When it comes to the digital collectibles space, VeVe is a trailblazer. Long before NFTs were cool, this company had been pioneering the building of a marketplace and community around premium digital collectibles from the brands that we all know and love. Daniel Crothers, the co-founder of VeVe, is an early adopter of disruptive technologies and he believes it is the platform’s mission to replicate every aspect of the physical world of collecting to the digital world. Tune in to this episode of The Edge of NFT as he shares everything from the genesis of VeVe, the many cool things they have done so far, and what they’re looking forward to in the future. Plus, on our hot sponsored topic for this episode, we get to hear from Jamieson Hill about Shellz Orb’s epic NFT project. Stay tuned!
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Daniel Crothers Of VeVe On Offering Premium Licensed Collectibles From Leading Brands, Plus: Starbucks’ NFT Based Loyalty Program, And More…
Stay tuned for this episode and find out how an eye toward the collectible experience and tapping into existing fandom has helped fuel the success of VeVe and its projects.
Read how sweet the taste of sour can be and why micro candy Coke bottles are a must-have in one guest’s candy cabinet.
Learn how to sell out an 8,000-item NFT collection in a bear market from the team that has done it. All this and more on this episode.
Don't forget. We put together a gathering called NFT LA a few months back that brought out thousands of the world's most innovative doers in the NFT space. Head to NFTLA.live to get tickets to our bigger, bolder, better, but as intimate and impactful event happening in Los Angeles from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023. We will see you there.
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This episode features Daniel Crothers, ECOMI and VeVe Cofounder and COO. Dan has founded a variety of successful startups, including a web agency servicing many international clients such as Hasbro. Dan entered the cryptocurrency space in early 2016, quickly becoming passionate about the cryptocurrency and blockchain revolution and getting deeply involved with the crypto world.
He also continues to hold interests in numerous other businesses. Founded in New Zealand in 2018, VeVe was created by collectors and for collectors to bring premium-licensed NFT digital collectibles to the mass market. With over 300,000 active users and over 7.5 million NFTs sold, VeVe is the largest mobile-first digital collectibles platform and one of the top-grossing entertainment apps in Google Play and Apple stores. Daniel, welcome to the show.
Thanks very much for having me. It’s great to be here.
It’s a pleasure.
It’s such amazing progress over that time. There were so many companies coming out of that 2017 and 2018 that disappeared into thin air. There is this group of companies that kept building and becoming that much stronger and more impactful over time. VeVe is right there, so kudos. As we think about digital collectibles and some of the most impactful brands in the world, you have partnered with a lot of them. We got Disney, Marvel, Batman, Adventure Time, DC, and tons of others. All the big ones are what it comes down to. It has become one of the biggest names in the NFT space. What we want to know is what the journey was like to get there. How did this project come together in the first place?
The journey itself like any startup, especially entering the same space, was extremely difficult. Any other projects that did start in 2017 and still exist, I’m sure they all have a very similar story. Back in 2017, both I and my business partner, David Yu, became very enamored with blockchain. We both bought our first Bitcoin for the first time at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017. I even remember thinking back then, “$800 for a Bitcoin is so much.” Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
There were probably three main areas that we identified as possibilities for business opportunities in the blockchain space. One was exchanges. One was mining, and the other was hardware wallets back in the day. The first two exchanges, mining, had a huge amount of capital licenses, etc. The first product that we released for crypto and the blockchain space was our hardware wallet called the Secure Wallet, which is a credit card-sized and credit card thickness Bluetooth wallet that you can carry around. It did very well. We still sell it to this day.
During that time, CryptoKitties came out. The first crypto collectible was what it was referred to back in the day. Both my business partner and I are big collectors. For David, what we internally call him is a level 9,000 collector. Anyone who's a Dragon Ball fan out there will get the reference. He’s got issues when it comes to collecting. For the majority of his career, he has had comic and collectible stores, etc.
We had the brainstorm that if we could take all of the products that he sold in-store and all the IP brands, we could move them into this new digital collectible or NFT space. Back then, nobody even referred to NFTs or even knew what NFTs were, so we called them digital collectibles. We were like, “If we could move these IPs into this new space, we could potentially have something that would be quite revolutionary, disruptive, and most importantly, quite exciting to the user.”
From there, we set out on a journey of two paths. Number one was building out the products. We wanted to make sure that we didn't just want to be a marketplace where people could buy and sell different items and store them in their wallets. We wanted to make sure that we were doing everything we could to replicate the physical world of collecting. That's the world that we came from. There are a lot of triggers in that physical world that has been around for a very long time. It was important to us that we build all of those features into the app.
The other side of the prong was onboarding the license source. This was probably the hardest journey for all of them. We would turn up to the license source like Warner Bros or MGM. They were like, “Digital what? Digital collectibles? We have no idea.” David and I are very tenacious people so that we would go back to them every few months. We would better show them more progress in the app. When we brought out the AR features, we could show them that. They started to understand what we were doing.
The cool thing is that part of our pitch was, “You guys don't have to do anything. We are just going to take whatever 3D assets you have if you have them, and then we are going to try and sell them for you.” It was almost like there was a low impact on them. They had to do very little work. Eventually, we managed to get around ten of the major brands onboard. We launched at the end of 2020. That was right when NFTs were peaking. It was when my grandma and her dog knew what NFTs were. It has been a wild ride from then to now.
