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At VidCon, Investors Are Still ‘Betting Big’ on the Creator Economy
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.
The creator economy is the bedrock of this week’s VidCon convention, which is drawing creators, companies, investors and fans alike to Anaheim to discuss the rapidly growing realm of digital content and entertainment.
To discuss how investors, in particular, are viewing the booming creator landscape, Thursday’s “Betting Big on the Creator Economy” panel featured the likes of MaC Venture Capital partner Zhenni Liu, Investcorp managing director Anand Radhakrishnan, Team8 Fintech managing partner Yuval Tal and Paladin co-founder and CEO James Creech.
Liu said that her Los Angeles-based VC firm is paying closer attention to the influence that creators are having on how consumers spend their time and money. She cited the recent “healthy Coke” viral trend, in which people mix balsamic vinegar and seltzer water as a soda alternative, as an example—citing how the number of people who have viewed the original TikTok video that set off the craze surpasses the Coca-Cola TikTok account’s number of followers.
This growing influence stems from the surging number of creators, Radhakrishnan said. With the pandemic forcing many to reconsider their career paths, he said people now view content creation as a legitimate professional route—quipping that these days, more children want to be YouTube stars than astronauts.
“As an older person, I thought this was the downfall of Western civilization,” the Investcorp managing director said. “At the end of the day, I think it reflects that this is real—and as an investor, we’re looking at ways to invest in the next great economies.”
Creech said that the growing creator sector rests on three main pillars: content creation, audience growth and monetization. The constant evolution of creator platforms does present a challenge for investors, however, with Liu noting that more creators are looking to Web3 as an alternative to traditional outlets often offering a smaller slice of revenues.
“As a result, we’re seeing creators who can’t figure out how to build their audience, monetize and distribute,” Liu said. “With Web3, this opens up a new opportunity. There's a lot of chaos, but chaos provides the opportunity for creators to rise up.”
Additionally, the shift toward short-form content means that more investment dollars will be redirected away from longer-form shows and films, Tal observed. And even with an increasingly likely recession on the horizon—one that already appears to be hitting the creator economy, as well as the wider tech, startup and venture capital sectors—Tal and the other panelists remained optimistic about the creator economy’s prospects moving forward.
“It is almost winter-agnostic,” Tal said. “The shift [toward the creator economy] is so massive that no [economic] winter can slow it down.”
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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.
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Why Bored Ape NFTs Are Showing Up in Movies, TV Shows and Novels
On a Zoom call last week, Gene Nubla was explaining the name and origin story he gave “Nicky Nickels,” his Bored Ape NFT who will be a character in a forthcoming novel.
Nubla’s Bored Ape Yacht Club #6717 wears a leather vest and orange beanie hat, but the cartoon ape’s most distinctive feature is the silver coins covering his eyes. The 39-year-old Nubla—an associate vice president for a flower delivery service—imagined his Bored Ape as a member of a biker gang called the “Apes of Anarchy” who died during a botched cargo heist. Loved ones sometimes place silver dollars over the eyes of the dead during funerals, but Nicky’s family used plain old nickels, Nubla told dot.LA. That somehow barred the ape from properly entering the afterlife, rendering him undead.
It may not be the best ghost story to come out of Los Angeles, but Nicky will soon haunt the pages of a book written by bestselling author Neil Strauss, who has penned autobiographies for the likes of Marilyn Manson and Jenna Jameson. Nubla has licensed Nicky to an NFT storytelling project called Jenkins the Valet, which is backed by Creative Artists Agency and will see Strauss cobble together stories from various Bored Ape holders.
Nubla’s Bored Ape Yacht Club #6717, which he affectionately named "Nicky Nickels."
Photo courtesy of Gene Nubla“This goes into the philosophy of Web3—like, I can participate as an owner now,” said Nubla. “I'm in the door now, versus on the outside looking in and just watching the movies [and] paying the ticket.”
