One of the great things about Web3 is how it enables creators and their communities to co-create projects that can benefit them both. This is what StoryCo aims to do. This innovative platform fosters collaboration between creators and avid fans, empowering them to co-create exceptional story franchises and share in their success. JP Alanís, an accomplished development executive, co-founded StoryCo after previously co-creating and leading Golf Media. Justin Alanís, the other co-founder of StoryCo, is a seasoned entrepreneur with expertise in technology and private equity. Taking advantage of their complementary skillsets, these siblings/cofounders are working on one of the coolest projects in the Web3 space, one that is set to change the way that IP is created and owned. Tune in and learn more! Plus, learn about the upcoming AURAS project, where Jeremy Cowart will create 10,000 project live in front of an audience from start to finish.
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Listen to the podcast here
J.P. Alanís And Justin Alanís Of StoryCo - The Open Storytelling Platform
This is JP Alanís.
I’m Justin Alanís. We’re the Cofounders of StoryCo, the platform that’s changing the way that IP is created and owned.
We’re here on the Edge of NFT, the platform that’s leading the way to learn about the coolest projects at the outer edge of Web3.
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NFT-curious readers, stay tuned for this episode to learn how StoryCo is an exciting platform that enables creators and their fans to collaborate and share in a story’s success.
Also, find out about the symmetry and shenanigans of two creative brotherly co-founders.
Learn how one ambitious creator plans to make a 10,000 PFP live in a twenty-minute time span. Finally, Outer Edge LA, our awesome community-centric gathering, returned to Los Angeles from March 20 to 23, 2023. If you think you missed out, there’s a way to catch up on all the interactive experiences, discussions, presentations, and more. You can do that simply by going to watch.OuterEdge.live. You can register with your email address and get a full recap of over 60 captivating conversations and performances. Binge watchers, welcome. Netflix, watch out. See you inside.
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This episode features JP Alanís and Justin Alanís, the dynamic co-founders of StoryCo. This innovative platform fosters collaboration between creators and avid fans, empowering them to co-create exceptional story franchises and share in their success. JP Alanís, an accomplished development executive, co-founded StoryCo after previously co-creating and leading Golf Media.
As the direct-to-consumer media platform and production company founded by Tyler, The Creator, Golf Media saw JP overseeing content development, events, product and technology, and sales of incubated projects to linear television. With a BA in Business and Cinematic Arts from USC film school, JP played an instrumental role in the sale of The Jellies to Adult Swim and Nuts & Bolts to Viceland.
Justin Alanís, the other Cofounder of StoryCo, is a seasoned entrepreneur with expertise in technology and private equity. He is an active core community member at various decentralized organizations that invest in and nurture emerging Web3 technology companies. Justin’s experience includes founding and serving as CEO of a data analytics technology company, which was acquired in 2018.
In addition to his work with tech startups, Justin is a proactive investor in the startup ecosystem. Finally, StoryCo is a revolutionary open storytelling platform that allows storytellers to effortlessly create and publish multimedia stories. By engaging and cultivating a fan base, they can develop these stories into vast universes, harnessing the creativity and ideas of their community. Justin and JP, welcome.
Thanks. We’re excited to be here.
Thank you for having us.
We’re excited to have you here. We have been long-time fans of what you are doing. Thanks to Gordon for introducing us. It feels like a lot has happened in the space and your world and ours since then. I’m glad you could be part of Outer Edge LA as well.
We appreciate you. Thank you for having us on.
Where are you based?
We’re in different places. Justin and I are brothers if you couldn’t tell by the name or the difference in good looks also.
I got all the intelligence and charm.
I’m in LA and Justin is up in Oakland.
Eathan is in Chi-Town and I’m back in my previous home base, Washington, DC at the moment after a brief stop in Boston where I got to see the Celtics crush the Hawks in game two.
We will see you in the NBA Finals. It’s another Lakers-Celtics final.
We’re following it.
I’m into it. I love both teams at this point because I’ve been in LA for about eight years. That would be a fun story in the making. Speaking of stories, you are doing some things to revolutionize IP, the way it’s created, the way it’s owned, and how it moves from top to bottom, centralized closed-system to bottom-up, and decentralized, which is a word we like a lot when it matters in the space. We would love to hear more about the founding story and its implications. You don’t have to start it when you met at birth. Let’s stick to the actual company itself and how you came together here. It’s cool.
I’m happy to kick it off. Eathan talked a little bit about my background but when I got into Web3, I started to meet all these entrepreneurs and founders in the space and understand and realize the amount of innovation that was happening in the space and what the future of the space could offer in terms of new ownership models and new access models.
I started getting deep into the NFT space. I bought a couple of CryptoPunks, I minted a Bored Ape, and I got fixated on the future of what media could look through the face of NFTs. I could see toward the future also what was happening in the artificial intelligence space although that was still early in that space. My brother, JP, was a producer in Hollywood. We got to talking, and JP started seeing a lot of things that were happening within Hollywood that he could talk about quickly. Our mutual insights came together in a unique and interesting way to find StoryCo.
I never thought we were going to be able to work together. We worked in completely different sectors and different spaces. We’re great friends as brothers but never did I think that we would find something that we could work on together. This fits so perfectly in both of our skillsets. It has been such a pleasure working with my brother. It’s so nice because we do come from such different worlds, career-wise, that there’s not a lot of overlap. The great thing about a co-founder relationship is when you don’t have that overlap, you can operate in your verticals, and you’re complimentary. That has been fun.
Congratulations on being able to work together as brothers because it could go either way.
There’s still time.
JP and I have never had a major argument. It’s pretty incredible. Throughout our entire life, we have never had a major argument.
Are there any disagreement that include a suplex or something like that? Are there any wrestling moves that you had to use to resolve disagreements?
There’s none of that.
I’m super curious about how many sibling companies have been founded. I could ask ChatGPT about that. I don’t have to ask you but it’s fascinating stuff here.