That's quite the story. We were messing around at the licensing expo talking to brands in that similar timeframe. It was so interesting. You nailed it. They didn't have a clue as to what they were dealing with there and what the potential was. They do now.
They are a lot more attentive.
Did I catch that right that one of the tricks was to say, “We are going to work with your digital items,” and not mention the NFT side of it or the crypto or blockchain side of it? Is that one of the tipping points?
Yes. If you were outside of the crypto world, then crypto and blockchain were still a bit of a dirty word. In the news, it was mostly talking about scams or hacks. We would allude to the fact that these assets were protected in the blockchain but our focus was always mass market. We wanted to work very hard to make sure that the whole crypto side of it was very much behind the scenes.
I would say that the biggest selling point to getting the license source over the line was the fact that we were building a product for collectors. It's not just a marketplace. We wanted to replicate what is happening in the physical world of collecting and bring that same experience into the digital world. That resonated with a lot of our license sources and IP holders.
Ultimately, they want to protect their products. They want to make sure that their fans and their users have an amazing time with their IP. It’s the fact that we were approaching it from that angle, which was about supporting fandoms, and those collectors were a huge part of our sales pitch. We didn't mention NFTs because, to be honest, that term wasn't even around at that time. We would sell this as a digital collectible because they knew what a collectible was. It's like, “This is a digital version.”
That makes a lot of sense, and then things turned around in terms of how people thought about NFTs. I know one of the standouts that you have are these customizable showrooms for people's collectibles. I can't help but think as I asked the question, “Maybe that's also part of the evolution of the product and what you found was what the license source and the clientele wanted for that experience.” How do you see that part of the experience affecting artists and creators? How do you see its role as you move forward?
One of the main reasons we wanted to build the virtual showrooms is hacking back to that premise of replicating what was in the real world of collecting. Anybody who's a collector or who knows a collector, there's a room in their house or a shelf in their house where they've got all of their collectible statues. Whether it's a cap, statue or baseball card, they've got a beautiful shelf where it all looks amazing. Maybe there's some lighting on it. That is a huge part of the collector experience for me to be able to take all of my collectibles and set them up in a very aesthetic way. The virtual showrooms that were the main objective behind that.
You managed to buy all these NFTs, which in our case, are all 3D assets, and then you have a virtual space in which you can set them up and put them in any kind of order. It's a bit of an expression of your emotional attachment to these collectibles. We have big plans for our showrooms. What people are seeing out there is version one. That part of it is going to become significantly bigger in the future.
Moving into 2023, we've got some cool stuff around those virtual showrooms, especially on the multi-user side of things. I can meet you there. We both got our avatars. We can talk, interact, and haggle over, “I want to buy this collectible off you,” as we haggle in person. I believe that is a big part of where we are moving forward. It gives the user something solid to do with their collectibles. You can collect it and put it in your wallet. That's what some collectors want to do but there are other users out there who create the most amazing showrooms that I could not have dreamed of.
It’s that move into the metaverse. That's what we are talking about. I always tell people when they ask me about it, “The trains left the station. That's where we are heading. There's no stopping.” Some of the products, though, that you have available are directly applicable to that. You have premium 3D models, readable AR comics, artwork, and drivable vehicles. You have all kinds of cool stuff. Tell us about some of those and how you are utilizing those.
Going back to when we were developing the product because we wanted it to replicate what was happening in the real world, that's why we went down the path of doing 3D. We thought long and hard about whether we were going to do the 2D images but there were a few coming-outs at the time that were 2D. Metaverse has been a common term for a while but has always been part of our roadmap. That is one of the main reasons that we went into 3D.
Number one, we've got this utility that's coming in the future but also, the fact that people who buy statues, that is what they want. They want to be able to rotate these amazing, beautiful statues and see them from all different angles. It was extremely challenging because creating a 2D image over creating a 3D collectible is a vastly different proposition. I personally think that it offers something additional to the user that they can enjoy, especially with the AR features, etc.
Since it is 3D and it is digital, that gave us the opportunity to make it what I like to call a collectible plus or a hyper collectible. With the DeLorean, for example, you can put that in augmented reality. You can put it into drive mode and drive it around. When I was growing up, my dad and I would always play with radio control cars. It was something that I loved growing up. This is the virtual version of that radio control car. We have to look at it through this small screen.
Part of our ongoing roadmap and one of the technologies that we always believe is going to become predominant in the future is AR in our real life, whether that's glasses or eventually, contacts. Ultimately, I personally believe that it is going to replace our phones and our laptops. We are going to live in a mixed reality world. What do I want people to see in that mixed reality world? It is VeVe digital collectibles.
We are excited about AR. Before I was involved in this show so heavily, I was one of those folks that were like, “VR, AR, and XR are all the same thing,” and then you meet that AR person who's like, “VR is not AR. Here's why they are different. Here's what's going on.” One of the things I'm most excited about with a company like Niantic, the mission behind those companies is to get people out into the “real world” and meet, interact, and get some fresh air. I love that part of that. How do you see AR tech bridging the gap between physical and digital collectors? Give a little bit of thought about how this all affects people's creativity and the things that come out of it.
