Valerie Carrillo of San Diego NFT Friends: Educating, Inspiring, and Connecting NFT enthusiasts

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana Estee be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon SD Tecos with your host, Neil Bloom.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I'm thrilled to have you here. On the Tacos and Tech Podcast, we interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly, so thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, a new interview and on Fridays we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode and welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I am your host, Neil Bloom, and I am thrilled to be joined by Valerie Carillo, the founder of San Diego NFT Friends and Red Rug Edutainment Group. Hey, Valerie, thanks for being on the pod.

Hey, thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

It is great to have you here. We've been Twitter friends for a bit. You have been quite the Twitter influencer, the crypto influencer, and, you know, I'm just thrilled to have you here and get to tell your story a bit because obviously people been getting to know your meetup. So, you know, want to give us a quick overview of what San Diego NFT Friends is?

Yeah, sure. So San Diego NFT Friends is a community of about 800 plus people where we meet at least once a month and we really get to dive in, into, you know, what web three NFTs, what crypto is and really give education and provide connections for people who want to take their companies or education further.

Awesome. I'm really excited to dive into that now. Obviously makes sense about Edutainment as a company. Any extra you want to add about Red Rug Entertainment Overview?

Yeah, sure. So Red Rug edutainment is a Web3 event planning, management and production company. So we're really focusing on bringing Web2 businesses into Web3 and having IRL events for them. As we know things aren't always just virtual and digital. A lot of the times people want to have human to human connections and so education in entertaining ways for Web3 is very important. And so that's what we strive to do for businesses coming into the Web3 space.

Awesome. Super important for that industry specific. Any, any new technology, you know, just needs so much education and time. Right. So finding ways to interact with the content, the industry, the people doing it totally makes sense. So I'm really excited to hear how it's going and how you were, how you're doing that for Web3 going forward. But where did it all start? Obviously, you know, Web3 has only been around so long. How did you find your way to here and in the tech world?

Yeah, so actually my background is actually in sports medicine. I was going to Point Loma University getting my master's degree in sports medicine and I was finishing up my first year and then unfortunately my mom had unexpectedly passed away and so that. Thanks. Yeah, and so that was really unfortunate. And with the program being so rigorous, I realized I need to put a pause and just take some time to focus on my mental health and grief properly, you know, for someone that I loved so much. So during that time of taking time to just grieve and just take time for myself was when I actually really started getting into like web3, finding out more about NFTs and also when my mom had passed away, you know, she actually didn't grow up for much so she didn't actually meet any inheritance, which is okay. But it started to make me realize like I need to start focusing more on my own wealth, my own health and I have a younger sister. I don't have any friends. Sorry, I don't have any friends. I don't, I don't have any younger children right now. So it's just my sister. And you know what happens when I'm gone? What do I leave her and what do I leave my future family. So I started thinking about what generational wealth could look like. And so I found that this new wave of technology. Right. People are calling Web3, could be an opportunity for me to really dive and discover if this is something that's possible for me. So then I started following Gary Vee. Gary Vee was dropping his first NFT project called V Friends. I entered into a giveaway and I was a winner. I won. So my first NFT was gifted from Gary Vee, and I was astounded. I was getting offers of $120,000. I was like, whoa, I don't know what's happening, but something is right. So that's just really when I went down the rabbit hole. And it's a whole journey from there.

Wow.

Incredible. Did you get to, like, interact with Gary or what did that NFT actually give you, you know, from the community benefits?

Yeah, great question. So this NFT gave access to his conference. He was calling VCon, his first, like, Web3Entrepreneur conference for the next three years. So as long as you hold onto this NFT, it'll give you access to his conference for 20, 22, 23 and 24. And so that's the main benefit. But then other than that, like, you never know what Gary Vee is going to do. Sometimes he'll do, like, collaborations where it has your NFT character and it's a merch drop. Sometimes there'll be access to him for like, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, go play tennis with him. There's so many different things that he just surprises us with. But definitely in the contract it says you get access to his conference for three years.

