Ivan Santana - What Goes Into Launching 10,000 NFTs At Once

Boom, boom, Boom. Boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey, welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Today we are talking NFTs. Today we have Ivan Santana from West Coast NFT on the show. And if you're not familiar with west coast nft, they've been behind the scenes of some of the biggest 10,000 generative NFT projects in the NFT space. Some of the projects they've been behind have been projects like Doodles, which is a very, very popular project MFers by a really popular NFT artist named Sartoshi. They've been behind some of these massive launches. And on this episode we talked to Ivan, one of the head guys over at west coast nft, about what goes on behind the scenes of these NFT launches. How do they decide which projects to work with, what the kind of marketing looks be like, what the development looks like, what getting them online looks like, how they actually generate 10,000 different unique images. So we really the gamut with Ivan and this is an interesting one because Joe and Ivan actually go back prior to this sort of web3nft space. They're old friends from a while back. And so it's really cool to see a friend of Joe's kind of enter the space and now be doing really, really big things in the space. So I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. If you haven't already, make sure you're following us over on our Discord. That's hustle and flowchart.com discord and follow us over on Twitter. I am Matt Rwolf. Joe is Joe Fear and then have Hard fork gaming where we talk about all the latest in the play to earn blockchain gaming space, what we're investing in projects we're excited about. Cool things like that. You're going to want to be following that Twitter. There's lots of cool stuff going on over there. All right, so let's go ahead and jump right in with Ivan Santana from West Coast NFT.

All right, Mr. Roadie. I mean, Ivan Santana from West Coast NFT and also friend way before then NFT roadie.

Yeah.

You guys go way back, huh? You guys go way, like way pre NFT together.

You know what? I was in Joe roadie in high school because he did have a high school band. I wasn't as roadie, but it feels like that's how far we go back.

He met. It's funny, I Was chatting with Heather, my wife, and she was like, yeah, you met my friends in like your most awkward stage. I had like this weird hair that was grown out. I think it was part of the band days. I was trying to look all cool. I was like, no, it was horrible. So I was like, hopefully that's burned out of your memory.

But yeah, I mean, it happens. Yeah.

Listen, man, I'm the one to judge. I've been growing out my hair just because I've been working from home. So I'm going through that phase now. That's where I'm rocking the make hat.

Same here. I mean, you can't really tell, but it's like super long right now.

The vid hair, dude, like over the years though, I mean, so got to give you props because you were the one that really opened up my eyes to NFTs. And this was, what, early 2021. And you were doing all sorts of stuff before this whole space completely different. So it's like super fascinating when you're describing it all and the people that you're collaborating with. And I was just like, damn, that seems super smart. I think she'd go in on, full in on that. And I think you already were thinking about it. But that got Matt and I talking about this whole space and just NFT launches and what can come with the trends and where this thing's going. Yeah, man, I gotta give you credit for that just because you kinda got the wheels spinning and then all of a sudden we just killed everything else basically. And we're like, we gotta go all in here because there's some crazy opportunities. And I feel like you're right in the thick of it, man.

Yeah, no, you know, the interesting thing is that me personally, I'm just a grinder, right? Like, the types of things that I've been involved in and worked on in the past haven't been like, high tech. They haven't been in entertainment or with artists. And so it's cool. Like, I build and I grind and when I talk to you about it specifically NFTs, when there's validation there, it's like, oh, this is actually something cool. Then it's like, oh, shit. Okay, so it is something cool. So, yeah, let's keep building on this and see where it goes. Because, yeah, like, I think that this is kind of our world's colliding, right? Because you've been doing things in entertainment, in tech for so many years. And again, like, for me, like, to get that kind of validation in terms of the space I'm working in was just really interesting, so I'm glad we can kind of connect on this. And hey, man, this is the first time I got to be on your show in like eight years. So. Also means I'm doing something right. Also means I'm doing something right.

There's a lot of people jealous. They've been waiting. I'm like, no, no, Ivan's getting the front door here. He's coming up.

Well, I'm curious about how you got into NFTs. Like, how did West Coast NFT come to be? How did, how did you get involved with them? How did whole process look for you?