For us, the premise was very simple, which is that we wanted these 3D collectibles to be as tangible as possible. We could look at it on screen and rotate it around. That was cool. With AI teach, which was still quite early back when we set it to implement it, let's say you are at a party. You want to be the coolest guy in the room, so you rock out your VeVe 3D collectible. People are extremely surprised when you are like, “Look at my Batman,” and then you hand them the phone. They are like, “This is so cool.” You can see them, and they walk around it. They are then like, “Where do I get it?” “Go to VeVe.”
For us, we had two reasons for the AR. Number one is that we wanted to be able to provide that semi-tangible experience even though this was a digital product. I could put it on my kitchen bench or in my living room, and it would exist like it was there. The second part of why we implemented the AR is for virality. We knew that we would have a lot of videos and photos. We didn't quite know how viral it would go. We thought it would have some viral feature but it took off. That's what will introduce people to the app.
One of my friends would post a 6-foot real-life-looking Batman with him standing next to it. People would be like, “Where did you get that 6-foot Batman?” It looked very real. That's the big part of it. On the creativity side, the great thing about the digital space is that we have free reign over what we can do in digital space. It’s the fact that you can group all of your collectibles together. Some of our fans set up amazing scenes that tell a story of Marvel Mightys fighting DC characters. It lends the toolset to create these amazing 3D dioramas.
We have really free reign over what we can do in the digital space. Click To Tweet
We have a lot of additional features coming in the future like accessories, for example. Let's say I wanted to create a Marvel Mighty scene. I will be able to bring in maybe a section of New York, old dustbins or a piece of road. The whole idea is that I can have very easy access to all of this content, and I have the tools to create this beautiful 3D environment, which then is all fully multi-user. We really see the AR side of the business as a big pull to bring users into the app. It's super fun as well.
We are all waiting for that big hardware move to accelerate everything. I know that's the thing that's going to send us into the stratosphere. One of the things I know our readers are interested in is some more of that secret sauce. What do you think it is that has continued to power all of the success? You have sold over seven and a half million NFTs. You continue to see success even with the bear market going on around us. What can you share with us? What are those secret components that you are cooking up in the background there to make this thing continue to hum?
It comes down to two things that I've touched on already. Number one, it's about the collector. It's not about just buying an NFT at the right buy-in price so you can cash out later on. It is about having that collectible experience. A lot of the app and the features we've built around the app have been heavily geared toward what collectors already know and love in the real world. Those are the virtual showrooms or having an AR ability to see it in a tangible way.
A lot of collecting is also about bragging. That's why it was important for us to have social feeds within the app, so people can be like, “I got the number 41 or I got a secret rare.” That bragging component is a very big part of the collectible world. On one side, we’ve got that collectible experience rather than being an NFT marketplace. On the other side are brands and IP.
There are tens of millions of people out there who like Batman and hundreds of millions of people out there who love Marvel. With these people who are very deep in these fandoms, they have posters, movies, T-shirts, mugs, and physical statues or digital statues. For us, it was another way to tap into those fandoms. We find that a lot of the users that have come into our platform originally come in like, “I'm going to get this. I’m going to buy it for $20 and flip it for $500.”
They then buy it and were like, “I'm attached to this Deadpool. I don't want to sell it.” There's a real heart between collectors and the IPs or the fandoms that they belong in. At a high level, they are the two core parts of VeVe that bring users in and help them stay. In addition to that, we are always evolving the platform. We have amazing stuff planned for 2023 to take the whole experience even further.
We would love to hear about some of those things. I know you've got the VeVe Artworks program that's going on. We would love to hear a little bit of scoop on that and what it offers.
VeVe has always been different from most other NFT products in the sense that we are more like consumable products that you would see in the real world. Let’s say, for example, a Batman Black and White statue. They create 5,000 of those statues and then distribute them around the world. VeVe has always operated off the same premise where it's low cost but higher addition.
For example, we might mint $5,000, $10,000, or $20,000 additions to a particular collectible but you can get it for $50. You might have the chance of getting the secret rare or a low mint which might affect the value of that. Ultimately, we want to have a wide range of offerings to suit each different type of collector. Through our IP relationships like with Marvel, for example, we also have a big relationship with a lot of artists out there in the world. We wanted to create something a bit more special, and that's where we brought in the artworks or the singles the 1 of 1. Unlike what we have done previously with the IP, where there are thousands of them, we wanted to bring out another product that was just 1 of 1.
In the collectible and the NFT world, if you have that 1 of 1 or you have that original, that is something that holds something special and may be worth more. The whole idea around it is that you are the only person who owns it. That was the real impetus behind bringing in the 1-of-1 artwork. It has done well so far. It's also a way for us to be able to give back to the artist community.
To digress slightly, back in the day, let’s say, for example, you were an artist for Marvel. You would be painting that on a canvas. You would then sell that to Marvel. As the artist, you had the right to sell that one original piece for $5,000 or $10,000. As everything transitioned to digital, artists were no longer able to do that. They were missing out on that ability to capitalize on their artwork. The 1 of 1s has allowed artists to get back into that space of selling their “original artwork” and support themselves moving into the future.
