Next-Level NFT Strategies for 2023 | Just Ape, Groovy and Danny Share Their Insights
Video Transcript:
Chris: And I am with our co-host for today, he’s actually the general manager and lead marketer for TokenMinds, Anchor. Hi Anchor.
Anchor: Hi everyone, thank you for joining this event. I’m really glad to have Groovy and Danny here, so yeah, thank you for coming to my Twitter space today. I know that it’s quite late right there Danny. It’s like 10:00 PM, right?
Danny: Yeah for me it’s about 10:00 PM, I think for Groovy it’s like 9:00 P, but let him confirm.
Groovy: Hi everyone thank you, that’s a mix-up, it’s actually 9:00 PM.
Anchor: Thank you for having you guys. So yeah let’s discuss like some NFT strategies in this event like how we do with nft projects, what kind of strategies, and what overview to expect in 2023. Yeah, Chris maybe you can continue.
Chris: Yeah so before we start guys I encourage you to share this Twitter space so that we will be discussing some very insightful things about the nft market as the nft market actually continues to grow and evolve it’s really important for us who are here in this space to stay informed and actually adapt to change it so by gathering this diverse group of experts and thoughts dot leaders in the field so we are actually hoping to gain valuable insights and inspiration for the projects, for example, you will you are an aspiring project owner. So here we are with our guests with the purpose of gathering these ideas and opinions and discussing effective Trends and strategies for nft projects so on top of that, we’ll also be discussing if you are following their project, so for example we have our guest here from just a so they will be also discussing project plans with regards to own their own projects for 2023 in order for them to you know to stay ahead of the game so with that being said okay so I think we can already start we’d like to introduce to you our guests so we have here Groovy and Danny Manny from Just Ape. Hi guys, welcome.
Danny: What’s up, what’s up, what’s up, yeah I guess I can go ahead and take it away. So I’m Danny, I am the current brand ambassador for Just Apes, which means from facing things like spaces, podcasts, and quick little exciting things before I move it over to Groovy we did drop our just chatting podcast today, it is up on YouTube we haven’t made a formal announcement but once that does come up we do you know encourage anybody to go on to those you know podcasts today or with this episode, we did talk a lot about what we are going to be doing in the future some stuff that we are you know kind of going to be accelerating in the next few months and it’s really informal so if you are interested to go ahead and check it out I’ll see if we get that tweet out by the end of the space I think or pin It on top but yeah man it’s been you know really exciting going into this right now but yeah and Groovy is actually the current co-founder of Just Ape, so I don’t know if you want to take it away right now.
Groovy: Yeah hey everyone, yeah like Danny said I’m Groovy I’m one of the OG co-founders of Just Ape, I primarily handle a lot of business development some of the creative decisions and whatnot pretty much you know steer the ship of Just Ape but yeah that’s kind of a little bit about me I guess for some background I was formerly a software engineer working in crypto just kind of really gotten invested in you know the nft ecosystems while I was working as a software engineer and ultimately I decided to kind of just you know leave that web2 life behind and kind of come on into web3 full time so yeah you know we founded just a about six seven months ago we’re on Solana but yeah now we’re kind of you know kind of expanding looking at to expand a multi-chain like I think you know like the host just mentioned you know it’s we’re kind of out of time right now where if you really want to go you know it’s kind of you know I’d say it definitely there’s pain in being a maxi, there’s so much room to grow across all ecosystems and I think we’re kind of at this point in time where everyone’s kind of seen that stuff happen especially with you know the recent announcement by utes Frank D’ God’s going to go into east I think we had a very interesting time for all ecosystems and you know we kind of have been in the past couple months where we’ve seen kind of this meshing of Ethan Solana come together plus you know all the other ecosystems out there so yeah that’s a little bit about me and a little bit about you know what we’re doing this year.
Chris: Yeah we’re really excited to hear your thoughts and insights on our topic for today. So thank you, guys, for joining us, so to everyone let’s engage in an open and interactive dialogue and learn from each other to help us drive the nft industry forward.
Anchor: Hi Groovy, Danny, really excited right to hear that he also travels in every heart actually to actually realize and achieve your next milestone or a personal road map right and then so first question so what are your opinions right in general because this stuff is mainly talking about the 2023 right the nft overview the market overview so what is the appearance on the current marketing situation and are there any specific challenges or opportunities that you see in the market right now?
