The Future of NFTs with Arvin Khamseh

george grombacher 0:00
Come on Well, I’m left with this is George G. And the time is right welcome today’s guest strong and powerful. Arvind Kham say Arvind, are you ready to do this? Let’s do it. Let’s go. Arvin is a fortune 500 marketer, he’s an NF T marketer. He’s also been always been on the forefront of new tech trends. He’s consulted with over 200 NFT brands, and he is an established thought leader in the space. Marvin, tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work and why you do what you do.

Unknown Speaker 0:40
Yeah, 100%. And by the way, as of now, it’s actually about 450 projects. So back then it was 200. Yes, so personal life, I, you know, I work a lot, obviously, just you know, with everything that’s going on with Kryptos. And NFT is just so volatile in this industry. But when I get time I do some Krav Maga some bit shadow dance, and then also have about 20 more hours to get my pilot’s license. So do some some fun stuff. And then when it comes to the NFT side of things, backing so I’ve been in the marketing industry for almost 10 years, I’ve worked with a lot of public companies doing the investor relationship marketing, and what it involves, for people who don’t know, it’s essentially finding short term and long term investors online. And, you know, we were spending, you know, 500k months to get in front of a lot of people. And I was managing that, obviously. And then when, back in 2021, October ish, there was an artist from Italy, he approached me, he said, like, you know, I have a great track record in finding investors online, if I could find investors to buy digital art as well. And this guy had a very small collection size. So we had about 12, actually pieces, digital art, he had a lot of physical, but his digital artwork was very limited. And then we sold it out in about a week. And that was a proof of concept for me where I was like, okay, everything I’ve done in the public company side of things, it’s actually relevant in the NFL is selling digital art. And then, and I mean, for people who maybe they know, a little bit more, essentially investor deck. So the team, the future, the track record, the problems with solution, things like that, in this investor deck and the projections, everything is literally NFT. website. So if you look at any NFT websites exactly the same. And so it was that month, alone, I worked with about 150 projects, and then about 100 every other month. So far, I’ve done with, I’ve worked with about 400 Plus NFT projects. Obviously, as I’ve started working with larger projects, I wasn’t able to take on like that many projects at the same time, I consult so many of them. So I can’t do 100 A month anymore, but it’s it’s the part that I’m very interested in to just see how a an artist could come out and with some sort of digital art if they don’t have it already. And then selling out. And just essentially eliminating that notion of starving artists. Like that’s, that’s a big goal that I think everyone in the web three space could strive for.

george grombacher 3:52
It’s a certainly such a it’s extremely exciting time. It’s super dynamic time we’re having this conversation on May the 25th. And I don’t know if the term is NF T’s have exploded, but just a, nobody knew what they were, or very few of us knew what they were and now they are just ubiquitous. Everybody knows sort of what they are. And I don’t know if we’re in sort of a bear market right now. What are your thoughts of sort of the current climate?