Yeah, so really, really, it started early last year, right. 2021. So I'm personal friends with one of our founders, he goes by Protein, and he basically got pulled into the NFT space by a previous co founder whose name is Richard, and he had founded a company called Manifold. So Richard started Manifold maybe in March, I want to say. And then he taps his friends Protein and Lim. He's like, guys, there's really something interesting going on out here with art and with NFTs and I think you guys should look into it. So at that point, it's probably about June when Protein and Lim and myself kind of take a look at what's going on in the space. We get connected with an artist. Shout out to Swole Chan. Our first NFT launch. We did it for an nft. Like, that was our compensation. Right? We just did what we do best. Right? So product management, solidity development, front end development, that's all we focused on. We let Swolf handle the art, the creative, the marketing, the community building. And it worked. It worked great and we kind of have it look back ever since.

Yeah, man, it seems like all the roads point to you. Like when you go to westcoastnft.com, everything's like, yep, Ivan will get you handled. Ivan will get you sorted. Roadies. Gotcha. And like, you are, you're a hustler, you're a grinder, you're a project manager. I know on your previous ventures you've done a lot of that. The fact I think all that's like coming to a point here. Yeah, you guys just found like a really good niche at the right time, it seems like. And it's continuing still, you know, even since the boom initially from last year, it seems like.

Yeah, no, that's a great point. I think you, you kind of touch on like a more macro thing with success in the NFT space. And really it's a space where it's kind of an even playing field. So everybody kind of starts at the same, same point because it's, it's new, it's emerging. But that being said, the type of projects and the type of partners that we're working with that are kind of setting themselves apart, you know, they've had success in other industries and other spaces in the past. And it's just, you know, it's kind of a new paradigm in tech right now and new economics and obviously like it's culturally kind of hot right now too. But yeah, at the end of the day it's people that enjoy building in the space is the first thing, and then are good at what they do. And so for us, it's like we just focus on our core competency. You know, we want to make sure that the tech we develop is safe and secure and reliable. And then the other great component is that since we were early, we have a lot of experience, we've made a lot of mistakes and we don't let our clients make those same mistakes as previous ones. So that's really it. It's like a super simple recipe. And eventually there's going to be more competent development teams and people with more experience coming into the space and there's plenty of work for everybody. But right now, yes, we're busy. We're very grateful for the type of client roster that we have. But yeah, I mean, I can't believe it's been nine months. That's it. I don't know, it feels like nine years.

Yeah, yeah, that whole thing, a lot of fun.

So how do you decide which projects are good fits for west coast and which ones aren't? How do you filter through them? Because I got to imagine at this point you've had so many success stories that you're getting quite the flow of potential NFT projects coming your way.

Yeah, that's a great question. I don't have like a super scientific answer. I think that we kind of focus just on the basics. First of all, we like artist driven projects, right? So are we talking to an artist? Are we talking to a middleman sort of thing? Who's pitching us? The second thing is, you know, do they have a good product sense of what they're trying to deliver? Right. Like, I don't make the rules in the market. Like I don't know if it's going to be a good product market fit and I'm not going to be a gatekeeper in that sense. We're not doing these things because we're not doing these type of projects because we think they're going to sell out or anything like that. But do they have, like a good product vision for what they're offering? I don't need to hear about, like the roadmap and all the utility and stuff. It's like, what's the phase one, most minimum viable product? And does it make sense to us? Because, yeah, we can get. We get. But they have 100 ideas, right? And you know, we can't build 100 things. We can only build one thing. So I think that those are like the two main things. And then from there I pitch the rest of the team and the question to them is, who's going to champion this? Who wants to do this? Who's going to own this on our end? And so if we find somebody to do it, then off to the races. And if not, then, yeah, it's just something that would be. It would be hard to try to pull something across the finish line just for the sake of it.

Yeah, yeah. So, like, so you guys, I mean, you guys are all dialed in and I love the singular focus because, I mean, there could be a million other things you could be doing, you know, doing metaverse type NFTs as a. Because I know doodles was one of the, you know, the drops that you guys did the launch and freaking sold out. I think you told us in like minutes, right? Or something like that. You've had multiple.

I texted you, I'm like, yeah, you got to get these doodles.

It was a. It was a hot drop.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. But so it's interesting. Like, so there's something there. Like, I guess there's a couple of questions. I'm going to go to that one first, actually. It's like, how does something sell out so fast? And like, are you. Are you helping to engineer some of that or is that just. You're picking them, right? The trends are right, the market's right, all that.

Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely nothing overt on my end. It's black marketing is black magic. What those community builders are doing is incredible. And for us, it just goes back to that. Main question is, would we buy this? Is this, is this a product that makes sense to us? Do we like working with the people? If you like working with them, other people are going to want to be part of that community. So. So we can only. There's only so many touch points that we control and so we just try to hyper focus on what Those mean to us. And yeah, once it gets out into the public though, it's, it's crazy. Yeah, we've, you know, we've worked with, with hardworking projects with, you know, great artistic integrity and good creators and they just don't get the type of marketing traction that's needed sometimes. And some of that is due to timing, some of that is just due to. Yeah, like it just doesn't resonate. Something doesn't resonate with the community at large. But you know, specific to Doodles, I got to give them a lot of credit. Those guys are an incredible team. They have a brilliant product manager, brilliant marketing community manager and I mean the art speaks for itself. Printos.

So with west coast, you're, you guys are basically everything up until the point of marketing, and then the creators of the project kind of take over the marketing from there. Or do you guys do a lot of in house marketing with West Coast?

Yeah, no, it's, it's strictly, strictly Web3 development. So usually the usual workflow is we, we try to touch base with creators early on just to kind of plot out what the, the work will look like. And on our end it's important to get specs and requirements from them because people are trying to push the boundaries, right. And so they're requiring smart contracts, new things, you know, novel, novel tech. And so we need time to develop that. So it's like, you know, what are you guys trying to go for? And then how do we help support that? And then we go back and we do our research development, we develop a proof of concept, we do a ton of testing. And in the meantime, in parallel, they're building community on Discord, they're engaging people on Twitter, you know, a lot of partnerships with existing communities to tap into the bigger community at large. And then it all kind of like coalesces in this like two to three week sprint. @ the very end, they're like, art's ready. We're like smart contracts ready. So we, you know, we just put all the pieces together, test everything and it's a sprint. And then, then the launch is like walking on a tightrope. It's like you get one shot, everything has to work. Kind of everyone's holding their breath sort of thing. But you know, lucky for us, we've done this a lot. It was very intense back in June. It was very intense. At this point. At this point, not a lot of things phase us, but it's always fun because for our partners it's, you know, it's the first Time and obviously they're putting their baby out there into the world. So it's kind of a shared experience all over again to kind of launch one of these things with them.

Yeah. How many projects have you guys launched at this.

Point? It's a great question. You know, I would just guesstimate maybe a couple.

Dozen.

Okay. Yeah, it's been nine months. Yeah, it's been nine months. And at most, you know, one. One. One to two a month. We've obviously done more. We did three in a week, so never again. Yeah, yeah, but. But we're not rushing these things out. So a lot of times people come to us and it's like, this is what's going on. And you know, the stuff will be ready in a couple weeks and then to launch the week after that. And I'm like, ah, slow down, slow down there. There's like a month minimum of marketing on their end and they quickly realize it. They quickly realize it. Yeah. So I would say like the average, average project is probably like two to three weeks. Sorry, two to three month turnaround. Yeah, yeah. Doodles, for example, we started talking to maybe late July and they launched in October. Most recently we did a. We partnered with artist named Craig Redmond who has a Darcelle character that he's been illustrating for 15 years. His project from once we started talking to him and his team was closer to like 7 and 5 of those was like intense art illustration, 3D curating generation. Yeah, so there's, there's definitely. Yeah, there's definitely some craftsmanship that. That takes time. You just can't rush.

That. Yeah, man. And I was looking up another project you guys helped launch the MFers. And I think it's what Satoshi was, he was, he was blowing you up and saying Santana freaking rock this thing in West Coast. And he said, he sent something like, I think he said like 69,600 and yeah, like just crazy amount of messages to you. Just handling the art back and forth before launch. And I'm like, yeah, that's legit. Because I know how much of a grind it is, like you were telling me on some of these previous launches. But that just tells.

Me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have artists like Craig and Dara Darcelles who, yeah, they're building out. He had a couple of 3D illustrators, impact and Bonbon shout out to them. That kind of helped them over that five month period with Satoshi, you know, he's kind of built this brand on Twitter and he's doing the illustrations alone. So for him, it was probably a similar amount of work. He just crammed it into like a month period. So for a month. For a month, yeah. He was heads down. And every. Yeah, every night I would get some DMs about this and then we would go back and forth tweaking, tweaking the arts. So it was definitely a really enlightening process because for arts like MFers, people say, okay, it's me mart and it's stick figure stuff. But I can assure you a lot of thought and a lot of consideration and a lot of craftsmanship on Satoshi's end went into that. So it was really great to work with him. And it's always cool to see the public validation, the community validation.

Because again, we can't control that. But when it resonates with people and it really hits. Yeah, that means a.

