Adam Levy on Leveraging Onchain Data for Creators

I'll give you an example. One thing that I learned is that a lot of my community is native to the Zora protocol. They collect NFTs on Zora, they've collected Zora-based NFTs, and prior I had never really created content around Zora or on Zora. So I invited 2 people now simultaneously and separately, and those episodes got 40 to 50% more downloads than a typical podcast episode. So I was able to use on-chain data as a way to kind of like influence my content strategy off-chain, find things that my collectors enjoy, and create better content for them. Similarly, I noticed that a lot of them are native to Aave and multi-chain on Polygon, the sister company of Aave's Lens Protocol. They came in as a sponsor season 6, one of my biggest sponsors to date, and I brought them a ton of new users to the protocol. So it was a very fruitful collaboration. Just by understanding what your collectors want, you could offer them more tailored things.

What's up guys? Welcome back to Infinite Money Glitch. My name is Zach. I'm here with my co-host Martin, and today we have a very special guest, Adam Levy from Mint. Adam, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. How are you guys doing? I'm excited to be here.

We are excited to have you and good. It's also nice to turn the tables on another podcast host. I guess as a way to start and just to, you know, set the stage for the conversation, Tell us about your earliest internet memories. What, you know, got you onto the internet and how did those early experiences get us to where we are today?

I think my earliest internet memory had to be YouTube and Club Penguin.

Classic.

For sure, those two. Yeah. And YouTube because I remember there was this, like one of the OGs, like OG pranksters, Reby. Remy Gaillard. He used to dress up in like the funniest costumes and like just like, like just troll people in France. And he'd do the funniest videos. And I remember as a little kid, I was just like dying of laughter, binge watching his content. And then simultaneously I got hooked onto Club Penguin. And my handle was Mr. Levy Jr. That was the handle. And I just roamed the streets of Club Penguin. And I got super interested in like hacking games. So I would download all these, like all these, I had BitTorrent and I would download all these like random-ass clients. I don't even know what they were called, but that would allow me to manipulate my in-game experience and like literally cheat and hack and find ways to just like get infinite amount of money or to just like have all these skills that I otherwise probably couldn't have done on my own just being a pleb and just playing like a normal person.

Sure.

And then until my account got banned for doing stuff like that, and then it was just like all uphill from there, I feel like. And, uh, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I, I've been, I'm, I'm very, uh, I'm very tech interested. It probably comes from my dad. My dad is an immigrant. He came here and the first job that he, that he got moving to America was like working at this like Wi-Fi tech company.

Hmm.

So he's, he's always been known as the guy in the, in the community that if you need help with your computer, you'd hit him up and he'd always fix people's shit out of the goodness of his heart. And he'd also, he'd always be like the guy who was at like the forefront of technology and tech products. So he'd always like binge purchase all these random ass gadgets from like the brand new iPhone, literally having like paying somebody to wait at the front of the line at the mall or something like that to buy the first iPhone or like the latest TVs or whatnot. So yeah. I feel like all that energy, all that creativity, all that motivation stemmed from him and then got me hooked on all these random games and experiences.

What do you think is like the thread that you kept on pulling there? Like from the Club Penguin days, which actually got me hooked on the internet as well, to now, what do you think is the thread that ties all of that together?

I think boredom. I have severe ADHD, like really, really bad ADHD. And I was like, I don't want to say I was an Adderall baby, but I like very much had to be on that to succeed in school, to pass my middle school and high school classes. So I think it was like, if it wasn't me playing music and being on the drums, then I was probably on the computer and finding ways to stimulate my distraction. I feel like it very much, everything I do is like, what's interesting? What's What's next? What's fun? And how can I find a way to like be focused on it, I guess. Yeah, I feel like it stems from that.

That's interesting. Yeah, that maybe is a common thread with people in crypto because we interviewed David Phelps last week and he also mentioned ADHD and the kind of this interest in getting bored and finding a lot of interesting things. But you run a really great podcast called Mint where you've basically interviewed every interesting creator and founder in the crypto space. I'm curious, like, why did you start with creators as a niche for that podcast and why did you start the podcast?

