BBW22 - Day 1 - Let's Meet the Creators

[Music] I would like to just introduce them by name and allow them to give a little backstory on themselves as Ian just did but Stephanie Max and Bill and I am Greg so if you want to go down the line kind of give a backstory on what we're doing how we got here um and just chat let's do it sounds good mommy is there sure excellent so hello uh Stephanie Howard and I started my career over 25 years ago in the Footwear design space so I've been a design director at companies such as Nike and New Balance I've worked at Reebok I've worked for Brands as a consultant in Innovation Timberland The North Face and vans so a lot of the brands you're familiar with and designing physical products and then a little over a year ago I met the co-founder of what we now formed the company called end State and uh he has his name is Bennett Cullen and he has a background in blockchain and uh his first company used um smart contracts and nfts to secure trademark rights and they were purchased by GoDaddy so he was a lifelong Sneakerhead thought about uh you know how this technology of web 3 and Seekers could really make a great match and connected with me after seeing me on a webinar and in May of 2021 we started end state which is a Lifestyle brand that combines the physical with the digital and what we do is unlock connections to things that people are passionate about we're doing that mostly by making sneakers right now we have several drops that we've made we've already you know created the nfts delivered physical products to customers um and we do some that are charitable drops the ones I'm wearing right now are um for the wells Remy Crowther charitable trust um and that's please do look up Wells Crowther if you haven't heard of him before but he's a hero from September 11th um who really sacrificed his life to save others and his mother has formed you know a trust over the years in his name to you know reward academic and athletic excellence and youth who serve their communities and so we built a sneaker around the theme of red bandana which is a big part of his story and there's a big red bandana football game at Boston College every year in silver celebration of his heroism so that's one type of drop that we do and then another is collaborating with creators like artists and athletes so we have a drop that we're we'll go live this weekend on Saturday with a collaboration with Devante Smith who's a um if you watched Monday Night Football you'll you'll know he's a wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles amazing Athlete on field amazing person off field and we are collaborating with him as our first athlete to really tell his story and then to show how nfts aren't just a digital art piece right we'll make a physical sneaker and we make a digital you know twin of that sneaker but the nft is going to unlock experiences outside of that and so that includes you know your tickets being a your sneakers with the NFC chip inside them are a ticket to meeting Devante in person and your nft when he gets his first touchdown you're going to get air dropped gift certificate to get a cheese steak so every time he wins you win and so um we have a whole bunch of um on on field performance uh sort of Milestones that he is going to make and then because you own the nft the sneaker just keeps getting more and more valuable beyond the physical product and so that's that's how my career has gone from just creating physical products to now sort of understanding how you can build amazing experiences beyond that Jim I'm Max uh I've been working in this space since 2016. I started off by running a cryptocurrency mining company uh a year later I had my own warehouse space I started it with my brother and then we ran that until early 2020 and shut it down um in early 2018 a lot of people wanted to liquidate all of a sudden everyone thought the price of crypto was going to zero and then we kind of held out for a little bit and 2020 was really our last year holding out uh after that I did some Consulting work for a bunch of different protocols helping them to add value to their governance token by implementing fees in their ecosystem or restructuring their ecosystem to add additional value to their users and then soon after that I did some work for the government and then I met my co-founder there and we left to start Solon and our product will be coming out if I had to guess hopefully q1 of 2023 at the latest uh and we've designed a decentralized operating system to interface with ethereum and layer twos uh and the whole goal of anything we focus on developing at Solon Labs is to improve user friendliness to make the interaction with the blockchain a lot more seamless and also to reduce the financial barrier of Entry associated with decentralization cool all right I guess I'm last up hi everyone I'm Bill Ramos um I'm the founder of dungeon miners I as uh said I also lead up the development for the Boston Celtics for in the digital space not here as a representative of them just uh putting that out there is just me and my project but I'm very much overwhelmed at how many cool things people are building the space and some of the cool stuff everyone's doing I feel like I'm under qualified to speak about some of these things but um I uh my project dungeon miners takes a unique take on the nft space where you have to mine for your nft generates a random hash which then combines with other people's nfts hashes to create this game that runs itself as people play so uh it's a very complicated