As a collector from the time I was a kid of all kinds of things from baseball cards to Star Wars figurines, the art of collecting, the ability to know definitively what number I have of a particular collection, how blockchain has made all that possible, and how NFTs helped us make that transition is enough for me in so many places. I don't need a lot of extra utility when it comes to the pure collector spirit inside of me. It's interesting because there has been a ton of focus. We talk about it a lot on, “What other utility is there besides the image or the thing?”
As a pure collector, for me, in many cases, who it came from, what the IP behind it, the brand behind it, and how rare it is are enough for me. I'm pumped about it. Having a place to show it off, even for myself to look at and observe it creates a tremendous amount of utility inside of me. In the discussion of utility, we forget how powerful that collector mentality can be and how it can touch you.
There's such a strong focus and impetus on utility. I'm in complete agreement with you. You don't buy a beautiful piece of artwork because it gives you a free something. You buy it because you appreciate it. You love the brand. However, the cool thing with NFTs and with digital collectibles is that we can build in utility. The exciting thing on our side is that a lot of the license source that we work with, especially going into 2023, wants to build a lot of utility into it. Those are special utilities as well like a utility that might be a 1 of 1 experience. I completely agree with you but the market, especially the crypto market, wants to see that utility.
The cool thing with NFTs and digital collectables is that we can build in utility. Click To Tweet
It adds tremendous value, especially if it's something you are super passionate about. That core experience starts there. It’s evident how such attention to detail around that experience has helped propel you. One of the other things that stand out is also that you built this thing mobile first. That's something that also seems to help with accessibility and uptake. What's your view on that aspect of your path?
We went mobile-first for a couple of reasons. Number 1) Is that we could launch it on App Stores and get a built-in audience right away. Number 2) Is that it offered very easy payment rails that everybody knows about. You don't have to connect to your wallet. You don't have to convert your crypto. It’s a one-click ordering within the app. A very big impetus for us was to make sure that this product was accessible to everyone even though it was NFT-based.
Number three was the fact that we wanted to capitalize heavily on AR. Even going back a couple of years ago, the last five generations of phones could do pretty good AR. You mentioned Star Wars. If you want a very specific Star Wars product that comes from Star Wars history or the canon, you have to go and hunt for it. You have to know where to go. You got to know who to talk to. You got to look up the different prices.
One of the other things about being mobile is that your collection and the entire library of VeVe is there available for you in your hand at any time. One of the very common themes that we get from our fans is that they say, “I never knew I was a collector. Until I downloaded VeVe and started buying a few things, I realized I love this.” They become obsessed with buying VeVe collectibles but then they go and buy the physical statue of the VeVe collectible that they have. For me, that's such a cool thing because collecting is so much fun.
When you can build up, you get that whole set of Batman Black and White season 1 or 2 or your favorite Marvel Mightys characters. It brings a lot of joy and sometimes, maybe not so much joy if you missed the drop of that character you wanted. To have to collect so accessible through your mobile device was a big part of what we wanted to do. We've expanded out to the web platform and then metaverse coming into 2023.
I'm beaming in from Peru. I have been here for a little bit. One of the beautiful things about being here is encountering all of the cultural artifacts that are handmade. It's interesting that the idea of, “Am I a collector or am I not a collector?” I had a few baseball cards or things back in the day. I have those objects that are beautiful. I want it to say that I'm connected with it to have that spirit of whatever it is, culture or essence, and have it be a part of what's around me in my life. That's interesting, that idea of discovering you are a collector.
Beyond the collectible side of it, and maybe this is a part of what people get excited about, is community. The NFT ecosystem is known for having a strong community. There may be some dissolution of it with the bear market and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about your feeling about the strength of the NFT community in general and the strength of the VeVe community? What are your thoughts on that?
Community is such an important aspect, in my opinion, of collecting in general. If you have a Bitcoin, there's not much to talk about other than, “What was your buy price? What was your sale price?” With NFTs, regardless of whether it's IP, independent artists or famous artists, it creates so much discussion around it. It’s like, “I love this artist. I love the piece of work that he's done and how they interpreted this or that.” Even on the other side, it is the fact that it's extremely low run. Maybe it's a 1 of 1 or a 1 of 10.
The other thing that's inherent in the NFT community is, let's say, you own 100 Batmans. In a way, it is in your best interest to promote that. If you want to get more exposure for it or a higher price, you want to say, “This thing is so cool.” There are a lot of different aspects to it. People identify with specific brands. It's what David and I and the company called Second Secret did. It is where if you walk up to someone and you don't know them but then you find out that they are an epic Batman fan, you have that common interest. It's not like you are out at a club and walk up, and you are like, “I like Batman.” That's probably not going to get you too far. When people find that common interest, whether it is artists or IP, it promotes a lot of conversation.
We have been extremely blessed with the VeVe community. It wasn't anything that we expected. We thought we would have followers on social and that thing but I attribute a lot of the success of VeVe to the early community who came in, started doing the live drop videos, and everything about it. We feel lucky and also happy that we managed to strike that cord in the heart of the collectors.
Jeff and I both have small children. Walking up to someone else and saying, “I like Batman,” can be quite a powerful way to connect quickly. It does work.
You all have accomplished a ton. We've talked about a ton but there is some more stuff here coming up on the roadmap. We wanted to hear a little bit about what's next up to bat.