Oh, wow. Really cool. So how long ago was that?

That was in May of 2021.

Okay. All right. So height of NFT days? Oh, actually, it was a little before, I feel, like, a little bit. So kind of on the early side of nft, what has the industry been doing to get one? Obviously, let's talk through the excitement of what was happening then. And when did you start your meetup? And then let's. Then we'll talk about industry.

Yeah, so back then, top Shots, you know, was a big thing. A lot of people wanted to collect these memorable moments from sp, specifically in the basketball world. So sports was like a big thing. Tom Brady was releasing his NFTs, people in the soccer industry. So a lot of things in the sports. And so I resonated with that. Me coming from a sports background, that was super cool for me. And so then I started to see other people and you know, just release these other projects. Of course, people might have heard of Bored Ape Yacht Club. I saw those when Those were at 0.5 ETH and I passed on it because I didn't resonate with it. I didn't see any like female attributes to it. It was very bro ish, which is cool, but not for me. So I just passed on that. But yeah, and then since then I decided, you know, I wanted to connect with people who were more involved in NFTs. At the time, it was just me and my significant other Keegan, who were just kind of doing it. And I really wanted just to connect with people. So I decided to reach out. In Gary Vee's Vee Friends discord. Back then Gary was saying, hey, put out your name, your location, your occupation and your interest in hobbies. And what you could do in the discord is you can go in the search bar and filter it down to the keyword that you're looking for. So I started searching for the keyword San Diego and it populated any time someone had mentioned the word San Diego. And I just basically what you would think of like cold emailing. I started cold dming and saying, hey, I'm in the San Diego area too. We should connect. I discovered how to do my own discord going through YouTube, learning how to do that through YouTube and started getting people into my discord. And that was like our main hub of trying to decide, hey, when are we going to meet for the first time? Where should we meet? And yeah, it grew from like 15 people on our first meetup and now we could have anywhere up to 50 people at our meetup.

Oh wow. Incredible. What a great way to just beat people from one community to in real life community. When was the first in person meetup?

So the first one was shortly after I had one. So it was like in early May or late May, early June. But this was at Nolita hall in Little Italy.

That's great. It seems like, man, Little Italy has like pretty much become the crypto meetup hangout between Edge's office being there. With the bitcoin meetup, I think the ETH meetup is there as well. And obviously the start of the NFT meetup is that still where the meetup happens today.

So now we kind of jump around the city. It's really cool to get a community and sometimes there's people that recommend going somewhere up, even north in San Marcos, sometimes more south. It's really cool to kind of discover these other restaurants and places and actually build relationships. Too, with the owners and managers of those restaurants, because they're like, what are you doing here? You're such a large group sometimes in the middle of the week. Why are so many people gathering? So it's kind of cool to talk to them about what Web3 is, what we're doing and all that.

I love that. Take us through a little bit of the backgrounds of people, but also what's their engagement in the community. I'm sure there's some creators, there's collectors, there's technologists, implementers. Like, what's the mix been?

Yeah, you named them. It's really people from all different backgrounds who are just. Sometimes you wouldn't even realize that, oh, wow, you're in Web three and you know they're doing something like they're a farmer, they're gardening, like they're doing something else and trying to figure out how this Web3 technology can relate to them, which I think is super cool. How do they put some of the data on the blockchain? Blockchain, as we know, is like a ledger. So it's really cool to see how people are utilizing that. We get sometimes restaurant owners, so we have had the restaurant owner from Botanica that is located in north park. His name is Amara. And then we've also had another restaurant owner, her name is Lauren Turton. She's the owner of Chow Chow Piadina, which is an Italian restaurant in La Jolla. So we get a couple of people who actually have these businesses and try to learn how to pivot what they're doing into the web3 space. But of course, we get people who are just, you know, just want to be involved in the community and not necessarily use the tech for what they're doing, but they just enjoy, like, understanding what's next in web3 and how can they flip and trade sometimes with this?