There are a few of them. The most notable is Stripe with the Collison brothers. I don’t even know what the value of that business is at this point. I was watching something that Sam Altman talked about that was non-AI related when he was running Y Combinator. He said that the most successful startups are founded by founders who intimately know each other. The relationship where you come together from a transactional nature and found a company together often dissolves or disintegrates because you can’t go through those complex or hard times together. The relationship is not stable enough. Having a brother or a best friend from early childhood tends to be the relationship and the business that thrive the best because you can withstand those hard times together.
The most successful startups are founded by founders who intimately know each other. Click to Tweet
That’s awesome. Let’s talk a little bit more about the result of StoryCo. You’ve got this collaborative storytelling focus in the Web3 domain, which is a very interesting place to explore. Can you give us an idea of the mechanics here of how storytelling gets achieved in a new creative way?
We can start by addressing some of the existing problems around IP generation as it exists in traditional media and then dive into how we’re trying to solve some of those problems. There are a lot of issues but let’s talk about two. The first one is that creating IP is a tough road to do it traditionally. There are a handful of gatekeepers that get to decide who gets to play. The pool of people that do get to play is gatekept as well. It’s hard to become a creator in Hollywood. You got to jump through a million geographical and socioeconomic hoops. It’s intense.
There’s a whole ladder to climb as well. It’s not just a ladder. I imagine it’s this Donkey Kong ladder where you climb the ladder. You got to jump over here and do this. You get bonked on the head by something.
You’ve got to make the decision to move to LA and then convince an agent to represent you. You start as an assistant making a non-liveable wage. If you have student loans, that’s probably not even viable for you. Who gets to play here? Very selected people get to play. That has no bearing on how creative you are and the ideas that you can come up with. It is not merit-based whatsoever. It’s merit-based once you get in at some point but to enter that ecosystem is not a meritocracy.
The other problem is in the last couple of decades, the gap between creator and fan has started to narrow. Fans want to be closer to the IP that they love. IP has become more ingrained into people’s identities. You see that at things like Comic-Con and the rise of cosplay and all these things. You see that in the rise of fan fiction. People want to be contributing to these big narrative universes. They want to feel like a part of it. How do we facilitate that closer relationship between artists and fans? At StoryCo, we strive to solve both of those problems. I can pass it to Justin to get into how we’re doing that.
Before you do, I have to add this funny facet of going back to climbing the ladder and doing low-wage internships. This has been around for a while. It’s a website. It’s called Stuff White People Like. It’s a blog. Number 105 is unpaid internships. It says, “In most of the world when a person works long hours without pay, it is referred to as slavery or forced labor. For White people, this process is referred to as an internship and is considered an essential stage in White development.” That applies to Hollywood to all races. That happens to the best of us. It’s an excellent description of how internships evolve.
It’s crazy when we interview people who come from traditional Hollywood and the nightmarish stories that they tell us of being an assistant to some producer who treats them horribly. This is the status quo in Hollywood. You saw what happened with Harvey Weinstein. This is the corrupt culture that exists within Hollywood outside of the nature of the people who get to go in. I even saw this whole thing about how all the actors’ kids are now the ones who are coming out and being the new stars, the new writers, and all of that. There’s a huge amount of nepotism within the industry as well.
One of our first artists is Kyle Killen. We will get into all this. He comes from Nigeria. He has a twenty-year-old school in Nigeria. Now he’s getting access to amazing actors and writers. He’s doing all the illustrations for one of the backstories for The Disco Ball. It’s this incredible experience that we have been able to witness. We’re starting to see the talent that exists out there and give them the deserved exposure that it warrants.
I appreciate all that. Web3 gives us some special superpowers when it comes to co-creation that weren’t around. Here’s a shout-out to Legion M, one of the early pioneers in trying to get fans involved in creating different types of things at a different level of engagement with what they’re doing relative to what you have cooked up here in much more making the sausage. I’m excited about how you’re creating this experience with The Disco Ball, which is one of the new things that you have been working on. I would love to understand more about it and how it functions.
The first thing to understand, going back to what JP talked about, is that we’re creating a platform first and foremost. We believe that the energy, the network, and the creative powers of all these people from around the globe should be expressed in a platformed environment where there’s a product that harnesses all of this energy and allows people to create new multimedia stories and distribute those stories in a front-end interface that feels like a motion comic.
It’s a multimedia comic where it’s a scrollable narrative experience that feels like a livable and breathable storyboard with audio and visual elements that come into this viewing experience. It layers in all sorts of other multimedia elements, live action, short animation, and things like that. It’s a new way to create and distribute but also the ability then to engage and bring fans into the fold, build an audience around that creation or that story, and then also bring those audience members in as co-creators and co-owners of that story to expand that universe. That’s the premise of what we’re doing.
The Disco Ball is our way of producing our first production or story and demonstrating to everyone the power that this platform can deliver to the art of storytelling and the future of storytelling. The Disco Ball is a multimedia immersive and interactive story. We have partnered with an amazing Hollywood creator, someone inside the gates, named Kyle Killen. He was the showrunner and producer of the Halo series on Paramount, the Fear Street series on Netflix, and a couple of network series on ABC and Fox.
We paired him with these amazing artists out of LA named Shelby and Sandy who are doing all the storyboarding, illustrations, and character design. We’re pairing them with these musicians named Superposition. They’re Grammy-nominated musicians who are doing all the soundscape and sound effects. We’re starting to bring all these multimedia elements to the table with these amazing creators. The idea behind The Disco Ball is that we’re taking our community on this amazing storytelling journey where they become a part of the story itself.
They’re actors almost in the story. They’re going to be finding clues, solving puzzles, going on this immersive IRL and digital journey, and also engaging in what would be an incredible television show or movie that would probably air on HBO or Showtime but it’s being told through the StoryCo platform. That’s the quality and the nature of the story that we’re developing here. The idea is that we’re slowly opening our gates to new production companies, co-producers, and creators to tell new and exciting stories and push the boundaries of storytelling on the platform as we open up these creator tools.
