Heritage Auctions does $850 million a year in niche auction volume. The speaker proposes "First Dibs," an auction house where creators sell their first limited batches directly to superfans, raising half a million dollars upfront while offering exclusive access. It's Kickstarter for people with existing audiences.
and you would end up raising, you know, potentially half a million dollars up front to fund your project. First dibs. Okay, what's first dibs? Okay, so, uh, this is when we were looking at auction houses. We were breaking down, uh, I think Heritage Auctions, which did $850 million last year in auctions, which just shocked me, right? People selling collectible coins, movie posters, comic books. I had no idea collectibles and auctions are as popular as they were. I knew they were a thing, but I didn't realize how much money was really flowing through that system. And so anytime I observe something that surprises me, I want to know more, and I see that as an opportunity. I used to see something odd and be like, that's weird, move in the other direction. And now when I see something that I'm like, that's weird, tell me everything there is to know about this. And I'll give you an example. I remember when I was in college, this guy who lived on our hall, Tawfiq, uh, probably the strangest strangest guy I've ever met. I walked into his room, uh, his dorm room, and he was looking at his computer and he was, uh, looked like he's playing a video game. And I was like, oh, what are you playing? And he turned and he looked at me and the game kept going, like, he, his character kept moving. And I was like, wait, you're not even touching the mouse, how's this happening? He's like, oh, I'm not playing, I'm watching. I was like, you're watching a video game? This is, you know, back in 2000 and, uh, what, 2006, uh, 2007, something like that. And he's like, yeah, um Yeah, this is a replay of a StarCraft tournament that happened yesterday. I was like, what? I was like, you watch other people play video games? And he's like, yeah, it's great. I'm like, and it wasn't even live. It was a recording of a Korean match that some guy had commentated over, recorded and posted on the internet. And he was catching up first thing in the morning. He woke up and he was watching this. And I was like, this is so weird. You're so weird, dude. I moved on with my life. Now fast forward, you know, 10, 15 years later, I sell my company to Twitch, which is the largest Live game streaming, you know, a place to go watch other people play video games. You know, who knew? Uh, but he knew, and he knew it was awesome. And if at that time I had been like, whoa, this is interesting, why do you do this? I could have learned a lot more. I could have started Twitch had I really sniffed out that opportunity. And instead, you know, now I work at Twitch, and you know, they've, they've created a multi-billion dollar company out of it. So it's kind of a learning for me. Anyways, back to First Dibs. So as I was looking at these auction, uh, auction houses, you know, of course you have eBay, which is the auction site for everything. But then I saw all these niche ones. There's GOAT for sneakers, you know, for sneakerheads. Bring a Trailer is an auction site for vintage cars. And it seems like, you know, on the surface that there's every, every niche is covered. There's an auction site for everything. So what do you do when there's no inventory left? There's nothing else, there's no niche left. You gotta make a new niche. You gotta make something, make new inventory that doesn't even exist yet. So, the idea for First Dibs is, it's an auction house for things that don't exist yet. What does that mean? You would partner with musicians, artists, movie studios, athletes, and you would auction off their first whatever. These are the first 100 of this new line of LeBron sneakers that are coming out. It's the same sneaker that's going to go for sale, but auctioning off the first 100 to be made. The first 100 Tesla Model 3s, the first 100 t-shirts, the first 100 copies of this album from your favorite musician. I think people would pay a premium. Maybe even a super premium for getting first dibs from the creators that they love. Musicians, athletes, artists, movie studios, et cetera. And it's like a cool kids' version of Kickstarter, right? If you're a famous musician, you're not gonna do a Kickstarter, it's sort of beneath you. But this is like a cool version of doing the same thing. You're just gonna say, hey, we're gonna make an album. If you wanna have one of the first 100 copies, or you wanna be the first 1,000 people to listen to the single, you can pay me right now. You know, $500 apiece to get that. And you would end up raising, you know, potentially half a million dollars upfront to fund your project just through selling first dibs to your super fans. All right, that's that idea.
