Start-up Society #79: The NFT Issue
Keeping the American Dream Alive
Welcome to the 79th edition of Start-up Society! This blog highlights some of the most exciting start-ups in the country striving to keep the American Dream alive.
Make sure you check out the previous issue, if you have not already, here.
In Summary…
Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) & Cryptocurrencies have frequently been in the news cycle for the past 18 months, with many people hearing about it for the first time. In this edition of Start-up Society, we will give a brief over view of NFTs and highlight two recently founded companies that have recently raised funding to help build out the space.
What is a Non Fungible Token?
NFTs represent ownership and allows for objects and concepts to be digitized, specifically on a blockchain. Non-Fungible refers to its uniqueness and the Token refers to the blockchain representation. NFTs were originally founded on Ethereum and have become most popular in artist communities, where the NFT represents the art on chain (assuming the art is stored on chain as well). There have been many popular NFT collections that have dramatically risen in market value such as Cryptopunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club and there are others such as Chrome Squiggles which launched with an absurdly high price.
“BlueChip” NFT Collections
The particularly famous and highly valuable NFTs are what we consider “BlueChip” NFT collections. Below are three examples of collections and platforms. These are three examples of multiple thousands of NFT collections/groups. Most of the projects that are launched fail due to abandonment, exploit, or lack of community and the assumption that all NFTs bought or sold will appreciate in value is false.
- CryptoPunks: The iconic, original collection of 10,000. Owning one of these is like owning a rare Rolex watch. They’re iconic and extremely expensive. Anyone who has a CryptoPunk as their Twitter profile will command attention. Price: $300,000+ (We know…)
- Art Blocks: Art Blocks is a platform that features limited edition digital art from well-known artists. They have three different collections, with the most prestigious being their “Curated” collection. Pretty much any “Curated” Art Block is investment-grade, but you can’t go wrong with their first one, the Chromie Squiggle. Price: $40,000.
- Bored Ape Yacht Club: This was the first project that took the CryptoPunk model a step further with a roadmap, membership community, and other perks. Still, very expensive. Price: an Ape is $150,000+, a Mutant Ape is $20,000+, an Ape Dog Companion is $10,000+.
We are visiting two companies in California that are not releasing their own NFTs, but rather providing products and services to support and advance the overall ecosystem.
California
Danvas
HQ: Los Angeles
Founded: 2021
Total Employees: 2 (on LinkedIn)
ABOUT THE COMPANY
- The company is introducing the first premium, luxury digital art canvas. The canvas will introduce art collectors to the beauty, value, and possibilities of the next wave of digital art, and to help digital artists gain exposure to a larger audience.
- The screens will feature a fully dimensional, interactive design aimed to bring the NFT to life.
“One of the missing links between the traditional and digital art worlds is display. How can you show your pieces in a way that matches their value and significance? Danvas will bridge that gap by giving collectors a gorgeous and visually-appealing way to proudly display their digital art collection.” — Gary Vaynerchuk, Founder of VeeFriends
- Backers included Greycroft, Lerer Hippeau, Waverley Capital, Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerFund, UTA Ventures, BDMI and angel investors Rich Greenfield and Jason Nazar.
MEET THE TEAM
Jeanne Anderson, Co-Founder & CEO
- Previously, Jeanne earned a B.Sc. and a B.A. from Northwestern University and started her Career as a Manager of Product Content at eToys.com from 1998 to 2001.
- Between 2002 and 2021, Jeanne served as a Director and VP level at over 8 companies including ZipRecruiter and Apartments.com. She focused on Product Development, Marketing and eCommerce.
Hernan Lopez, Co-Founder & Chairperson
- Previously, Hernan earned his M.B.A. from the University of Miami in 2001.
- He started his career as an SVP for Fox Latin America. He ended up spending the next 15 years working at until he left in 2016 as President and CEO. He then founded Wondery in 2016 and ran it as CEO until it was acquired by Amazon.
THE START-UP SOCIETY ASSESSMENT
- With the amount of attention that NFTs have been garnering in the traditional and high end art community, there is a fast emerging underserved market for displaying NFTs in a high end fashion.
- The traditional global art market represents $60 billion in value per year. NFT sales in 2021 are on track to reach nearly $13 billion. Numerous NFTs have been selling at Christie’s and Sotheby’s many of them fetching anywhere from $7m to $69m!