Unknown Speaker 4:22
Yeah, so we’re certainly in the bear market. And I will say started maybe two weeks ago ish. And then there is this, this could be the same same time as a recession. That’s some people saying we’re already going through all we’re about to get get to. And so just for people to get us understanding, so nfts came about 2017 Cyberpunks was one of the early projects, and then it was a 10,000 collection size and then since then everyone thought they have to do 10,000 collection sites too. So a lot of people doing the same, but there there could be any So as of the collection, and then this year, it’s been obviously a lot harder to sell our products like last year, I remember, we would just have a website, just say, here’s some some pieces of art. And you know, whether it be a 5000 10,000, whatever it was, and we just say, hey, on the roadmap, we’re going to do bunch of things, cool things in the metaverse, we’re gonna have some staking, maybe play to earn games, so on and so forth. And then everyone will come and buy everything. Now in the bear market right now, that’s not the case. In fact, last night, people in my mastermind we were just talking about, it’s just basically this alpha group, we were just talking about things that are happening, and like, just analyzing, everything is happening in the market, it’s actually hard to find projects that are selling out right now. And so for that reason, as far as lecture side of things, they’re holding back to buy a lot of expensive NFPs, they are buying a lot of cheap nfts, which is something that’s very interesting, because they’re, it’s the time to buy everything is discounted, basically right now. And then the more of a pricey and FDS, they’re having a hard time selling out. So they can’t really sell out unless they do certain things, which I’m happy to talk about too. But as far as the founder side of things when it comes to selling and FTS people well, I mean, I just told you, like, I went through about some around 1000 DMS, on my Twitter. Over the past two months, I had about 1000 DMS. So that’s direct messages. And out of those, I literally messaged everyone back and just said, Hey, how is your collection going? How’s everything going? Literally just that question. And I just wanted to get a sense of like real time real data from the market. And majority of people, they either majority of these collections. And this is this is I hate to say this, but majority of them either wiped out or they’re bad, too. And so but then on the bright side of this, this is a great thing that’s happening for a lot of people, because the projects that are serious, they have, they have legitimate reasons to be here. And they have a team they have, well, even if they don’t have a team, but they have enough resources, whether it be individually or as a team, to be able to actually sustain a project, they have great utilities, meaning like benefits that they will provide for people who buy their MFDs, they are going to stay and actually it’s going to be way better for them. So it’s going to be a lot simpler for them to not compete with, you know, 500 new projects coming out every day. So that’s what we were dealing with, at the beginning of this year. 500 new projects every day. And that was crazy. That was that was making it very hard for us, right, we had to try so much harder. But now the market has reset itself. So it’s not the cash grab opportunity that everyone just you know, and they’re, you know, friends, they can just say, hey, let’s just get into this. It’s more like Okay, actually takes some work, some preparation. And that’s perfect. Because if someone can actually do those things, and they’re serious to stay in the web three, industry, then they’re going to do really well. And they’re going to be appreciated. And so in a way, obviously, it’s sad to see, you know, a lot of people have to abandon their projects. And that actually, by the way, could cause a lot of scams and what we call it Rockpool could be a lot of them, because they just can’t sustain themselves. But but on the bright side of things, everyone now has to innovate. Everyone has to be great. Like would you know, just like a small project that doesn’t have any meaningful reasons to be in this market, they can stay. So now, everyone’s thinking about how they can be different, how they can be better, develop themselves a lot better. It’s perfect. Like, we really needed that. So back in, I want to say November 2021. That’s about a month after mirror. So Mark Zuckerberg company mirror, previously known as Facebook, he announced that he’s going to have this Metaverse and the metaverse is going to be including a lot of NF T’s like everything, all the pieces all the assets inside this Metaverse is going to be NFS. And so because of that, and because so many large companies like Sony,

Unknown Speaker 9:48
so many of celebrities like Snoop Dogg and so many people actually got into buying lands in the metaverse and buying a lot of NF T’s back in I want to say no end of November. the summertime, the search inquiries for NF TS surpass cryptocurrencies. So a lot of people now we’re looking for NF T’s right? So they will just want to see what it is right. And at the beginning, all those people who started looking for it, they just started just creating whatever projects they could come up with just to make some money. And then that time has passed. So it’s no longer just whatever projects now it’s all just going to be great projects, at least for a while.

george grombacher 10:32
And I imagine it’s probably sort of the natural order of things where somebody new comes on the scene in 2017. And people flooded, because they’re interested in releasing their art, but also making money which, which, which is all fantastic. But now we’re going to see a shakeout and the only thing moving forward, or probably the ones that will be successful will be high quality. And are there a framework? I almost feel silly saying, because we’re talking about art a lot of the time, so it’s all going to be different and unique. But is there a framework that says this is what an NFT really has to have?

