Solo Ceesay on Calaxy’s $26M raise and creator monetization

0:01i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investmentpitch media and today on the cryptocoin show we have solo sise ceo and co-founder of galaxy solo welcome to the show and it's great to have galaxy back once again appreciate you for having me thank you very much you're very welcome i know there's a lot of exciting news from yourself and from galaxy and we did

0:23speak with galaxy on the show last year and i know a lot has happened since then um so there's so much to dive into but i'd love to kick off our interview with just a little bit of intro from you and yourself and and your newly appointed role and then we'll dive into everything galaxy yeah absolutely so my name is solo cesai co-founder and now ceo of galaxy

0:43uh in galaxy inc so spencer dinwiddie of the dallas mavericks is my co-founder um and he's been playing great down there just a shout out to him down there but uh we've been super excited about the journey that we've had we announced the financing that we had last year where we raised seven and a half million on seed funding uh we just announced another

1:03round led by the hr foundation and animoca brands of a strategic financing round that was done up of a grant from the foundation as well as the token sale that we did and we raised a total of 26 million dollars and so we're super excited to head into the end of the year and really this latter half of the year roll out this product and kind of start scoring some points on the board all

1:26puns intended amazing i love it solo and congratulations on the new role and on the financing as well i'd love to dive into that uh in in a little bit here but for those who didn't see our first interview and i'd love to just get uh an overview of of galaxy and you know what's your team and working on the vision and and what you're really building here

1:46yeah absolutely so our vision started nearly three years ago i was an investment banker at a bulge bracket bank and i focused on securitization um and so things like residential mortgage-backed securities commercial mortgage-backed securities and those types of securitized products are where i focused um and basically spencer had the brilliant idea of a

2:06brilliant idea of wanting to tokenize his contract um so you know a couple of years ago and so my brother at the time you know spencer and him are really close that's one of his best friends um told me like hey you know this job that you do on a day-to-day basis makes no sense to me what spencer has been talking about with his mba contract and all that makes equally no sense to me uh

2:26you guys should you know chat and try and make something of this right um and so originally it was just you know one you know what is the premise of blockchain how is that helpful understanding securitization and kind of finding the uh point of inflection or the common area to create something like the contract um and so we were able to securitize this contract

2:46and he became the first player to do so and that was kind of the genesis point of content um your galaxy as it currently is now right like the idea is about unlocking trapped liquidity um and so for something like a traditional asset like an mba contract um we thought that you know there is a even bigger opportunity to unlock trap liquidity in the gig economy or the creator economy

3:08um so you've seen the rise of platforms like patreon cameo only fans these creator-centric platforms built on monetization uh we essentially wanted to take that utility and bring it to the blockchain um and so galaxy is a social token platform um with real-world utility um and these tokens have real-world access similar to what has already been validated um in the web 2

3:31universe um and so we're super excited with all the creators that we have um and our access to them to really roll out an impactful web through product um that is focused on the user experience first and foremost incredible i love that story and who would have thought that you know making that connection all of a sudden you're creating a whole new web3 platform to

3:51hopefully help uh you know athletes artists and creators around the world uh really get more value from the value that they're actually contributing right and absolutely a lot of these platforms um it it sounds good at the start and then all of a sudden you know the the creators themselves aren't really getting that much and they're sort of uh also a slave to the system that if their

4:13account gets exceeded they've built their following on uh that's not a centralized entity yeah exactly so um so that that's super cool about uh spencer's contract and everything and now i'm curious on you mentioned some some good examples there of platforms that are really being able to give back to creators and they all sort of each have um their own specific uh in in some

4:37ways uh a niche and now with galaxy are you focused on you know for example athletes like spencer or um artists specifically to help connect closer to the creators or is it more general purpose yeah i'd say we're definitely more general purpose obviously our connections to sports leagues and you know people that are professional athletes like spencer is an nba player

5:02and a good one at that but also an advisor of ours is ezekiel elliott he's one of my best friends and we grew up together um and so obviously we started sport-centric to start um but what makes us different than a lot of the competition both web two or three is that we don't have a single niche or a sort of sku product right like the social token is designed to be power