There are some things I can say and can't say. When we started the company, we were far more mass market in the sense that the way of onboarding, you can buy with fiats and with credit card very easily. It was because we wanted to tap into that mass market. Crypto has come so far in the last couple of years, and it has penetrated into the mass market. Many people know about it.
One of the major features that we have in play is the ability to bring crypto in and out. We feel that this is going to bring more liquidity into the platform. It's also going to open the product up more to that crypto market, especially since we are doing things like 1 of 1s where some of these things get pretty high value even in a bear market.
In terms of other features we have coming up, we've got the metaverse side of things, which I'm excited about. We are going to see the existing showrooms transformed into something 1,000 times better in terms of features, functionality, customization, aesthetic appeal, and all of that side of things. There's a whole lot of stuff that goes on in the background that people don't know about like the security side of the product and the onboarding.
The other unfortunate thing with the NFT space is that it can be rife with scams. For us and also for our users and the IP that we work with, ensuring that we have that security in there is extremely important. That's why we brought in KYC. Even though it made it more difficult to onboard people, we want to make sure that we are a very trusted platform in the space.
The global thing is that we have all of the moving pieces in place for the VeVe app but the next step is to improve everything we can about the product. The market is very rudimentary in terms of finding what you want. We are going to have massive personalization where if your collection is mostly Disney or Star Wars, then you're going to start seeing that content. That may seem fairly simple but it takes quite a lot of technology in the background to make sure that we are delivering the product that you exactly want to see.
There's the utility side of things. I've discussed the interactive DeLorean. There's going to be a massive amount of interactive content. Moving into 2023, people are going to see the quality of our collectibles step up massively in terms of detail and quality. Let's say it was Jurassic park. It might be on a base and there could be flowing water entering and little shrubs blowing in the wind. It’s about taking that to the next level.
That is an exciting future for sure. It’s right around the corner.
It’s getting very close.
The pace of advancement here is amazing. A lot of people are hands down, the building, as you guys are, in a good way. We are excited about that. We are so happy that we were able to hear some of the origin stories here, the thought process that went into the evolution of VeVe, everything you are working on, and all the things to come. Thank you for sharing that. We appreciate it.
No worries. Thank you.
We like to transition to our next segment. This is a section we like to call Edge Quick Hitters. It's ten questions that we ask every single guest of our show. It's intended to learn a little bit more about you personally and some of your perspectives on these things. It's intended to be short, single-word or few-word responses but we may dive a little bit deeper here or there. Are you ready to jump in on these?
Let's do it.
Question number one, what's the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
I have always been a big fan of candy. Being younger, I was a little bit naughty. I remember stealing some coins out of my mom's purse, running to the convenience store down the road, and getting a bag of lollies. That was always my kind of thing to do.
Do you have some candy within reach?
We have a candy cupboard in the house, and I'm only allowed to take two things out of a day.
That's pretty liberal depending on the candy.
My wife is pretty generous with me.
Question number two, what's the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
That's a tough one. I can't remember specifically but I used to be very heavily into radio control cars. I remember I was always buying a lot of new ones, so I will probably say it would have been something around selling one of my old cars to one of my mates.
Question number three, what's the most recent thing you purchased?
It was coffee but in terms of something more substantial, we got back from DCon UK, and I brought a lot of collectibles and artworks over there.
On the remote control thing, I have to note that my son was floating around Amazon earlier and convinced my wife to buy a little remote control alligator head. It looks like a real alligator. This thing looks like it's rolling up on you in the pool or in the ocean. He's only four. My head immediately went to have a little fun with people at the beach but I don't know. It might scare them to death. Question number four, what is the most recent thing you sold?
It would have been one of my NFTs in the VeVe marketplace.
That makes a lot of sense.
It's very accessible. I thought, “I've got too many of them. Maybe I will flick one-off.”
Question number five, what's your most prized possession?
That is a tough one. A lot of people ask what my favorite collectible is, either digital or real. Generally, my favorite thing is whatever the last collectible that I bought of value. I was extremely lucky to get a 1 of 1 hand painted Louis Vuitton trunk painted by Virgil Abloh, who was the main designer for Louis Vuitton. Normally, these things are extremely rare. They are very hard to get but somehow, even living down here in New Zealand, they dropped into my lap. With anyone that comes into my house, I say, “You can look around but you have to stay 3 meters or 9 feet away from this particular thing.”
That's a solid one. Question number six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical service or an experience that's for sale, what would it be?
It would probably have to be an experience. I love to party. I would probably say some kind of worldwide party tour on a private jet with all my friends with an IV nurse on the plane. When I'm not working my butt off, I generally like to relax and party. It would be something along those lines, flying to Mexico, Ibiza, Cypress or anywhere in the tropical ring. I should have been born in the tropical belt. That's where I should exist.
My question is, does that already exactly exist?
Yes.
Have you seen that type of thing?
Yes. There are worldwide party tours where that will take you from place to place. You can either fly by commercial or the next level is you get the private jet. I will give you guys a buzz when it happens.
Let us know. Is Burning Man on that list? Have you been out there?
It’s more tropical islands thing.
FireFest-type.