Lot. I'm curious, you said you've done probably a dozen projects or so so far. What are some of the mistakes that you've Learned throughout those 12 projects? What are some of the things that, through trial and error of doing this 12 times, you've learned? Okay, we're not going to do that again or next time. We need to think this through a little bit better or, you know, are there things that we can. We can give the listeners who might be thinking about launching a generative NFT project, like things to be aware of that, you know, pitfalls to avoid, that sort of.

Thing. Yeah, you know, that's a great question and something that I should think about more. Every time we launch something, it's like, all right, we definitely got to do a postmortem on this. Right? And then it's like, okay, but when are we going to do that? Because the next one's right around the corner. I would say maybe, like, the underlying thing that I've noticed just in the answers that I'm giving is that you just can't rush it. And so for us, it's like, okay, well, these people want to really get this thing out. The market is hot. Yeah, maybe we should just, you know, and again, like, we're not going to rush our tech, we're not going to rush our smart contract, but if we have it ready and they want to go, then, like, you know, why not? But we've learned, like, early on, when we started summer 2021, a lot of things sold out in spite of themselves. What they thought, what all of us thought was good marketing and good community engagement, it really wasn't. And it was just a hot market. And you put something out there and it sold out. And we learned. Everyone learned that lesson. September, October, November, the same kind of equation didn't work out so well for us. So our partners and everyone kind of in the space. So I think the thing is a let's focus on quality and all of those important pillars, right? For us, we'll handle the tech for our partners, make sure that the arts is exactly where you want it, make sure you kind of budget enough time and bring in a strong enough team for the marketing, the community building. No one knows how long NFT craze is going to last. No one knows if it's going to be PFPs, if it's going to be one of one art, it's going to be photography. So the real thing is focus on the things that we can, right? And it's our crafts, our art, and make sure that what you're putting out there is a product that you want representing.

Yourself. Yeah, that's interesting, man, because I know you and I chatted about the trends and how marketing could layer into that. And yeah, it's like last summer or whatever it was earlier, Juneish, you were saying it's so hot, where it's almost like marketing is not even needed for most of these. But now, yeah, we're seeing variations. There's obviously metaverse variations to the NFT. There's 3D rendered things that are now used in places or starting to. Or there's game NFTs. So do you ever think about or do some of these projects, like Doodles? I saw that they have some other stuff coming out and I'm sure that's going to grow into other things I'm not aware of, like games or whatnot. But is that ever something you guys are thinking about with the trends and. And somehow in conversations with. When it comes to the art and launching these.

Things? Yeah, that's a great question. I think for us, we really rely on our creative partners to kind of drive that conversation. And for a couple reasons. One is whatever they want to build, whatever the artistic integrity that they bring should really drive the product, and we kind of build around that. And two, these artists and these creatives are awesome. I had a quick call yesterday with Poopy from Doodles and he was like, hey, you guys want to see something cool? I was like, yeah, yeah, show us. And so, you know, he kind of laid out some of the next Q3, Q4 goals for Doodles and space Doodles. And the question is like, I'm just like, I'm looking at it. And I asked him straight up, I'm like, hey, this is going to sound facetious, but it's not. Like, how do you come up with this shit? Like, this is awesome, this is cool. And again, it's their craft. They're putting in a lot of time talking to people, spitballing, coming up with ideas that are. At the end of the day, it all goes back to serving their community. Right. And everyone has different goals for the community. I can't really speak for doodles, but I think for them it's like, how do we bring value to original doodle holders? And so everything that they kind of develop is in service of that. And so that question and that goal is going to be different for other communities. And so our goal is just like, what do you guys want to build? And then let us figure it out, let us loose and we'll help support.

It.

Yeah. Are you seeing any trends in the kind of evolution of NFTs? I know you've been doing it for about nine months now and we've seen the bull market now. Stuff's kind of cooled off a little bit, but then there's little moments of heat whenever Ethereum drops. It seems like we get a little boost in NFTs. Are you seeing any trends as far as art styles, utility? You hear on crypto Twitter, a lot of people Talking about music, NFTs being the next big thing. What sort of trends are you seeing? Where, where, where's the direction going right.