non-fun thing to to talk about how it works but if you want to check it out dungeonminers.com back there I I will say real quick I played Bill's game before and it's a lot of fun appreciate that but uh happy to just come here talk about uh crypto in general and learn from everyone who's here because there's so much opportunity um I think that sometimes we try to fit uh crypto into everything um and I but I do think there are some projects that are really really cool applications of the technology that I'm excited to learn more about see what kind of opportunities are out there so we can kind of continue to as a group as a community build some of these new things together cool so a bit of a background on me I was a barber for seven years and while in that profession um business cards were a thing that was important for us and my brother and I um one night we're kind of just chatting about making that experience better it was really a selfish conversation like for myself but it ended up turning into a much bigger idea of truly digitizing the business card as opposed to some of the digital business cards that are out there already and so we began that and over the last maybe a little less than a year and a half I have been all in on the web 3 space and so naturally learning the things that I have and meeting people um the idea continued to grow and integrate these new web three aspects into them and so our plan is to make a a truly um digital business card that looks and feels like what we're used to already but then adds in similar aspects kind of like end States shoes being a ticket when we have an nft drop that would also be your ticket into events that we have whether that's our own networking events or co-sponsoring other companies events we plan on working with some of the bigger artists in the space to do that so that it's actually a piece of art that doubles as with say the the background of your uh business card um so things of that nature uh one of the things that we're really excited about is the idea of allowing our users to actually own their data so when we get approached on um data our users would actually have the opportunity to benefit from that and not us as the company per se um and so that's what what I'm working on um with stay busy it's it's really trying to seamlessly uh make networking more efficient especially with job securement and then there's the environmental side that uh really took us back when when we started to see the kind of waste that goes into that industry and the kind of environmental harm that comes from that um so being able to eliminate actually printing of cards and then on the back end every one of our paid users would be responsible for planting trees that that's one of the main drivers into what we're doing also so with that being said I would like to ask you guys coming into this space as Leaders as Founders what has been some of the main hurdles that were kind of different than you know the web 2 route or especially you know with you coming from Nike and New Balance and all those companies what are some of the hurdles and then like what are some of the benefits that you've been able to utilize being in this space um when you say hurdles I don't know if I it's it's complexities more than hurdles in our world right because I'm I have to uh you know create design Source um physical products but that's been done for a long time and I've seen it done at the big Brands um so I was familiar with that side of things but the um you know the complexity of then making sure that the you know the nft is created in our case a digital twin uh you know rendering of the physical product and then the um the Innovation that we have to create behind what will those experiences be right we want this to be something much bigger than you know just the digital art in the physical product but the experiential side of things so there's a lot of um just complexity into creating what each of those um you know kind of rewards and perks are building a community from scratch that's that's its own complexity building a brand from scratch whether you're in this space or not I think is is a complex thing to do and to do it right and not to over hype but to make sure that you grow an audience and a community who's you know who's kind of supporting you along with your growth um so those are some I think it's just been very the additional layers of complexity and of course you know working with engineering and making sure you know everything's correct in the smart contracts before each of our drops I think we're on our fifth drop now so we're we're getting better with each one with solving how to to plan ahead um the uh I think the the pros I think in my case the pros of being in a startup are um are it's just our ability to move really really quickly and as I said I was at some of the Legacy Brands it takes about 18 months almost every time to get a sneaker to Market from design to Market and that's with you know existing Supply chains and um I think just having a a new frame of mind trained in the way we're going about each of our drops and you know just kind of utilizing the network that I built over my career we've been able to move in a third of that time and so I feel like doing things differently is allowing us to move a lot faster and that is a big benefit for us because every time you do a new drop we learn from that drop but then we also um you know kind of have even more proof of concept to the point where we're signing you know like major names and athletes and talking