So before I started the podcast, I was working at this venture studio called Draper Gorenholm. It was one of Tim Draper's like subsidiary funds, probably one of his smaller funds actually that was based out in LA. They did early stage, very, very much so precedency deals. And when I was at college, which we all went to the same college, I was also interning for them. So when I graduated, I joined their fund full-time after spending some time in Europe. And yeah, I got my first forte into like crypto creatorship through them. I had this show called Blockchain and Booze that I started at the midst of COVID March 15th, 2020 was my first day. I remember this actually. Yeah, was my first day at the job. And yeah, nobody, like that was the first day of COVID in LA. That was lockdown. So I was like, I was like, I feed off people's energy and we could no longer go to like post-work meetups or networking events or share ideas in person and shake hands. It's like, all right, how can we bring this online? So started Blockchain and Booze as a way to bring conversations online, but in a live format and do it over a drink. And I was lucky enough to get a lot of like the early DeFi project founders on there and kind of like get my first forte. And if you watch and listen, back to those episodes they were on, I feel like they were asked, like, I was so not the person that I am today when it comes to podcasting, which by default will happen. But I learned a lot and grateful for Draper Gorenholm for giving me that opportunity to explore my creative endeavors and selfishly like get so stimulated that I wanted to spin off and do it on my own. So before I quit, I had recorded 10 episodes and I had like offers to do other things at like other companies like ConsenSys and whatnot, but it wasn't for me. I wasn't like feeling 100% with it. And I was like, all right, I'm just gonna leave this fund and start a podcast and see what happens. So I, my last day was like on a Friday, work, woke up on Saturday morning with like a, with an anxiety attack and like a panic attack at like 3:00 AM trying to figure out what am I gonna do for income? And then found my first 2 sponsors, CoinVise and Poap, that helped bring the podcast to life. So shout out to Patricio, shout out to Jenil. If it wasn't for them, Mint wouldn't genuinely, probably wouldn't be here today for believing in me. And I started Mint because I saw there was a gap in documenting the creative entrepreneurship that crypto was inspiring and stimulating. And I felt like it could have been better. And I also felt like I had this experience from Blockchain and Booze that I could easily translate. And when I was doing Blockchain and Booze, I was talking about supply chain and infrastructure and DeFi and all these random topics that were quite frankly really important for me understanding the space. but I cared very little about. You'll see the drum set behind me if this ever goes and becomes a video. So I'm a drummer, so I'm a creative. First it was music, then it was crypto. So seeing all these musicians, all these artists, photographers, and creative people kind of like find ways to monetize their craft using crypto primitives was really inspiring. And I wanted to document that.

That's cool. Can you go a little bit more in depth into how you got those first sponsors, how you did that? I don't know how quickly that was after you left your job, but how you got those first sponsors and got started?

Yeah, I remember one of the opportunities that came up was Janil, we were like entertaining the idea of either me joining CoinVise or finding a way to collaborate with CoinVise 'cause they were building really cool airdrop tools, token minting tools for creators at the time. And they still do. So shout out to them for powering a lot of the communities in crypto. And Janil saw my work at Blockchain and Booze, and he wanted to do something similar for CoinVise. And I told him, I was like, I wasn't 100% sure that I wanted to go work for a company. I felt like my risk to reward wasn't really matching up at the fund. Like I wanted to, I wanted more opportunity and wanted to capture more of the value that I was creating. So he was like, all right, start this podcast, we'll sponsor every season. And through there you can get your head start. And it was great. And then I tweeted that I'm starting this podcast and I set up like this bummy-ass WordPress website to capture like a contact info and had a few people reach out for sponsorships. But one of the most serious people was Patricio and he is like, I like what you're doing. I wanna integrate POAPs. I want the people that you're speaking to to use POAP. So I gave out speaker NFTs to people in the form of POAPs. And so it was very much like, I guess inbound. But I don't want it to come off like it was easy because they relied on my previous work from Blockchain and Booze to see that I had like Stani and Fawcett and Mark Cuban and all these people on. And they saw like the work that I put in there and they're like, all right, he's gonna go spin off and start his own thing. There's something over here. Maybe we should take a bet. At least that's how I understood it from them. They may have something else that they say, but at least at the time, that's what I remember.

You know, it's cool to hear that the kind of creative aspirations came from kind of early childhood hobbies of drumming or, you know, even just like the story of being on the internet. I'm curious, like, because when people think about, you know, being a creator, they often, you know, attribute that to podcasting, posting on TikTok, being an influencer on social media more broadly. Did you ever think that you would make that switch to becoming that sort of content creator yourself? Or was it something you really just kind of fell into given, you know, the experiences with Draper?

So I never ever And I'm never motivated to do things for an audience. Like I never started the podcast to get listenership ever. Seriously.

Totally.

Because I'm just not motivated. Like I don't care about that genuinely. Like I love you guys, whoever listens, like you guys are awesome. But my motivation doesn't stem from growing an audience, for example, right? Like it's a very positive plus. And I found ways to, I don't wanna say like growth hack, but very much like guerrilla hack ways as to how you can build audiences. 'Cause it just, again, stems from my curiosity and my boredom to try something new, right? But when I started Mint, it was from the sheer selfishness of trying to learn more about the Web3 creator economy. And the cool thing is that when you tell people you're starting a podcast or you have a podcast, they'll come on. Like, they'll literally come on, they'll tell you all their knowledge. And it just so happens that I hit record at the same time and documented it and decided to publish it for others to enjoy. Like, that's it. That's all that it was, right? And season after season after season after season, I'm about to launch season 7 in January. So it's been crazy. And when I started season 1, I introduced the concept of seasons because I was like, all right, I don't wanna get into this like this rabbit hole of episode 352 and like, all right, another episode and another episode. And then it's like you lose people. So I was like, all right, if I could get, I got inspired by Netflix and how they do things in seasons.