5:22back in the hands of creators and so there's a lot of different things and countless use cases that can be used for social tokens galaxy's an application layer that's been built with the functionalities of cameo patreon and only fans so you have the video message on cameo style right you can send a birthday shout out to your grandma and galaxy you can do

5:42video calls or face-to-face calls like we're having right now in this discussion which isn't really you know mass-marketed at the moment and then you can have subscription-based content form content available for your fans via the social token i mean so essentially that paves way to a very diversified list of creators that might connect with their fan bases in very different ways whereas

6:03like cameo makes sense for um you know celebrities uh you know celebrities from yesteryear's past and stuff uh nostalgic people but not necessarily the instagram influence or the tick tock influencer right um whereas only fans and patreon kind of serve those markets and so we want to be a one-stop shop skills or a tool kit for any type of creator whether

6:24you're a professional athlete or a middle class creator and honestly the creator middle class is something that's being more and more talked about but honestly the biggest opportunity for us here just because the incentive for a creator to monetize themselves um is much higher for them right like if you're a professional athlete you don't have the incentive to get out of bed and

6:44do that video call to make that money the same way that an instagram influencer or a tick tocker that makes their primary means of income uh off the internet um you know the one the incentive that they have definitely solo great point and you know you mentioned there the social token and so sort of reinventing social media as well and when i look at

7:05patreon and these platforms that are meant to you know monetize content for creators i sort of see a lack of like the social networking compared to you know facebook and instagram and where there's actually a community where you can have multiple connections around um and and that is like an even bigger challenge to tackle you know to try to take users away from

7:27the network effects of of instagram and tick tock where there is a lot of social community you know how do you balance doing the creator monetization part but then also making sure that it's like a socially um fun place that people will come and stay there not just use it and then leave yeah no that's actually a great point and we talk about this in the meeting

7:49room just about every single day shout out to my chief strategy officer rusty mataviv as well as cooper coons and chad weston my chief technology and chief design officers uh we talk about that every single day right like how do you get people active and wanting to come into an ecosystem like this especially if you're coming or pulling from the web to

8:09universe and i think it's really about understanding who you are right and so us at galaxy we have a very strong identity of what we are and what we want to serve and so like we are a platform for the top 10 of a creator's fan base like the die-hard community members that one not like everyone that follows that creator but the die hard community members that

8:29are invested and for the long term in a creator and so we want to curate the opportunity for that creator to interact and connect with their fans in that intimate setting and so the social tools that have been built alongside that are reflective of that um and so you have a social feed you have the ability to post to your page and make it your own and

8:48the ability to post exclusive content and express yourself on that channel which is something that is lacking a lot of the other platforms that you mentioned as well and so i think it's a combination of those things and then just longer term philosophically when you think about the web 3 adoption um right now the way web3 is accessible is just if you have a wallet of some sort

9:09you have a wallet and it takes you and gives you a gateway pass to a lot of different platforms where blockchain technology is integrated um and i think that's a strong model but i think there is you know something to be said about people who could create a platform or a service where it makes it really easy to access this type of stuff in a familiar

9:27channel so like when you create an instagram account you don't need to remember to use trade as immediately you don't need to do these things it's like kind of finding that perfect balance of you know between centralized and decentralized i mean i think what galaxy's really focused on is finding that ideal standard for mass adoption right like decentralization is something

9:45that is on the spectrum and you know whether you're on a certain layer one or a layer two or layer one uh you know here or lay one there that's more centralized more decentralized whatever um you know it's really about finding the proper technology to to suit the needs of what you're building mm-hmm yeah i like that approach solo with the strategy not just the strategy but

10:06understanding that you know the strategy and sticking to it um and having a little bit of a niche there uh for the audience and then as well about the uh the adoption and and i don't think 100 percent fully decentralized with really high barriers to entry um and you know very technical is the way to go about it to bring the next 100 million people into web 3. you know you need to

10:29make it easy and i like that that you've also mentioned that and you're focused on you know making sure that people can get involved and eventually the techie ones will figure out the more technical ways of doing things uh in the long run but to get people through a social platform you really need to lower the barriers to entry to make it easy for them to connect to the creators so i

10:51really do like that approach absolutely i think one thing that's super important in rohan from dapper labs is actually an advisor to our project and he's said multiple times like the biggest challenge for web3 adoption is going to be the user experience um and so we have a guy in-house his name is chad weston like i mentioned before our chief design