These days, there are scores of artists, startups and entertainment companies—as well as ordinary NFT holders—who are parlaying non-fungible tokens into commercialized intellectual property. Santa Monica-based Universal Music Group, one of the world’s largest record labels, has created a “metaverse group” consisting of four Bored Apes who ostensibly make music, while crypto exchange Coinbase is using Bored Apes as characters for a film trilogy. Talent agencies like WME and United Talent Agency, meanwhile, have added Bored Apes and other NFT characters to their client rosters.
These creative works are possible because blockchain firms like Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, have attached broad commercialization rights to NFTs, which are unique digital assets verified using blockchain technology. Granting those rights could boost the value of NFT collections by making them more culturally relevant, according to experts, though it remains to be seen whether such projects can appeal to audiences beyond NFT adopters.
A lot of legal questions remain, too, as actor and producer Seth Green just learned the hard way. Green is developing a hybrid live-action/animated comedy called “White Horse Tavern,” in which the creator’s own Bored Ape—whom Green affectionately named “Fred”—comes to life as a friendly neighborhood bartender. The project was almost sabotaged last month when a scammer duped Green in an online phishing scheme—stealing four of his NFTs, including Fred. Since Bored Ape NFTs come with a license to commercialize the art, Green may have momentarily lost the rights to produce the show (Fred has since returned home safely). The drama turned Green into a poster child for how sketchy the world of NFTs can still be—the “Wild West” of digital assets, as some observers have put it.
Ready for Primetime?
Jeremy Goldman, a Los Angeles attorney who leads the blockchain group at law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, credits companies like Yuga Labs for generating immense value for their NFT collections. The problem, as he sees it, are the collections’ relatively brief terms and conditions that don’t spell out what happens in certain situations, like when an NFT is stolen. That has the risk of killing projects and productions if investors or distributors are uncertain of the consequences.
“All of these NFT projects, including Bored Ape Yacht Club, are highly experimental and in some ways were never meant for primetime,” Goldman told dot.LA. “A lot of questions about the license are sort of unanswered.”
That hasn’t stopped some entertainment tech firms from sticking NFT avatars in their stories. L.A.-based Invisible Universe is developing an animated parody called “The R3al Metaverse,” which will include characters from five NFT collections. (Disclosure: dot.LA co-founder and executive chairman Spencer Rascoff is an investor in Invisible Universe).
Promotional art for the "The R3al Metaverse."Photo courtesy of Invisible Universe
The startup bought three NFTs and secured licenses for two more that fit well with the story, CEO Tricia Biggio told dot.LA. Just to be sure, Invisible Universe approached the creators behind the NFT projects, as well. While those organizations had varying views on using the IP, they all saw the value of Invisible Universe’s project, she noted.
“It was funny—some of them would be like, ‘Well, you actually don't have to run it by us,’” Biggio said.
In “The R3al Metaverse,” NFTs who live in the digital world come over to the real one after they’re cast in a reality TV show and move in together. The parody pokes fun at the debate around the value of NFTs, as well: In one episode, the characters stare at a painting and are confused by its lack of “real-world application” besides being a wall decoration. (“Like zero utility,” one observes, according to a storyboard of the scene.) Invisible Universe will release around 40 episodes of the program on social media platforms starting in late July, with each episode running between 45 and 90 seconds.
Who will watch a show about NFTs—which, for all of their recent hype, are still owned by just a tiny fraction of the population? Biggio said that the audience for “The R3al Metaverse” will primarily be holders of its featured NFT communities: Bored Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats, Doodles, World of Women and Robotos, which collectively have roughly 50,000 tokens in circulation. That said, Biggio believes the show can build an audience outside the not-yet-mainstream NFT market and, in turn, boost the value of those collections.
“Because we aren't gating the content, we have a unique opportunity to onroad people into the Web3 space who enjoy the content, fall in love with the characters and want to be a part of the collaborative storytelling experience,” Biggio said.
‘A Unique Opportunity To Create Wealth’
At their most basic level, NFTs—like artwork at large—generate much of their value from their scarcity and cultural relevance. Yet companies like Yuga Labs have popularized the idea of giving NFT holders commercial rights as well, allowing Bored Ape holders to put their ape’s face on a t-shirt or other merchandise and sell it. That not only makes the NFT itself more lucrative, but may well make the entire collection more valuable as Bored Apes are plastered on storefronts or featured in films.