Now? It's hard, it's hard for me to keep up with the whole market trend just because we're always head, heads down, you know, building. So I get like a glimpse of it on Twitter and just kind of seeing, seeing what's selling, what's not. Honestly, every single day something sells out. I was like, I have never heard of that. That's amazing. So I, I noticed like micro trends like this January was just nuts, right? Like everything was up and so there was just micro trends, like the usual thing that people kind of like take advantage of so you can try to get on a white list, you can mint and then you flip pre reveal and so you notice price trends like that. In terms of macro trends with projects, I think we're definitely seeing a higher quality all around with some of the top end projects for us. I feel like we touched on a decent number of projects last year because there was probably maybe only a dozen or so devs in the space. Dev shops in the space that can really help, you know, get a project launch And I'm sure that number has quadrupled, you know, can doubled whatever it is. And we're seeing more projects with in house devs, which is awesome because it allows them a little bit more agility. Kind of, kind of builds a bridge from phase one to phase two to phase three, roadmap building. And so you just see the quality that, that we hope to bring to partners. You just see it more, more often as opposed to, you know, something a smart contract from Fiverr Arts. From Fiverr. Those things are still there. Yeah, those things are still there. But I think the market is rejecting it and kind of looking towards higher.

Quality. That's a good point. I mean you brought up Fiverr because we've even peaked at Fiverr recently because I'm like, we've used fiverr for freaking 10 plus years now or something. But now it's so funny how public company all this, it's everything on there. But there are a bunch of NFT artists on there. Some of them look legit. There's a lot of them that are just kind of like, eh, sure, I'm curious of your take. I don't know if you've even poked around there, but since looking at art for so much and you're not an artist but you're obviously, you're kind of like the bridge, it seems like what are you actually looking for when you're going back and critiquing their arts like doodles or mfers, but also just, I don't know, are there very specific things that most people aren't aware of with the art that will actually bring success to this.

Thing? Yeah, that's a good question. I think honestly I am not the right person to answer that. I am easily amused. I am easily impressed. Anyone kind of putting in, yeah, anyone putting in the energy and the effort and kind of delivering like, yeah, like there's, there's. I mean, that's cool. Our art is art. Obviously. Like I resonate personally with some things and less other things. Right. So you know, I have my personal taste, but I hear people talking about like, oh, the weight of the line they're using, you know, to like. And I'm like, what, what are you guys talking.

About? Yeah, I didn't know if you were picking that kind of stuff apart which I'm like, okay.

Okay. Oh no.

No.

Yeah. And like in Satoshi, going back to Satoshi, you know, that was one of the things that when we had 69,420 messages was because you know, he does, he has like A very specific scribble style and it just wasn't right. And he's like, oh, let me do it again. And I'm like, dude, it's, it's the same freaking scribble. What is different here? Why am I spending all this time making this revision? But yeah, yeah, so they're getting deep into it. Yeah. Same. Same with Burnto, same with Craig. To be honest, like I said, all of our, all of our partners, they, they know what they're looking for and we are basically looking to them and trusting their, their artistic expertise on.

That. That makes sense. Yeah. Again, you're staying in your lane. You know, your, your skill sets there, for.

Sure. Yeah, but, but, but you know, at the same time, if a, if a big name artist comes to us and the art doesn't resonate, then, you know, it'll just have to be like, do we believe in the vision? Right? Do we believe in, in kind of the product and, and what, what it's gonna mean to the community sort of thing. So yeah, we're not, we're not gonna just say no just based on. I personally don't like the art or anything like.

That. Yeah, I get.

You. Can you break down real quick what goes into an NFT launch? Because I think there's probably a lot of people listening who have seen these big mints, right, where there's 10,000 pieces and they're all, you know, and every single one is unique. That's kind of what an NFT is, right? The non fungible everyone is supposedly unique from each other. And you know, an artist isn't going and drawing 10,000 images. Right. It's, you know, there's layers and there's other things going on. So could you kind of explain what goes into this process just to help people understand what goes into these big 10,000.

Mints? Yeah. Okay. So specific to the 10K collectible genre, there's a lot of art development that has to be programmatically generated. So what we ask for from our partners is basically every single trait adds an individual layer on a transparent PNG file. So if you want to put a make hat on your base character, give me the main cat. Just by itself. It also has to like already overlap. So you have to meticulously, in whatever program you're using, Photoshop or Procreate or whatever, make sure that, hey, your base character is centered and the hat fits on top nicely and people kind of get fancy with the stuff and there are going to be some traits that maybe don't work well. With others. So, like, if I took my hat off, you know, my hair would kind of go everywhere. So that might not work so well with the crown trader, things like that. And so we have ways to writes exclusions into our rules engine. Basically, you give us all the traits, tell us what's not going to work, we program it and we can generate 10,000 from there. Then we also have. We built out some tools and products to leverage the tech that we've used so many times. We have a really cool gallery viewer where you can filter through things and it helps you curate your finished product. You're not going through 10,000. One by one. You can pinpoint some things that maybe aren't looking right, go back to the drawing board, tweak that trait, and then we'll run it.