Yeah.

and how they drop all their episodes at one shot so people can binge it, you know? I was like, where does that exist in podcasts? I don't think it exists. So I tried it and it failed and it was a mistake. I should have never released all my episodes at once because 10 hours of just me talking in like the most, the most like, the most like broken immature way, like as early as a podcaster as I was, like I have over a year now doing Mint. So I feel like I'm more confident behind the mic. And I don't wanna shit on myself too much. Maybe there's some quality over there, but yeah, it didn't work. And candidly, like I had no listenership really for the most part. Like I had listeners that came with me from Blockchain and Booze, but it wasn't like, whoa, like, you know, like crazy.

Mm-hmm.

So, but I wanted to do the season model because I feel like I could capture people's attention for a second. And if they could just like see that, over the course of many months, every so much, every few months or so, that I probably find, uh, recognition through that, and I could probably make something out of the podcast for sure.

And I mean, it's, it's pretty interesting to hear. You're, you're not the first person that's told me you started the podcast to like, you know, have an excuse to talk to amazing people, learn their insights, and it just so happens that you hit record. And I love that. I think it shows, you know, in your show and, and in many others like it. And so I'm curious, like, Reflecting back on this past year, like, what do you think was the most surprising or interesting learnings that's come from those shows? Either a tidbit from a show itself or just generally, you know, starting that pod. What do you think is the most surprising or interesting learning there?

For someone who's creating content for the creator economy, I have to practice what I preach, right? So I have to be the practitioner who continuously tests and is a super user of different products and tools. So that when I have conversations, I could create more context and authenticity, right? So I can be on their level. So it's like going to school, right? Even though I'm not a big fan of this, but it's like going to school, studying, and then trying to apply. It's like in crypto, you have that every day. You're going to use a new protocol, a new DEX, a new tool, a new this, a new that, mint an NFT, collect an NFT, stake it, like whatever it may be. And then I have to go through that process to then find ways to create commentary around current events. So I, I've, and again, it stems back to like me being bored in my ADHD. Like I just like trying new things. So going through that process as a practitioner, then document, documenting that process with other people who are either building the products that I'm testing, um, has super, has been super fun. And then I guess like I always find ways to improve and try to like create a better, well-oiled machine. So finding a way to create, I don't wanna say like an assembly line of people, but very much way like a process to record content, chop and edit content, ship content, and then monetize content has been a really interesting learning process for me. And season 1, I came out with this concept of sponsorship NFTs where sponsors don't send me wire payments, they just collect my NFTs for whatever the rate is for that season. And it's been a really fun way to kind of like experiment with on-chain revenue. Right? And, but do it in a way where you can also integrate the brand into your community in a more meaningful, authentic manner.

That's cool. Wait, can you, the sponsorship NFTs, I wasn't super familiar with. So like Poop bought like an NFT from you basically as a way to sponsor. And so there's some wallet out there that has like the mint NFT?

Yeah, exactly.

That's cool. That's cool. Yeah, you talked about a well-oiled machine and you described this really well. You wrote a blog post called the Web3 Creator Tool Stack that was really amazing. And it did, there's like all these learnings from you running your podcast and actually a lot of that stuff you'd shared with me in a call a few weeks ago or months ago. And that really motivated me to start Infinite Money Glitch, actually to start this.

Let's go.

Yeah, so that was definitely like the motivator because you were so open about that and how you were running your thing and, you know, that you were enjoying it, that it was working well. Like what's the thought process behind being like so open about your strategy and like how the sausage is made and basically saying like, hey, this is how the mint machine works. Like more people should be doing this. Yeah, why did you decide to make that so open?