Sure, yeah. Obviously a lot of. Mostly all early adopters, I would imagine. Right. People who are just interested. Has pretty much everyone bought or owned an NFT in the group?

For the most part, yes. From time to time, we'll get someone who knows nothing about it and just really is coming to the meetup group to understand more. And so they haven't bought their first nft. They don't even have a digital wallet. So we do have to walk them down and even, like, educate them on the importance of security and privacy when you're creating your first digital wallet. How to protect yourself, how to keep your seed phrase safe, all of those good things.

Yeah. Great. I'm glad you're Doing that. What about. Is there like a community gallery to see everyone's collective NFTs together?

That's a really good idea. We don't, but there is a collective gallery of the photos of our meetups from every single year. So if you do go to sand sdnft friends.com you get to see a couple of the galleries. The website is a work in progress. It's self built by myself. I'm by no means, you know, web designer or do code. So this is definitely like through WordPress. So it's very. It's gonna look more like Web 1.0 ish in my opinion. But hey, it's something just to put up there so people can discover a little bit more and find us find out more about what we're doing.

Makes sense. So okay, we'll make sure we link to it in the show notes. We had San Diego NFTCON last year, right? In 2022. Did that bring a lot of more community members out, a lot more exposure to this as well?

Yes, we actually had two conferences. So the first one was SDNFT San Diego NFT Con, which was in February of 2022 and then we had Web3SD conference which was in October of 2022. So yes, definitely San Diego NFTCon brought in a lot of people, even people who flew from different states and definitely a lot of people from up north in LA came down to San Diego. So it was really cool to connect with others that were not necessarily in our own little bubble of San Diego and to see what other people have been doing and see their innovative ideas.

Awesome. I love that web3sd happened, especially time period wise. I don't know if it was on purpose knowing Chris who's so Chris Grushing, who's so accessible and bridge builder doing it at the time frame he did around Startup Week was so cool to have multiple events happening. So I hope we talk, make sure the groups are talking again for this year to, you know, bookend Startup Week and Web3SD Con. Is it being talked about or are we working on year two for that conference?

We are working on year two. We are working on year two for Web3SD. We're hoping to aim for maybe a little earlier in August. But I do like the idea that it's right before Startup Tech Week because there's that integration right right now we're at the intersection of art and technology and all of the good things. So I think it's really cool to have it right before. So my vote is to have it right before, but we'll see what happens.

Well, let's make sure we're all talking around that because what also is being talked about is San Diego Innovation Day at Petco park, which last year was in April and it's put on by Connect. This year they're moving it to October as well. And I think it's right at the end of October to actually coincide with wonderlust, a music festival. So I think if we could maybe take over 10 days worth of non stop stuff, we might have the beginnings of our own little south by here, you know, from art and music and science and technology.

That makes me so excited. I love where you're headed. I agree. We gotta talk more about this.

I'm literally after this. I'm going to get us on an email chain, all the organizers and just say, hey, like just where do you currently have dates? Is there flexibility? Let's see where we're going.

So let's do it.

I love it. That actually speaks to a little bit of the Web3 community. Like it really does feel really accessible and inclusive. Is that you think industry wide or is that a San Diego trait?

No, I definitely think that is industry wide for sure. I mean, the basis of Web3 is to be decentralized. You know, in the Web2 world, we see a lot of corporations monopolizing on like our data and just taking control of a lot of a lot of the things that they get to have control. And us people don't really have to have a say in it. So in Web three, it's really about giving power back to the consumer and they get to decide, do I want to share my data, how can I monetize my data and things of that sort. So really we want to be inclusive. We want to have diversity. Of course, the more people we bring in from all walks of life, the greater ideas that can come about and the greater technology that it can improve. So yeah, I see that. Like it's super inclusive. I just came back from East Denver and if you haven't been before, I highly recommend if you're looking to get into Web3, that is the first Web3 event that I recommend. It happens every February and that is the most inclusive community and event that I can think of. It's absolutely free to attend. And this year they had 25,000 people attend.

