Wild creating a marketplace for NFT digital collectibles

0:01I'm Ashton Addison from Block West capital for investment pitch media and today on the crypto coin show we have Douglas the founder and CEO of wild Douglas welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time thanks so much for having me you're very welcome excited to dive into everything that your team has been working on I would love to start off our conversation

0:19together by just hearing a little bit of your background in blockchain and web 2 and how that led to starting wild and then we'll dive into all the details sounds great uh you know quick background I live in San Francisco California but I'm born and raised in Ohio uh spent the first part of my career as a a finance geek and uh on a move from Ohio and New York City uh it

0:43became pretty fortuitous because uh it led to me starting my first business which is a company called apartment list uh I was the founder and CEO of apartments for about 14 years raised about 170 million in Venture Capital grew it to 100 million run rate revenue and profitability in 2020 in the pandemic year um moved into the chairman role Department list in March of last year uh

1:08to uh uh to have an opportunity to start wild and uh it's been a really exciting Journey so while there's a culmination of a lot of a lot of pieces of my past I was a collector as a young kid I collected baseball football basketball cards I used to build model train sets with my dad and our in our base basement and that was kind of my first experience

1:31World building um fast forward to 2017 I started investing on the blockchain like a lot of people I uh in 2020 started producing my own music uh that's where the name Douglas came from it's my middle name and uh and so I got to see that this new World Through The Eyes of a Creator and an artist in 2021 I started buying my first pieces of digital art and I was

2:00obsessed so I um I'm super excited to be in one three I'm happy to share all about wild today and I also happy to answer any questions about my background amazing great intro Douglas and yeah that sounds like a wild history uh with that amount of uh revenue and growth and congratulations on that and the timing is just perfect and I feel like the timing's probably perfect now to start

2:22wild in you know what we're seeing in these marketplaces and the digital Collectibles uh I feel like we're just nearing the beginning of it and uh you know a 14-year history there I feel like this could easily do that and more these digital Collectibles are the start of something that could be around for for decades and decades so I'm excited to see how it plays out and to hear you

2:41know where you think the industry is going um can we just talk about wild from like the top level you know obviously there's people that are starting to you know there's a whole different crowd of people that are starting to invest in digital Collectibles than that of traditional cryptocurrencies and traditional investing which is great to have more people in the industry I'm

3:00curious where wild is positioning itself uh in that Marketplace in the Collectibles industry absolutely we believe there's a better way to Foster the world's creativity um so wild is a digital artist residency so a lot of people was scribe wild as y combinator for artists and creators uh you know we're flattered by that uh an analogy but our excitement around the

3:26business is really it helped me uh creators be the most successful version of themselves in web3 and so um we kicked off our residency last year we started with a cohort of 20 incredible digital artists across the world and we just started our drops about a month ago out of the residency so you know since then we've kicked off the the subsequent season of our residency so we've got 20

3:55more amazing artists and uh you know by the end of this year we'll have over 100 artists that have gone uh through the wild residency or on the platform and you know we'll have done uh north of 70 drops alone Gone Wild wow that's incredible and great to you know have a place for these digital artists to get together in that sense and I feel like that's something that I haven't seen in

4:17these other you know what we're seeing of like just nft marketplaces like open sea and blur and a lot of people that are into digital Collectibles they hear oh if I just go there I can just get some art but this is different than that can you explain sort of the main differences from somebody who you know maybe they bought one or two nfts but they're not really into it deep what is

4:36the main difference between like an nft Marketplace like openc and what wild is doing sure yeah the the biggest difference is our art is 3D and experiential um you can also describe it as immersive and so what that means is uh you're able to collect these incredible pieces of art from our amazing artists and they will act as building blocks to the Future metaverse

5:05um and so it is um you know what one of my personal pain points as a collector into space is so much of the experience is 2D and some so many of my digital Collectibles uh kind of collect uh digital dust in my ethereum wallet uh or wallets and to me that just seems like um a waste of incredible art and talent and so to me uh you know we really wanted to create a way and a platform

5:35that the artist can navigate that would help them be successful and you know not a hockey fan but to quote Wayne Gretzky skate to where the puck is going and we believe that future state is fully immersive uh AR and VR compatible and so um a lot of the artists that we work with come to Wild because they won't have a playbook for how to navigate the next chapter uh of the internet and you

6:00know I think the blockchain is uh particularly well suited uh to to provide a lot of resources to these uh creators as they as they move into this new territory I agree and I feel like something like this kind of you know y combinator cohort is especially important because especially for Independent Artists and those that you know they're not they're