There's only so far you can go as one individual. And if you create a level of vulnerability, ownership, and communication and like open, transparent communication, I believe if you do that with the right person, they'll return that, right? And you'll build this relationship of learnings and lessons. And sometimes I get a head start into figuring something out and I want to immediately share that because maybe somebody else has tried it or maybe there's something to learn from somebody else. Now, I don't expect anything in return. I do it out of the, like the sheer willingness of just wanting to talk about what I do because I've seen success. And it really stems back, guys, to me getting into crypto because when I got into crypto, Mm-hmm. I read the Bitcoin white paper when I transferred from Pierce College to USC. I read the Bitcoin white paper my first month or month or two at USC, fell in love with it. And then winter break came about around the same time, December, locked myself in that room for 4 weeks in my brother's room and just tried to consume everything that I can. And then wrote in Facebook groups, if you want to learn about Bitcoin on the weekend, on a Saturday at 3:00 PM, meet me in this room in the Marshall Building. I'm doing like white paper roundtables and like, whiteboard sessions and literally reading that content and then teaching other people helped reinforce the entire process for me and gave me my edge in understanding what the hell was happening. So very like, like very, I guess it's a very analogous sort of like experience to going through this Mint podcast experience and being able to document it and share with other people helps me reinforce what I learned and talking it through helps me understand the holes of my process. And maybe other people have commentary. Now keep in mind, I don't like, I don't share stuff with everybody. Like I like sharing stuff with friends, people that I feel like I trust, people that I feel like are good people, and people that I've looked up to at some point in my career. Like Martin, like you started Lava Labs. That was the sickest freaking club on campus. And I wanted, I just wanted to be a part of it, right?

Mm-hmm.

Ended up doing Troy Labs and like Trojan Blockchain Society and whatnot. So seeing us in our careers kind of like meld in this new world, and that we're all super excited about is like the best part, you know? So if I could share my knowledge and share my learnings, like I win at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, I can't take credit for starting Lava Lab. I was just involved in that sphere. It was actually one of the founders was Alex Zhang, who's the mayor of Friends with Benefits and who brought Elon Musk to campus in like 2015, which was like a crazy origin story. But yeah, you talked about those first few months at USC and I think that's when we met. Yeah, around that time. And I remember you starting the Blockchain Club and, or just getting involved in that. And I remember just being like, I don't get this. Like, this guy's clearly passionate about this. Like, and at that point I think I was clearly like missing out on something, but I was like, I don't understand Bitcoin. 'Cause it was, that was what, like 2017 or 2018 or something? 2017?

Yeah, 2017.

Yeah, I remember just being like, I don't, I don't really get it.

So funny.

I don't, I don't really get blockchain, but this guy, this guy is really passionate about this. I don't know, Zach, if you had something else on that.

Yeah, I think it's, it's just such a heartwarming story. One that like, you know, we were all at USC around the same time and each of us kind of found crypto in our own way. But more broadly, what I'm pulling from what you're saying here, Adam, is this saying that rings true in my head, which is something along the lines of, you know, if you want to go fast, go alone. And if you want to go far, go together. And there's a lot of people who, you know, go on social media and they tout this kind of building in public mentality because they just want to build an audience and they just want to talk about, you know, how many followers they have. And for you, it's so much more than that. And it's very clear in your work that like, no, this is about the connection between people and about learning together. And, you know, teaching people is the best way to learn yourself. And so, you know, this definitely shines through and You know, we can tell that you're not just one of those people looking to build the audience. You're actually really trying to make a difference here in the space. And I would say that you're doing a pretty damn good job doing that.

Thank you. You know, one thing that I continuously think about, I feel like I think about it every week, is what does the Web3 Hype House look like? Okay.

Oh, that's interesting. Say more about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the Hype House is basically a collection of TikTokers that live in this house in LA, and they cross-promote each other and create content together. And And it's like this exclusive yet really, I guess, cool club for that culture in that world. And one thing I often think about is like, we don't have that in Web3. So if I could share my lessons with as many creators and people that aspire to be creators, maybe there's a way in the world where we could build some type of like decentralized Hype House. And what the hell does that look like? And I think it starts with every single creator kind of like building out their own island of content. And then us finding ways to bridge ships or melt bridges to each island, right? And find ways to cross-collaborate and cross-collaborate either on content, on NFT releases, on collecting stuff, whatever it may be, right? So I think about that concept a lot. Like what does the Web3 Hype House or what Web3 creator house look like? Is it a digital house? Is it a phygital house? Like a physical digital? environment. So also part of like sharing my knowledge is like, all right, how can we build a network of like Web3 native creators? Because then we can all kind of like benefit and grow together. You know, that's how I very much like see it as well.

Yeah, that's super cool. That makes me think of, have you heard of MetaLabel?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, yeah.

It makes me think of like MetaLabels and kind of like that mindset or approach. I feel like there's definitely a very like on-chain element too of creating a collective of creators creators, that sounds really interesting and I don't think has really been done yet. But yeah, that would be, sorry, I just completely lost my train of thought, but that would be super interesting to explore that. One thing I was gonna say is I think actually most, a lot of creators, even in Web2 tend to do this, right? Where you have like Cody Ko and Noel Miller, like they have their podcast is very successful. Then they start some sort of studio where they basically fund other creators, which I think makes sense, but it would be really cool to approach this in a much more decentralized way.