Here’s a quick clarifying question. I’m trying to get a scope of the gravity of what we’re talking about here. How many creators or collaborators are getting together to pull this off?
For The Disco Ball, there are quite a few. It depends on what you mean by collaborators but we have an internal team working on the development of this. We have Kyle who’s writing the entire thing. He’s doing that himself. We have artists like Shelby and Sandy who are creating all of the artwork and musicians. We have amazing A-list actors doing a lot of the voices and performances for all of this. We have voice directors who are directing them.
All of these different creative elements are coming together to create this production because we believe that The Disco Ball is going to create this foundation for this narrative universe that people can start to build on top of once we tell this core narrative. We’re trying to prove a lot of those theses that we have around community co-creation early on. Justin alluded to this a little bit earlier. We have this major character in The Disco Ball. He’s our main antagonist. Kyle has written an entire backstory for that character. An A-list actor has recorded the VO for that backstory already.
We wanted to test some of our theories. We said, “Who’s going to create the art for this backstory? It’s not Shelby and Sandy because we are almost going into his past. Maybe the visual style is different. What if we could find someone who could possibly do this?” We put a bounty out there. We got tons of submissions from artists all over the world. We had our producer token holder community evaluate all of the submissions that came in. They narrowed it down to three. We had those three do a little bit of additional work that we presented to the producer token holder community. They picked a winner.
We couldn’t be happier with the artist that they picked. His name is Aanu. He’s twenty years old. He lives 15 to 20 minutes outside of Lagos, Nigeria. He’s an art student there. The things that he’s been coming back to us with are incredible. It’s a microcosm of what we believe. It’s the tip of the iceberg for us. It’s the first proof that there are all these amazing creators out there that have the ability to contribute meaningfully to Big IP because we have amazing Hollywood writers doing this. We have A-list actors doing this. We have Aanu. He’s fitting in like a glove. The things that he’s producing are incredible.
He’s not someone that would have necessarily come into the mix through the normal process. That’s cool. What do you think, Eathan?
Not necessarily at all. It reminds me of some of these Web2 stories of some kid in Africa who is making homemade helicopters from junkyard parts. He gets to go to MIT or something because somehow they found him more than they wouldn’t have previously. Let’s talk about this promise that Web3 is going to allow creators and fans to dominate. It’s exciting. It motivates us. It helps move the space forward but there was a Web2 promise that musicians would be able to take control of the production process and distribution process and cut out the middleman.
In a conversation at our closing talk on music at the main stage of Outer Edge, it was this idea that you listen to Spotify. I walk into a store. They’re playing some cool music. I say, “This is great. Who is this?” The person at the counter says, “I don’t know. It’s Spotify.” All of a sudden, Spotify gets all the credit and all the money. The creator in the background is making $0.02 a play. Briefly, because we have some other questions to cover, how much do you feel like this promise is going to be fulfilled with Web3 and AI? What do we have to worry about? How can we defend against the negatives that might occur here?
I was going to comment that Web3 is this enabling technology more so than the distribution engine for a lot of this. Traditional Web2-based products like a Spotify experience or what Audius is doing in the music space and Web3 are a little bit more what we’re going to see from a traditional distribution perspective. You still need to centralize that distribution in some way and have marketplaces of information and creativity. You talked a little bit about, “Are the creators going to take control of this process?” AI has this barbell effect to help us both take control of the process but also lose control at the same time.
Creators can create because the barrier to entry for creation is so low now and it’s getting even lower to where anybody eventually will be able to create a Hollywood-level motion picture. We’re probably 3 to 4 years away from somebody being able to type in a prompt that wants to emulate the Mandalorian style. The Mandalorian is on your screen and a character is moving through that screen in exactly the way that you prompted. We’re on the precipice of this.
That’s completely game-changing but the distribution element of how those stories get distributed is still going to be fairly centralized. Web3 becomes this underlying substrate to allow for new ownership and access models that don’t exist in traditional Web2 media. On the other end of the spectrum, I saw this too. Somebody created a Drake song. It’s called Heart on My Sleeve or something like that. It got huge amounts of play. People thought it was Drake. It was a collaboration between Drake and The Weeknd but it was an AI. It was a guy using an AI bot.
I didn’t listen to that but I heard of it.
It’s good. People thought it was real. At the same time, there’s this worry that artists are going to lose control of their underlying IP and the art associated with that IP. Web3 also helps solve this. Web3 and AI need to go hand in hand. There needs to be some way to authenticate what is real and what is not real in a digital age where AI can mimic anything in terms of deepfakes, IP creation, and all of that. StoryCo is having a central part in both helping solve that problem using fundamental underlying Web3 properties and technology and also leveraging AI to help lean into the good parts of AI where it can enable creators to create amazing creations together and augment their existing creations and new creations.
I was going to ask about the StoryPass and I still will but I have an idea there that I’m curious if you have conjured up as well. You’ve got the StoryPass, which we’re excited about. It motivates the community to develop the narrative and decentralizes IP. There are some features and advantages to this that you have thought about. I would love to get the details there but it also crosses my mind that it would be cool to have AI be programmed to proxy vote for me based on my natural preferences when I have too many things going on. If we’re all going to be part of all these co-creation communities, we’re going to be making a lot of decisions. I do wonder now if I can have AI help me with doing some of the proxy voting.
You’re onto something there. I like that. AI is going to help augment a lot of what we do. You’re already starting to see it with AgentGPT where now you can run an inline command, and it will go out there and try to complete that task. This is the very infant stages of this but AI is going to allow for us to have better UI or User Interface, audio interface, and visual interface.
It’s going to help us understand the underlying dynamics of our thought processes and what we would or wouldn’t do under certain circumstances. People are going to be ultimately able to determine how much control they want to deliver over to their AI assistant for things like what you’re talking about, Josh, “Go vote for me. Rather, present all the things I need to vote on, learn from me over time, and then present what you think I would do.” I press a button that says yes.
