Dogs, NFTs, and NFAs — My journey down the web3 Rabbit hole.
Life is an endless pattern of random moments and pieces that we fit into the big puzzle. And I guess my story with Multeez is not very much different. My name is Moish and you can say I live the typical high-tech life in Tel Aviv, a small town in the heart of start-up nation, with my wife Ophir and 2 kids — Yonathan & Daniel. Oh and Pola of course, my beloved dog and a key piece of the story, as you will soon find out.
I’ve completed a somewhat standard journey in this industry, from Finance to Entrepreneurship and from Fintech product leader into the web3 rabbit hole. I must admit I was not among the first to jump on the NFT wagon. I spent most of the last couple of years on the fence, watching from the sidelines as this new wave has been taking over the world. Even for someone with my background, embedded in technology and specializing in product, things moved a little too fast for me to catch up and fully comprehend its infinite potential.
It was only after the last company I worked for was sold, and I had a little break from the everyday race of life, that my thinking began to change. After taking part in building a successful startup that completed the full circle, from infancy to the coveted exit, I felt confident as ever that I knew what it takes to be done. Now it was just about finding that tricky combo of the right opportunity at the right time.
This is when Pola enters the story. Over here, dogs are what cows are for India, holier than life. Whether you’re single and looking for a date, or a promising talent searching for his next opportunity, an adorable dog by your side is the ultimate way to get noticed in the mean streets of Tel Aviv. It was during one of our regular walks when a neighbor and colleague, stopped to say hi and shower Pola with affection.
And while our dogs were playing, she told me about the new “hot” kid in the start-up block. She connected me with Tal Dadia, the founder of an exciting new venture and part of the “8200 Mafia”, which includes graduates of the elite army intelligence unit that is dominating the local tech scene.
Moish Meets Multeez
It was Friday morning, less than 24 hours later, when I sat down with Tal Dadia, Multeez Co-Founder & CEO, in the local cafe spot and in true start-up tradition. Right from the start, it was obvious to see he’s a man of vision with high ambitions, even bigger dreams, and has that “thing” about him. It’s hard to say what that thing is exactly, but even for a cynic like myself, his inspiration and enthusiasm were contagious.
“It’s not all about technology. We’re dealing with culture here”, he summed it up as I realized that the same disruptiveness that blockchain brought to fintech, NFT technology can convert into the creator’s economy. It was in that meeting that I had my first “penny drop moment” and managed to connect the dots, understand a little better where the world is heading, and imagine a path for his vision.
My enthusiasm only grew when I met with Idan Angel, Multeez CTO & Co-Founder, blockchain prodigy, and amazon veteran, with a winning track record that spans over 20 years. After meeting both founders, along with the rest of the team, I realized there is real substance behind the dream. As an entrepreneur, I know just how important it is to have the right people beside you before you head out to battle.
And with that, I’ve heard and seen enough to stop playing with ideas in the sandbox and jump all in, as I used to say in my wild poker days.
Stepping out of the sandbox
In a nutshell, Multeez’s mission is centered around shared ownership and access rights in the web3 space. This is already being implemented with our private Alpha protocol which offers communities a real social experience for buying NFTs together. However, this is just the first step in a far more ambitious vision for a seamless peer-to-peer connection between creators and consumers, over NFT technology.
The challenge we were facing is “simple” enough to understand on paper, but extremely complex to solve in real life. While there’re a lot of web2 mechanisms for group governance and finance, web3 technology is still struggling to offer those solutions in a decentralized environment. By now, many of you probably heard of DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and smart contracts, but when use cases evolve — edge cases appear. And whenever there is real money on the table and people are invested, the stakes become much higher and the wiggle room is smaller.
In this super-fast pace race, focus is the key to staying ahead of the curve. And as the VP Product, it’s my responsibility to make sure everyone is goal-oriented, with eyes on the prize, and in the hunt for the KPIs that will make or break us. Priority is the name of the game and it’s only when the feedback loop is closed, and the big picture in the puzzle suddenly reveals itself, that you can shift your focus to the macro, before solving the micro.
But enough of big words and fancy theories, let’s look under the hood for real front line examples; After playing with “Buy Together” features for static NFTs (Doodle, Apes, etc), it wasn’t long before we noticed one of the main concerns from communities we onboarded was centered around, surprise surprise, operation price. Turns out it’s not enough to allow people, which are otherwise priced out of the game, to buy NFTs together, you have to offer competitive costs. And for someone who takes pride in living and breathing product, this kind of feedback is like finding gold in the haystack of distractions.
The first fix was pretty obvious, splitting the gas fees between all group members, instead of having the proposal initiator carry all the load by himself. This was an easy win but it was not enough, so we had to come up with a long-term answer and a game-changing solution. Basically, we innovated a “Green” recyclable DAO, that can be reused once the NFT is sold, eliminating any further operation costs for members. Of course, this is just a small taste from our “secret sauce”, as every day brings new questions to be answered and challenges to be solved.
To infinity and beyond - There are layers to this game.
Now is where it gets really interesting. Our biggest leap is building the access and ownership domain for the next generation of NFTs, which will inevitably evolve from collectible JPEGs into dynamic content territories; Everything From live streams, podcasts, music, web shows, and real-life/Metaverse events.
Gated content is nothing new but with the blockchain on our side, we can reinvent a new layer for an endless royalty mechanism with a built-in marketplace that will feed the flying wheel; Quality content that increases the consumer demand, resulting in more value that offers a concrete incentive for creators to produce more content, and so the cycle continues. This symbolizes our transition from owning NFTs, as we know them, to NFTs which are used as access; Or what we’ve taken the liberty to coin as ‘NFA’ — “Non-Fungible Access”.
The tension between these two layers of ownership and access is fascinating. Fusing them together, so each layer stands alone and complements each other, will create endless opportunities and a whole that is bigger than the sum of its parts. We believe this is key to unlocking a new experience that will align interests between creators and consumers and engage them in ways that haven’t been seen before.
This is it, for now, it’s time for another walk with Pola, and who knows, maybe I’ll close the loop and find our next talent along the way.