to artists and big Brands and things like that so uh yeah I think the complexities are what make us interesting and then the speed um sort of gives everybody the proof that we can do it but all of that's very very different than the world of corporate you know structure which is where I had spent a lot of my time and you so you said you guys have done five drops yeah and in the past each one would have taken like 18 months separately yeah yeah if I was a you know in the traditional Legacy brand without an nft right and and the state has been around for a year and five months I think yeah we started released five shoes in the time that it would have been one right exactly that's pretty important I think uh one of the things that gets kind of mentioned ad nauseum is community right and web3 it's all community-based Community Based that is I think for me uh has been the largest challenge in trying to get more attention on dungeon miners is community building really is an art form right and it takes the right kind of personality to engage with your community um and you know I'm a project of one right I am I am the dungeon miners Persona right so having a full-time job where I don't really have all the time to focus solely on dungeon miners one of my largest challenges is just like how do I continually deliver this hungry hungry or uh something to these hungry hungry audiences who always want something fast right I think one thing I've noticed in my three is everyone wants something now and that hype kind of building is kind of intrinsic to the space in general how many projects have you seen where uh they promise you know that your computer is going to turn on and start printing money and we're going to launch a Q3 or whatever and it never really comes to fruition right um but the hype gets thousands of people rallied around that project the idea of the project and then when it comes to delivering a product Falls flat right I took the opposite approach where I built this thing and then I announced it I'm like oh hey here it exists and then it's been a slow triple slowly building slowly building of people coming in getting excited about the project but like they all want more now right and it's like how do I how do I how do we continue to to engage with audiences and keep them interested when their attention span is like a goldfish to like re-engage with us and kind of help support the product and this is you know my product is is unique in that it's it's kind of like a self uh it's a Perpetual game that runs itself so I don't have to really do too much to make the core part of it run but in another business like like end State um and with what you're launching and so on Labs like how do you how do you keep those people engaged right that's I think the main the main thing and on my regular like back with the Celtic stuff like I don't have to we don't have to fight for attention right like that just happens so the other thing there is like how do we deliver something and this is I know a lot of Brands across the space are looking at this like how do we deliver something that is true to whatever brand it is that is an established you know web 2 traditional brand um and fit into this new landscape that is ripe with opportunities like those are I mean those aren't small problems to solve right but I think that's why we're all here and trying to figure out like as as small Builders looking at larger companies like how can we fit into their roadmap how do we how do we become part of this ecosystem or bridge the gap for them um people are going to solve that and I think maybe some people in the audience are working on it now but um those are some of the things that I'm thinking about from both sides of it from a small studio in myself and then larger scale like a bigger brand how do we how do we take the technology of blockchain and use it in an authentic way that like helps actually helps the business yeah I definitely agree with you Bill uh for me though like I see this whole sense of community that has really come to life especially in the nft world and even in the crypto world where hey now I can have ownership in this company or I own this JPEG and we can all Bond over it um as less of a hurdle and more of like in like an amazing benefit um because for me personally I feel like this this decentralized sense of community has eliminated many hurdles so um I created a Twitter specific typically for the nft world and because of the decentralized nature of nft communities and crypto communities I was able to go on Twitter with absolutely not knowing anyone uh hop into random Twitter spaces talk to random people learn and then eventually uh get up on those spaces and starts speaking myself uh and you know after doing that for a few months uh I turned zero followers into fifteen thousand right and I wouldn't have been able to do that without the this decentralized sense of community right this idea that hey we can all Bond over these things everyone wants to learn right we're all in this place we all want to learn uh we all want to see cool new technology we're excited we're not at the level where like anything is really Advanced enough where it's an improvement over anything that already exists in the web 2 space the only real new innovation that exists in I would say in the nft spacing specifically today is this revolutionized sense of community um so for me like it has been the opposite of a hurdle I was even able to crowdsource the original funding I needed to start my project by selling nfts right like