11:11officer he wakes up and breathes uh lives breathes and eats that user experience like we want to create the most easy to use experience possible like at the end of the day the best technologies that i've ever been created are the ones that created convenience and we're easy to use right like if driving a tesla was any more complicated than driving a regular car uh a lot of a

11:33lot more people will be driving glass reluctantly because gas prices are through the roof but people would be driving gas cars uh nonetheless definitely and you know you mentioned um about dapper labs that that's great to have them involved um at the beginning uh you mentioned that you just closed a new strategic round which is incredible and i saw some of the names as animoka

11:55brands you know hbar i'd love to dive into hedera hashgraph after this as well and polygon studios what can you say about uh this latest raise you know the partners involved and what are the next steps with that capital uh closed yeah absolutely so we did raise 26 million dollars and announced it this morning so we're super excited about that we have great partners on our side

12:18so hmr foundation those guys have been uh in our back corner for the longest period of time i've been cheering us since before we were getting all the press that we're getting these days so we're obviously really great to continue to keep that alignment and partnership uh for many years to come animoka similarly they led our last round as well um so they are you know

12:38highly uh you know highly uh you know bullish on the idea of consumer adoption gaming and social and those types of projects so we're going to fit their arsenal really well and their team has been nothing but great supporters for us and we're super excited to explore that you see the strategic options and partnership opportunities you know with our investors as well uh polygon

12:59similarly right like they've created such great brand value and equity um you know we can't you know be thankful enough to be associated with the likes of the partners that we have um and then also in terms of the phrase that we just did it was combined done via a token sale um as well as a grant um from the foundation as well in terms of how we plan to spend it moving forward uh

13:20that's the million dollar question or the 26 million dollar question but um you know ideally we want to make sure that we continue to refine that user experience building mobile applications is expensive and it's hard but we're super excited to continue to reinvest into the business and building that user experience so that when people come in here it doesn't feel like

13:39they're doing anything with crypto it just feels like uh they're on galaxy um and then lastly you know kind of continuing to build out the team and round out and then you know obviously start putting some marketing dollars out there as well to we get a lot of good press just because we have a celebrity founder uh but obviously we want to continue to be tactful and finding the

13:58right opportunities to raise awareness about what it is we're doing definitely solo i love to hear it and it's interesting to see you know polygon great to hear them getting involved as well you know in our last interview um we talked a lot a bit about hedera hashgraph and i'm curious on um if you have any insight into you know the technology backing um

14:20you know for the for the crypto people on the show uh about their technology and polygon and how it works on on the back end with the blockchain and how those technologies will be involved in the use of the application yeah absolutely so i think to to give it the very you know the very agreed abridged version so hedera is our layer one we are built on hedera um and we chose sedera just

14:48because of the fact that one it's asynchronous byzantine fault tolerant we believe that the governing council is a very strong appealing point for us um you know that would be something that we hope to be on one day um and we want to build where those guys are building um and then lastly too i think it has that perfect trade-off of being decentralized fast and secure right like

15:08i feel like you have to kind of pick and choose um you know those different sliding variables and i think hedera has the greatest you know attributes for something like what we're building in mass adoption um in consumer facing use cases enterprise level use cases um so that's why we chose them um there's the creators galaxy protocol um which is a decentralized and permissionless level

15:30layer two built on top of the hedera blockchain or the hedera distributed dlt network um and essentially galaxy is the first application built on top of that within that ecosystem and so when you want to think about our tech stack and kind of what makes us different is if you're familiar with platforms like rally or roll those are protocol level solutions they don't have an application

15:50layer it's just a technology um galaxy is the first application layer of its kind in the social token regime that allows a creator an easy on-ramp to do this stuff instead of having to go to uh you know an engineering team and have them build a website to integrate your social token that you minted directly on the protocol you can use an application that allows

16:11you to swipe your fingers a couple way and do that and then also that lowers the barriers of entry to all different types of creators you may not have an interest or the ability to pay a team to build that type of stuff out for them specifically um and so that's kind of why we chose to build on hadera that's a little bit more about like our structure