Groovy: Yeah absolutely I can go ahead and speak to this, you know I think up until recently you know we were kind of at this very precarious time you know in the crypto market with you know the whole FTX collapse and whatnot and you know I think we’re kind of balancing back from that I would I wouldn’t go so far and say you know we’re completely out of the out of the hole yet right I think it’s kind of important to look at you know the macroeconomic situations of the world, when you’re kind of looking at these ecosystems and to kind of see or getting a sense of where they’re actually headed but you know you even so you know with the whole precarious time I think you know what we one of the things we kind of saw firsthand is you know there’s kind of these core communities that are staying within the nft ecosystems and with this kind of bear market that’s been happening you know one of the things that we’re kind of we can see with absolute certainty is there’s these core communities that are not going nowhere right they really believe in the tech they believe in you know the communities behind the tech they believe in in the use cases behind blockchain technology so we’re kind of you know while we are going through kind of a tougher time right now we’re really seeing that there are true Believers out there who are going to kind of stick to their guns with blockchain technology with nft ecosystems with these businesses that are kind of rising out from across various blockchains so I think it’s kind of been a positive when you when you really look at how certain you know that that everyone isn’t just going to kind of you know abandon ship so I think you know regardless of how things have gotten there they’re kind of definitely turning for the better and I think as you know time goes on even so far as things have been getting better over the past months the past couple weeks we’ve definitely seen more participants who have been coming back to the ecosystem which is you know it’s good for growth right and as I was I was kind of touching on second ago we’re seeing more businesses more projects kind of really start to think about what it means to grow and what it means to explore other chains in terms of growing there I’m just kind of spreading you know that business that IP across as many avenues of value as you possibly can so I think we’re kind of at a very interesting time where you know 2023 can be can set up to be a quite a big quite a big way for growth across all ecosystems so I think as time goes on you know it’ll things will keep looking positive again as I mentioned you know earlier there’s no way to know things for certain right so it’s not financial advice but I think we’re a kind of a very good time after just going you know through one of the most the biggest times of uncertainty these past couple months and I think yeah it’s turning more to positive every day so yeah excited to see where 2023 leads.
Chris: Yeah thank you for that Groovy, so yeah I agree, 2023 is really an exact exciting really exciting time, especially during the start of 2023 I’ve seen that the market is already picking up, so hopefully it continues that way as well so how about you Danny any insights about this one?
Danny: Yeah definitely I mean it’s kind of just you know kind of going about what Groovy said, I’m just kind of going back to like it is really you know a pivotal time for you know crypto for web3 and just the economy in general, and I’m really excited to see you know how different projects adapt including just Abe and I think that you know with such a runway with you know with a project that has you know so many ideas so many plans, I don’t think that there’s any or there is that would ever be you know a better time to build I mean you always hear about stuff like building during the bear, building in the bear, but people don’t really understand what that means until you know they actually see it come to light and I think that you know these next few months this this next year is going to be very pivotal to a lot of these projects that are on the blockchain and seeing you know which ones you know strive which ones you know strive even harder than other ones and which ones you know come out and maybe they don’t have a lot and I honestly think that Just Ape fits in perfectly with those that are going to strive a lot harder than other ones reason being is you know the actual activations that we have planned you know the different things that we have planned you know these different you know juicy aspects of the projects that we’re just gonna you know start pumping out and making a lot bigger I’m really excited to see how that happens you know playing out in this you know this this very like Groovy said like you said this very pivotal moment in web3 so yeah that’s kind of like my insight on that yeah.
Chris: Thank you, and actually I observed that for Just Ape, you have a really strong community as well so as Groovy has been mentioning that okay the supporters you know some are leaving but some are coming back but then for Just Ape, I really seen that you have really such strong community actually I’m seeing a trend right now that I think you have been doing with your communities like this is my ape, there are many like it but this one is mine, so something like no similar to in the movie that I like this is my rifle there are many like it but this is myself I think this is really cool initiative as well then some really physical merchandise you’re also launching them, and even some coffee products you know I’ve seen this yeah can you shed light more into these community initiatives that we’re seeing so it just goes to show how strong it Just Ape community is right now despite the bear market.
Danny: Yeah definitely and that you know just to kind of like highlight a little bit on our community, like these initiatives these things that the community does have been like very strong since the beginning, and you know it’s one thing and I don’t want to you know sound pretentious or cocky about this, but it’s one thing to you know see like a community that reads hard that you know really does go hard for their project but ours just is like a whole different level, and these people they’ll stick you know anything up for us like they’ll do anything for us, they help us out with everything and so we really do you know like to kind of activate these things for the community, and I think you know one thing that I do pride ourselves on especially at Just Ape is making sure that we have the means and the rights to you know actually be able to empower our community you know help them out with whatever initiatives they want to push and that’s something that you know I don’t see a lot of in other projects and I think that you know just kind of going along the line of where we are going and the things that we have been doing for them it does really reflect like reflect in the community and you know it’s again like when you’re when you’re making an nft project or any kind of project in general like the number one thing that you have to have is that community trust, that community bonding and I think you know with the things that we have done we have definitely gained that and they trust us 100 percent and you know it’s it really does you know just kind of bring joy to us because it’s like well that’s great like if we had your backing we know that you know we’re unstoppable that there’s nothing that can stop us that we can just keep going and it’s going to be it’s gonna be pretty cool like we were talking about earlier today you know just kind of seeing like how this year is going to be planning out or panning out it’s gonna be interesting to see you know what our community is and how they actually react to this.