as a at the time I was probably 20 years old 21 years old um I didn't even need to show anyone in my face I didn't even need to give anyone my name so there's going to be no personal bias against me they don't know anything about me and I can just put out technical facts I write I portray I go on Twitter and I pitch to people and it's purely 100 about me uh and what and if people see any person like any sense of value so we sold roughly 400 000 with the nfts we sold all of our nfts and then after that because another cool thing about the this decentralized space is I didn't know anything about like how to start a company or how to like get funding or to do all these things I wasn't connected with VCS I didn't grow up in like a very wealthy environment but because of this decentralized space I was also able to meet people through Twitter and then we started the Boston Dao and all these other groups and through there I was able to meet with people in person and that's how I met my VCS so um we did a precede round that we closed out probably about two months ago for six hundred thousand dollars uh in exchange for six percent of our governance token so like none of this would have happened I wouldn't even have this option nor would I be in the place I am to today without web free so personally I think it eliminates a lot of barriers do you think that's sustainable or do you think that's a byproduct of it being like in its infancy and everyone wanted to get it get a slice of like the.com bubble essentially happening in nft I would say everything is about supply and demand so like uh if you look at the nft space let's say eight months ago right like there was a decent amount of Supply nothing too crazy people are dropping nft projects every day but most of those didn't even get the light of day but there was a lot of demand and most these people were spending money that they wouldn't probably shouldn't spend anyway but a lot of this was driven by hype right it's one of those things where yes while it can be cool and beneficial and fun and like everyone's on a good vibe it's also not necessarily the best thing for an ecosystem right there's there's always the downside eventually uh the music's gonna slow down or stop um before it starts again so uh you know in any space yes there's good and bad things but for me personally I see this space as a space today right now that I can create things in and be able to receive as much attention that I feel appropriate that I deem myself I don't have to be dependent on other people and that's a huge thing for me that I can go out and it's a hundred percent up to me the man I look at in the mirror every morning how much work I want to put in that day how many Twitter spaces I want to attend how many people I want to make a connection with but yes today the audience is a lot Slimmer and a lot less people are interested because people are making crazy money anymore but you can still go out and talk to people yeah I mean I I see that like the overall audience is kind of shrinking I think it'll probably inflate again at some point um but it's it's interesting like how for how much longer will VCS be throwing money at anything right and maybe it'll continue in perpetuity uh I think the space will evolve where it's not just going to be jpegs right and I think that as Builders right we build on top of I mean we either build the infrastructure that people will build on top of or we take the infrastructure of a blockchain that exists and build on top of that and try to kind of continue to evolve that ecosystem I think we're still you know I hate well we're early we're early right we're early in the development of the technology and I think that there will be you know blockchains that make it and don't ones that haven't launched yet that will further Propel the idea of the blockchain further and then how will people kind of tackle that next step what other quirks will that blockchain have if it's popular people will find a way to milk it for for profit but like how how do we build something really cool and genuine that people want to engage with I think you're in a unique space that with the with your physical stuff it's just it makes sense to bridge the gap between web3 Natives and and people who just like physical Goods like shoes to kind of bring them all together yeah like you have an opportunity within state to really kind of ride the wave and bring something new to people that they haven't seen before yeah I think a lot of our focus is not on people who are already and if these I mean yay they know about us and we're excited about that but we are definitely focused on what the utility of the NFP is right and so that's creating these connections that people are passionate about and that's you know delivering on these experiences that give value beyond the physical product plus we're making a really cool physical product in a coveted space that sneakers collectible limited edition designed by you know like a world-class design team um but I do think that the focus you know for for some of the hurdles that you're talking about is the education of all the people that don't understand what nfts are because there's so much more utility beyond what they know they are and there's a lot of Stories being told to them right now and so you know I hope that our company is one that can you know just be an example of that there is this utility built into the connection to the blockchain and it can be used for all these you know experiences Beyond a product and that's part of how