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XNFT Hype And The Rise of Digital Collectibles
Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
Even Rikin Mantri, whose company launched an NFT exchange on Friday, admits the eye-popping sums being paid for digital artwork, NBA highlights and even Tweets are being fueled by hype.
Mantri, co-founder of Curio, which launched last month, expanded his platform to let fans trade their digital collectibles directly. It will be competing with a bevy of blockchain-backed collectible exchanges including Rarible and OpenSea, which just raised $23 million.
But Curio plans to appeal to the average consumer by targeting dedicated fan bases and partnering with well known entertainment brands. Already, it's struck a deal with Fremantle, which owns the television drama "American Gods" franchise, based on the graphic novel by Neil Gaiman.
"We're definitely seeing a hype cycle," Mantri said. "If you see who's placing the bids, it's based on crypto enthusiasts who've made a lot of money investing early on."
But he still sees a big business in targeting dedicated fans. "We think about (NFTs) as a passport to prove your fandom and also unlock VIP experiences."
So-called "smart contract" technology that underpins NFTs can give the owners of these tokens special access to experiences, like celebrity meet-and-greets.
Mantri thinks most people won't care about the underlying technology of NFTs in the same way they care little about how credit cards work. To appeal to a non-cryptophile audience, Curio accepts payments in normal currency – in contrast to many NFT platforms that require crypto – and also offers a "gallery" feature and enables sharing on social media to allow collectors to "flex" their items.
"Collection is a human condition," Mantri said, noting his old pet rock, trading card and watch collections that have been gathering dust.
Mantri and co-founder Juan Hernandez met in the computer science program at Northwestern University. Hernandez went on to build a blockchain-based financial exchange as founder of OpenFinance Network. Mantri entered the world of entertainment, first at William Morris and later at ABC. Along with Ben Arnon — an early employee at tech startup Wildfire that was later acquired by Google — the two began the company last year to capitalize on their experience across crypto and entertainment. They wanted to ride the tailwind created by NBA TopShot, which first launched in July 2019.
Curio has so far sold 2,350 NFTs connected to seven different American Gods characters. The tokens have been priced between $50 and $100, depending on their rarity, and have in total yielded $130,000 since sales began in late February. Collectors who purchase all seven types unlock one of two bonus items.
Mantri said every NFT "drop" has been sold out within two hours, and some in as little as 90 seconds.
One NFT that was sold originally for $100 later traded for $1,800. Numerous others have traded for six- or seven-times their sales price, Mantri said.
Curio makes its money by taking a percentage from the primary purchase and from any secondary-market trades – which it now enables on its own platform. The intellectual property rights holders receive the remainder.
With Fremantle, Curio is working with its merchandising division, which manages the distribution of earnings to the proper rights holders.
"It's all boats rise; a completely new incremental revenue stream," said Mantri.
The company also plans to offer a service that allows IP owners to create their own NFT platforms.
Earlier this month, Curio announced a $1.2 million raise that it closed in late 2020. It is currently pursuing another round.
Since Hernandez built Curio's platform eight months ago, the company has grown to 12 employees, and plans to expand to 20 next month.
The timing of Curio's future NFT "drops" will largely be determined by its partners' overall marketing strategies – for example, in between show seasons, or to boost one-off content releases.
"It's about fitting into the space in between a fan's experiences," Mantri said.
He thinks these partnerships and a selective strategy of what to offer will help Curio stand out.
"Open Sea and Rarible are more like YouTube and user-generated content; we're more of a Netflix model," Mantri said.
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Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
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Astroforge Raises $13M To Mine Asteroids
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Y Combinator startup Astroforge wants to use its new $13 million seed round to mine asteroids.
The Huntington Beach-based company aims to become the first company to bring asteroid resources back to Earth, TechCrunch reported Thursday. Initialized Capital led the funding round and was joined by investors Seven Seven Six, EarthRise, Aera VC, Liquid 2 and Soma.
“When you look at the opportunity here—and the opportunity really is to mine the universe—this is such a huge opportunity that investors are willing to make the bet on a longer time horizon,” Astroforge co-founder Matt Gialich told TechCrunch.
Virgin Orbit veteran Gialich launched the company alongside his co-founder, SpaceX and NASA alum Jose Acain, in January; the four-person firm, which Gialich said is now hiring for seven more positions, hopes to successfully mine an asteroid by the end of the decade. The seed money will fund Astroforge’s first two missions, with its first being a demo flight scheduled for a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare launch next year.