6:24trying to just run their digital artwork sort of from the ground up you know they're not a blue chip project or they don't have a huge company it's really hard for them to actually get noticed you know it's like as they say it's in it's an Open Sea of all of this stuff and like how do you get recognition um for your unique talents when there's so much other noise around in the

6:45industry yeah for us it starts with storytelling uh we want the artists to be able to uh to be able to share that story uh because it's about more than just collecting a piece uh uh and it's about more than the price change of that collection I think it's all you know we're supporting an artist we feel uh like um like these artists uh are super

7:13inspirational to the future of technology and so you know it's my perspective is the pieces that resonate the most with me are the ones where I got to know the artist and I got to know the story behind the collection and um and that that makes these uh experiences uh that much more special to be able to kind of learn uh all about what the artist was going through what

7:37the inspiration was for the collection so to me that's a missing element in today's uh web3 world and uh it's just an added layer to everything we're trying to do Wild definitely and you know with these traditional cohorts you know why combinator for example not just anybody can just join and be a part of of the crew you know for Life how do you curate with with wild you know what

8:03are the good artists what determines uh what artists work can go onto the platform yeah we have a combination of more experienced digital artists and also emerging artists and we take great pride in building um a diverse uh group whether uh whether it's the artist genres the mediums they use the software they use where they're located in the world and so on and so

8:27forth so uh we we get really excited uh to um to receive our application so there's a formal application process and we review every single application uh so uh it's difficult to get into but it's also I think Super rewarding for the artist and so you know we want to keep the bar very high we want uh people to be very excited about the opportunity and we're

8:54also creating our own version of a curatorial board to help kind of Usher some of the artists uh into a different sphere within our platform and so you know that curatorial board will be filled with some iconic artists and collectors across the world and so it's a combination of those two things but we're always accepting applications on Wild's website okay great and you

9:19mentioned at the beginning about you know doing these exclusive drops from these artists I'm curious on how that works and you know how rare I'm guessing it depends on each collection but are there just a very small amount of limited nfts that are dropped that get picked up right away by people that are following along and preparing for these drops or how does that work with these

9:39primary drops yeah we've sold out our first three collections so the way it works is we have uh uh our Oasis pass holders so a wild has its own uh nft which is called The Oasis and for anybody that holds that they get allow list to all the artists uh drops which is a really incredible opportunity um and so uh the Oasis is relatively undiscovered so far and we're excited to

10:06kind of share that story here today so if you have an oasis you get an opportunity ahead of everyone else uh to to make to build your collection and support the artists and and collect a piece and then we go to the artist allow list so the artists tend to add folks that have supported their work in the past and that's super exciting for them and then we have our auction and so all

10:29this happens in just about 24 hours including the reveal on the artist interview on our wild Wednesday program on um uh that that happens weekly and so you know from our perspective active we really want to share those stories to tell more about the collection and we want people to see what it's like to to experience the wild experience as well which is a compliment uh software

10:55experience that we build to the artist's work so we have a core competency at our company in Unreal Engine 5 which is uh you know what fortnite is built in and so you can start to really see with uh really incredible precision and aesthetic quality uh what these pieces of art will look like in a metaverse mm-hmm yeah no I I'm really excited to take a look at some of the artwork I

11:21haven't seen it yet but I'm getting tired of just a picture you know which could just be any JPEG and like you really want to have something that has Extra Value where you're immersed in it or you know it's just 3D experience and I'm curious about the plans for this metaverse that you talked about you know uh I feel like when you look at the analogy of the old school collectors as

11:42you mentioned at the beginning you know there's certain collections where you know if you have a bunch of baseball cards they're in a binder and you're not really showing them off you just buy them and you know decades later you you pull it out but there's other collectors that also have rooms showcasing all of their Collectibles and an interactive experience where you can actually you

12:00know appreciate the art that you've that you have you're not just having it in the closet for for decades and I feel like that's something that we can bring into this metaverse format how do you envision the showcasing these digital artworks in the metaverse as you continue to grow the platform yeah my personal feeling is that we we will um all become collectors of these

12:21experiences and I think you know a quote I like to share is happiness is only real when shared uh which is uh ironically from from the book Into the Wild um the story of Chris McCandless and you know I uh I love the idea of creating different surface area for people to explore with friends uh and to make new friends and uh and I think that the building blocks of that metaverse will