Like, here's an idea. Like, imagine, and probably somebody's gonna take this, and I hope they do. And if you do, hit me up, 'cause I wanna be a part of it. Imagine having like either a physical or digital or both types of an environment where you bring creators and developers together and you find ways to create like tokenized content and just like experiment at the innovation in the forefront of what tokenized content looks like and remixing content and doing really cool drops around the content that you create or the community, a community of collectors that you create. I think about that often. Like imagine if we could do like a getaway of just like creators and developers and we just like, we just turn off our phones, hone in, double down on what we could do on the forefront of tokenized content. I don't know, I think about that a lot as well.

Dude, it's like Blockchain and Booze Part 2, but this time you're in the Bahamas. Or maybe not in the Bahamas because that place is tainted now. But it sounds very network state-esque. Like Balaji has this whole idea of basically create the community in the cloud is his way of describing it. And then tokenize all of those relationships and build governance systems to then ultimately settle on land. But I think what you're saying here is like, if each individual creator has their own little digital nation, building the roads and building the bridges between those communities is really what's going to, you know, tap into that collective intelligence. And I think you'd be the perfect person to do that, man. It seems like, you know, perfect tie into what you're doing now.

You should do it, Adam.

I feel like I've been wanting to do it. And I like have like a document that I've just like put down thoughts as like, all right, should I publish this Mirror post or should I not? Like, what should I do? But then I'm like, all right, I don't want to spread myself too thin. One of the things that I learned at USC was like, I tried joining too many clubs and being a part of too many organizations and I didn't get shit done. You know, like I just couldn't contribute meaningfully to anything. So I find a way to do one thing well, I feel like, or others can be the judge if Mint is a well-oiled machine or whatever, but I feel like it's going well so far and I found people to help me continue that process so that I have more time now to figure something else out. And that other thing is Bellow, right? And it's an itch that it's been, it's like poison oak itch that I've just been scratching at for a minute now. And I wanted to bring that to life. So there's gonna be a while, it's gonna take a long time, I feel like, till that's a well-oiled machine. But I don't wanna spread myself too thin. But one thing that I always think about is like, the podcast is my foundation. The podcast is my island. It's where I live. It's how I make money. It's who I am, right? Everything that I do needs to be centered around that because if I'm able to build some type of audience and create content around a specific niche, right? And I'm able to have a megaphone to that community, then everything that I do needs to be around that because I can just create distribution for it and bring more attention and more eyeballs to it. So I'm never gonna do anything that doesn't fall into par with what the podcast is already doing.

Yeah, you've hinted at, At Bello. And yeah, if the podcast is an island, it feels like with Bello, you're getting on a little boat and going out into the open sea. Can you tell us a little bit about why you started Bello? Like, and what's the connection to Mint and what Bello is for people that aren't familiar?

Something that I do every season is I give away free NFTs to my listeners. And Martin, behind the scenes, we've talked about this process in depth and it's really helped me build a newsletter. Genuinely has helped me build a newsletter, has helped me build the MVC, the minimum viable community, right? Of my, around my content. And for the longest time, and I've given out at the time before Bellow started, like close to 10,000 free NFTs or a little over 10,000 free NFTs. And for the longest time I was dying, like dying thirsty, I was starving, I was parched. I wanted to learn more about who the hell my collectors were. And I couldn't do it because I wasn't technical, which a lot of creators aren't. I couldn't go and query a dashboard on Dune and I didn't know who the hell to find to help me with that. Nor could I use like financial-based crypto analytic tools to understand who they were because I didn't care about trading. And I was like, all right, where do I do this? How do I do this? And I remember February, February 21st, I interviewed Queen George. We had, we had done an activation at ETH Denver. And we gave out NFTs as tickets to attend her in-person conference. I was like, wait a minute, you know nothing about your listeners on Spotify. And if you tried to sell tickets through Eventbrite, you would've never known who the hell are the people collecting. But because we gave out NFTs, there's a lot of context in their wallets. And if we could analyze on an aggregate level, we could probably find something really cool about the people who watch you perform live, you know? And I talked about it on the podcast. I was like, guys, Whoever's building this, hit me up. I wanna use it. I have collectors, blah, blah, blah. February goes by, March goes by, nobody's doing it. April, I hit up my friend Ellie. We go to ETH Amsterdam and we build the, I guess the initial MVP at the ETH Global Hackathon. And we were one of the finalists and we took that money and we continued building out Bello. And the idea behind Bello is creators are building new audiences and an audience is defined by a collector. And just like we have audiences across social media that give us distribution around our content, we're building a new audience that allows us to capture more of the value that we create. And it's super important to know who are the people creating that value for you that you're capturing, right? And it seems so intuitive, like you need to understand the people listening to your podcast, the people visiting your website, and the people collecting your NFTs. And I had Google Analytics, And I had Spotify and Apple Music data and I could sort of build a profile around my average listeners and then take that back to brands to do collaborations with. But I felt like there was this plethora of information on-chain where if I felt like, I felt like if I knew who they were, I could probably create better content for them and find better ways to monetize them. So Bello is the tool that helps you understand more about your collectors. And we do it in a very simple way. You search a collection or a group of collections and you can get an aggregate analysis of who these wallets are so that you can kind of figure out what to do with them next, right? So I'll give you an example. One thing that I learned is that a lot of my community is native to the Zora protocol. They collect NFTs on Zora, they've collected Zora-based NFTs. And prior I'd never really created content around Zora or on Zora. So I invited 2 people now simultaneously and separately, and those episodes got 40 to 50% more downloads than a typical podcast episode. So I was able to use on-chain data as a way to kind of like influence my content strategy off-chain, find things that my collectors enjoy, and create better content for them. Similarly, I noticed that a lot of them are native to Aave and multi-chain on Polygon, the sister company of Aave's Lens Protocol. They came in as a sponsor season 6, one of my biggest sponsors to date, and I brought them a ton of new users to the protocol. So it was a very fruitful collaboration. Just by understanding what your collectors want, you could offer them more tailored things, right? Yesterday or today, we just announced heat maps. Heatmaps allow you to see the activity around your collector's purchasing behavior. So at what days and times are they most actively collecting or least actively collecting? And based off that, you can find and pinpoint the ideal moment where you should drop your NFT, right?