Oh, wow. Incredible.

Yeah.

So let's talk about the edutainment piece a little bit. So obviously web3 to some people is a buzzword, to others is a lifestyle. To others is like you mentioned the rabbit hole is all encompassing life. So you've got different ways that people are learning and interacting, or maybe some who have still never been exposed to it. How are you finding unique ways to both educate and interact with this so that people are learning? Love to hear.

Yeah. So I actually had partnered up with the restaurant I mentioned before, Chow Chow Piadina, and Lauren Turton, who was one of the co founders of the restaurant, really wanted to find a way how she could pivot her restaurant into the Web3 world. The problem was that you can't really spend time educating your staff, your host, your chef. Right. Because their focus is on providing customer service. So how can you get web3 involved without doing too much of the education part, but more of the entertaining part? So that's when we decided to do a loyalty rewards program using what we call poops. Poops is an acronym that stands for proof of attendance protocol. And basically what that is, it's just a proof of like, hey, I was here, I showed up. And so with the restaurant, we used poops to signify that a person had eaten at that restaurant. So they had to spend a minimum of $20 in order to receive a poop. And so with that, if you had collected five poops, you would get airdropped an official NFT from the restaurant. And with that, NFT was integrated a lifetime of rewards. So, you know, and there was like five different levels. In level one, it was like, okay, you get free appetizer on every visit. And then as you kept going up these different levels, they got more and more exclusive rewards. So at the top level, you had everything from level one through four. Plus you got to come to end of the year celebration party for all of the NFT holders. So that's how we decided to do, like, education with entertainment. If people had questions, we had like links into like, how do you start your own metamask wallet, this and that. So that was really something cool that we did. And then we. I had also worked with Amar from Botanica Restaurant to do his first gin and NFT gallery. So restaurant bar kind of concept, which is really cool. So he has NFTs displayed on the wall. So that was just like almost like an in real life marketplace where you can start discovering these artists that are using Web3 technology. So you can go there, have a cocktail, try out the gin, and at the same time see these moving pieces that are on this digital screen and you can go literally and purchase these. So we are trying to work on providing education as well to people who are interested in the art, but maybe not necessarily again have their digital wallet. So trying to find ways where people are having these real life experiences. And that was also our same concept when we were thinking about like Web3 South Dakota is instead of just having your standard event bright ticketing, we went with Privatize, who I know you interviewed just before, and we went with our DPASS ticketing system and just basically did our tickets as NFTs. So people who were curious about it but didn't want to like fully dive in, into buying an NFT and investing in NFTs, you could certainly try out using a ticket as an nft. So just finding ways how people can start using the technology without having too much risk. Because definitely, as we know crypto and NFTs is very volatile. Things go up and go down drastically all the time. So how can we start getting people to use this technology in very easy, user friendly ways that is not super risky.

That's great. Especially to show just other applications because I would say the probably closest to mainstream is art. Right. And that has both pros and cons. We've seen of that now of like, oh, you're just getting, you know, a meme and is that an nft? Right. So I love that you're showcasing real world applications. We know crypto for one needs more and more of that to show that it's more than just gambling per se to some people. Right. So that's so cool to see. As well as using a local tech privatized, we, we love seeing the use case from the local tech companies. That's awesome.

Yeah.

So if someone wants to come out to the first meetup, like what's the. Give them a little onboarding, like what's the expectation they should have in coming out and meeting the community?