- Focusing on this end of the NFT market allows Danvas to tap into highly wealthy art curators and organizations, who would be willing to pay top dollar for a display system as futuristic as their Chromie Squiggle.
GO DEEPER
Danvas Raises $7M in Seed Funding
Please welcome Danvas, a startup bringing NFTs and digital art into the real world
Mnemonic
HQ: San Francisco
Founded: 2021
Total Employees: 5 (on LinkedIn)
ABOUT THE COMPANY
- Mnemonic is the first B2B (business-to-business) NFT company and its hope is to solve several problems within the NFT landscape, in particular making it easier for companies to track the NFT market and build their own using API (application programming interface).
- Mnemonic is focused on indexing on-chain data in order to allow the NFT artists to focus on their end product, building the data infrastructure layer for the next era of NFT companies.
- The goal does not stop there, however as the potential future use for Mnemonic could be for luxury good authentication. Huge brands will be able to use Mnemonic’s data tracking ability to know where their goods are going, who owns them and the NFT can serve as authentication of ownership.
“There is so much demand and interest. We believe to provide and build more data visibility, actionability and accessibility to this data, as the rate that this data is producing is increasing every single day, is crucial.” — Andrii Yasinetsky, CEO and Co-Counder at Mnemonic
- The company raised $4 million in seed funding led by Kenetic and was joined by investors including Monochrome Capital, Sound Ventures, and Tribe Capital.
MEET THE TEAM
Andrii Yasinetsky, Co-Founder & CEO
- Prior to finding Mnemonic, Andrii received his Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the National Technical University of Ukraine ‘Kyiv Polytechnic Institute’ in 2008, before attending Harvard Business School in 2017.
- Yasinetsky would go on to be the founding engineer of JeraSoft and then Audiko before joining Google as a software application engineer in 2011 until 2015. He would go on to be the Senior software engineer at Uber for 5 years before launching Mnemonic in 2021.
Elena Ikonomovska, Co-Founder & Machine Learning Lead
- Elena began her academic career earning her Bachelor’s of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from University St. Cyril and Methodius in 2006 before receiving her Master’s in Machine Learning in 2008. Ikonomovska went on to receive her PhD in Machine Learning in 2012 from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Jozef Stefan International Postgraduate School.
- In 2012, she was a PhD student in Software Engineering for Google before becoming the Senior Machine Learning Scientist at Turn. In 2015, she became a Data Scientist for Reddit before becoming CEO of Nuntio Labs.
- In 2018, Elena became the Head of ML/AI for change.org before co-finding Mnemonic in 2021.
Denys Nevozhai, Co-Founder & UX/Customer Success Lead
- Denys, like Andrii, attended the National Technical University of Ukraine ‘Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and received his Master’s Degree in Computer Science in 2007.
- Denys has almost 20 years of experience designing Webpages, UX, and UI. Most notably, he was the Senior UX/UI designer before becoming the product designer for Alcatel Onetouch before joining Google as a UX Designer in 2018 and co-finding Mnemonic in 2021.
Ben Metcalfe, Co-Founder & Product/Strategy Lead
- Ben started his career as a software engineer for BBC News in 2000 before becoming the project lead on BBC Backstage in 2004. He then went on to become the Director of Engineering for Myspace in 2007.
- Metcalfe would go on to be Head of Project Revolution and Senior Product Manager at Uber in July of 2014 and then following this joined several investor teams such as Samasource, Rafay Systems, and Ridge Ventures.
- Currently, Ben serves as co-founder of Mnemonic, Founder of Monochrome Capital, and President of Lauk Haus.
THE START-UP SOCIETY ASSESSMENT
- With Mnemonic just getting its feet wet in the industry, recently raising $4 million in seed funding is significant.
- We expect them to be a major player especially in the B2B market for NFTs. We look forward to tracking this group of talented individuals and Mnemonic’s exciting future growth!
GO DEEPER
Mnemonic raises $4 million to launch B2B API platform focused on NFT’s
Thank you for reading this article! Feel free to leave a comment, clap, and follow. Stay tuned for next week’s write-up, posted every Monday at 5 AM ET.
Authored by Arteen Zahiri, Rumeer Keshwani, Thane Wharton, Hooman Dadkho, and Julian Ramcharan
