we are ao on the block
Kia Ora and welcome everyone.
We are the team at ao on the block, a subdivision of the New Zealand based company Ao Collaboration.
We have been in business since November 2020 as a Salesforce agency, looking after the reality of small businesses that make up for over 90% of the NZ business landscape.
Since January 2022, thanks primarily to our CTO Michael (MilkyTaste), we embarked on a new journey deep into the web3 seas.
While it looks like a wild swerve from our initial path, this decision was made after Michael decided to utilize his 10 years of software engineering experience in the classic corporate world to fuel his web3 passion. A passion that eventually transmitted to the rest of the team, and thus ao on the block was born.
What we do
We primarily work on NFT project launches and Discord bots. Our now 2 developers (MilkyTaste isn’t alone anymore!) can help with any project relevant web development, mint buttons, fully optimized smart contracts, image and metadata generation, IPFS hosting, custom token creation, token swap, airdrops, DAPPs development, and smart contract auditing / peer reviews.
We are also well versed on anything Discord related, from various bots (check them out on our website, we have some really cool ones!) to server sanity checks.
The team
Michael
The one and only superdev and CTO at Ao Collaboration, MilkyTaste is his web3 identity. He was here early, twice: his first bitcoin purchase on record is in 2013, and his first NFT purchase was Apymon in Apr-16–2021. The project was showing some red flags during mint, so he flipped for a profit before public sale ended. Turned out to be a rug — what a first experience!
Kate
Heart and soul of Ao Collaboration where she works as CEO and Salesforce Consultant, she is best known as MrsMilky over on the “other side”. She got into NFTs thanks to MilkyTaste (just in case you are wondering yes, they are husband and wife!) and fell in love with the art and the community. Tried the flipping life, but it wasn’t for her — being a deeply caring and kind soul, we are not surprised!
Serena
Operations nerd and content marketing monkey over at Ao Collaboration, she also goes by Grumpy Sommelier. Despite her current role within the company, her lifetime passion and most of her past career revolved around the wine industry, and web3 saw this flame rekindled big time.
She quickly went from “what the hell is this pyramid scheme and why is everyone talking about apes and floors!” to “oh, does that mean that I can make anything I want in here? Even wine?” to “I freaking love this place” in a relatively short amount of time.
Jono
Our newest recruit, he is Michael’s right hand when it comes to coding. He’s still new to this whole web3, but his coding skills allowed him to get up to speed with the work we do in no time, quickly becoming an invaluable member of our company.
What we really want to do
The most beautiful thing that happened with the birth of ao on the block was the ability to see various members of the team naturally merge their passions with the NFT project concepts, which is how two in-house projects were born.
Ao on the block is now not only serving our customers and helping them achieving their web3 goals, but also working hard behind the scenes to allow these two projects to come to life.
The projects: welcome to Peeps Club and GCWC
Peeps Club
A joint effort from the power-couple MrsMilky and MilkyTaste. Here is an introduction to this exciting project:
Peeps Club started as a light-hearted doodle that MrsMilky has been drawing since she was 15 and has now evolved into an NFT project that is family-friendly, fun and community-focused! One of the goals at Peeps Club is to have a peep that represents YOU! Whether it’s your favorite hobby, an eccentric hairstyle, or a disability that makes you uniquely you. If you are new to the world of NFTs or simply want to learn more about them, we have created Peeps Academy as an ongoing learning space where you can ask common questions about NFTs and have open conversations.
GCWC aka Grumpy Cantina Wine Club
Grumpy Sommelier is spearheading the web3 space and molding it to make it finally fit some serious wine talk.
The aim of this ambitious project is to passionately pair web2 and web3 with integrity, quality, and camaraderie. Fighting wine wankers, delivering wine alpha to the community, all the way to delivering actual wine to holders’ doorsteps are some of the main goals of this project. Grumpy wants to make wine accessible to everyone and wants to build a community whose values are being real, celebrating each other, and an understanding that quality pairing makes everything better. Like pairing wine and NFTs!
In conclusion
Peeps Club and GCWC are two very unique projects spawned by the minds of the ao team members and are officially run by the ao on the block company.
While Peeps Club is managed by the Milkies and GCWC by Grumpy, you will see the team as a whole appearing in both projects and helping — depending on their skillset and their jobs at ao on the block.
From a practical standpoint, the project deployment, assets, and management will be done through the company, to ensure complete transparency and to fully back our projects with our business.
Keep an eye out, we are there building cool stuff!