We will go to the next question. Question seven, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
I would probably say tenacity. In life, especially when you are doing something new and in the same industry like this, you are going to get knocked down 100 times for every step forward. You have to have built in you the ability and comfort to fail over and over but still keep that dream in mind. I would say that's probably one of my strongest abilities.
That’s so important. That was full display, probably coming out of that 2017 and 2018 period. The next question is question eight. If you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?
I would probably say my obsession with candy. I've had big dentist bills over my life. As I get older in life, it's not so much of an issue but everybody suffers from self-doubt. It is you stopping yourself. Anyone is capable of doing anything, especially if you have the tenacity and the drive. I would say self-doubt would be something that I would've liked to eliminate throughout my whole life. It got me to where I am, so I can't discount it completely but I know a lot of people and friends that suffer from it.
You don't want to stop yourself from chasing those dreams. It’s that tenacity to get you through it. Question number nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I woke up and had a shower because it's early morning here in New Zealand.
This is the last official question, question ten. What are you going to do next after the show?
I'm going to dive into a day-long of extremely exciting meetings.
That sounds interesting. Eathan, word on the streets is we may have a bonus question. Do you have something else there you would like to share?
It’s a little bit of a thought experiment. Do you know that magic pill? Maybe you do or don't. There is a magic pill that, when you take it, turns everything that is sour into sweet. Have you ever tried that? Daniel, if there was a pill that you took and it turned all of your sweets flavorless but you could only keep the flavor of one, what would that be?
You are coming out with a really hard question. You know I'm addicted to candy, so this is tough for me. It's also a little bit ironic because my favorite candies are sour candies. Are we talking about a flavor of food or a piece of candy?
It would have to be candy. This candy, when you ate it, you could still taste it but all the others, you don’t.
In that case, I have always probably been most obsessed with the little Coca-Cola candies. Those are the little Coca-Cola bottles that you could buy. I'm going to go with that because that's always my go-to.
I love the thought you put into it. You can tell that you care because that took a while. Thank you. We appreciate it.
That's Edge Quick Hitters. We appreciate it. This was lots of fun. Thanks for sharing with us. Eathan, the word is we have a very special hot topic to talk about in this episode. Let me turn it over to you.
This episode’s sponsored spotlight hot topic is about the Shellz Orb NFT project, which successfully sold out 8,000 NFTs in pre-mint in 2 hours at 0.89 ETH. There are another 1,000 more to come. We are fortunate to have the Founder and Creator, Jamieson Hill, here to talk about the collection, its history, and where things go from here. Jamieson, welcome to the show. I feel like you have an answer to that question. What candy flavor would you keep if you could? Do you have that? Did you think that through?
I was always a fan of sour things, so anything sour. If you had sour Skittles, there was this white powder that came on them that was the sour piece of the powder. I would say anything sour. It's also translated into later in life too liking these sour types of tastes.
Can you give us a little bit of background here on your story and how you found your way to blockchain and NFTs in general?
I met up with a guy named Robert Menendez in 2015. He started a company called VEZT. They were trying to build stuff in the blockchain. Back then, it was figuring it out. Fast forward to the start of the pandemic, I was hanging out in Clubhouse in Bitcoin rooms, teaching people how not to get rugged, what a hardware wallet was, etc. Right around that same time, a buddy of mine started talking about the people drop. We started co-mingling these two blockchain types of things.
Fast forward to a couple of months later, I started working for this company called Melos, which is a company founded by one of Binance’s lead investors, doing music NFTs. I helped them bring some artists and produced some of their first music NFT drops for Trey Songz and David Bowie, which is pretty cool, at the tail end of 2021.
You’ve had quick happenings here as the NFT spaces evolved so quickly as well. You have brought something interesting with Shellz Orb. Please, tell us a little bit about it. What's the story there?
A few years ago, we started to create this idea to do a PFP project. Originally, it was to raise money to do a film. We then broke away from that and decided, “We are going to create this digital art NFT company.” We had a bunch of ideas. We were building our community. Around January 2022, we acquired an artist called Voyager who was on Magic: The Gathering and League of Legends. He was Adobe 25 under 25.
He submitted a piece of concept art to us. We started sending it around to our friend group, in groups, Discord, and whatnot. Everybody was like, “That shit was fucking dope.” We took this art, and then we were like, “We are going to build an NFT out of it.” It was then like, “How long is this going to take to make?” We were like, “It’s going to take a long time.” Each one of our pieces of art takes about twenty hours to draw. If you could imagine one character that has ten layers per attribute, that could be a month-long process to come up with and concept for that artist.
We quickly built up an artist roster. At the end of it, we had about eight artists, including part-time people, animators, assistant colorists, and whatnot, and we built out a studio. We ended up becoming the highest quality hand-drawn generative art project ever to hit the Ethereum blockchain or any blockchain that I know of. We are about 280 gigabytes on IPFS and 3500x3500 PNGs at zero compression.
We built all through the bull market, and then we rode the bull market all the way down. We ended up selling out in the middle of August 2022 in this crazy bear market, where five other projects that day failed to mint out. We ended up selling out in under two hours with crazy velocity towards the end of our mint. It was 100 transactions per block when we sold out. We ended up here as somewhat of a unicorn. A lot of people are saying that in the NFT space, which is an interesting position for us to be in.