Groovy: Yeah absolutely, I mean I mean just kind of jumping on there I think one of the things you mentioned was you know having like coffee having you know a fashion apparel line so you know when we kind of started you know the business we had this idea of what we wanted to do the direction we want to go and you know, all these all these alternative you know revenue streams that we wanted to go ahead and get out there right it was It was kind of you know from day one with us it’s always been the idea that we never want to be a project or a business is just kind of relying on incoming royalties right, that’s it doesn’t really seem sustainable as a means to grow a project so it’s really not something we wanted to kind of lean into, so with that in mind you know we obviously want to kind of work across different verticals to see where we could expand and where it made sense, so with you know with the passion apparel it was like okay we can do this you know we create high quality fashion apparel, everything that we create is OEM I’m down in a fabric that’s chosen for a particular attire so with that mind you know one of the one of the things that that tied into that was how can we reward the community for you know holding their nfts, holding their digital collectibles, so with us you know it was pretty early on part of the community one of the things that they wanted was you know we decided early on as well when we were starting the project we didn’t want to do any kind of token based mission staking system we basically just did want to kind of create this regulatory gray area where we’re kind of dispensing this token and there’s a liquidity pool so that alternative was something that was more a little bit based on say web2 a loyalty program, if you will basically as an ape holder what you could do is you would go and stake your ape and throughout our seasons you would basically earn these rewards throughout the season so there was tangible rewards, digital rewards, things like Amazon gift cards there was someone who won like a ten thousand dollar bike at the end of last season but yeah you know so that that really kind of tied into the different verticals that we can explore right we really want to kind of look at these products as we create as a means of like oh well we can create a revenue stream and then we can also give these products to our holders for free right, and that’s kind of how our whole you know reward loyalty program exists it kind of exists to you know reward holders reward the community for participating whether it’s things like you know I’m spreading the word on Twitter there was even achievements for say the reward system say if you like posted all your merch on Twitter tagged us and that kind of stuff so yeah you know I’d say at the heart of everything we do it’s it ties into how can we deliver more value to our holders whether it be tangible whether it be something that’s digital so yeah that’s I think that you know with that kind of mindset moving forward it’s really helped us kind of foster this really core strong community that you know really is willing to go to bat for us and you know it kind of goes without saying that we wouldn’t be anywhere without them you know down to down to all the you know the comments on everything that we produce there’s so many people who post all their fashion apparel some people post their coffee so that kind of stuff just helps us out immensely right. And essentially quite another great way to market everything that we’re putting out there right we basically give all the holders these things for free with season one just ending we had over a thousand orders from everyone who was able to claim all their hoodies all their hats, all their t-shirts, all this stuff for free, all they had to do was pay to ship so yeah you know it’s worked really well to kind of go that route and get these quality products and goods out to holders and they definitely seem to enjoy this different kind of reward system that’s definitely all our web2 right and at the core essence of everything we do we essentially want to onboard more the ecosystem so it makes sense for us to kind of to go with something that’s more relatable to say an audience that isn’t crypto natives and it’s yeah it’s definitely been working well for us.
Chris: Yeah, I agree, for me personally I think it’s really vital nowadays to have you know good business models apart from you know like business models generate revenue for the project apart from the mint and secondary sales so if before it’s all working for those kinds of projects which gets revenues from this, for now, I think it’s really important that apart from those we have this business model so really good for Just Ape yeah. In relation to that my question so for you guys in your observation so what are the new trends or strategies that in nft projects have been working on or building on in the nft market and which are the previous strategies that are no longer working for you, so are there any particular technologies or platforms that you actually see as particularly promising?
Groovy: Yeah I mean I guess I can go ahead and jump on this one, so you know something that you know with this whole reward system we kind of had this opportunity to kind of not only try something new and different on Solana but also kind of see how it kind of resonated with the you know the Solana community here and one of the things you know when you when you look at different ecosystems, there’s definitely kind of a different audience to each ecosystem right first of all I could say you know you definitely more have kind of like this degen culture, people that kind of like might enjoy gambling a little bit more, so it’s been interesting to kind of you know deviate from the whole you know token meta the passive income meta that was kind of booming whenever we launched it’s been interesting to see you know how receptive the communities are to it right so the cool thing about you know one of the things we did is after we finished season one, we kind of put out these fillers or took pretty much surveys from our communities to kind of see how receptive they were to the ideas that we presented during season one so you know we asked things like you know what did you like during season one what didn’t you like what would make it more appealing for you as a holder you know questions that were very much along those lines one of the things that we kind of really saw that is as I mentioned earlier you know there’s that Core Essence of people that really who participated in the system and kind of saw, how it worked knew what they would get they really enjoyed it right so they really liked it you know to step away from the passive income meta and you know it’s so it’s been interesting to see how well it’s received on Solana as a whole, but