How Doodles NFT Did $325M In Sales Volume

We didn't plan on, on doing another NFT sale, you know, for, for quite a while. But, uh, you know, I think there's gonna be some exciting things coming up, uh, over the next couple months because, you know, people really want a new Doodles NFT product and we're, we're ready to execute on that.

All right everyone, today we've got my buddy Evan Keast, also known as Tulip. Um, he is one of the co-founders of Doodles, which is one of the most successful NFT projects out there, um, over $325 million traded, um, and they've done, they've done more than that. I mean, look, they've, um, done some amazing stuff. And not only that, Evan is the first airport podcast that I've ever done here. So those of you that can see the video, um, Evan is on his way to Miami where it's— where, where all the stuff's happening. I'm biased, obviously. Um, and I had the pleasure of meeting Evan at a dinner, um, a couple weeks ago, or maybe a couple month or two ago. Um, great team, great guy, just great vibes with, with everything that they're doing. I hold the Doodles myself, and I wanted to introduce our audience to, um, as many, as many successful projects out there because, um, you know, more people need to get educated on this stuff. So welcome to the show, Evan. How are you?

Hey, Eric, thanks so much for having me on. Um, yeah, you can see my gate in the background, so, you know, no sleep, uh, no sleep while we're on tour. So, um, yeah, I'm doing good.

All right, amazing, man. So I want to start with your background a little bit.

Um, tell us kind of your story as it's led up to your founding of You know, about, about 3 years now ago, actually, maybe even 4, in 2019, I joined CryptoKitties and Dapper Labs. So that was kind of like where I got my start in NFTs and, and the space. And from there, I, I met Jordan Castro, who eventually became one of the co-founders with me, you know, for Doodles. And yeah, that's really where I got my start. Always been doing e-commerce and things online, like really working in kind of the creator economy, the e-commerce economy, and really just the digital economy. So that's ultimately what led me to Cryptopitties and Dapper Labs. And shortly after that, I was working at Kabam Games, which is a mobile game studio based in Vancouver. And then in 2021 is when we had the idea for Doodles and and launched Doodles. So, um, yeah, just, you know, working for one of the greatest in the space, Dapper Labs, World Blockchain, uh, CryptoKitties, and Top Shot. And, you know, eventually moved over to, uh, to doing my own thing. So it's been quite a journey, but here we are.

Awesome. And this is your first, um, entrepreneurial kind of journey, is that what it is?

My first entrepreneurial journey? No, not really. Um, like, I've always been making— I used to do, uh, independent, like app development. So I had a few apps in the App Store, you know, worked on some simple trivia games to, you know, more complex jumping platformer type games. I started a brand called Dog Emoji back in the day, Doing Things Media, doing all their web and mobile experiences. So Doing Things Media is a brand that just owns a bunch of Instagram pages. So really when, when Instagram was on, on the rise and, and you know, the creator economy was, was able to utilize that platform. I was, I was helping creators out at that time as well. So, um, yeah, I've been working in the space, I guess, the kind of creator economy space for, you know, over 10 years, and, and in, in NFTs for, you know, about 5. Um, is kind of, you know, when I first, uh, when I first stumbled upon them was CryptoPunks, actually. Um, so yeah, I mean, the space has matured and evolved so much, so since then, but at the end of the day, what I do for Doodles is what I've been doing for 10+ years, which is just brand building. So Doodles is no different. We started as our original 10,000 NFT collection, but real quickly it's turned into something so much more, which I'm really pushing to be a globally recognized brand, and we're well on our way. So very exciting times ahead.

Yeah, I think you guys have done amazing in such a short period of time, and your, your team is amazing too. The— I think the, the hiring that, that you've done, so, so kudos to you on that because it's all about team at the end of the day. Um, and so how would you describe Doodles? Like, if you were to explain to me like I'm 5, um, because I want to get people interested in it as well, so how would you describe it?