12:49be all of this incredible work and I can't think of a better way to enter uh web3 as a collector than to uh than to have kind of experiences built by the most creative people on the planet Earth and so I got really excited uh to kind of unleash these uh these new mediums and these new formats to collectors because I do believe that they'll be iconic and I do believe that the artists

13:15that we have uh um some of some of which are already uh um world renowned um even the emerging artists are really going to be uh on a different trajectory by virtue of their emphasis on 3D and immersive uh characteristics of Art and so you know we're we're the only ones I know that are completely focused on this and you know I think that's a fun place

13:38to play and I also think it'll be a really rewarding opportunity for all the collectors involved yeah I think it's really unique and I'm curious what your uh perspective is on on the timing of the you know just metaverse and interactive art for you know growing that market more into the mainstream right because nfts have gotten quite popular over the last couple years uh

14:03and but the metaverse technology and the interactive experiences you know we've been talking about VR metaverses for uh a decade or almost a decade right and it's just a matter of some Catalyst where that actually kicks it software all of a sudden the next 10 million or 100 million people are joining and the interactive experience is great but it's great to be able to share that as you

14:25mentioned as you said about the happiness once we can actually share it lower those barriers to entry so that it's easy for people to get into that experience and experience it without having to have Hardware or you know download a million things what is your perspective on you know when these artists create this beautiful experience when millions of people are going to

14:45start joining and being able to experience that yeah absolutely you know it's already happening today when you look at ROBLOX as an example you know half of 10 to 14 year olds in the United States are using Roblox that's just an incredible number uh you know that is the uh the most kind of prolific metaverse we have today and so I I think that uh this next

15:10Generation uh that you know will be adults in the next five years uh is really starting to um experience this already and they're used to buying digital Collectibles they're used to avatars uh they're um they're used to spending so much time on their phones in immersive worlds so you know to me uh I think it is inevitable uh that um you know hundreds of millions of

15:35people are on their way if not a billion people over the next decade uh to these immersive worlds I think from a hardware perspective we're just in the infancy as you reference so you know um meta just come out just has just come out with the Oculus Quest Pro you know we're all anxiously awaiting the Apple uh you know mixed reality uh AR VR headset there are a bunch of like lower

16:00cost AR headsets now and Alternatives out there um and so uh I I think that you know there's a lack of incredible content for these devices that play uh with these devices personally and you know our so does our team and so you know we uh we would love to be a fixture for uh for creativity that's blockchain driven that is supported by these devices and so you

16:30know we're we're gonna do our best to build uh pieces of work that are scalable uh once air and VR become more mainstream and we're excited to uh to the lead from the front in that regard but in the interim you know it's going to be a lot of desktop and a lot of native apps yeah I know that's a great perspective Douglas especially about you know just

16:51the teenagers that are they're living it and when once they grow into you know a few years from now um it will be the normal right and it's not just the the 40 and 50 year olds that will all of a sudden pick up a VR headset and become obsessed I don't think that's exactly how it's going to happen but I feel like as all of these different Technologies sort of uh

17:10encroach into people's lives more uh it will just be the normal so well said yeah we want to we're here for it you know we uh uh the analogy I use is like it feels like we're on a surfboard you know riding in front of a a big tsunami a happy tsunami of uh of people that are coming to win three and uh you know we're we're uh fired up to be in that position and and to be able

17:35to to build something special to us like wild very fun I'm ready to go surfing um so thank you so much Douglas for for your insights in into this and and for creating a cohort for artists I feel like it's something that they they mean a lot to to bring people together and to create an experience that's more than just you know pictures it's a and it's

17:56an immersive experience so I'm looking forward to checking it out uh myself and following along as it continues to grow uh what is the best way for the viewers to follow along for these drops to learn about the artists and to follow along with them with the metaverse side as well it come to Wild dot XYZ you know we have uh weekly auctions uh for new

18:15collections we share artists stories you can follow us on Twitter uh we keep everyone up to date on the latest news if you're on Discord you can you can join us there uh and otherwise you know um we uh we would love uh the you know the absolute best ways is for you to buy a piece of art from one of our incredible artists and support their journey and also

18:37um uh get a sense for what the this future kind of decentralized metaverse will be like because I think it's going to be a really wonderful place great thank you so much I will leave the the wild XYZ link and the socials there and the Oasis pass details with the artists everything in the description box below all the best on everything with wild moving forward Douglas and

18:57let's follow up in the near future sounds great Ashton thanks so much for having us