one of the things you know whenever we launch we definitely assed that it would be a little bit bigger right we assed kind of this this ideas to kind of maybe pop a little bit more in the ecosystem, and it didn’t really seem like they did so you know that kind of leads on to what you asked is you know well what’s the next step how are you guys going to kind of evolve and adapt right because if anything the way we’re running Just Ape right now is we’re running very lean and when I say lean, you know we have small teams and we do that so that we can move fast right we want to be able to pivot and kind of adapt when necessary and one of the ways we’re doing that and we’ve kind of we haven’t officially announced anything yet we’ve kind of teased it but one of the ways we’re doing that is you know we’re looking at going multi-chain. So a couple of months back you know we kind of got in contact with polygon and really want to kind of see you know how I guess at the core essence of that thought behind that process was how can we move closer to bigger brands to work with right we want to be on a chain that’s closer to them we want to be on this tech that they already utilize and we want to position ourselves to just ultimately be closer next to them right so yeah. You know we started talking to Polygon and you know just kind of discussing ideas you know telling them our intentions what we want to do how we want to grow the business the direction we want to go the type of partners we want to make, and that’s something that you know we we’re still currently we have a lot planned and I just we haven’t announced anything yet so I can’t say exactly you know the direction that we’re going but you know one of the things that we I can say is you know what we do see right now on Polygon is we see these huge conglomerates that are that are choosing polygon as a place to make their intro into web3 whether it be projects or companies like Disney whether it be companies like Adidas, whether it be companies like Nike, you know we’re seeing a choice being made in terms of where they want to launch and that that really kind of you know that that made us rethink our strategy in terms of well you know ultimately we want to do things or be close to these brands. Well ultimately we need to take steps to get there so you know as I mentioned we started different conversations with the Polygon team who has been extremely helpful and eager to help us which has been really nice, and yeah you know we’re definitely we have a lot planned some of which we’ll be announcing this week but yeah in order to grow we really see as I mentioned earlier in the conversation we really see it’s kind of a no-brainer for us to kind of expand and you know to reach for more market share, especially on the chain like Polygon where there’s an obvious gap for you know pfp collections and what it means to be a pfp collection. Nowadays right just you know you think back like six months ago maybe even like eight months ago there’s a time where a pfp collection was just essentially a profile picture right there’s no utility or there was no utility behind that particular profile picture but we’re definitely moving in a different direction where you know people want to see these different kinds of Integrations even with just pfp collections whether it be like I mentioned you know what we’re doing is you know royalty programs whether it be physical Integrations whether it be something that people really you know goes just whether it’s just their identity. Yeah, we’re kind of seeing I think a kind of growth or expansion of what it means to be a pfp collection and you know with that kind of evolution we want to make sure that we’re best situated to kind of best grow and scale up as we can and yeah I’d say you know the course is what that means in terms of our strategy is going multi-chain.
Anchor: Okay, thank you Groovy, that’s really impressive, and with all the plans for like what you need to say right loyalty system more utilities for your project nft, and also right to communicate with the community and all these kinds of like plans. So we also know you already started from last year, like there were actually a lot of like all the also other nft projects. So can you actually share with us what project styled your project to success and what are the unique things that you did that are different from other projects and where there are adding specific strategies or tactics that you used to stand out in the market?
Groovy: Yeah I mean yeah you know I think we when we launched, we’re kind of going through this hype meta of when there was this really big crossover of you know Ethereum players coming on to Solana, so we kind of saw this really interesting time for all this crossover and also at the time we launched there was I swear there was about I think four other projects launching that week there was also you know a couple projects that launched before that week so it was just a massive time for the space but yeah you know in terms of you know what we did to kind of or at least what I felt we did kind of set ourselves apart is you know we were we pretty much came out right instead this is what we’re gonna do this is everything that we’re gonna base the business around, this is what we want to you know do to get closer to say bigger brands, so yeah you know down right to our actual mint, what we did is we had this we launched in a really interesting ways you know we had a live launch event where all the team flew down to Austin Texas and we threw a live launch event that was in parallel with the Solana hacker houses, at that time you know Magic Eden was also a co-sponsor for the event so it was a really cool way to kind of launch our project you know mint out and then immediately have that event right after that kind of planning that whole ordeal like it was it was a lot more difficult you know than I expected kind of just being like oh we’re gonna do a live launch event it’s gonna happen you know a couple hours after mint, so it was basically. I remember when we mentioned you know we had the whole team at Airbnb the mint went was going well and then we were like okay well now we have to go set up for the event and then yeah you know even down to prom part of the promises we made is you know we knew we want to do fashion apparel just because it was it was tying into you know all the network that we have we want to make sure that we utilize all the team members, and we brought in some really good people you know people that worked in the music industry, developing or selling creating clothes, there as well creating fashion brands there, so one of one of the ways that we also added to that uniqueness of our live launch event is we had our first piece of fashion apparel available for free for whoever attended the event