Again. So it's like an internal tool that you guys use that shows how everything lines up and. Yeah, I like that.

Modeling. Yeah, exactly. And that's like the art generation portion. I can go on and on about what else would go into the project, but that's a big part of it. Yeah, we spend a big chunk of our time early on, kind of iterating and going back and forth with our partners.

There. And do you handle all the mint type stuff too? The landing pages, where they actually mint from, and any sort of reveal process that happens, that's all you guys as.

Well. Yeah, exactly. So from there, once we have art, we will also in parallel generate metadata. And the metadata is just, hey, these are the properties that this specific piece of art has. And that's what's going to display on marketplaces like OpenSea and looks rare. So we have those two pieces now and we do just some basic decentralized asset pinning and emerging metadata. So at the end of the day, we'll have a folder with 10,000 pieces of metadata that all have an image, a URL to an image, all the properties, token names, token description, things like that. Then from there, there are multiple ways to serve that metadata. When we mint from smart contracts, so we can have what's called mystery metadata, and it's a mystery piece of art, and so we can serve from that directory while the mint's live. And then you can decide, hey, after 48 hours, we're going to reveal, and then we switch to the revealed directory. You can serve it instantly. Right. So when the smart contract is minting something.

Based on the front end, based on the minting portal, like you said, those things will talk to each other. And then the smart contract says, hey, I minted Token ID number one. Where's the piece of art that goes with this? Where's the metadata that goes with this? And so we create what we call secure minting pipelines. And it just listens to the smart contract and one by one serves them as they go. Yeah, so there's things that you can do with the metadata, the front end, the smart contract. But yeah, we'll handle that whole process. And the other important thing is that we also walk our client and our partner through all of the deployment. So at the end of the day, it's their custom smart contract, they're the ones deploying it, they're the ones owning the smart contract, they're the ones that call the withdrawal function on the smart contract and all the other function calls that they do. So it's a really collaborative effort, all in service of the provenance and the ownership of these projects remaining on our partner.

Side.

Yeah, I think a lot of people just kind of get it more so like all the inner workings here, because I think from the outside perspective, like what you just laid out there, it kind of fills in a lot of gaps here and shows really the work that's going on. Probably, obviously weeks leading up to this, but the crunch time and why so many projects, it's probably the page doesn't work, the minting has to be delayed. It's like, this is probably why it's a lot of.

Tech. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very, it's very tedious and meticulous and it's. Honestly, it could be pretty painful, all the testing. So when you guys, when Hard Fork does their, their first PFP drop, you guys will see firsthand and hey, man, maybe we can record some of it, do a live launch so they can see, they can see everyone sweating, sweating when they have to execute this.

Function in the boiler room for.

Sure. Now, do you do much NFT trading outside of like the West Coast NFT stuff or are you pretty much. Is your exposure to NFTs pretty much just what west coast.

Does? No, I mean, obviously, like I'm in the space hundreds of hours a month, so we, you know, we just try to keep up on what's cool and what's new. But in terms of like, trading, like, the short answer is yes, I am overexposed on NFTs. And that's a combination of, you know, projects. I like creators, I like to support. We have a lot of friends in the space and we want to support them. And then also a product of, hey, it's 1:00am, our Alpha channel is talking about this thing, you know, the dev says, hey, go check this thing out. And like, yeah, this is a good idea. Why don't I just degen into this project? So definitely have a couple of those in my wallet. But, you know, big picture of my investment strategy is I don't know what's going to happen. I feel like we're early in this space. This was what we were telling ourselves nine months ago. And if I invest in kind of teams, projects, communities that I believe in and I can execute and have some staying power, that's where I want to park my money. And we'll see what happens in a couple of years. In five years and 10 years. Yeah. And so, yeah, and there's definitely enough of those. There's definitely enough of those to, to. To eat up my entire paycheck for sure. But. But yeah, there's. Yeah, people have different strategies and I would say just kind of work or do, do what works best for you. Like if I had 24, 7 to just trade NFTs, it would be a little different, for.

Sure. So are there any projects coming up in the future that you kind of got your eye on that maybe our listeners can get some alpha on or projects that maybe aren't west coast NFT but are on your radar? Anything like.

That? Yeah, that's a good question. So again, I kind of talked about the different modes and investment pieces. For me, the stuff that I look at is what's an established community that I think can kind of make a jump and kind of stick with it. So I look at projects obviously, like doodles. Like, if I can just keep buying doodles, I would just keep buying that I'm so bullish on what they're building. And there's projects like cool cats that are trying to push the boundaries in developing these games that I think they had some technical difficulties, but in terms of a brand and the tech that they're trying to put out there, that's always cool. Mfers. I got the alpha on MFers. I can't say anything, but it's cool. It's culturally relevant and he might have some tricks up his sleeve. I don't know. I really just. I really just talked about all of our projects.