At least give me a recommendation or two.
I’ll tell you what I’m concerned about. We’re on a little bit of an AI tangent here.
Eathan is concerned about my opinions toward twisting the story because he’s a little bit better at this stuff than I am when it comes to it.
I was thinking of this. I’ve been using AI extensively lately. I use AI to generate an email response to an annoying email that I had in a graceful way. I was like, “You’re so tactful.” What’s interesting, especially in the text-based domain and the visual arts domain, is we’re utilizing AI to make creations for us and make us sound good. We’re putting our name and our stamp on it.
You’re going to run into a weird situation, “I’m a blogger who’s got a ton of incredible blog content. They asked me to give a TED Talk. I’m going to stand up there, and it’s going to be like Cyrano de Bergerac. I will not know what to say because I’m used to having AI cultivate my language. That’s how I look as an intellectual. It’s going to be very hard to translate. My persona as an AI-assisted eloquence into the speaking domain and the actual intelligence domain.”
What’s this going to do to all of the dating lives out there where all of a sudden, there’s an AI-assisted dating robot that tells you exactly what to say to get a date?
The real people show up, and they’re like, “Uh.”
While we’re still making our decisions for the most part, tell us a little bit more about this pass and some of the fun perks that you have built into the model.
Thanks for getting us back on track, Josh.
We’re working on a new show. This is fun stuff to talk about. This is signaling that we need to do this show that we have been conjuring up. Alas, we’re excited about the past itself as it’s created at this moment in time before we start throwing some AI into it.
I happened to talk about the StoryPass. It’s important to understand how we’re rolling out The Disco Ball. It’s backward in the Web3 way. It’s forward in the traditional way but usually, people sell an NFT and then make a bunch of promises of what that NFT is going to be, “We’re going to tell this whole story. Once we have this budget and this treasury, we’re going to use it to do all these things.”
We’re going the opposite way. We are creating the entire narrative. We’re going to take people on this adventure. At the end of that adventure, we’re going to say, “Here’s the NFT. If you want to continue this adventure and you want to be a part of this adventure as it moves in every direction, we have set the path for you. We’ve got the momentum here.”
The thing that terrified me the most about doing it this way was doing all this work, selling an NFT that represents your governance over where the story goes in the future, and having a whole bunch of speculators who don’t care about the narrative and the IP who want to see prices go up controlling where this piece of IP goes. The question became, “How do you create the nucleus of your community?” Speculators have a role to play in the marketplace, StoryCo, and The Disco Ball but how do you create the nucleus of your community? How do you identify the super fans that are going to drive this thing the way it should be driven? You’re giving the keys over to them.
StoryPass is a soulbound NFT. It charts your journey and your participation through the narrative. At certain points, if you read a chapter, solve a clue, or contribute meaningfully along the journey, you’re going to collect moments in your StoryPass, and then we can start giving outsize rewards to the people who are contributing the most to that ecosystem and build the nucleus of this decentralized community around our most fervent super fans.
It solves a number of issues for us. Number one, it helps us identify who our core community is when we hand over the reins to them to some degree over the future of this universe. It allows us to nurture that community and also gamify the experience in some ways, which we feel is an important aspect of a lot of the way that the future of the world is going to work and developing a system of incentives and rewards that we think are powerful motivators for contribution and creativity.
I love it. We’re thinking about all this stuff with our company as well as Outer Edge LA. We had a community day that we co-created with the community. We’re always trying to get folks involved. It’s going to be fun to be part of the journey with you. We will be working on our Swoops basketball game. We will be co-creating your next production. We’re going to have to set up some new meetings, Eathan, for all of these co-creation responsibilities but it will be fun times.
Indeed. Let’s hit one last question before we go on to Quick Hitters, which is going to be very fun with you, I’m sure. That last question is about the roadmap. We always like to hear what people have got cooking, anything we didn’t share already, partnerships, collabs, and features we might look out for. Did we cover everything? Are there some secrets to reveal?
There are a couple of things on the horizon for us but the most relevant one is the launch of The Disco Ball. It’s coming imminently. We’re not even going to say when because it’s coming soon. It’s going to be in a way that we think is cool. It’s going to be in a way where people have to their eyes open. It’s going to be in a very secretive or hush-hush way. Everybody needs to keep their eyes open. We’re doing that through a prologue activation. We’re going to launch chapter one on the actual StoryCo platform soon after.
We’re working on a bunch of different co-production partnerships that will help us determine our lineup for post-The Disco Ball life on the StoryCo platform. We’re building out all these creator tools so that eventually, we can open up these creator tools so that The Disco Ball can become this expansive universe with creators creating backstories and side stories and using a shared treasury to be able to take The Disco Ball universe in various directions, and also for new creators to create new stories on the StoryCo platform and build an audience on the platform. All of that is coming over the next nine months to a year.
Is there anything else to add, JP? Should we move on to Quick Hitters?
Justin hit everything. I’m excited. It’s going to be big for StoryCo. Keep your eyes peeled for some very interesting in-world things that we’re doing. I wish I could say more.
The theme is to keep your eyes open. You may get hit in the face by a disco ball at some point if you do not. Make sure you’re ready to duck. It’s launching. Edge Quick Hitters is a fun and quick way to get to know you a little bit better. There are ten quick questions. We’re looking for a short, single-word, or few-word response but feel free to expand if you get the urge. I’ll try to hit answers from both of you. For the first question, we will go to Justin first. What is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
The first thing that comes to my mind is a Frank Thomas gold-plated baseball card. It’s funny. This goes to show how much the medium of how you buy things has changed over the years. I was watching a late-night TV show when this guy came on. He’s pitching all these baseball cards and shouting, “This is an amazing card. It’s 1 of 20.” I run into our dad’s room and say, “I need to get this card.” He must have had a credit card or something at that point. He calls up an 800 number to buy the Frank Thomas card. That Frank Thomas card is now owned by my son. I still have it. I gave it to him. He’s now a big baseball card nut. It’s a precursor to the future of my NFT days, no doubt.