we didn’t have enough for everybody but we definitely had you know more than a handful and yeah when we opened the doors to the event all that stuff was gone within like 10 minutes so it was it was cool to see you know kind of like that first drop that coincided with you know live launch with the entire team present to meet everybody who you know people who minted people who are just interested in learning about the project the business and then it was it was also like it was pretty awesome to kind of tie that you know that first deliverable to you know that actual live launch event so you know from there I’d say you know one of the things that I at least you know that I thought made a standout is you know we kind of came out with a set of ideas of you know like I mentioned earlier this is what we’re going to do in the next few months and you know after we said we’re gonna do that we went ahead and did it right with our like what I mentioned earlier our loyalty program there the whole reward system you know that was kind of born out of you know community sentiment in the community asking for some sort of rewards program for holding the nft so you know we we’re like okay yeah we’ll go ahead, and do that we came out with this whole you know system that made sense for us made sense for the community so it was It was kind of nice to kind of go through that whole process you know see what that system actually looks like it is very like a battle pass kind of like video game based, so it was interesting to see how that you know went with the first season see how that was receipted and yeah just kind of finished all those deliverables that were accompanied to that season right I’m handling all the fashion apparel production the Fulfillment worldwide launching different products like coffee just really kind of exploring you know where we can actually take VIP and you know what where it makes sense to expand so I I’d say yeah that’s definitely you know one of the one of the more interesting things that I think that we’ve done since launch even with the season one I mean we launched about I’d say like eight to nine different products through our fashion apparel and that was just our season one right so it’s been really nice to kind of hit that finish line and be like okay you know we did all this we kind of followed. I don’t want to necessarily say a road map one of you know when we watched the product we didn’t really come out with the roadmap in that was for a few different reasons we didn’t essentially want to put ourselves in a position where we said we were going to deliver something and then you know go two months down the line it didn’t really make a sense for us to continue on that mission. So we wanted to be more fluid and adaptive as I mentioned earlier and yeah, so yeah it’s been really nice just kind of getting to that first season finishing that first season and now you know looking at what we can do with other seasons in the future seeing what ideas really hit or what ideas really resonated with the community and kind of expanding on the ones that didn’t or I’m sorry expanding on the ones that did and kind of doing away with the ones that didn’t and one of the things that we’ve seen is there’s kind of like you know we’ve definitely noticed and I guess it’s noticeable in any nft ecosystems right you have what you would consider active holders and passive holders. Some people just want to hold on to these assets and watch them raise in value other people want to be more active with their communities and actually we take part in stuff and one of the things that pieces of feedback that we got was some people did want the reward system to be a little bit more engaging and say a little bit more gamified, so it’s really something we want to do you know whenever we get to say season three or season two, but yeah I’d say you know at the core of everything we do you know we really want to do things that are engaging and interesting for our community that also contribute or help us to you know Drive older value even more so I think as time goes on it’ll you know we have this kind of especially with the idea of going multi-chain, we’re kicking up some pretty interesting ideas on you know how can we set ourselves apart how can we do things in an interesting and meaningful way that makes sense of you know not only our mission but also you know the mission of say growing all ecosystems and I think 2023 would be really good for what we want to do at least so far as we know no one else is kind of you know hitting on some of these ideas so it’ll be very interesting to see you know how well these ideas hit this season the next season but I think for the most part they’re going to hit really well so excited World goes out and start making those announcements.
Danny: Yeah definitely and I and I do kind of like really quickly just want to put in something really small but just kind of going back to what he was saying about the live launch event this is something that you know I kind of do want to highlight especially you know with recent events a lot of the actual you know fashion items that we have regarding you know the first season are rolling out and we are getting tons of positive feedback on them and I do want to say that that kind of like highlighted just you know the quality of the things that we had put out and that you know we do own credit to embroidery boy who is our in fashion, excuse me, our in-house embroiderer you know he is the one that designed all the merchandise and all the you know the fashion items and he really killed it with that and I do want to say that that was something that we did pride ourselves on that we do pride ourselves on because again it’s about this identity that we did have that we do have and you know just something as simple as fashion items that comes out to be you know something that’s super great in the background super great that’s gonna you know be coming out and you know really crediting us with that and so I do kind of want to highlight on that because I feel like we haven’t highlighted a lot on the on the fashion items or anything that we have done there but just yeah I just wanted to put in my two cents.
Chris: Oh yeah, thank you for sharing that really cool strategies and tactics that you’ve done in the past. Yeah, but for me right now it’s 2023 right, so I’m really excited about projects like you have been successful so far I’ve been excited to know what are your actual project plans for 2023 example, so for people who have been following just if so maybe this could be alpha information. I’m not sure if you already announced some of the things that will be mentioned for this question but yeah Danny, Groovy how do you actually plan to stay ahead of the curve and continue to innovate in this space, what are your project plans?