you build a community right if we bring everybody together who's a Devonte Smith fan and then in two months bring everybody together who's a you know fan of a very famous musician and then an artist and then we're bringing all these people into the ecosystem of being an nft you know sort of owner but they're not necessarily in it for the money they're in it for the experience that they get out of it and so that's going to open up the world to the technology in a way that a lot of people are closed off to now I think yeah I personally don't believe we'll ever get to the point where we see like a mass of individuals actively interacting with nfts and blockchain and crypto uh until the technology is so seamless that people don't realize they're using it right like it needs to be an additional benefit it needs to bring an additional value proposition to our current world that doesn't exist today something you can't replicate in web 2 right otherwise what's the real point it's more of this gimmicky thing that we're all kind of playing with and saying maybe we'll do something with it one day but the real value proposition today is decentralization right like you have billions of people all over the world who are affected by Insane amounts of corruption and inflation uh who it would be nice to have an alternative source of your uh storing your wealth and for most these people they're either forced to use local banks or they're forced to rely on their local government which uh doesn't usually turn out so well my favorite example would be Nigeria over 200 million people live there and they said a snake ate two billion dollars worth of taxpayer money like obviously that didn't happen and during SARS protests which was over the pandemic um they would just freeze people's bank accounts and then they couldn't feed their families so like yes in the United States we don't really have to worry about these things but we're playing around with it the most because decentralization is still so expensive right I still have to pay so much for a transaction but you still have over 30 million people in a country with a total population of 200 million people and an average GDP per capita of twenty four hundred dollars using crypto on a daily basis right so uh to me yes I see that as the main value proposition today um but at the same time yeah it's not that much Capital but hey are we how are we going to continue to push this envelope and we need to just keep innovating on how we're going to make this more seamless for users and how are we going to lower the financial barrier to entry I think the Innovation part is is the most I mean I'm a nerd right so that's part it gets me the most excited I'm like all right what can I do with this technology that I couldn't do before right then like that the list there is pretty small at first glance but if you get creative you can find some ways to use it that hasn't been done before like in Dungeon miners the game runs Itself by the out like putting together the output of a hashing algorithm that somebody runs on their computer right and that's a really really nerdy concept what we have to do is connect your wallet hit start mining in the game and that's it right the game runs it like it's more complicated than that but like I couldn't do that in a way that would be as cool on web2 because I could say like oh I'm gonna run this hashing algorithm and stuff and it runs on my server and you just have to trust that you're like your character is going to have these randomly generated things right and the trust part of it is like yeah I take this 60 these 64 characters numbers and letters and I turn it into this thing and then that you can look at an experience and then when someone else does what I just did creates a new character their output combines with mine to make something new and it continues to like evolve as people like play the game because it takes the concept of the blockchain where block the block that comes after this one you can verify it came after this one because the hash is matched and blah blah blah and applies it in this way that on nfts it hasn't been done before and that like it was cool for me to build X I'm like oh it's Innovative it's new I haven't seen anyone do this before and you know now that it's built like what else what else can I do that's new and interesting and is something that wasn't afforded to me before right and I think that there's a lot of opportunity out there to do some really cool things that people start thinking outside the box instead of being like how can I do this web 2 thing with web3 it's more what can I do here that I couldn't do over here and how do I turn that into something that people actually want to engage with and use and build uh that's my personal prism that I view it through but there's I mean there's different ways to approach this space um and be successful but that's kind of my my core uh gut feeling is like I want to build stuff I want to do cool things I want to do Innovative things how do I do that um so I guess I mean not that you should take advice from me but if you're looking to get into space like my advice would be like just build something because if you like it and you think it's cool and if you put enough passion into it other people will jump on board I'll emphasize that yeah okay so I I think our time is up I don't want to go past but it was a pleasure sharing on the stage with with you all and um you know hearing what you guys are doing so cool thank you thank you guys for the time and uh space [Music]