It’s a common theme there. We could ask the other person what they think the other person was their first purchase. If any of those come to mind for any of these answers, it would be fun to hear what you thought they were going to say.
JP’s was probably Beanie Babies.
This is a weird story that I don’t even think you remember, Justin. The first thing I remember buying is the Friends soundtrack.
The show?
I heard the song. I loved it. I lent it to my brother. He scratched it. I got so mad. It skipped. I went and stole one of his signed baseballs because I was so upset. I hid it in my closet. My whole family was looking for this baseball. I knew it was in my closet. I had done it as revenge. I had to fess up to it. I remember that vividly.
I love those things little kids get upset about. It makes you reflect on what you get upset about as an adult and be like, “I’m probably getting upset about stupid stuff too. It’s just bigger items and more expensive.”
At least now my kids can’t scratch my CDs because we don’t have any CDs anymore.
There you go. Let’s hit this next question. We will go back to JP. What is the first thing you remember selling in your life?
I used to sell used golf balls on the side at a golf course.
A la Warren Buffett’s early life.
I didn’t know Warren Buffett did that.
He would collect the golf balls from the swamps on the golf course.
That’s what I did.
Warren Buffett turned it into a business where he paid other kids to collect the golf balls.
Half the fun of it for me was finding the golf balls. That was going golf ball fishing right at dusk when there were no golfers, getting all these golf balls, and putting them in bleach overnight to make them look nice. I had an egg carton set up. I would put all the golf balls in egg cartons and be there selling golf balls for $0.25 a pop.
That’s well-organized and structured. Justin, how about you? What’s the first thing you remember selling?
Honestly, the first thing I truly remember selling was software at my first startup where it was a founder-led sales experience. I had to sell the first $1 million of software there. That was an interesting experience for me hitting the ground and having to talk to clients and convince them to buy something that we hadn’t even created yet.
That’s the best way to do it, to be honest, because if they don’t buy it, you know not to create it. If they buy it, you create it. If they don’t buy it, don’t create it.
There’s another word for that called vaporware. Justin, back to you, what is the most recent thing you purchased?
An Ecosapiens NFT. I bought one. I’m pretty big in the ReFi or regenerative finance space. Our mutual relationship with Gordon in NewAtlantis. Ecosapiens is a very cool NFT project. As you upgrade the NFT, you capture more carbon. It’s this new and novel concept. The art is amazing. I’m bullish on the opportunity and idea to create an underlying financial infrastructure that benefits humanity through the lens of NFTs and crypto.
I love what Gordon is doing. There is an earlier episode where we interviewed Gordon on a panel at an event. I believe it was at UCLA. JP, what about you?
I don’t know if you all saw it on the SNKRS app. They had a bunch of pairs of Jordan 1 Chicagos go up. I wasn’t successful in that. I got an L but I tried to buy those. I was upset.
I’m sure you can buy them at 10X the cost if you want.
I was so close. I thought it was going through but alas.
Next time. What is the most recent thing you sold?
I’m a big LAFC fan. I’m a big soccer fan. I have season tickets to LAFC. Sometimes when I can’t go, I sell my tickets. That’s the last thing I sold.
I bought some tickets for the Celtics. It was a $55-per-ticket charge. One-third or more of the cost is the ticket sale. We got to Web3 that industry soon.
For sure. It has become such a pain in the ass to sell tickets too. If you have tickets a lot and you can’t go, now you have to file it. Sales of tickets have become regulated now. You have to put it on your taxes and fill out a bunch of forms on Ticketmaster. Even if you sell to release the money for one ticket even if you’re not paying taxes on it, you have to go through this rigmarole.
There’s that new box on the tax form, “Have you sold or bought tickets this year?” I’m kidding. Justin, what about you?
Frankly, the most recent thing I’ve sold is an NFT. I sold a Bored Ape Yacht Club. What do they call their metaverse?
You’re making it hard to remember.
I had the passes for the Otherside because I had a Bored Ape and a Mutant Ape. I decided, “I do not want to participate in whatever they’re doing from a gaming perspective. I’ll sell these things.” I sold them.
You’re providing liquidity in the NFT market. Thank you, Justin Alanís. The next question is back to you, Justin. What is your most prized possession?
I don’t have a prized possession, honestly. There’s nothing that I can say, “This is something that I would never give up.” My house is probably the most logical thing that I can think of. We spent a lot of time and energy.
It looks like a nice place. Is that your house behind you?
This is our ADU behind me.
That’s very cool. JP, what’s your most prized possession?
I have a watch that was passed down to me from my godfather who I was close with and passed away when I was younger. He gave it to me. I love watches as the symbol of something that can last. I decided to pass that down to my children one day.
That’s beautiful. I love that, although neither of you did say, “My relationship with my brother is my most prized possession,” but it’s okay.
I was thinking of physical goods but there are a lot of spiritual things.
Back to you, JP, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service, or experience that is currently for sale, what would that be?
Isn’t there an NFL team for sale? I would buy an NFL team. Is money not an option?
Money is no object.
For sure, I would buy an NFL franchise.
JP would be a new owner. I’ll answer this question. We would do it together. We would be co-owners of the Washington Football Club. It’s what they call themselves now.
Washington Commanders. We would change the name.
They would use their community to write the storylines for the season. Let’s start with Justin again. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
My tenacity. Both my kids have it but in different ways. It expresses itself. As JP could probably testify, I’m incredibly tenacious and resilient, and a person that will not stop at pretty much anything to get the things that I feel are right.
What about you, JP?
Curiosity. I get interested in very weird stuff, go down the rabbit hole on it, stop getting interested in it, and get interested in the next thing but it’s such a constant curiosity of wanting to dig a little bit deeper into so many different things.
I see the symmetry. Persistence and curiosity are the entrepreneurial journey. JP, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would it be?