Groovy: Absolutely yeah you know I can go ahead and expand on this, I’ll share some Alpha you know I think I’ve definitely seen a few spaces you know I have mentioned you know the whole idea to go multi-chain obviously I’ve mentioned that you know we’ve been speaking to Polygon for a couple months now and you know one of you know one of the intentions when I started these conversations is I want to kind of dip my feet in right just kind of see how what the temperature was like on Polygon you know you hear you see so much community sentiment in terms of you know there’s nobody on Polygon there’s just so much different kind of fun, and you know whenever there’s thought I essentially see it as an opportunity right especially when you look at the funds that’s occurred with Polygon you know there’s different kinds of I’ve seen things like people say you know there’s no one on Polygon and for me that that screams opportunity it’s like okay well there’s nobody on Polygon why how can we get people on Polygon what can we do on Polygon to make people want to go participate there how can we you know how can we help grow that block chain right, so yeah you know with that with that mind that kind of you know I had a whole host of ideas and as I mentioned I want to kind of just dip my feet in there and you know we were like okay let’s start looking at you know scalability how can we just do something smaller and then build up from there how can we potentially you know see if this is right for us to go in the direction of Gen2, maybe doing Gen2 on Polygon that would kind of be cool you know see how things work so I you know I spoke to the devs that we work with and essentially kind of you know what if we rebuilt everything that we’ve already built on Solana what if we go to a less saturated environment and kind of you know sell all those services business to business there and it just it seems like a big opportunity and yeah you know going back to well what are the next plans you know one of the things that we’re currently looking to roll out soon or we’re hard at work right now is we’re looking at doing a smaller collection on Polygon at first and seeing kind of how things to go there and that’ll be tied into you know right now we have the interim season enabled for just a holders so what that means is the season between now and season two and we’re looking at ways to kind of you know reward those holders with or at least take part in what we’re doing on polygon through being stick during the interim so there will be different ways to kind of maybe get a white less spot for you know that that smaller collection that we’re doing on Polygon but you know the whole context of that that particular drop is you know to kind of explore Polygon in a meaningful way right so part of the way that we’re doing that is you know we’re kind of securing partners for this first drop and I guess I can’t say more than that I will say you know since we started this idea and started pushing forward with this initiative we’ve already got a few partners some pretty big Partners as well that are big in the web2 space, and it’ll be kind of a cool way to kind of explore like I mentioned you know doing something on a smaller scale seeing how receptive it is you know not only to our own community but to the Polygon community as well to you know all the communities of all the partners that we’re working with we just we’re doing things in a really interesting way and I think it’s kind of going to be interesting to see how we know how that’s received whether it be you know by other communities that are also taking part in it or by our own community or by the actual community radio employed on one of the things you know through this whole initiative is we’ve been connected with so many different businesses and projects from Polygon, so it’s been interesting to kind of you know talk to these people and you know see what their intentions on the chain are how that how those kind of values align with what we’re trying to do in our mission so yeah it’s I’d say that’s kind of you know the most that we revealed about you know the smaller collection that we’re doing it’s expected in q1, and it’s called AAW which is an abbreviation we haven’t really came out and said what that stands for but yeah that’s kind of the gist of it I I’m super excited about you know the that particular collection the art that we’re using for that collection kind of the this IP they were all mashing together it’s kind of a really interesting concept and yeah interested to see how it lands and you know how well it’s received but yeah super excited for it.
Anchor: Okay thank you Groovy which other plans are mostly in the New Year 2023? By the way I have another question so you know right you know in the nft market industry so for each project right they are not really competitors, but more like they can collaborate together rights and the drive, actually another nft market cap actually rise to boost within the industry so in this case we also see always some new Nifty projects right maybe some projects, they already have a team they have not really clear idea about what kind of an empty project they want to set up like any utilities and also in the last period of the bearish market right it’s also they quite hesitant to actually just step into this game or something but for recently since we see the pickup for the crypto market, we also expect a very promising and a good future for the nft industry growing like from right now the next years, but for the new nft projects launching like in this year as well, what is your suggestion, like what do you have for them to be successful, and what are some key things to keep in mind when starting a new project in that nft space?
Groovy: Yeah, I’d say you know some of the biggest ideas that come to mind, I think you know it pays a lot to have a working product right in whatever niche you know whatever niche you want to launch in, whatever niche your business, your project is in, I think if you have you know working products that you know it that that goes a mile right? You know I mentioned you know one of the ways that we launched is you know we knew we want to do fashion apparel so we launched with you know we did the live launch event which was also part of our you know not our roadmap, but say you know some of the things that we would be doing to kind of bring more brand exposure to the project to the business towards everything so doing those two things kind of coming out these products, distributing these products say at our first live launch event you know we already had that that immediate market feedback in terms of you know the stuff that you’re delivering is high quality that was you know kind of the instant feedback from that first apparel drop so seeing that that feedback immediately and then you know kind of going through that same manufacturing product, or that manufacturing process when it came to creating all our fashion apparel you know we knew we knew that we needed to kind of adhere to this high level of quality we knew if we could do deliver all those things that we were creating, that you know they would hit really well and like Danny was mentioned you know with the end of the season we’ve been seeing a lot more people get all their packages worldwide, and that’s kind of the consistent theme about everything that we’re producing is you know the quality is great, and that that ties into say you know the products that we’re selling at it’s a lot of spaces who’s one of our partners we’re selling real products in Hudson yards in New York City, as well as in Wynnewood in Miami and you know that’s kind of the thing that you know