“By giving broad IP rights—either making them public domain or granting commercial rights to holders—you're increasing the chances, potentially, that these items are going to get out there and go viral and become culturally relevant, and therefore sought after,” said Goldman, the attorney.
Bill Starkov, a real estate developer who lives near Calabasas, “right by the Kardashians,” in his words, is the founder of another primate-inspired NFT project, Apocalyptic Apes. (The collection’s zombified primates look like scarier versions of Bored Apes.) Starkov said his team gave NFT holders the right to do “whatever you want” with the artwork—so long as they don’t use the Apocalyptic Apes brand name. “We have to make sure they use it properly enough and it's used to promote our project and our brand in a good way,” he explained.
Apocalyptic Apes have been featured on the shorts of mixed martial arts fighters. Photo courtesy of Bill Starkov
Apocalyptic Ape holders have placed their simians on hot sauce bottles, exercise equipment and sunglasses, he noted, while on the entertainment side, a car-racing game, comic books and movies depicting the apes are all in the works, too. Starkov, who goes by Fity.Eth online, has also partnered with Nicky Diamonds, the owner of clothing company Diamond Supply, on licensing deals with Ape holders to create merchandise. Those deals are generating tens of thousands of dollars for ape holders who collaborated with Diamond, he said.
“One thing that people are sleeping on is the understanding of IP rights,” Starkov said of some people in the NFT community. “They think it's a quick flip, but it's not. It's something long-term. It's something that's here to stay. It's a unique opportunity to create wealth.”
Nubla is among the NFT holders who have taken advantage of those IP rights. Speaking through an augmented reality filter on his computer that made him look like Nicky Nickels, Nubla said he’s earned some cash by allowing artists to make works based on his Bored Ape, including one artist who sells lapel pins bearing NFT art. A street painting of Nicky also adorns the side of a brick building in Brooklyn—part of a mural by the graffiti artist Masnah, who was paid for his work by NFT holders.
"Nicky Nickels" was featured in a Brooklyn street painting. Photo courtesy of Gene Nubla
When the Florida-based startup Tally Labs launched the Jenkins the Valet project last June, Nubla was one of the 69 lucky people to randomly mint a rare “Yacht” NFT. That allowed him to license his Bored Ape as a character in Strauss’ novel and receive a share of the book’s royalties. Nubla debated selling the Yacht NFT as its value reached six figures, but ultimately decided to keep it and build out Nicky’s IP “just to see where it goes.”
Nubla does see some risk in NFT collections decentralizing their IP; he noted that there isn’t much stopping another Bored Ape holder from using their NFT to promote ideas or views that others may disagree with or find offensive. But like a lot of people involved in the space, he’s enamored with the idea of Web3—a decentralized vision for the internet that runs on blockchain-powered applications.
“It'd be nice to be able to benefit off the royalties of anything that comes off this,” Nubla said of the Strauss novel, which is coming out this summer. “But I'm doing it mainly just for the vibes.”
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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.
Starting today, Glendale’s most meme-able outdoor mall, The Americana at Brand, will be home to the Amazon Style store—the ecommerce giant’s first foray into brick-and-mortar apparel retail. We got an early sneak peak inside the new digs (located on the corner with Sprinkles Cupcakes, next to H&M and the Apple store) and were able to try out some of its tech-enabled features, which—as ever with Amazon—seek to make the act of shopping as easy as possible.
1. It’s Bigger Than It Looks—Even From the Inside
The floor is massive—laying out original products from Amazon’s own apparel lines alongside name brands like Theory, Adidas and Calvin Klein, as well as several other lines that have up until now only existed online. But the actual store is much larger than the two floors that most customers will only ever see.
Amazon Style is just the front—the homepage, if you will—behind which a large warehouse facility keeps a gigantic surplus of inventory. A floor-to-ceiling glass window on the main floor gives shoppers just a peak behind the scenes, as employees help load industrial-sized elevators with racks of goods to send upstairs to the dressing rooms.