Oh.

So the way I like to think about this is like a triad. Imagine everybody that's listening, a triangle in your head, okay? Close your eyes, imagine a triangle. The top point, okay, is purchasing. So you wanna figure out the price to sell your NFT at. The bottom right corner is day and time. You wanna figure out the time and the day to sell your NFT at, right? And the last corner is editions. How many NFTs do you sell? So I'm on like this spiritual mission to kind of complete the triad of giving you the amount to sell your NFT at, when you should sell it, and how many editions you should sell. That's like, that's what's keeping me awake at night. That's Bellow.

Dude, wow. First of all, that pitch is so polished. Like as a recently anointed founder myself, holy shit.

That was a great pitch. Thank you.

I'm curious, like, you know, obviously there's such an important timing aspect to startups and, you know, more often than not when VCs, you know, evaluate a startup, it's like product, market, and team. And in this case, team, duh, it's obvious that you're the person to build this. Product clearly sounds like it's filling a need, but the market is definitely facing some Not so good tailwinds these days, to say the least. So how do you think about timing as it relates to launching Bello, especially given what's happening in crypto today? Why do you think now is the right time to double down on building a crypto startup, even amidst that broader macro uncertainty?

Yeah, so there are about 200, 220, 219,000 NFT collections today. There's about 500, Yeah, it's a lot on mainnet, on mainnet, just on Ethereum. Don't forget about Polygon and Solana, but just on mainnet, okay? And there's about 500 collections created every day on average. Despite the bear market, people are still creating new projects. And whether that be a PFP project, music NFTs, tickets, whatever the use case may be, but people are still using tokens to build, monetize, and own their audience, right? They've adapted to this new primitive of decentralized communications, decentralized community building, And everything in between, okay? So my bet as someone who's been documenting the creator economy is that over time, every creator or almost every creator, I'll say, will be at some point in their life crypto native, whether that be from the music that gets published on chain to the concerts that they sell out through tickets. And they may not even know that NFTs are under the hood, right? To the digital fashion, to the games, to everything that kind of like involves their digital life. Is gonna involve an NFT. And with that, you're gonna want to know who your audience is, right? So especially now when prices are down, it's never been more important to understand who your community is so that you can cultivate better experiences for them, keep them engaged throughout this down cycle. So having a tool like Bello is like the perfect time because you can use that information to find better ways to create engagement, keep the thing alive and keep the pulse going. You know, that's how I see it, that's how I understand it.

I love it. I mean, I've been talking a lot with my team, especially about, you know, the past bull cycle has basically been a marketer's market. And, you know, people like you and many others, you know, were able to capitalize on that so, so well. You talked about, you know, it now gives you the distribution to launch products like Bello and distribute that, you know, through your network and community. And it's just fascinating to see that, like, now that we move into what I'm calling a builder's market, This is so obvious. Like, you know, it seems like this is the thing that everybody really needed and nobody has access to. So I wish you all the best on that, man. I mean, it seems like such an amazing product. And, you know, as I said, you're the perfect person to build it. Martin, over to you. I know you had some broader thoughts about content.

Yeah, I think it's a good point is the crypto content In the last cycle, I feel like especially like 2021 throughout the year was pretty saturated. What's something that you think in the world, in the realm of crypto content, what's one type of content that you think is kind of overrated and what do you think is actually underrated that no one's exploring in terms of crypto content and content used very loosely here? Overrated.

