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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
Netflix Pushes Further Into Video Games With First-Person Shooter Title
12:01 PM | March 22, 2022
Courtesy of VanDAM/Netflix
Netflix is expanding further into video games with the upcoming release of three new mobile titles, including its first-ever first-person shooter game.
The streaming giant has already released 14 titles since launching video games on mobile devices in November, including some using intellectual property from Netflix originals like “Stranger Things.” The games are free for Netflix subscribers and available on Apple and Android devices.
On Tuesday, Netflix announced three more games dropping this month, including a zombie first-person shooter called “Into The Dead 2: Unleashed.” The title, developed by New Zealand-based developer Pik Pok, features dozens of levels where players can “maim, mow down, and eliminate the Dead,” per Netflix’s description. The company also unveiled a narrative puzzle game titled “This Is A True Story” and a retro-style brick-breaker called “Shatter Remastered.”
The new titles come on the heels of Netflix’s pending $72 million acquisition of Finnish mobile games developer Next Games, announced earlier this month. The deal was the streaming giant’s second acquisition of a video game company in only six months, following its September purchase of Glendale-based gaming studio Night School.
Netflix, which has a huge footprint in Los Angeles, has expanded beyond traditional movies and TV shows in other ways, too. In addition to mobile games, it has released interactive movies and shows that blur the line between TV and video games. It remains to be seen whether the strategy will pay off for the streaming giant, which has seen its subscriber growth slow down in recent quarters.
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Christian Hetrick
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Why a Startup Needs a Board: The Why and How of Constructing a Board Early
05:22 AM | October 28, 2022
Photo by Benjamin Child on Unsplash
If your business is a corporation, you are required by law to have a board of directors. For many startups, it can seem like just an option. However, there are many reasons startups should aim to form their own board of directors early in their lifecycle.
Does Your Startup Need a Board of Directors?
Yes. Even for experienced founders, a new company comes with new challenges — and an opportunity to make all new mistakes. For first-time founders, you don’t know what you don’t know. The best way to avoid many of these mistakes is to surround yourself with experienced counsel, and a board is a way to formalize that. The primary job of a board of directors is to look out for shareholders' interests, oversee corporate activities, assess performance, assess the CEO and senior management and give feedback about the future direction of the company. Your board should help provide advice and mentorship from people who have been there, done that.
When Should Your Startup Form a Board?
As you start to think about your board as founder and/or CEO, the board can initially be as small as just one director: you.
As the startup grows and evolves over funding rounds, you should expand and include more members. The most standard time to form a board is after the Series A funding round, but some startups choose to after the seed round. Typically, the board expands as the company does from two to three directors (including the CEO) around the Series A, to five to seven directors when the company is in the Series C/D stage to seven to nine directors as it is preparing to go public.
I prefer boards on the smaller side because they can be more collaborative and interactive, but as you create board committees, you will need a larger board in order to have two to three directors on each committee.
Who Should Serve On Your Startup's Board?
One of the best ways to fill a board of directors is to find the people you wish you could hire but may be in positions where it’s not really feasible. For a startup, you should aim for a board with three to five directors. This should include one or more in each of the following categories: the founder, an investor in the company and an independent director.
You’ll want to have some of your investors on the board because they are the ones most rooting for and affected by the financial success of the company. This will also allow them a small measure of control and visibility into the company's progress. Keep in mind it’s important to keep cultivating these relationships for when you need to raise capital down the road.
Additionally, it’s important to have one or more independent directors — a person who is neither an employee nor an investor in the company — on the board early. Ideally, you’ll be able to find another founder, peer, colleague or acquaintance who has been in your seat before and can bring a clear, objective perspective to board discussions. A trusted independent director can let you know if you’re missing an opportunity or taking a step in the wrong direction. Plus, most importantly, help navigate the challenges that arise when the investor board directors may have a different perspective from or disagree with the operating board directors.
Lastly, the diversity of your board is also extremely important. Groups from different backgrounds, genders, races and perspectives make better decisions and improve business outcomes. I recently had a conversation with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin at the dot.LA Summit about this very thing.
A Board Success Story
Throughout my countless years working and growing with boards, I’ve had many opportunities to see just how important a good BoD is. A great example of when a board decision aided my company and me more than expected is from my time at Zillow.
Prior to 2008, investors were looking to invest more money into Zillow — which we didn’t need at the time. One of our board members, Bill Gurley, gave the great advice of “take the hors d'oeuvres when they’re being passed” or take the money when it’s being offered. We ended up taking on the new capital and it was good that we did. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, the extra capital allowed Zillow to weather the storm and take advantage of the moment to expand more aggressively when the market was up for grabs.
It’s small moments like this that led to bigger successes down the road and prove the importance of having a board early.
Final Thoughts
Your board of directors should help you navigate challenges and serve as a trusted sounding board (pun intended) when you need advice. Something most, if not all, founders know by now is that startups are dynamic and constantly evolving, so as your startup scales your board will too. And if you build the foundations of your board thoughtfully, it will aid your startup in the years to come.
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Spencer Rascoff
Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.
https://twitter.com/spencerrascoff
https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencerrascoff/
admin@dot.la
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