While Astroforge is keeping the specifics of its technology close to the vest, the company told TechCrunch that it involves a “high-rated vacuum” and requires a zero-gravity environment, but won’t involve actually landing on the asteroid itself. The company is eyeing asteroids ranging from 20 meters to 1.5 kilometers in diameter that carry high concentrations of platinum-group metals, which limits its potential targets to less than 1 million of the 10 million asteroids near Earth.
Astroforge wouldn’t be the first to attempt this science fiction-esque endeavor, though commercial space mining has faced financial and logistical obstacles that no company has yet overcome. NASA, for its part, is counting on the private sector to realize the U.S.’s space mining ambitions, then-deputy administrator Jim Morhard told dot.LA in 2020.
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Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Illumix Founder Kirin Sinha On Using Math to Inform Creative Thinking
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.
Kirin Sinha wanted to be a dancer. When injury dashed that dream, she turned to her other passion: math.
On this week’s episode of the Behind Her Empire podcast, host Yasmin Nouri talks with the founder and CEO of augmented reality (AR) technology and media platform Illumix.
Sinha received degrees from MIT, the University of Cambridge and LSE and founded a nonprofit to help middle school girls with their math skills. She ventured into AR while perusing an MBA at Stanford. Since founding Illumix in 2017, Sinha has raised $13 million from investors including Lightspeed and Maveron Ventures.
Her background in mathematics informs how she problem solves as a CEO, she said. Both math and her dance background taught her to seek out creative solutions.
“A lot of people think that math is very rote and analytical, but at its core it's truly not,” Sinha said. “It's about being creative. It's about having this building block for expressing and understanding the world around you.”
That creativity is bolstered by habits her mother taught her, such as surrounding herself with affirmations drawn onto post-it notes to bolster her spirits. Working in AR, Sinha said she's aware that what people surround themselves with impacts their inner world.
“Your diet is the people around you,” she said. “It's what you surround yourself with. It's the images and the words that surround your day-to-day life. I really spend a lot of time thinking about how can you improve the wider sense of the word diet around you.”
A crucial part of Sinha’s diet is carving out time for a daily walk to dedicate time to ponder Illumix’s future. Reflecting on big-picture goals and challenges allows her to consider how AR changes the ways people engage with the space around them.
Hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Editorial Intern Kristin Snyder contributed to this post.
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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.
Rael Raises $35M To Grow Its Organic Feminine Care Brand
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Rael, a Buena Park-based organic feminine care and beauty brand, has raised $35 million in a Series B funding round, the company announced Wednesday.
The funding was led by the venture arms of two Asian companies: Japanese gaming firm Colopl’s Colopl Next and South Korean conglomerate Shinsegae Group’s Signite Partners. Aarden Partners and ST Capital also participated, as did existing investors Mirae Asset and Unilever Ventures.
Rael described the new round—which takes its total funding to date to $59 million—as “the largest amount raised in the U.S. feminine care category to date.” The company said it plans to use the capital to grow its product offerings, retail partnerships and global marketing reach.
Having already branched into skincare products meant to combat hormonal acne, co-founder and CEO Yanghee Paik said Rael plans on further expanding beyond basic feminine care products. “We aspire to be a clean, holistic personal care brand for women, so we’re graduating from just being another organic feminine care company,” Paik told dot.LA.
Paik and her two co-founders, who are all Korean-American women, launched Rael in 2017 and started out by selling organic pads on Amazon. Paik said she was inspired by the products she would bring back home after trips to South Korea, where the organic category represents more than 30% of the feminine care market (compared to less than 10% of the U.S. market, according to Rael). The startup has since expanded into retail stores like Target and Walmart, and part of its new funding will be dedicated to further growing its retail presence.
These days, Rael is part of an increasing number of companies focused on organic feminine care, with brands like LOLA, The Honey Pot and The Flex Co. all offering organic menstrual products.
“The feminine care industry is not like beauty, which attracted a lot of investors initially,” Paik said. “People are noticing that it’s one of the markets that has not been noticed by investors as much, but has a lot of growth potential because it’s been dominated by big brands. Now there are female-founded smaller brands that are trying to make a difference there.”
As part of Rael’s growth efforts, the company has also brought in Lauren Consiglio, a former marketing executive at Unilever and L’Oreal, as its president.
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Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.