2. Online Shopping IRL
When perusing the store’s bouquet of cottagecore maxi dresses, Kendall & Kylie blazers and, yes, a whole section dedicated to Y2K apparel, one doesn’t just pick an item off the rack and take it with you while you shop. Instead, each rack has a barcode that you can scan via the Amazon Shopping app, which has your sizes pre-loaded from previous purchases. (You can opt for a different size if you choose.) That cues an AI-enabled algorithm to start searching through the store’s warehoused catalog and zip the desired item over to the second floor, where the dressing room provides its own glimpse into the future of shopping.
The store also boasts a version of The Drop, an Amazon staple that allows online customers to shop entire influencer-curated collections for a 30-hour flash window.
3. Changing Stations of the Future—Today
Your phone also acts as your keycard to get into your personal dressing room. To prevent waiting, you are put in a virtual cue the moment you scan your first item; should the Amazon app prompt that your room is ready while you’re still shopping, a tap of your screen allows you to hold your spot in the queue while freeing up the room for someone else. (And if your phone dies while you’re waiting, Amazon says a Style employee on the floor will be happy to help you keep your place in line, or hook you up with a charge.)
Amazon Style’s dressing rooms offer a tech-enabled twist to trying on clothes.Image by Joshua Letona
The changing room is like its own parlor trick. Designed to look like a walk-in closet, one wall has a full-length mirror and a giant touchscreen while another has all the clothes you scanned in your style and size preference. Expect to see a few surprises in there, as Amazon’s algorithm picks out other stuff you might want to try on based on your picks. It would be spooky if it wasn’t so convenient—an IRL mashup of the online retailer’s “Recommended Based on Your Purchases” and “Frequently Bought Together” features.
If an item doesn’t fit quite right or you want to see how a skirt looks in blue instead of black, just tap the touchscreen to request a variant. Or an entirely new outfit, as the screen makes available everything in the facility. Then just bring it down to checkout—perhaps the wildest part of this ride.
4. Palming the Bucks
Checking out of Amazon Style’s flagship store is what really blew my mind—although apparently it’s because I haven’t been to one of the Amazon Go, Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods locations where cashless checkouts have been an option in select stores since 2020.
I assumed you could just walk out the door with your purchase, because I watch "Saturday Night Live" sketches for news. While the Go payment option isn't available at Amazon Style, there are several checkout options to keep the experience as frictionless and non-cumbersome as possible.
One way is to take the clothes you want out of the dressing room and go directly to Amazon’s palm-enabled checkout kiosks. That’s right: Register on the spot for an Amazon One account, and you need merely to wave your hand over a little black device that reads your palm and charges your on-file payment method. It’s super convenient for everyone except $10 boardwalk psychics, who just may be put out of business by such technology.
For the more traditional set, you still have the option of paying via credit card or cash.
Shoppers can check out of Amazon Style with the wave of a palm.
Image by Joshua Letona
5. Supply & Demand & Return
Amazon Style’s brick-and-mortar location opens up a variety of new ways to shop, return and exchange clothing. For instance, you can order a load of clothes online and pick them up in the store; anything you don’t want can be returned in the store without you ever having to print a shipping label.
See something you like but don’t have time to try it on? Just scan the barcode, pick it up at the front of the store and pay on your way out without ever going into a dressing room.
The Amazon Shopping app also boasts a Deals feature, which automatically sorts for the best price on items to help customers either save money (or believe they are).
While Glendale is home to the only Style store so far, Amazon isn’t ruling out more locations. With fewer retailers able to afford rents on America’s main strips and shopping malls, Amazon’s resources—and its unique position at the intersection of tech and retail—make it easy to envision more Style stores on the horizon.
Drew Grant is dot.LA's Senior Editor. She's a media veteran with over 15-plus years covering entertainment and local journalism. During her tenure at The New York Observer, she founded one of their most popular verticals, tvDownload, and transitioned from generalist to Senior Editor of Entertainment and Culture, overseeing a freelance contributor network and ushering in the paper's redesign. More recently, she was Senior Editor of Special Projects at Collider, a writer for RottenTomatoes streaming series on Peacock and a consulting editor at RealClearLife, Ranker and GritDaily. You can find her across all social media platforms as @Videodrew and send tips to drew@dot.la.