Can you expound upon that? Can people take out their notebooks? How did you end up selling that out? You had a formed team and all of this stuff in a bull market. What do you think were some of the secrets to this sauce?
With selling out a project in the bear market, for one, we focused on being the best in class. We had a product that was undeniably the best. We went overboard. In 6 months and 8 artists, nobody else is doing hand-drawn. It's very hard to find these types of artists. A lot of people can do 3D but nobody does hand-drawn. From the very beginning, every one of our community members knew that what we were going to put was going to be the best thing possible, so they were always waiting. They were patient.
We had been building the main community for about six months before we launched. Nobody was like, “When mint?” Everybody was like, “Chill out. All of you meant when you mint. We know it's going to be dope. We love the art.” The one thing was building a community of core people that loved what you were doing. The other thing was that we didn't have a pedigree. There were no Bored Apes on our team. There were no Doodles on our team. We didn't have any fancy advisors or anything.
I lived in New York City, so we had a couple of guys that maybe worked on Wall Street that had given us business advice but nobody that was super-duper Web3 heavy or had crazy NFT launches backing us. What we did was we had a passion, and we activated people that became passionate about the project. We attracted team members that were incredibly involved in building and wanted to build something big. With these team members, we were able to do about 250 collaborations in those 6 months that we built, with the bulk of that being in the last two months.
Working with artists, I commended and applauded you because it is quite a journey to work with them. To produce top-quality stuff is such a good way to do it in this NFT space.
It has been a wonderful journey getting to employ these people. I got lucky. Voyager, our lead artist, manages the team. He's the head guy. Also, one of the things about building art is that art has to be consistent. All artists have different styles. He was the one that normalized that and taught his style to everybody else. At the end of the day, nobody knows that there were eight artists working on this project unless you went and read it because it all looks very similar. I got lucky.
In preparation for building this thing, I watched a keynote with Sid Meier. He talked about working with artists. He said, “The way that we work with artists or the way that I've learned best is you put them in a very big box, and then you let them go. When they come back, they deliver something that you didn't even imagine was possible.” That’s the philosophy that we went with.
There were so many of the things we have been talking to Dan about throughout the episode around community, tenacity, that core value in the art itself, and why that's valuable to collectors and the authenticity that goes into it. That’s so cool. The distribution's important. You have this partnership with Binance NFT, also. We would love to hear about that.
The company, Melos, that I worked with was in collaboration with Binance. They launched on the BNB chain. At consensus, this 2022, I got introduced to the Binance NFT team. They told me about a new product that they were launching. They have a centralized exchange, which means you can trade Ethereum NFTs. You send your NFT into their contract, and then they can be traded off the books or in a centralized manner.
They told me about this decentralized exchange that they were building, which is going to be something of the likes of OpenSea. I came up with this idea. I'm like, “If you are launching this, this is going to be big. This is going to open up the Eastern market. Art is Eastern-focused. If we could be the first NFT project to launch via this exchange and this brand new product, that could be big.” That was the idea. I then started telling it in AMAs to Alpha groups. They were like, “That is a big deal. That's history. That's groundbreaking.”
As it turns out, CEZ and all the guys over at Binance haven't put out this decentralized exchange yet. They were supposed to put it out on August 10th, 2022. That's when we minted the presale. Eventually, whenever Binance launches this project, we will still be the first project to launch there and, hopefully, bring a lot more eyeballs. It’s the biggest marketplace in the world. They've got many other people to share this love of art and collectibles with.
Kudos. That’s awesome.
Congratulations. We've talked about it. It’s worth talking about. There is a story here. You've got this burgeoning partnership with the Neese brothers. They produced the Umbrella Academy at Netflix. There's some work to produce your story. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
We had the verbal finalization. It goes to the lawyers for paperwork and whatnot. We've come up with all the terms. The Neese brothers came on. They are two guys rooted in sci-fi and fantasy worlds. They are connected with all sorts of people. They are on a Kevin Costner film in Utah, helping him with what he's doing after Yellowstone. He’s building this crazy Western. They are creative guys. We formed a deal to bring them in to build out the entire world and ecosystem of what we are going to be building.
We are not just necessarily a Web3 company. What we want to do is tackle all aspects of entertainment with the goal of putting Web3 at the arm’s reach of almost everybody and, through traditional media like animation and games, bring more people into our community and raise more awareness. The Neese brothers were specifically super excited about the product. One, because we had dope art and also a blank slate to build the story. We had a base story but we didn't have everything planned yet. They can come in at the beginning and work with it.
When we take this show to market and go to producers and distributors like Netflix, Amazon, HBO Max, Hulu, etc., we will be one of the first animated projects to have a built-in community. You are working with Marvel. Why does Marvel IP work? They have a built-in product. They have video games already. They have comic books already and a community base.
In Web3, we've built a community of 70,000 on Twitter and 50,000 on Discord. It’s going to be cool to build one of the first community-driven stories. Our story is not only going to be written by big Hollywood producers but with input from our community via them watching in Discord. We have a lore chat in there. It's going to be a community-built story, not just something that's 100% hand-delivered to you and told. It is the first of its kind.
It’s interesting. Things have been moving in that direction and are moving further in that direction. Shout out to a woman named Mignon Fogarty. She's a fellow podcaster. She has this podcast called Grammar Girl podcast. She was doing pop-sci and then moved to this grammar podcast that took off. People want to listen to grammar tips. They are 5 to 10-minute grammar tips every episode.