YouTube thumbnails with open faces and VeChain, 1,000% overrated.

Yeah.

Right? Like those types of content creators. But you know what's crazy? Like those pieces of content are the ones that perform best. Like because they're just so catchy, they're so clickbaity. But I hate them because they're so shilly and lack quality and substance.

Yeah.

Right? And it gives kind of like a bad rap for crypto because people then think it's all about trading. and all about making money when there's this whole new world of like audience building, communication, operations and whatnot that is just getting left behind. You know, so I would argue that's overrated. Underrated content like this where thoughtful, meaningful questions on the day-to-day of a crypto superuser, right? I really like that because it gives you depth layers to the onion that you just keep peeling and peeling and peeling and you reach to that stinky yet amazing sweet core And you get so much value from it, you know? So I guess that's my take. Also, I'm trying to do, okay, another one, underrated Shorts. Shorts are underrated.

YouTube Shorts?

I've been publishing, no, Spotify Shorts. Oh, okay. So you take your long-form content, you chop it up, the best questions, because an episode tends to be an hour and a half, hour long, however long you do it, 45 minutes. And you think everybody listens? No, there's a drop-off rate at some point. But, and by the way, forget the but, and you can only choose one title for the podcast, yet you ask so many questions, right? So it might be like how NFTs will influence the music industry, right? Or Web3 music, whatever it may be. But you also talk about like their creative journey as a producer, you know? And that's also very interesting depending on who's listening. So you chop up every question and every answer in its own episode miniseries and You can boost your download count and it's great.

Yeah, that's something that I saw you do that I thought was really cool. And for us, I was thinking about in the context of something that I wanted to explore in the context of the podcast was also like weird ways that people make money on the internet or just like businesses that people don't know about it. So for example, like in LA you see all these billboards for injury, like lawyers, or is that what they're called? lawyers. And like, basically it's like, oh, you did get in a car crash? Like, call Jacob, right? And I did a little bit on research because some of them, I did a little bit of research on them because some of them like sponsor the Chargers, they sponsor UCLA, they sponsor USC, they're everywhere. And so I was like, how are these guys making money? And so I wanted to do like a super short thing on that or topics like that. But I think that short format is spot on because there's a lot of podcasts where I'm like, there's 5 minutes that are really amazing in your 1-hour thing, but I don't wanna listen to the full hour just to find those 5 minutes. So like, just give them to me and I'll, I'll consume them, become a fan and get outta your way.

And the cool thing about that too, like think about like SEO on Spotify, because if you can chop up a bunch of content of like the Gary Vee episode, for example, and you put Gary Vee asking a specific question or an answer that he gave and in the podcast filter on the Spotify search, right? Like chances are like you'll probably increase your ability to be on there. And I've also noticed the way Spotify's algorithm works, like the more 5-star or star, more reviews you have, the higher your keyword gets ranked in the listing, right? So for the longest time, guys, Mint did not show up on Spotify. But now when people ask me or like, they like, oh, what's your podcast called? And I'm like, open Spotify, let's give it a test. Mint is the first thing to come up when you search Mint.

That is sick.

It's like in the first 3, you know? So it like worked and it's working. It's like these small things that are like amplifying the growth. Of the podcast. Yeah.

That's cool.

By the way, Martin, the cool thing about Jacob is that the way they work, and I don't know if you discover this answer, but they're like hotlines. Like they, they're just lead generators. So they, they take that phone. Yeah. They just take that phone call and they sell those leads to other, other law firms. That's what they do. They're marketing agencies.

Yeah. Martin, that's probably why they're making bank.

Yeah. They're in the business of marketing. They make so much money.

Yeah, that's something I looked at Pirnia Law and I think they, it's a, maybe it's a little different. Maybe they also do that, but it looked like they basically just have a ton of people that aren't technically lawyers handling everything up until the actual like case. And then once in a while they just have a case that pays a ton of money and so they make a bunch of money, but.

It's like, it's like 6 lawyers, 6 lawyers making millions or something.

It's tiny. Yeah, they make a ton of money and one, It's that realization for me. And I think kind of related to stuff around Bellow and all this stuff, I'm like, everything is marketing to some extent is like, is if you have like eyeballs, if you have people, if you have email addresses, if you have Ethereum addresses, like all that stuff, that's where really you can get a lot of value. And so yeah, that was like a thread for all those. But obviously you think about all of this stuff a lot, Adam. When you think about the future of the creator economy, like what do you see in the next 5, 10 years? Like what are people missing or misunderstanding about the future of the space and what are you seeing looking ahead?

Just like you heart a video on TikTok and it ends up going into your favorites folder, I think the future of all this is collecting content, number one. you may think like people are not gonna pay to favorite something. Like it could just be collecting free content.