16:28and how we work um and you know we're super excited to to make it really easy for creators and people to access this technology like web3's biggest affliction is the fact that it remains largely unaccessible and it requires a password you gotta know a guy if you're standing outside the club or you need to read an entire manual to use this technology uh we're in the business of

16:51making it available for everyone so come on in incredible solo that's great to hear and you know it's a big job to create the social networking platform i know you guys have already been working on it for a while and i know that there's still a lot to go as well maybe you can talk about where you guys are at right now and you know obviously this phrase is going to

17:10help take you to the next level but what are the main things that you're sort of focused on uh in the near term here yeah absolutely so we do have a lot of uh nfc drops uh coming up as well so we're super excited to facilitate and put those on in terms of the mobile application it's been in a public beta uh for the last six months about um and so we

17:32are super excited to um open the doors this summer and allow people to come in and start renting social tokens and start connecting with their fans um we really wanted to make sure that when we did so that your first impression um is oftentimes the last impression you'll get whether it's for better or for worse uh you either got somebody for life or

17:48you don't um and so we wanted to make sure that we had that experience down quick um you know people are used to you know what there's just a different user segment i think so people don't really realize when you want to get influencers celebrities like these people are used to using instagram they're used to using twitter um they took 10 years to build

18:05something so like if you're shipping a consumer-facing product with any sort of level of you know functionality or capabilities uh it's gonna take a little bit of time to build that so i think from our perspective we're really looking forward to being able to unveil those doors open the doors allow these creators to come in here and really enjoy their experiences and

18:27like i said we don't want it to be something that uh feels like arduous or something that's in a learning process really we wanted to feel um at nature and really meet them where they're at so um you know we're looking forward to getting out there and scoring some points real soon incredible and i did see the inaugural uh like nfc collection drops i think

18:46that's super cool and i would i'm definitely gonna share some links in the description box for people to check that out and hopefully follow along for future nft drops as as you mentioned as well because i think those could be worth something in in the future um and and definitely have some kind of cool extra creator value and the public beta is so for the nft drops obviously if

19:09there's going to be more people can look for that with the with the app that's live in the app store um can people start utilizing that right now and how else can people get involved um for now and for the next steps of the platform yeah we're regularly inviting people off our wait list into the application um and so there is a code to get in or an access key in order to get access to the

19:31beta um and so we are currently in the process of allowing uh you know fans and creators alike to test it out payments have been turned off just generally to make sure that we created an environment where we're getting the most data feedback and really building a user experience that people will love but in the future we're going to be continuing to let

19:52people in off those uh access keys so you know if you're any lucky you can tweet the account you can tag me or spencer maybe we'll just shoot out a veda code but we regularly invite people um off the list as well so you can access those via the website online but like i said sometimes people get lucky and they get uh they get in there uh just by having a conversation with

20:12the right person very cool solo and any last words on the vision and you know what you hope uh people will get out of this and and why they should look forward to start using galaxy uh now yeah absolutely i would say from our perspective the vision is really to be the standard for personal monetization we want to be the vanguard we want to be the fidelity of personal monetization

20:37whether it's web 2 or 3. um on the web 2 side we'd love to eventually be mentioned in the same conversations as some of those applications i mentioned before and on the web 3 side we really want to define the standards for what a user experience can be um and start challenging some of those rules and those standards that have already been set uh by the web3 enthusiasts or the

20:56early adopters right i think we got to find that middle ground for mass adoption that makes it really easy for all types of people to come in and feel welcomed um and so if we do our job right with the connections that we have to the creators that we we know the creators that will be onboarding as well as uh you know just the general sense of you know understanding

21:16um you know you obviously want to aim towards product market fit and we'll be very diligent in finding that but it does help having you know celebrity founders people that kind of understand it the target demographic of the people that will be using these technologies um we're quite close with or and many times are these exact people um so we're super excited about the

21:35future and i appreciate you for having me on the show i appreciate the coverage um and it's definitely been a great momentous day for the galaxy family thank you so much solo for coming on the show i appreciate those kind words i will leave the links to the galaxy app and the website uh and the wait list and everything in the description box below as well all the best with everything

21:57moving forward in galaxy and let's follow up in the near future awesome thank you sir appreciate it