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Afterparty Raises $4 Million to Launch NFT Ticketing Platform
Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
Web3 startup Afterparty has raised $4 million to launch an NFT-based ticketing platform for live events, with plans to use its Utopian NFTs as event tickets after a trial run at a Las Vegas music festival last month.
Afterparty landed the new capital—which it described as an extension of its $3 millions seed round from last fall—from more than two dozen investors, including angel investors like Paris Hilton and Jason Calacanis and VC firms like early-stage crypto fund Blockchange. Existing investors Acrew Capital and TenOneTen Ventures also participated. (Disclosure: dot.LA co-founder and chairman Spencer Rascoff is an investor in Afterparty and contributed to the round.)
Afterparty has now raised $7 million in total funding since launching in August 2021, co-founder and CEO David Fields told dot.LA. Fields, a former executive at Michael Eisner’s investment firm The Tornante Company, said Afterparty is “building technology to enable creators and music artists to build direct connections with their fans and realize the full potential of Web3.”
The startup trialed its NFT ticketing technology in Las Vegas last month, at what it called the “first NFT-gated festival ever”—meaning nobody could get in unless they owned one of Afterparty’s Utopian NFTs or were a guest of an NFT holder. Fields said over 6,000 people attended the event.
The Utopian NFT collection features 1,500 pieces of art depicting headshots of futuristic, cyberpunk-esque robots. On NFT exchange OpenSea, the NFTs are listed at prices ranging from 5.35 ETH (roughly $16,400) to 50 ETH (upwards of $153,000).
Owning one of these NFTs—some of which the company minted earlier this year at a party at its Afterparty House in the Hollywood Hills—comes with perks, including access to future Afterparty festivals. Afterparty is now planning a Los Angeles festival for this coming October—with access coming through its upcoming Guardian NFT collection, which will provide holders with “lifetime festival membership,” it said.
Afterparty’s venture into event ticketing is an attempt to disrupt services like Ticketmaster, which often charge hefty transaction fees. Local startups like Granted, which raised a $3 million seed round this February, are also looking to use cryptocurrency and NFTs to wrest power away from ticketing brokers.
Fields noted that blockchain technology also makes it impossible to scalp an NFT ticket. He added that Afterparty is involved in discussions with other festivals interested in integrating its NFT ticketing system, but wouldn’t disclose specifics.
“The ability to buy a ticket every subsequent year… if you had that in the first year of Coachella or the first year of Burning Man, that would be something that'd be really valuable,” Fields said.
Afterparty also plans to allow music artists to mint their own NFTs through the company and use those as tickets for their own events and festivals.
“Collectively, [artists] get 0% of secondary sales today,” Fields said. “$10 billion-plus of global secondary sales in concerts are going to other parties, and I believe NFTs are going to be a really big part of the story about how artists and venues can recapture a lot more of the value in that market.”
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Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
Behind Her Empire: How Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis Lives Out His 'Mother's Mission'
04:08 PM | July 23, 2021
Marcus Lemonis
On this episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, hear from Marcus Lemonis, the CEO and chairman of the multi-billion dollar business Camping World and the host of CNBC's "The Profit."
Lemonis is the first male guest on Behind Her Empire, but prioritizing diverse entrepreneurship remains the theme for this episode. Lemonis says he is constantly inspired by his mother who "always felt… that women rule the world."
He says he's made his mother's values a cornerstone in his work, which is centered around "living out my mother's mission." To Lemonis, this means "creating platforms and creating pathways that allow women and women of color and people of color… to be given opportunities that have been… not made available to them."
To achieve this, he created The Lemon-AID Foundation, focused on backing underrepresented founders, which he seeded with $50 million of his own money.
Lemonis says he prefers to work with female founders because he "think[s] that women, generally speaking, don't make decisions with their ego." He also shares how he thinks "women make better business people because they also manage with a level of empathy."
Lemonis also shares his strategies for overcoming the fear of embarrassment, something he feels everyone has to deal with. He argues that by giving yourself permission to be embarrassed, you give yourself permission to fail, and fail with dignity.
In the rest of the conversation, Marcus shares how he got started with entrepreneurship, how he avoids imposter syndrome and how he dresses to feel free.
Marcus Lemonis is the CEO and chairman of Camping World, and the host of "The Profit."
"Ultimately, businesses are run by people... Whether you're running Dell computers, or Susie's coffee shop, the numbers may have more commas in them. But it really doesn't change the principles." —Marcus Lemonis
dot.LA Engagement Intern Colleen Tufts contributed to this post.
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Yasmin Nouri
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
Here's How To Get a Digital License Plate In California
03:49 PM | October 14, 2022
Photo by Clayton Cardinalli on Unsplash
Thanks to a new bill passed on October 5, California drivers now have the choice to chuck their traditional metal license plates and replace them with digital ones.
The plates are referred to as “Rplate” and were developed by Sacramento-based Reviver. A news release on Reviver’s website that accompanied the bill’s passage states that there are “two device options enabling vehicle owners to connect their vehicle with a suite of services including in-app registration renewal, visual personalization, vehicle location services and security features such as easily reporting a vehicle as stolen.”
Reviver Auto Current and Future CapabilitiesFrom Youtube
There are wired (connected to and powered by a vehicle’s electrical system) and battery-powered options, and drivers can choose to pay for their plates monthly or annually. Four-year agreements for battery-powered plates begin at $19.95 a month or $215.40 yearly. Commercial vehicles will pay $275.40 each year for wired plates. A two-year agreement for wired plates costs $24.95 per month. Drivers can choose to install their plates, but on its website, Reviver offers professional installation for $150.
A pilot digital plate program was launched in 2018, and according to the Los Angeles Times, there were 175,000 participants. The new bill ensures all 27 million California drivers can elect to get a digital plate of their own.
California is the third state after Arizona and Michigan to offer digital plates to all drivers, while Texas currently only provides the digital option for commercial vehicles. In July 2022, Deseret News reported that Colorado might also offer the option. They have several advantages over the classic metal plates as well—as the L.A. Times notes, digital plates will streamline registration renewals and reduce time spent at the DMV. They also have light and dark modes, according to Reviver’s website. Thanks to an accompanying app, they act as additional vehicle security, alerting drivers to unexpected vehicle movements and providing a method to report stolen vehicles.
As part of the new digital plate program, Reviver touts its products’ connectivity, stating that in addition to Bluetooth capabilities, digital plates have “national 5G network connectivity and stability.” But don’t worry—the same plates purportedly protect owner privacy with cloud support and encrypted software updates.
5 Reasons to avoid the digital license plate | Ride TechFrom Youtube
After the Rplate pilot program was announced four years ago, some raised questions about just how good an idea digital plates might be. Reviver and others who support switching to digital emphasize personalization, efficient DMV operations and connectivity. However, a 2018 post published by Sophos’s Naked Security blog pointed out that “the plates could be as susceptible to hacking as other wireless and IoT technologies,” noting that everyday “objects – things like kettles, TVs, and baby monitors – are getting connected to the internet with elementary security flaws still in place.”
To that end, a May 2018 syndicated New York Times news service article about digital plates quoted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which warned that such a device could be a “‘honeypot of data,’ recording the drivers’ trips to the grocery store, or to a protest, or to an abortion clinic.”
For now, Rplates are another option in addition to old-fashioned metal, and many are likely to opt out due to cost alone. If you decide to go the digital route, however, it helps if you know what you could be getting yourself into.
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Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
steve@dot.la
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