Yeah, for sure. So Doodles is a collection of 10,000 NFTs which were designed by Scott Martin, aka Burnt Toast. So if you're not familiar with NFTs, I mean, they're non-fungible tokens, very similar to, you know, in-game items that you acquire in Fortnite or skins that you get across other games. But what's different is that you actually own your doodle. Nobody can take your doodle away, not even us, the creators. The reason why is because it's on the Ethereum blockchain. So, you know, you can take it across different marketplaces, different experiences. And really what the Doodles brand is trying to do is just spread joy through artwork, installations, activations, and other ways you can use and interact with your doodle. So also owning a doodle, and this is something that we did differently, gets you access to vote on or submit proposals to our doodle bank. And what our doodle bank is, essentially just a big bag of money in which we keep reserved for the community to vote on to complete project experiments or project ideas. So a couple examples from the Doodle Bank are one project called Noodles, which released earlier last year. It is a derivative project, but they used Doodle Bank funds to start the project. So we love supporting initiatives like that one. And yeah, we're just excited to see, you know, where the future of the project takes us. The roadmap is currently basically open, except, you know, the founders, the founding team, and, and the core Doodles team, we do steer the project in which we think, you know, is, is the best for the space at the time. Um, so we released another product called Space Doodles, in which you can transform your doodle into a space doodle, uh, which was a piece of technology that Jordan utilized called wrapped NFTs. And yeah, we're just continuing to build new Web3 experiences. We are trying to build, you know, one of the best or most unique teams in Web3. So yeah, you're right, the hiring that we do is very important to us. We want to make sure folks are, you know, bought in on the future of NFTs and Web3, which is, you know, Decentralization, utilizing different platforms and being able to use your assets in fun and new, exciting ways.

I love it. I mean, your guys' aesthetic really, you know, the entire team, also what Scott's put together, it's really unique. It's different, right? And I remember, you know, when I was at dinner, Scott just mentioned not wanting to look at, not trying to draw on other people's inspiration and look at other art too much because he wants to stay true and stay unique to the Doodles brand, right? And I think that was a really interesting thing to hear. someone doing, um, do— just doing the stuff that you guys are doing, right? So I guess I'm curious, right? Because there are going to be people here that are looking at the cash, it's like $325 million in volume, like, I want to make that, right? And I would encourage everyone to think more so along like, um, to do that, it's not, it's not because Doodles was focused on making money, it was because they're focused on building a brand, right? So, um, if people are asking like, how do I make— how do I launch a successful NFT project? What was your guys' kind of secret sauce?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, to launch an NFT project is not that hard, right? Like, even the original Doodles contract is a standard ERC-721 NFT contract. So, you know, at its core, doing an NFT project is, is at this point, you know, nothing revolutionary. So really, when we looked at it, we wanted to make sure that, you know, what we were launching was a lovable IP. So the Doodles IP was, you know, what we focused on the most. Like you said, you know, Scott wasn't really looking at references and things like that. You know, he's been developing his art style over the last, you know, 20+ years. He has made amazing graphics for, you know, Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, Red Bull, all these amazing brands. So, you know, in the era of when digital identity and, you know, spending more time online was on the rise, we really just wanted to create a beautiful profile photo, right? And, you know, we thought for a really long time on every single trait that's in the collection. So yeah, we really think the original collection is just a beautiful masterpiece of creativity and joy and color and inclusivity. So yeah, really creating a strong brand was our main objective. And with Scott, myself, and Jordan, I feel like we were able to get there. Since the original launch, we have started to really try to release the best Web3 products, extending your NFT, adding utility, showing up at live events, and creating merchandise and and other ways for other folks to collect doodles at a different price point because in the current NFT market, doodles are very expensive and that's kind of our next problem to solve is how do we create a product that's accessible to millions? We want millions of people to enjoy doodles. So that's what we're laser-focused on right now and I think it'll help the the NFT space as a whole, because we need to be onboarding new users. Um, the current amount of users in, in the space right now is essentially, you know, playing hot potato with, with different projects. So, um, yeah, that's what we're really focused on is how do we onboard, you know, the next set of million crypto users, um, specifically into NFTs.