babe who is the CEO of Solana spaces will send me you know screenshots of some of the closing notes every now and then from the store and that’s kind of the consistent theme from people that go visit these stores and buy their products is they always comment on the quality right and I think that kind of for us that’s you know the that’s one of our revenue streams so for us that means a lot to know that you know we want to create a sustainable web 2 business that’s obviously you know we’re rooted in web3 so it makes sense for us to kind of you know we want to expand this business over to web2. At the end of the day you know it is a business so part of our business model is to you know fill up the treasury and to do that you know we need to sell more of these products, and you know one of the ways that that’s gonna work for us is you know that that ties back into what we want to deliver quality products and we want to make sure that these products that people buy are you know they’re worth it in terms of you know what a consumer sees, because ultimately you know while we are you know a crypto native based company we do want the extra market share and from non-crypto natives from web2 right and that’s you know that ties back into going to explore like Polygon, where you know there’s so many big businesses there and if we can you know integrate more with them then it just it makes sense for us in terms of scaling up, growing our brand growing the business growing in the IP, so yeah I’d really say you know whatever niche you’re going for you really just kind of have to be you know more entangled with the systems that already exist integrate more with other projects with other businesses collaborate more I’d say that’s kind of the biggest piece that’s you know really helped us get to where we are now is the collaboration right you know from there early on premium stage we were talking to Diesel, we were talking to Anheuser-Busch. Anheuser-Busch actually co-sponsored our event in Lisbon as part of their crypto times project so yeah collaborations you know will always take you far in collaborations with I’d say with other projects or other businesses that really have the same kind of vision aligned as you with us you know we want this to be something that goes on for years and years right we want to create a sustainable business, and it’s interesting when you actually think about these kinds of ideas in the sense of a business world right because there’s like an absurd amount of startups that typically fail when they you know whenever they proceed or not that many startups actually succeed. So I’d say really you want to you know do as much as you can to collaborate with other big projects with other big names and collaborate in a way that’s you know that’s meaningful as opposed to just doing something that’s shallowness or without substance, I’d say that’s definitely got us to you know some of the big places that we are we have dinner that we’ve gotten to our collaboration with Solana spaces, where we’re an official partner. Solana has really helped us a lot to, help you know get a lot of eyes on our fashion brand you know I get a lot of eyes out of my coffee products, yeah collaborations just mean so much and yeah I’d say the last thing is kind of you know don’t come out with the road map and you know it might not it might not be a big people might not be a big fan of this idea but I think it’s like you know when you come out with a road map you really kind of pigeon yourself into doing something that may not be favorable in a couple months’ time especially if you know you’re planning too far ahead I think there’s a lot of value in having you know like the plan A, plan B, plan C, having all these contingency plans but don’t set yourself up to just kind of commit to one course if anything you know we’ve seen in these nft ecosystems even in crypto ecosystems is the space just moves so fast right and you never want to be somewhere where you shouldn’t say like you know if the ideas aren’t hitting you don’t want to be committed to something that’s just not going to bring much value to the project to the business to your community so yeah don’t commit to something that’s just like too far in the future because otherwise you know you might put yourself on the wrong course but yeah that’s pretty much all of it.
Chris: Yeah I agree with that actually with the roadmap thing, because you know in this space, for example, you set up a roadmap and you put it up for example in your Discord, then you did not actually hit the date targets, so it will be a cause of this appointment or somehow a FUD for some of the community members right so they will say oh they promised this but they actually did not or was not able to deliver what they said.
Groovy: So yeah absolutely you know that’s something that we also learned pretty early on you know you have these you know these strict deadlines and you know the community’s asking you know what’s next, what’s next? So you have to find like a nice balance between you know what’s next and what actually you know when it’s actually coming so in terms of everything that you know we’re doing this year the way we’re kick-starting this year off we’ve been very tight-lipped about everything we just don’t want to over commit ourselves or you know commit ourselves to certain deadlines because you know we have had issues in the past where you know we’ve had to delay things like shipping our staking system for you know testing and we just want to make sure you know when things are ready to release we’ll go ahead and drop official announcements. There’s been so many people in Discord you know every day who will ask about you know what what’s next for season two or when season two and it’s like well you know just wait for an official announcement just have confidence that you know we’re planning out but you know we’re not ready to officially announce anything yet and that’s primarily because you know there’s just so many moving parts to having something finally solidified or having plans fit in perfectly and you know before those things happen we just don’t want to kind of come off premature so it’s been it’s been interesting to find that happy medium and kind of you know give those little teasers when we can just to kind of you know at least give the community something to let them know there’s something big coming but yeah it’s always interesting in terms of you know say not saying not saying enough and saying too much but you know I think, I think we’ve been definitely doing better in terms of you know communicating that and yeah super excited for you know the next couple weeks.
Chris: Yeah and in the end great things take time, you know to create, like you don’t want to release some half-baked products, so it will be like just a mediocre product if it’s half big. So great things really take time, for example, I have a question for example, I have a project right, so one of the biggest challenges that new projects have been facing is for example, I am a new project then okay I will follow the suggestion of Groovy upon hearing this Twitter space like okay we will do collabs then the challenge is of course with this different projects there are a lot of people contacting them so how do I actually number one, of course, projects who will call up build who you would ask to call up with we always check your initial attraction or initial members how strong your community is, etc. So for startup projects, how do they actually make that good enough, so that you know when they request for some collaborations they will actually get approved or something? But what are the insights that you can share about that?