My inability to focus on one thing.
Justin, are you super focused on one thing at a time?
I’m pretty focused on one thing at a time. That’s where JP and I thrive. JP is more of the creative powerhouse of the brother duo, and I can be more in the back office, business development, and sales and keep us on task. We thrive in that environment for sure.
Is that the trait that you would eliminate, being too focused? Is it something else?
That’s something I’ve had to develop over time. My impulsivity is something that I would want to eliminate for future generations. Creating a more structured and regimented habit-building environment for my kids is a top priority for me.
I’ve got some NFTs to sell you. I’m going to text you right after this.
You can tell from all my purchases and sales that I’m an NFT junkie. My wife has to hold me back. There’s no doubt.
Back to you, Justin. What did you do before joining us on the show?
I talked to JP. JP and I were on a call talking about the show and also a bunch of other things that we needed to do and get done.
That sounds about right. You’re preparing and planning. We appreciate that. JP, is there any nuance to that? Is that the same answer for you before joining us on the show?
It’s the same answer. I was pretending to listen to my brother on a phone call.
The next one is this. What are you going to do next after the show? JP, what’s your thought?
I have not eaten lunch yet. I would love to do that but I know Justin is going to call me right after this. We have a bunch of stuff to talk about. I will probably be listening to my brother while eating something.
Justin, what about you? Will you be calling JP?
I will be calling JP. We will be talking through a couple of things, probably first downloading on this and then secondly finalizing a couple of things that we need to get out the door.
That sounds great. Thank you so much. That was fun. It’s always fun to have duos that know each other go through these questions as a little bit of an element of more interest and fun to it. I appreciate that. It is time for our new and very special segment sponsored by Swoops. Swoops is bringing basketball to the blockchain, allowing us to draft, train, and strategize our way to running the court and winning real-money competitions.
In a previous episode, we let you know that we’ve got our Swoops team. We gave a sneak peek at the name and asked you for your input on naming one of our players. We will continue to put the votes out there on socials and get your feedback but we’re going to dive into revealing the team branding as well as a bit of our newly formed roster. The first thing we would love to do is talk about our team name, which we hinted at in a previous episode, and take a little time to talk about the thought process and why we chose it.
We chose Outer Edge Travelers as our name. We did think of some other names that were probably terrible and funny. We had to decide whether we wanted to hit that Outer Edge event as part of our branding or we wanted to go to Edge of NFT. We had so much fun with Outer Edge, and it speaks to so much that we stand for. We thought we would give a little nod to the Outer Edge branding and then also have not just the Outer Edge team but add something to it that spoke to our values and things like that.
We have all done a lot of global traveling. At this point, Outer Edge is a global media company. We have been to events all over the world. It felt good.
Can you think of any of the alternative names that we had there, Josh?
I would like not to think of them because they were particularly not so good. It was not an easy decision to come to this but it was one of those things similar to how we named the show. When the right name came out, everything else disappeared.
Let’s bring up some of our competition in terms of names. We killed it there. The competition here is around creative naming. We have already won.
We’ve got the Blockchain Burners, Boston Blockchains, and I do like the word Boston, Denver Cyber Bombs, Unchained Web Legends, Killer Bytes, and Mechanical Bulls.
We got the best name. The only topic there is the word traveling. That’s an illegal move in basketball.
Here’s the deal. It’s Web3. We break the rules a little bit here and there. If the ref doesn’t call the travel, it’s not a travel.
That makes sense. Moving on to some of the other aspects here, let’s talk about the logo there. What we decided to do is take our Edge of NFT logo, which happens to be part of our overall Edge of Company logo, which we have had a lot of fun with. It does have a sporty theme to it. It’s reminiscent of Adidas or Nike. It’s very simple and energetic. We don’t call them swoops. What do we call those three bars?
Swashes.
We were going to go with that straight up but I got a little creative. I got into some design software, “Let’s get a little basketball imagery there.” At first, it was just a basketball on that. It had its appeal but why not throw in some stars? We are the Outer Edge. We are traveling to the far reaches of the galaxy with everything we do. It is cyber basketball players. It all came together in a very special look at the branding.
People are probably looking at our record as well. You will be glad to know that we started 0 for 7. We have won 7 of our last 9 games. We are improving by the day. Check back later on that record.
After getting our logo and our name together and making sure they align with our values, we’re killing it on all those domains. We needed to name our first player. We are not fully named yet on that first player. We do have three options out there in the social sphere for people to choose from. We want you to keep an eye out on the socials. Keep an eye out for videos and content on our socials around everything we’re doing with the Swoops team. Make sure you get your vote in for the name. Josh, you’re a little bit more of a basketball fan than me. Why don’t you explain the player that we wanted to name first and why? Let’s take a look at what the three names are. Tell us about the naming.
He is a guard. He’s pretty well-rounded. He has been getting 23.7 points per game with a solid 44.5% field goal percentage. That is legit. He’s crushing threes too at 40% like my Celtics. He’s a well-rounded dude. He also does well at the free throw line at 77.8%. Let’s see if we can improve that over time. We got a well-rounded guy. He’s the all-star leader of our team at this moment. He’s also not bad at passing the ball around. He’s got four and a half assists per game.
We will be looking out for more ways to get you out there and the audience involved. Make sure you put your vote in for the names we got on hand. Do we have those names? I remember we had Tron Stockton.
We also have Solidity Curry. We all know where that’s leading. There’s one more gentleman. Gary Plasma is the third name. We will have all these guys up for a vote among the community very soon.
That’s beautiful. Before we roll-off, make sure you give them a recap and let people know how to get involved here. We want to see you playing with us, rooting for us, and maybe even competing with us. That’s fine but truly, we will be the winners. Let’s get a little bit of that info about how to get involved. It’s super fun stuff, pretending we’re big-shot basketball team owners.