Totally.

Like the act of hearting something and it landing in your folder to then collecting something and landing in your wallet, it's very analogous, right? It's a very similar sort of action, except one, the latter has more power to it down the road, right? And I think about this from like a data perspective. I think about this from an interoperability perspective. So in Web3, when you build an audience, those collectors follow you everywhere, right? They can follow you not only to sound.xyz, but to Zora, to Lens Protocol, to JokeDAO, to all these platforms, right? And it's like, again, we're going back to that analogy of bridges for each island, right? Whereas on TikTok and Instagram, when you build an audience, if you try to funnel those users from Instagram to TikTok, you have high drop-off rates and it's 2 different communities. The way I see it. And you also see that like, if you look at the history of content and you look at the history of social media, in 2018 TikTok started popping off and all the Instagram influencers started to become really irrelevant and all the TikTok creators started to become really popular, right? But imagine if Kylie Jenner could have brought all of her 100 million plus followers to TikTok, she'd still be the top creator, but now she's not. You know, she's just not. Charli D'Amelio, Addison Rae, all these people, like they're the top people. So the ability to take your audience with you from one platform to another, I think is super, super interesting. And then I bet that your collector base is gonna outperform and outpace your followers, right? So a good example of this is that, and again, I don't care about numbers, but just like I always look at things to measure my performance, okay? So I just crossed 15,000 followers on Lens, okay? I'm like 14.8 on Twitter. Okay, I've been on Twitter for a minute now. I've been on Lens for like 3, 4 months, 4 or 5 months, something like that. And the ability to do programmatic experiences and do and develop stuff around being able to follow someone is super, super fascinating, powerful. For example, one thing that I did at the end of season 6 is I did this thing called the Vault. And the Vault is like this token-gated tomb of content where I've curated a few creators to publish content in there, never-before-seen content. The only way to unlock your access to the vault is if you collect my Season 6 pin. They're free to collect, they're non-transferable, they have no speculative value. It's just to show that you were here at a given time for me to say thank you and give you more content, okay? So the only way to collect Season 6's pin on Polygon was if you followed me on Lens, right? So Lens ended up being a really, really powerful tool to experiment with because all those people that collected on Polygon also followed me on Lens and that gave me like, thousands of new followers in a week, you know? So being able to program experiences around collector count, around tokenizing content, all that in between is, I think, the future of what the creator economy looks like.

I love that. So I guess to tie up this conversation in a nice neat bow, we've talked about content, we've talked about communities, we've talked about creation in general. We, you know, Martin and I here are super, super early in our podcasting journey with IMG. What advice do you have for us or other creators listening who really, really want to kick ass with the content they're creating? And as, you know, a way to tie up this conversation, what sorts of last little tidbits do you want to leave our listeners with?

Always be experimenting. So ABE, I think it's a good— that's a good acronym, ABE.

I like it. Honest Abe.

Yeah. Honest Abe. There he goes. I don't know what that means, but I'll run with it. Honest Abe. Okay. It's like Abe Lincoln. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, I know that, but— oh, Abe. I see what you're saying now. All right. I'm slow here. Okay.

It's all good.

Always be experiment— yeah, always be experimenting. Crypto is all about trying new stuff. We are still in the innovator's adoption cycle, and experimentation is rewarded greatly if done correctly. So I think always be trying new stuff, create new content, collect new stuff, be a part of organizations, try to launch your own projects, even if they flop. A lot of creators that are at the top of their game have also had really failed experiences that they've learned from and bounced back from. I am one of those examples, like very bluntly, like I've like a lot of things that I've tried didn't work out, but That's the beauty of it. And you actually, you actually build a community around that and you find people who also go through that and you guys thrive together down the line, you know? So ABE, Abe, Honest Abe, always be experimenting. I think that's a good way to wrap it up. Yeah.

I love it. Adam, thank you so, so much for joining us on this episode of Infinite Money Glitch. It is an absolute pleasure to, you know, bring lovely friends like you on the show. Where can people find you on the internet? I know you talked about Lens, Twitter. What are your socials? Where can people follow you or Follow up after.

You can find me everywhere at @LevyChain. So just like the blockchain, but for the Jews, the Levy Chain. So you can find me on Twitter, Lens, and everywhere in between. I'm also on Instagram. And then yeah, follow Bello at @BelloSight. It's B-E-L-L-O-S-I-G-H-T and then an S at the end, I think. Bello Sight. Yeah, we're on Twitter. on Lens, not on Instagram yet, but if you go to bello.lol, you can sign up for early beta private access and I'll see you there.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Adam. And thanks to everybody who listened to this episode of Infinite Money Glitch. We will catch you next time.

Thank you, Adam.

Let's go. Thank you guys.

Thanks again.