Got it. I love that. And so, like, you know, what I'm hearing too is it's really since the very beginning, it's, it's been an exercise on branding, right? Like, how do we create the best IP? And not only that, the Space Doodles— so I upgraded my Space Doodle, it's like a banana that flies in space, it's awesome.

Cute.

But it's not like you guys try to, you know, make more money out of that one. I think I just paid transaction fees there. And then, you know, you think about the stuff that you guys did at South by Southwest, right? So it seems like a very long-term branding play. You guys aren't trying to cash grab everything, you know, the merch isn't like outrageously expensive or anything. And because the reason I'm bringing this up too is because I just had a conversation with Avalanche head of strategy, And I was just talking about like what, what unique things did you guys do from like an awareness standpoint? He's like, well, you know, we gave away like a $180 million like fund over here, and then like we incentivize like blue-chip DeFi products and all that. Um, so they had a great product, but they also layered on a bunch of incentives. Um, it sounds like for you guys it's purely been on branding and it's worked really well. Um, is there anything else there, or do you think I— do you think I missed anything there?

Yeah, no, I think you got it. I mean, most of the headlines are like You know, $70 million mint, right? And, you know, that's a lot of money. So, you know, I hope those projects are putting the funds to use. For us, you know, when we did our original mint, we sold doodles for 0.123 ETH, and we actually put 420 ETH back into the doodle bank. And yeah, every time a doodle gets traded, we do take a royalty, but compared to other projects, The amount of liquidity that has been put into Doodles is very much in the collector's hands and in the Doodle Bank. So yeah, we're just stoked on building for the future of Web3, and that's it. Yeah, we didn't plan on doing another NFT sale for quite a while, but I think there's going to be some exciting things coming up. Over the next couple months because, you know, people really want a new Doodles NFT product, uh, and we're, we're ready to execute on that. So it should be coming soon.

Yeah, that's amazing. You guys will totally smash it. Here's a question from you, from like a, you know, I think you guys have done a good job, right? Like, you guys have obviously done really well for yourselves already, but you guys continue to stay focused on building and staying humble. But I think, you know, for a lot, I just— human nature, you, once you, you're able to quote unquote crowdfund this money, like there's a lot of people are just incentivized to take it and run, right? Um, so, you know, when you, you spoke about the Doodle Bank, so how are you thinking about kind of reallocating or investing kind of these funds, um, into the future, whatever you can share?

Yeah, for sure. So the most recent bit of capital that we allocated was for scaling our team. So that's the, that's the most recent proposal that's been passed. You can go take a look at it, um, in our forum if you go to doodles.app and And go to the Doodle Bank forum. But yeah, really what we're focused on is creating that superstar Web3 team. So everything from 2D animators, 3D artists, Solidity engineers. We already have a team of about 8 full-time staff and about 4 contractors. So really we're trying to get upwards of 15 to 20 people to really be competitive in the space. And yeah, really scaling the team and just being able to ship product is our number one focus right now.

Got it. I want to talk about, I mean, your team. This is good for people to know too that are listening to this. Who are you looking to hire right now? So maybe you'll get some applicants here.

Yeah, no, 100%. Doodles is very focused on, you know, how we present How we present our brand to the world. And I think the way that we do that best is through, you know, visual, audio, and experiential displays of how the brand shows up. So really we're looking for, you know, some of the highest quality creatives in the world. That's, you know, our number one focus. And we're actively interviewing a lot of people right now, but, you know, over the next month, as we continue to scale, We do have a lot of listings, or we've had a lot of listings in the past on Cryptocurrency Jobs. So that's where we're going to be posting any open opportunities at Doodles, and we'll definitely be making, you know, tweets and Discord announcements. And, you know, hiring from the community is one of our best choices that we've made. There's so much talent in the community, you know, people that own Doodles or own other NFTs. We found some really great talent just in our own community. So yeah, folks that are looking to get into the space or, you know, get a job in the space, I think, you know, just being a part of communities is really like that catalyst to familiarizing yourself with the space. So yeah, things will be opening up over the next few weeks.

Cool. Amazing. And they can go to just follow Doodles on Twitter for that?