Here are the deets for how you at home can get involved. Number one, sign up for the SSN1 presale. If you want to take on our squad but don’t own a Swoopsters, your chance to build the team is coming up. Swoops is introducing a brand new batch of players for owners only with the presale event happening very soon. If you’re not an owner, to improve your chances of getting your hands on some of those never-before-seen players, go to PlaySwoops.com, click Presale, and fill in the form to sign up for Swoops’ SSN1 presale event. Swoops sold out their SSN0 mint in 35 minutes. Get your name on that presale list.
Secondarily, those who do sign up for the presale will have a chance at landing two limited edition five-star Swoopsters, each of which will be randomly hidden within the first two days of the SSN1 mint. Those Swoopsters will be named Vector Wembotyama and Swoop Renderson. These two new Swoopsters are based on the two most sought-after prospects in 2023’s NBA Draft.
Even the physical builds of each player will mimic these key draft picks. Keep glued to our socials and YouTube. You can see our team logo, players, and more. We are building this team toward a Swooper Bowl challenge. If the Travelers are going to make the Swooper Bowl, we are going to have to win pretty consistently. Thanks for playing along. We hope to see you there. Let’s get on to the next segment.
Onto our next segment, Hot Topics. Our Hot Topic is a special one featuring Jeremy Cowart. He’s in a very fashionable black-and-white frame with some fun photo equipment behind him and whatnot. He is a renowned photographer with fifteen years of experience specializing in celebrity portraiture and global humanitarian photography projects. Before pursuing photography, he explored abstract painting and graphic design.
These artistic mediums converged when Jeremy launched his debut NFT series, Block Queens, fusing his paintings, portraits, and drawings into fully interactive NFTs. The collection of 999 NFTs sold out in mere seconds in February 2022. Jeremy, now based in Nashville, Tennessee, is concentrating on various upcoming releases, encompassing both unique one-of-ones and generative works. Jeremy, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. It’s good to be here. I’m honored.
This is so overdue, Jeremy. I’m glad that our mutual friend, Chris Flight, reached out to us and told us what you’re up to. It was great to have you at Outer Edge breaking some ground with your unique photography style and approach. Coming in hot is the AURAS project. Can you share its significance and what inspired it to come to life?
On May 2nd, 2023, I’m going to be creating a 10,000 project live in front of an audience from start to finish in about 20 minutes without using generative code or AI. It’s all through analog methods. It was that core idea. In my whole career, I followed ideas. I was like, “I could create 10,000 in 10 minutes.” The live event is on May 2nd, 2023. The mint on OpenSea is midnight the week later. It’s a partnership with OpenSea, Transient Labs, Canon, and all kinds of other cool people.
It’s going to be a live art performance. I don’t think this has ever been done in the NFT space to this degree. People have done live mints. There are human PFPs but this mix of things has never been done where somebody creates it in front of the audience from start to finish, especially in just twenty minutes. I’m fired up and nervous. It’s a lot of work but it’s going to be cool.
10,000 PFP in 20 minutes is the criteria. JP and Justin, are there any thoughts? How would you do that? Do you have any ideas? Is there AI involved?
JP, it’s taken us a year and a half to do our 10,000.
We have twelve hours of story that’s launching with it. I’m excited to see that.
If it reaches 21 minutes, does it implode, everything is for naught, and it auto self-destructs?
It will take less than 20 minutes but I’m saying 20 minutes to give me that extra time. I’ll be shooting with my camera. I’ll be shooting myself. I’ll be in a white mask and an all-white projection suit of sorts. It is performance art. I’ll be shooting it at about 30 frames per second. My camera will be going crazy with the art projecting onto my face and body and on the $5 million 130-foot LED volume screen behind me. The images will be projected on that at the same pace, changing with the camera speeds, and then all kinds of other crazy stuff happening as well. It’s going to be insane.
That sounds boring. I’m sorry. It’s plain. I haven’t heard anything that creative. I’m kidding. Tell us more about the process and the reasons behind pulling this off. Why do this? It sounds fun and exciting but what prompted this?
For twenty years, I’ve chased ideas. I love pursuing crazy ideas. A lot of times, they are humanitarian in nature. I do a lot of hurricane, earthquake, and wildfire relief projects. I go where the wind blows me in terms of ideas. This time, it was that simple. It was 10,000 in 20 minutes. 10,000 is such an iconic number in our space. I could do way less but I wanted to do it. It wasn’t about money, I promise. It was truly about, “I can make this iconic piece of performance art in front of an audience and an online audience.” I went with it.
This was in January 2023 when I had the idea, pitched it, and started sharing it with people. I got a production company on board. It has taken a life of its own. People are excited. With so much bad news, non-accounts, scams, and all that, our space needs to see something transparent from start to finish where we know what we’re getting into. We see the artist and the process. I keep saying that I’m not only doxed but now I’m doxing my creative process because I have been building this for ten years, and it will be the first time that I’ve ever revealed it publicly. It feels like the right time.
It reminds me of our process of co-creating. You said, “I have this idea. It’s never been done before.” We’re like, “Let’s go.” It seems like that’s your MO. You whip up these ideas and get partnerships together, and there you go. It happens. It’s pretty awesome. Justin and JP, you got someone to consider if you need an amazing photographer for some of that co-creation stuff you’re doing.
It speaks to the idea that the barrier between the artist and the consumer of that artist is narrowing so much. Allowing a community of fans into your creative process is part of creating an engaged community around you as an artist and around your work. I love that. That’s awesome.
There’s a lot that’s happening generally in the space. Jeremy seemed to be pushing forward the idea that with AI getting so good now, you’re going to need to understand what goes into the making of the thing and the documentation of the making of the thing. People want insight into that. We’re seeing that with stories for Netflix and HBO where not only are you getting into the making and how this was made. I went to the MoMA and saw all of the Pinocchio exhibits, which was super incredible. People are inspired by the creativity that goes into something, not just the final output. Understanding what goes into it makes the final output even more satisfying to the consumer.