Huh. So that's.

Cool. Let me think about it. Let me think about it. I'll come back to.

That.

Yeah. What is, what is it about doodles that you like so much about their roadmap? Like what, What, What's. Because you said that you're super bullish on.

That. Yeah, so. So Pupi is of that name, their technical.

Founder.

Yeah. Poopy is your tech technical founder. He just has a very, very sharp product eye. He has experience in the space and he's surrounding himself with the brightest people. So, you know, whenever you do something like that, and again, like, you have a goal and you have kind of an ethos to focus on, I think that's really powerful. Right? It's. It's harnessing a lot of the experience and a lot of the geniuses in the space on this one goal. I think that's. That's really powerful and promising. And then his counterpart, Evan. Right. I don't know if you guys are too familiar with what they're doing at south by Southwest, but, you know, they put in a lot of their own personal money to basically build out this in real life activation. And so just kind of engaging with the community in a really organic way, putting the community first and kind of letting people interact with doodles in a different way. I think that's really powerful. And then on the art end, obviously, like Burntos creative direction and illustration, like, you can. You can just, like, it makes me smile looking at it. You know, I can see it on McKenna's backpack when she starts preschool.

Joe. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, for.

Sure. And then. And they kind of reinforced that with a strong team around him. So you have Alfie doing the animations. Varun is a very bright art developer. If you guys saw space doodles, like, it was just an incredible team effort to pull that.

Off. So I saw the intro video just this morning. I was like, ooh, this looks cool. It's just the whole feel of it. Yeah, it makes you happy and it appeals to so many people.

Too. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then at the end of the day, like, a bet on doodles is a bet on us too. Right. So, you know, I believe in what we can bring to the table and to the space at large. And yeah, I mean, it's just, it's. For some reason, it resonated with me since day one, meeting the guys, and it's just really. It's really special and validating to see it play out every step of the.

Way. If you have, like a few more minutes, I know we're going over. Are you good for like another five, ten.

Tops? Yeah, you're.

In. Busy man, Busy man. Tell us about. Because you hinted earlier that you guys are working on some internal stuff too, like some other products that might or might not go public, because you guys are obviously heads down and singularly focused. Rightly so, but can you hint anything at.

That? Yeah, of course. I'm glad you brought that up. So a lot of the stuff we talked about in terms of like supporting creators, we built out tech to kind of help us do that more efficiently internally. Right. So that basically we're not doing the same thing 10 times. We can build it once and then use our resources to focus on new iterations, new requests from our clients, this new mechanic in a smart contract, things like that. So we have kind of like that need on one side and on the other side. Again, very grateful to have a lot of conversations with artists and creators that are building really cool things and have really great ideas. But at the same time, we're a small team, we can't support them all. And so the idea is how do we solve a couple problems? And so we're working on an internal product. It's called Art Lab. It's kind of like the baby of our head devs. And so they've put a lot of thought into it, a lot of consideration, a lot of resources, and we hope to basically have a platform for artists and creatives to come and be able to do their own 10k PFPs, leverage the things that we've learned and that we've built, and really just put it out there for the community again. At the end of the day, there's so many talented people in this space. How do we support more of.

Them? Dude, that's sick. Yeah, it's just a natural progression. It seems like with what you guys have been doing and obviously you can't do it all and there's so much demand and, you know, we're just seeing more celebrities and other these influencers popping into the space, trying to make their own thing or team up with, you know, projects or people that can kind of do it. But what if there was software that kind of allowed them to get it out there in the right way that all the headaches and shit. But yeah, that's. Yeah.

Man. Yeah, there's. Yeah, it's not going to solve everyone's.

Problems.

Hello?

Yeah. But it's going to be one thing they don't have to worry about for.

Sure. Nice.

Dude. I do have one last question that I wanted to ask, just based on kind of what you guys say on your West Coast NFT website, but you talk about price strategy. So I'm curious what goes into the pricing strategy of NFTs, because you definitely see a whole bunch of all come out around the same price. It seems Like a lot of mints for a while were all 0.05. And then there was a window where everybody was kind of trying to go for higher prices. And you know, what goes into figuring out the pricing of some of these NFT.