She built a huge audience and following. Sure enough, all of a sudden, publishers were coming to her and saying, “We want you to make a book.” It's because there's this huge value to already having that audience built. Imagine writing a book, and you don't have any audience. You are crossing your fingers. There's so much value to that. That's wonderful. You get to give back to them and help them co-create because you have that audience in advance.
Speaking of audience, so many of our audience are learning about this for the first time. We want to make sure that they know where to go to follow you, Jamieson, Shellz Orb, all this amazing stuff that's happening, and a bunch of stuff that's forthcoming. Where should they go?
The best place to find us is on Twitter. We are @ShellzOrb. From there, you could get to the Linktree, which will send you to our Discord. It is Discord.gg/theorb. There are going to be links to Instagram and YouTube where you could find all of our high def, 4k animations. Proof of concept works for what we are building. I'm @JamiesonHill everywhere. You could find me on Instagram, Twitter, etc.
That is amazing. We appreciate it. Everybody, make sure you head over there and check them out. Also, word on the streets is that we have a little giveaway planned for Shellz Orb. There are five unrevealed Shellz Orb NFTs and Binance eggs. Those are valued at around 0.15 ETH. That is very generous of you. We appreciate that. Community, get in there and keep an eye on our socials. We will give you all the details of that giveaway. It’s going to be great.
Thank you so much for your time. It was great hanging out with you. I look forward to what you guys are doing over at VeVe as well. It’s super cool. I was listening to all the stuff.
Thanks for being here.
We appreciate you joining.
Thanks. Cheers.
Take care. It’s very cool. It’s an amazing project. It is lots of fun.
I love what they are doing over there.
They are crushing it in August 2022. It is amazing stuff. We want to move on to our next segment. We talked about this a little bit earlier. It's a new one that we've added, which is a little shout-out where we like to give love to folks in our orbit that are moving the needle for us and making a difference. Dan, we want to turn the floor over to you to give a little shout-out.
There are a lot of people behind the scenes in VeVe. We do multiple drops a week. They are sometimes up to 5 or 6. Every drop that we do is coordinating some Showtime event. They are all the 3D assets, which could be in production for 3 to 6 months. For me, there are a lot of people who are front-facing of VeVe who get a bit of attention. I want to give a massive shout-out to all of the people behind the scenes at Veve with all our developers who work hard every single day to improve the product and roll out new features.
We have our marketing team behind the scenes that people don't see. We have our digital production teams, and even down to our in-house legal. We love that guy. I always love to thank the VeVe community because, honestly, we wouldn't be anything without those guys. The amount of work and effort that they put in on a weekly basis to talk about VeVe and spread the word is something we are so grateful for.
It does take so many people. It's the grind behind the scenes making it happen that delivers. Much love to all those folks that are making it happen. For folks that aren't on the VeVe train yet or for folks that want to learn more, where should we send them to follow VeVe, yourself, and all the amazing stuff that you are working on?
Number one, they can go to our website, VeVe.me. They can also go over to Twitter. It’s a little bit embarrassing. I can't quite remember our handle off top of our head but I'm sure if you type in @VeVeCollectobles or @VeVeDigitalCollectibles, it will come up. From there, it is very similar to Jamieson. You can find a Linktree that will link through to all of our Discord, Instagram, and our medium channels, where we talk a lot about collectibles, the artists that we work with, and the drops that we have coming up.
It is @VeVe_Official. There you go.
That's the one. Thank you.
Go over there. Check it out. These guys are up to some amazing things. They have been and will continue to be. Follow them closely. There are good things to come. Speaking of good things to come, we also have an amazing giveaway from VeVe that we wanted to share with you all. There are a number of different elements here. We have 4 rare collectibles, 4 ultra-rare, 2 secret rare, and a few bundles of $200 worth of OMI. That’s a package. The combination of what we are doing with the giveaway we mentioned earlier in this is something else. You are super generous. We appreciate it. Do you have anything else we want to note on that other than to follow our socials for the details?
I want to give the collectibles away and introduce people to the audience. Follow our socials. Participate in the Glean platform. I hope you enjoy them if you get them.
Follow those socials. Check it out. We have all the details on there for these amazing giveaways that we have queued up from this episode. Thanks so much for your generosity, Dan. We appreciate it.
No worries. Thank you.
We've reached the outer limit for this episode. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on this starship. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes. Rate us and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Also, look us up on all major social platforms by typing @EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Thanks for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- VeVe
- NFTLA.Live
- ECOMI
- Niantic
- Binance NFT
- OpenSea
- Grammar Girl
- @ShellzOrb – Twitter
- Linktree – Shellz Orb
- Discord.gg/theorb – Shellz Orb
- Instagram – Shellz Orb
- YouTube – Shellz Orb NFT
- @JamiesonHill – LinkedIn
- Instagram – Jamieson Hill
- Twitter – Jamieson Hill
- @VeVe_Official – Twitter
- Linktree – VeVe Digital Collectibles
- Discord – VeVe Official
- Instagram – VeVe Digital Collectibles
- Spotify – Edge of NFT
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
- @EdgeOfNFT - Instagram
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