Groovy: Yeah absolutely you know I think that that is definitely kind of you know, that’s a tough one right because it’s the most important thing or the hardest thing you know in essence is to get that initial audience with certain projects, with certain individuals right and one of the ways you know we’ve been very successful is you know when we work with anybody, I really like to know who the individuals are who’s behind the team you know what is your web2 experience, or what is your professional career like because that really gives me a sense of you know what this person’s here for, or what the team is here for you know what do you what are your long-term intentions you know that kind of stuff. And I think kind of having clarity on that kind of thing really at least for me is kind of helped me connect more or help me connect better to individuals one of the things that you know whenever I do try to make connections with anybody with whether it be a web2 business or whether it be you know another project is I kind of and you know it’s probably not a popular article about things but I kind of want to you know before we even go anywhere about having a discussion or even like starting a new relationship with any particular business or entity is you know, we, I like to do video calls right and I think that kind of goes a long way to kind of add a hand touch to you know to the actual to the relationship itself and that in itself as you know any pretty much any time where I’ve tried to make a connection or develop a relationship you know that initial first call, jumping on video has been incredibly helpful to pushing those relationships forward right? One of the you know when I think I mentioned earlier when we were first starting, we had started conversations with Diesel to kind of you know how can we do something collaborate we did a few like shallow like you know Twitter posts social like engagement posts with each other whatnot, and one of the other ways we kind of push forward that relationship was I had you know jumped on a call with their partnership manager and we just you know talk to him about you know what their intentions were in the ecosystem what we were doing let them know you know some of our ideas and how we were approaching different kinds of problems and yeah from that that relationship kind of took off we haven’t really done anything more in terms of like anything officially, but it’s a relationship that we still have that you know we’ll reach out to them every now, and then just to see if there’s any kind of synchronicity in terms of if it makes sense for them to do anything on say Solana or whatnot, but yeah you know just jumping on a call and whether it be video or our Audio Only I’d say that’s it’s been a really good way for me for me to make those connections obviously everyone’s different I imagine you know, I definitely get it how hard it can be whenever you’re just starting a project it’s incredibly difficult to actually make those connections but I do say you know when you first started a project you do kind of have to start building some something right I think that goes back to one of the things I mentioned is you know if you have a working product before you officially launch, that really gives people confidence in in what you’re willing to do on the ecosystem right, as opposed to just kind of being like vaporware, I think that that speaks of voles if you’re if you’re already building and already delivering these kinds of values before you even meant out that that goes a long way.
Chris: Yeah thank you for those beautiful insights Groovy. So yeah I think that would be all for my questions and how about you Anchor?
Anchor: Yeah for me it’s all covered. Thank you Groovy, Danny.
Chris: Yeah with that, we’ll be opening our stage for any questions coming in from our audience. So we have Groovy and Danny here from Just Ape, so one of the successful projects in Solana. So any questions from our audience guys, just feel free to request to speak, so you are all welcome here, and don’t be shy just in case, so we are a small group today so feel free to just ask, and if your example you have any questions with regards to the Just Ape project, if you’re a follower of the Just Ape project, yeah feel free to ask us well, so since the founders and the key opinion leaders of Just Ape are here.
Danny: Hello guys, yeah, definitely, I mean if nobody wants to come up it’s okay, I mean again guys our Discord is public, so if anybody wants to join in and ask any questions later on they are more than welcome to go ahead, but yeah guys I do want to say thank you, guys, for you know having us up here and you know allowing us to speak with you guys and speak with anybody here who wants to learn more about Just Ape. Oh my God, guys, it’s been a pleasure and honestly like just talking with you guys you know the past weeks in the DMS it’s been you know kind of a mission to get this going but I’m glad that we did get it going but anyways guys yeah we really do appreciate it. So it’s okay if nobody does want to come up again. We have Discord open, and our Twitter’s public, our Twitter is open if you guys want to ask us questions there, feel free.
Chris: Yeah and also Just Ape has their own podcast as Danny has mentioned earlier, so then yeah just chapping, so it’s out now so with Crypto Kenny and Danny man. So yeah you can actually join in and tell in that podcast as well.
Danny: Yeah we have it open to you know anybody who does want to come in, anybody you know with interesting ideas any interesting ideas for in a web3 crypto, doesn’t have to just be about Just Ape, again we do tie it down to you know some strategies that we do have for Just Ape, so it’s pretty cool just you know seeing how we do roll it out but again don’t feel shy that you know to ask to come up on the podcast again we just did release our first episode it’s actually with Groovy just you know about just taping what we’ve been doing for these past few months weeks, but yeah I mean it’s gonna be pretty exciting to see how that goes especially with you know the podcast seeing you know where we branch out from there as well.
Chris: Yeah, so if there are no more questions from the audience, so we’d like to thank you Groovy and Danny for coming in today. So really good insights come in from experience and successful projects such as yours. So thank you very much and also I would like to thank Anchor for co-hosting with me today in this space.
Anchor: Thank you, thank you Groovy, Danny for joining, and I thank you, everyone.