I’m nodding my head so strongly because you’re exactly right with this insane onslaught of AI. I’m already at a point where on Instagram and other networks, I’m having to say, “I’m not anti-AI but we can’t lose sight of human intelligence and hard work for ten years.” The other reason why this project is so important is to show that humans can still create insane things without depending on artificial intelligence and using our intelligence. Thanks for bringing that up. I’m very passionate about all things AI, the dangers, and the benefits that it’s going to bring. It’s a big topic but that is a big part of why I decided to reveal the whole process live from start to finish.
We’re excited. Thanks in advance for giving our audiences two of these amazing NFTs that you will be minting. Tune in and pay attention to that. You’re not going to want to miss the chance to have a piece of this incredible collection. Are there any additional details on what folks need to know about where to go to keep tabs on this and participate?
My website is my last name, Cowart.io. The URL for this whole thing is Cowart.io/Auras. There’s an AURAS link on my website if you click that. If people want to remember the livestream, it will be Livestream.Cowart.io. That will be where they can watch online. On my channels and socials, I’ll be announcing all the details but on Discord, I’m always giving alpha and things early that I’m brainstorming. I’m too bad about that. I’m teasing and announcing things because this is just me. I’m a single artist. I’m not this big company. I share with my Discord what I’m brainstorming and all that stuff.
Thanks for stopping by, Jeremy, and sharing what you’re going to be creating with our audience. We’re excited about this project. We will keep tabs. I’m sure we will have a chance to co-create again at some point in the future.
It’s so much fun. Thanks so much.
I appreciate you. Thanks for having me.
Take care.
See you, Jeremy.
That’s going to conclude our Hot Topics segment. We will move on to what’s next. Next up, we have a shout-out segment featuring Justin and JP. We would like them to give the audiences a little bit of a hint about what’s interesting in their world in terms of people and projects. You had some shout-outs in mind that we would like to give some love to. Justin, do you want to have a hand at that?
I’ll first shout out Derek Edwards who is one of our investors. He has probably been our most helpful investor to date from Collab+Currency. You can see Derek on a lot of the PROOF podcast with Kevin. He’s a prominent figure in the NFT space. He knows so much about culture and community building. He has been our go-to in terms of vibe checks with how we are thinking about the release of The Disco Ball and the experience around The Disco Ball. Here’s a huge shout-out to Derek.
Derek is great. We had an opportunity to have him moderate a panel with Eric Calderon, Jack Butcher, Jen Stark, and Betty. He did a fantastic job having a conversation about culture. I echo what you’re saying there.
I was there. It was a great panel.
We have one more shout-out.
I’ll shout out an incredible creator, a good friend of mine that I’m so proud to know, and an early believer in StoryCo, Lee Sung Jin, who I know as Sonny Lee. He created a show on Netflix called Beef with Steven Yeun and Ali Wong. It’s number one on Netflix. He’s one of the most creative people that I’ve ever met. I’m so happy for him. This is the first show that he has run. He’s an advisor to the business as well. I thank him for that. I’ll shout him out and tell everybody out there to watch Beef on Netflix.
You don’t have to tell Josh twice.
I binged that show in about four days. What an original show with so many twists and turns, incredible writing, and incredible acting. I highly recommend that show. It’s one to watch when it comes to awards season.
For some reason, I envisioned Josh binging on Beef while eating Korean barbecue beef. I don’t know why but I feel like that’s your style.
I do like both. I live in LA. Korean barbecue is part of the culture.
We call it the double beef binge.
That’s the only way to watch it.
Not too close to bedtime because it gets a little dark.
Eathan, you’re making JB hungry over here.
That reminded me too. I had forgotten about this. I’m savoring it as I have the memory. After Outer Edge LA, we had a team late lunch. Leslie from the team who’s an expert in Korean food brought us to an awesome Korean barbecue place. It was the most incredible. What I love about the Korean food is they have lots of veggies too. You got the meat but you got all those fresh veggies, rice, and stuff. It feels healthy even though your stomach feels a little bit stuffed.
The oil it’s cooked in is not healthy.
Those are awesome shout-outs. They always give us a reason to tip the audience to something that might not be on their radar. There will be more binging of beef in the near future, I’m sure. That concludes the content of our show. What we will do now is do a quick wrap-up. What we want to do is make sure we get from you where people can go to find out more about you and your projects.
You can check out StoryCo on Twitter. Go to @StoryCoHQ on Twitter. You can also follow The Disco Ball, which is linked on the StoryCo Twitter page, which is @DiscoBallHQ. If you want to sign up for a StoryPass, which is highly encouraged to get involved in the story itself, go to Story.co/DiscoBall. It’s Story.co if you want to learn more about the business, read our lite paper, check us out, and read more about the team, and Story.co/DiscoBall to get into The Disco Ball, see the marketing page, experience how the story will unfold and more about the story, and sign up for your StoryPass.
That’s beautiful. JP, is there anything you missed? Are we good?
Grab your StoryPass, keep your eyes open, get in our Discord, and buckle the fuck up because it’s going to be a crazy ride.
I will be sleeping with one eye open as they say in the famous Metallica song. That concludes pretty much everything. We have reached the outer limit at the show. 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. Look us up on all major social platforms by typing EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- StoryCo
- watch.OuterEdge.live
- Outer Edge LA
- Stuff White People Like
- Kyle Killen - Instagram
- The Disco Ball
- Legion M
- Shelby and Sandy
- Superposition
- Aanu Okereafor - Twitter
- StoryPass
- AgentGPT
- Swoops
- Ecosapiens
- NewAtlantis
- Gordon Gould - Previous episode
- Otherside
- Jeremy Cowart
- Block Queens
- AURAS
- Livestream.Cowart.io
- Discord - Block Queens
- Collab+Currency
- PROOF
- Lee Sung Jin - Instagram
- @StoryCoHQ - Twitter
- @DiscoBallHQ - Twitter
- Spotify - Edge of NFT
- iTunes - Edge of NFT
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