Launches? Yeah, you know, I don't have a super strong opinion on price strategy, but it is something that we get asked a lot. So the main thing that I rely on is just my lived experience. Right. And so, you know, I've, I've launched projects that have done well in the hot market. I've launched projects, not me personally, you know, we've launched projects that have done well in a not so hot market and vice versa. Projects that we put out there that just didn't gain traction. So I can, you know, I lean on my experience to talk about some of the decisions our clients made and some of the things that may not have worked. So that's like part of the equation. And then the other part is, to your point is like, what kind of marketing traction do I have today? What is the price of other projects? You know, what are they pricing things out, how are they selling? Kind of finding comps in the space. But yeah, I think big picture, you know, people, people look for a proof of concept and say that this thing worked and this is kind of what the community is primed for and what they're looking for. And I think a lot is driven by that. But what I bring to the conversation is just our.

Experience. Any plans to do any projects off of Ethereum? Or is Ethereum the bread and butter that you're always going to stick.

To? Yeah, I think big picture, there will be other projects outside of Ethereum in the long term, short and medium term. No, we don't have any plans. It just kind of goes back to something that Joe mentioned in the beginning about marketing in the space. There's a lot of low hanging fruit and at the end of the day it would be great to do it all, be it all for everybody. But yeah, we're sticking with our core competency that really, it's not tied to a specific chain, it's really just tied to serving our clients and our community at large the best that we can. And so when our clients are all telling us, hey, we want to do stuff on Polygon, then off the polygon.

Yeah. Well, dude, is there anything that we didn't ask you that you're kind of lit up on or, I don't know, just something that you want to share or should we sign this puppy off and tell Them where to find.

You. No, man, no. This is it. This is what I'm lit up on. This is what I do all day, every day, is talk about NFT projects. Yeah. I mean, no, there's nothing else. I just want to shout out all of our partners that have chosen to work with us, that have trusted us with their projects. We're so grateful for them, for the artists, for the creators out there. And hopefully, like I said, that that kind of. That little group can get a little bit bigger if we can. If we can get some of these products out the door. But. But, yeah, yeah, it's been a lot of fun, and I'm glad that you guys are in the.

Space. Me, too. I was going to say the.

Same. I was like.

Yeah, I'm sure we'll be seeing. We should be seeing more of you guys. At least I hope so. Who knows, man? One week, one week next week, who knows? I'm going to wake up to the great NFT.

Recession.

We'll all work at McDonald's.

Together.

Yeah.

Replace that hat with something else. No, I think what you guys are doing is super exciting, and you're with some really cool people. The crew that you've teamed up with, like, and you've opened our eyes to so much, even here on this show. And I know our community's gonna love it. Yeah. And it's. That's what we love about this space. Super collaborative. So if something flops or, like, whatever, you know, I'm sure there's something else, that it's just a cool community. Like I said, everything's community in this thing. So wag me, we're all gonna do this. Yeah, dude. All right, brother. Westcoast nft.com right? So what are the Twitters and all that stuff? Just so people can connect with you and the community.

Yeah. At West Coast. West Coast NFT on Twitter, the main, main way to get a hold of us, to connect to us, is hop in the Discord. Skip the website, skip the Twitter. Hop in the Discord. The Discord's on our. On our Twitter page. I'm at nft, Santana. You can find our Discord there. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, we. We get a lot of messages, so, you know, please be patient with us. But the best, like, the best way, the best flow to get ahold of somebody is Hop in the Discord and we'll.

Connect. Beautiful. All right, brother. I'm happy we made this happen. And it's kind of crazy that we're doing this knowing, like, the background that we've had all of us so stoked for your time, man. Appreciate you.

Dude. Agreed. All right, guys, thank you everybody. Enjoy Hard for Gaming. Enjoy this one and look forward to hearing from you guys.

Later. Awesome. So I hope you enjoyed that episode with Ivan from West coast nft. And before we wrap this one up, just a couple quick reminders. If you're not over in the Discord with us where we chat and answer your questions and share cool stuff that we're up to and that we're coming across in the NFT and crypto space, make sure you join us in that discord. That's hustle and flowchart.com discord and if you're not already, we love to hang out on Twitter too. That's pretty much the only social media platform you'll find Joe and I on these days. I am Matt R. Wolf over on Twitter. Joe is Joe Fear on Twitter and follow our Hard Fork Gaming over on Twitter as well. That's where we share all sorts of gaming and crypto news and what we're up to in that space. So follow Hard Fork Gaming as well. And once again, thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone that you think would find it valuable. We appreciate you. See you later.

Sh.