culture, but it's SoundCloud Rapids, Pink Rappers, and Islam Defu, and Paris are like, whatever you wanna have, there's moments where the establishment says, that's not art. That's stupid. And then the kids are like, Cool. Boomer. We'd be over here. You know, we're hanging out, doing our thing. And that becomes really interesting. That becomes very powerful.
People talk about, like, in the nineties in your garage as a shitty teenager, you would start a garage band. That was your form of, like, what to do in the garage. Now you start a startup, but that's, like, the cool thing for kids doing garages is go buy their Mac computer and start a startup on the butt. That's something each in their own. Stories matter. I agree with you. Our story is really, really compelling.
When you hear the critics talk about it, it's inevitable, but they don't have to matter for what we're doing to matter. The future is going to be impacted by our work Pete, regardless, but the future is going to be impacted for better and for worse. Well, I think the question is, like, a, like, what matters more, right, controlling that and controlling kinda, like, you know, managing that future that we wanna Pete, or, easy about, the innovation that we're bringing. Right?
And what's the greater of the 2 evils, right, one one Pete. It's like, it's kinda like Facebook. Right? Like, I don't use Facebook today. I hate that Facebook tracks all my information. I don't love it. The fact that it brought all of these, like, communities online, and it created this network where you could communicate with all of your peers, and it made information so readily available. Like, there was something very magical about that, and it was kind of important to the innovation.
Now where they went, probably not the greatest, but what they enabled, like, enabled an entire new ecosystem and economy of innovation. So that's kinda the way I think about it. It's like there will be things that come out that we probably don't like, but it's not in our control, and the innovation that we're bringing matters more, I think, at this Flint. But who knows? In 5 years or 10 years, one proud voice. This is this model. I'm gonna be really pissed off.
So I've never seen an incident and I would love, like, as a sort of fan of history and the fan of the future, I would love to find an example of when I'm wrong, but I've never seen an example of the toothpaste going back in tube. Let's all walk away. We managed to have not lit off a nuclear bomb on top of the human for 70 years, which is good, but that's after we did it twice and killed a bunch of people as a species.
And so one of the criticisms of technologists, people who spend their time doing what we're doing, Morgan, is that, like, we just plow forward. We don't ever stop and say, is this good? It's possible. But is this good? Is this right? I don't know that a world where people did that would be interesting. Should we be doing that with something like stoner cats? And these conversations are interesting. Maybe we'll air the conversation, maybe we won't.
I hope we do because it's intriguing for us to think about the impact of our work. Hollywood content is very liberal. You know what And we all know it is. And so sometimes they make shows that are sort of, like, red state shows, and they are pandering. That's what they are. So very rarely, I have a very occasionally, there is a red state scripted show that doesn't feel like it's pandering that feels like it is organic that space.
But, I mean, what if we gave red state opportunity to make entertainment content scripted content that made the liberal coasts Pete things that we don't see so that it doesn't have to be as factored. So it doesn't have to be as we're not pushing ourselves out to the edges anymore. I think that, like, giving the opportunity to, you know, the same way you it's really hard to hate up close. And when you sit down on the table with somebody, it's really hard to Beller a nice that person.
And so if we can see inside somebody's home and see how they love their children too, I think maybe there's an opportunity. This is like me being an idealist, and then, like, probably it's just a bunch of, like, in Beller, James horrible shit. But you know what? I love the idea that we could reach a hand across. Yeah. Well, and the other thing is, like, I mean, a lot of, like, content creation is not easy. Like, it takes a lot. We've seen it over the last few months.
Like, it takes a lot of fucking work. And so I do think you're right, Lisa. The the people who are going to be empowered to create that content. I don't think it's gonna be, like, the people who it's not gonna be just, like, anybody. Not everybody's, like, gonna be spewing, like, anti vaccine stuff. Right? It's gonna be quality bar, the quality threshold that you need to surpass in order for this model to work. And so I think you kind of eliminate a lot of noise from that.
Whereas today, like distribution, right, on Twitter or on Facebook, is so easy for anyone. Like, there's no quality content bar that needs to exist, but if you're gonna actually sell content through the Stoner Katz model and you're gonna content that way. There is a quality bar, the quality threshold that you need to meet, and distribution is not easy. Lisa, that point is you did the thing where the hair at my neck went That was very good. Like, I'm out Pete, like, oh, watch out.
The rednecks are gonna get crazy with their blockchain. Somebody in Kansas wants to make content about their home. They're like, somebody in wherever that you're not Morgan. And I love the perspective that there's a bunch of people in that term. Well, I've heard this so amazing fly over country that have got stories to Beller, stories that we can unify, have got heroes that we should all share, and that I don't have access to those right now. Did I could have access to those using our model.
And then the really blocky thing here, remember, is that we are blurring the lines between creator and consumer. So that person in that place where I haven't been and I'm sitting here being judgmental and shitty about can say, hey. Like, no. I'm not a movie maker. I don't know how to make a movie, but I can absolutely pay for this movie to be made. I can buy an in participating in the community and understand our perspectives and our world views.
And this NFT allows me to fund that content and share that content. That's really, really, really neat. I mean, it's been an interesting perspective. I just moved out of Los Angeles. I just moved 2 hours out of LA, and I'm in a purple, purple area. And finding it to be wonderful. I mean, I'm, you know, from eighteen years old, you know, was the biggest liberal ever, and it's been interesting to hear other people's point of view.
You know what we need to talk about is the golden part of it, Morgan. Why don't you talk about that? Okay. So one of the things that we thought about is, like, how do we reward the early adopters or the community who gets involved? Because that's really an Morgan piece of this. We're trying something innovative. It is a science experiment, and we want everyone who participates within this ecosystem to be rewarded with something more.
And so This Stoner Katz NFT, it gets you access to our first episode of content, which would be about 5 to 6 minutes long. And then we sell, I think, about if it's 50% of the NFT, FTS, that'll actually fund the next 4 or 5 episodes of content. Each episode of content is about 5 to 7 minutes each. And your one stoner cat NFT will give you access to watch the entire season of content in total about, call it, 30, 35 minute long.
But as an extra perk, so if we are successful with this model who sell out, you know, a 100% of the NFTs we have available, we wanna do this again. And we wanna do this again and again and again. And so your stoner cat NFTs actually James from golden ticket of reference to what's it called? Charlie chocolate factory?
Yeah. Golden ticket like Charlie and chocolate factory, where if we do create new content using this model, your center cat NFP will become a golden ticket in order to access all of that content in perpetuity. And so by being an early adop, by being an early believer in our mission and our vision, you actually get to participate in all of the content that we get for the future. And I think it's something really magical that not a lot of other projects having. We have Orchard Farms.
We have an amazing animators. We have all the most amazing creators that we can have access to, and it's something really special that we wanna do to award Pete. Participating. That was great. Thanks for doing this. Everyone tune in July 26. At 2 pm Pacific. July 26. At 2 pm Pacific, get your hats. At NFX, we believe creating something of true significance starts with seeing what other do not.
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