Exactly. Yeah, Doodles on Twitter. You can join our Discord or just be checking back at doodles.app.

Cool. Yeah, selfishly, I have a question for you too. I mean, you know, it's really hard to find community managers and moderators, right? You know, did you guys just source directly from the community when you guys launched early days, or was it something else?

Yeah, we did. So our community manager right now is Mushy, and he has been in the space for, you know, since at least early 2021. And yeah, he was a community manager for a few other communities, and he's been one of our best hires. He manages the Doodle Bank, he manages the community and all of our other moderators. And yeah, he, you know, he was in— I believe he was in law school at the time and just wanted to make pivot. So, you know, there's folks from all different backgrounds and experiences that are, you know, getting into the space and getting really, really good roles and really progressing their careers because we are still, you know, early on in formulating these AAA brands of the future. So yeah, I think just getting active in the community is like the first step to finding really great opportunities.

Amazing. And, and when you think about, um, just some rapid-fire things for you real quick, um, when you think about you guys launching, obviously people talk about Discord, Twitter Spaces, Twitter, um, you know, collabs, allowlist stuff. Like, is there anything else you guys did that was kind of unique with your launch, or do you think it was just strictly brand plus the things I just mentioned? Anything I'm missing there?

Yeah, I think it, I think it's really just like, you know, reputation in the space, honesty, and like a clear vision of, of what we want to build. And, you know, that's that's building for many. We're not just building for Doodles. Every new experience that we launch, smart contracts are public and people can fork our tech. That's really what we're looking to do is make sure that everything's interoperable and everything is working in the NFT space. When you do build in that way, everybody around you begins to support you. So sharing of code and sharing of lessons learned and how to scale these Web3 teams, people are just so willing to share that knowledge in the space. And that's why we keep building towards just making sure that we're always focused on community first, you know. How do we, um, how do we better the, the collector experience, um, for Doodle holders, um, is, is our number one focus. Yeah.

There you have it, guys. Build, build a great product and serve your freaking community. All right, so, um, 3 rapid-fire questions. You could just answer me in like a sentence or 2 on these. Um, let's do that. Your investment portfolio right now, like, A— so here there's 2 parts to this question. A, Is it mostly in crypto right now? That's the first question. Yes or no?

I am like 99% in crypto. So I mean, once you are working in crypto and Ethereum becomes just a natural currency. So you're mostly Ethereum? Mostly Ethereum. Yeah. Just because that's where all the builders that we're working with, it's just, that's where we make royalties in, that's what the Doodle Bank is in. So the quickest way to activate creators or other brands or people that we partner with is working in cryptocurrency. Folks like Coinbase with Coinbase Commerce and being able to invoice now and the taxes are getting easier, I really see a bullish future for, you know, working in digital currencies. Uh, it's, it's so easy, it's so quick, and, um, you know, with more, uh, with more kind of guardrails, uh, placed on it, I think, um, you know, a lot more people are going to be comfortable with, uh, working strictly in cryptocurrency in the future.

Love it. All right, uh, favorite business book?

Just do favorite books? Do you know what I'm really into right now? Where's Waldo.

Really? Okay. Well, tell me how that came about.

I don't know. It's just, it's just inspiring. Like there's so many cool characters like spread out throughout the book and like just finding something is interesting. So I don't know. I kind of want to make like a Beatles Where's Waldo.

Yeah. Oh my God. That makes all the sense in the world. And your answer is the most fascinating answer I've gotten for that question ever. Okay. Final, final question. Favorite tool that you've added in the last year, or it could be like a favorite business tool. So you can say like an Oura Ring, or you can say like an app.

I think Figma is just like our go-to. So for any designers out there, shout out Figma.

Amazing. All right, Evan, what's, what's the best way for people to find you online?

Best way for people to find me online is Twitter. So it's just my name, Evan Geist, and Instagram, Evan Geist as well. That's it. It's all I really use now.

So. Amazing. Evan, thanks so much for doing this. We're gonna have to do one in person sometime, but this is a great primer to doodles. Thanks so much.

100%. 100%. Thanks so much for having me on.