Yeah. So don't feel like you have to show up to this meetup in a business suit or anything. It's very laid back. We definitely are a community. And it starts feeling like family. I mean the title is NFT Friends and that it's really the ambiance and the feeling that I want to create with people. As we know as, you know, get away from college and high school, it gets harder and harder to make friends and to relate to people. So the idea is to really connect on a human to human level and really share this interest and discover this technology as it evolves through our time in real time, really. And so really just come. There are no stupid questions. So if you have any questions, if you have ideas, this is A really great place to connect with people who you know, if you do the art, but you don't necessarily know how to upload your artwork and onto the blockchain. You think you need to know code or you think you need to know all of this techie stuff. You really don't. There are people in our community who can offer that. There are a lot of developers and there's also a lot of like no code solutions. Now in the beginning there really wasn't. So you did have to connect with a developer and hire them to do your smart contract behind your nft. But now there are different platforms. There is one that I'd love to shout out. They're called Nifty Kit. They're also local. Here in San Diego they offer a no code solution for creators and artists looking to release their NFT collection. So we get a lot of people who have founded great technology that help anyone from any different background come into the space. If you're looking to come in as an artist, if you're looking to come in as a business and try to see where you can use this technology to help your business elevate and integrate into this next wave of technology. And if you're just someone who's like, hey, I just really want to make friends and I want to learn more, then absolutely, come in and hang out.

I love that. Well, we all know hanging out, coming together has to go with food. And in San Diego when we say food, we mean tacos, obviously. Where do the San Diego NFT friends or mainly you go for the favorite taco?

Oh man. Yeah, that's a really hard question. There definitely is not a place. I'm actually originally from LA in Santa Monica, so I do have to shout out one of my favorite places up there. Up there it's called Jaliscos Mariscos. It's a food truck. They also have a small restaurant in Boyle Heights and they do these amazing like seafood ceviche based cocktail tacos and tostadas. That's all they do. And they close at Sunset, so definitely check it out there. If you're in LA down here. I haven't had too many places that I've tried here actually. Surprisingly, I'm all about the California burrito. So I don't, I don't drink too many tacos, but El Gordo is a great place for al pastor. Al pastor is very seasoned so they get it right. Love it. And then if you get a chance to go down to TJ which is like 15 minute drive from here, definitely Check out this famous place. It's right in the downtown. I can't remember the name, but it's right in downtown of Tijuana. But they have the best Birria Taco. So that is like shredded beef has all these juices. So good.

Oh, love Birria. And you can find Birria like these like pop up tents on street corners in Tijuana, like all over. Oh, man, we could talk about Tijuana tacos all the time. Have you been to Telefonica?

No, I haven't.

Oh, it's like a, like a. There's like 15 restaurants, a brewery and a bar all in kind of not a mall. It's just like a pop up. It's a full time pop up. I guess I would call it Great Tacos there as well too. I don't know the name of the taco spot there. Usually the best taco places don't have names. Right. It's like. That's right, that truck in the Target lot in South Park. Right.

It's word of mouth. That's the best way. It's like, oh, people are talking about it, you know, it's good. And if you see that long line, okay, something's happening. Something's really, really good there.

For sure. I love that you're honing in on the California burritos because that is a favorite of mine too. I feel like we need our own whole separate database of favorite California burritos as well.

It's a staple. It's a staple of not just California, but really San Diego.

Totally. And I love comparing and contrasting like the different ways places do potatoes. Right. Some it's fries, some it's home fries, some it's other mashed potatoes. It's pretty cool to see how creative people get, can get even with the same thing, which is, you know, there's a bare minimum to make a California burrito, yet there's so many different ways to do it, that's for sure. Well, Valerie, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Thank you for what you're doing in building community and bringing people together. We love that. So we will make sure we get the links in the show notes so that anyone else can join us as well. And thanks again for being on.

It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. And hopefully I get to come back on and explain what I've done in the next few years. You know, we'll never know where I'll be at then.

Absolutely. No. We love tracking the stories of the builders in the community, so we'd love to have you back on. Thanks.

So fun. Take care.

Thanks for tuning in to the Tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on freshbroodtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also follow freshfoodtech on all of our social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Google Play. Thanks again.

Startups get the party Startups get the party started Startups get the party Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it hey.

Startups get the party Startups get the party started Startups get the party Startups get the party started Startups get the party Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it Every.

Hey.