Unknown Speaker 11:11
Yeah, so the digital art, obviously, that part. So initially, they were all some sort of animals. So they were all derivatives of animals, right? So we had every single animal that you can think of on somewhere on these marketplaces of NF Ts. And at some point, we all just got sick of it ourselves. So we bought buying them, but then at some point, we’re just like, Okay, that’s enough. Like, we just bought so many of these animals. And I think we just, you know, the time for that as also passed, right. So there was literally a time where everyone’s profile pictures not only on Twitter, also on LinkedIn, which is, which I found really odd. On LinkedIn, it was just some sort of animals. And I actually had this experience few days ago, I was going through my feed on Twitter. And I was just thinking about, like, if the sum of these people that are just I’m just talking with, like, if they’re actually just like teenagers, if they’re like, grown, you know, adults, like I don’t even know at this point, right? So it could be it could be whatever, right? So you don’t even know who you’re talking to at this point. And they all sound the same, right? So they use the the NFT, lingos, the minting and aping in, and so on and so forth. And so you can’t even understand like who this like what age what age group you’re talking to, which is kind of odd experience. But anyways, so the animals side of things that has passed. Now Funny enough, I’m actually creating a collection myself, and the name has one of these animals in it. But we’re not, we have nothing to do with any of those collections, we’re not going to be derivative, but we do have something in the name about it, just because he just happens to be relevant in this case. But the so anyways, the animals have, just out of the out of the trance, the 2d is out of the trance. So now it’s more 3d type of art, that pixelated is not really the type of thing people want to see anymore. So mostly 3d, audio, video, and then experiential thing. So like, for example, AI and VR, they both are also getting in very few projects, they’re implementing it, but it’s also really cool. So you can actually have an NFT that, for example, you can speak with, and you can train them, so they become better at actually responding. Whatever that means in in within that NFT project. And so there’s some cool stuff happening with that and also like music for musicians, is definitely really

Unknown Speaker 13:54
futuristic idea, because now they don’t have to have the middleman as much or they can just have their collection have their let’s say soundtracks going to people directly without having to pay someone in between. So as far as the artwork that’s that’s the evolution of it. So it’s going from animals and 2d Mostly to 3d and video and audio, and just more of experiential things. And also just really good art. Like now we actually getting into the part where people actually releasing like really great art. It’s not just all you know, same thing that you will see just a slightly different and so so that’s as far as the art side of things and then as far as the community, so everyone, I guess every collection, need to have a discord community, the Twitter community, those are a must. And it’s interesting because there have been projects that they didn’t have a discord. So for example just recently it’s either okay burgers or no capers, one of them. I don’t know but one of them didn’t have a discord. And because of that is that people started actually just connecting with each other on Twitter spaces. People don’t know what Twitter spaces are. It’s just like, think about like Facebook Lives, but it’s on Twitter, and it’s only audio or it’s just clubhouse, maybe that’s a better example. And so, so that’s as far as the community side of things. So those two, Twitter and discord, they have to be there, for the most part, unless your project is an anomaly. And if you try to do it without it, then you fall into the old type of marketing, which is the web to marketing. Right now we’re in web three. So if you do any of the web two marketing, it doesn’t work, people don’t recognize it, people don’t want to follow you. Because they just feel like you just haven’t caught on with the nutrients. And then the next part is the hype, which is not so depends on how people define that term. Obviously, the way I define it is having more demand than there is supply. So the distinction here is imagine you go buy something of some, let’s say store like Adidas, actually, maybe Adidas is the best example. So let’s say if you buy some some cloth, clothing, from from Adidas, maybe it’s sneakers, or whatever that is, or maybe a hoodie, whatever that is. And you can go buy this anytime. And you can look at this item for month and month, and then buy it whenever you feel like buying it. But that’s not. So that’s web two. Web three is not like that. You can’t have a collection, just being open to people for months and months. There is a timeline, so two to four weeks, sometimes even four to six weeks. But that’s it. You can’t just keep it open forever. So it’s the scarcity. That’s different. So and even like Adidas, for example, they have their their NFPs. They just launched it, I believe they sold out in like few minutes, right? And so it’s not the same thing as web two. And this is, this is something that people don’t understand most of the times they try to force it, they try to make it they say, Oh, well, I just want to make it easier for myself or maybe for people, I don’t want to give people a deadline. But that doesn’t work. It’s just the nature of this industry is needing scarcity. And then the last piece is utility. And that’s actually right now is one of the most important one. So what are the benefits of holding the NFT. So if you think about, you know, just the artwork alone is going to cut it. You for example, you would think, let’s say Picasso, right? So the most well known painter, if that was the case, like he would have sold that in seconds, but he didn’t. The reason is just web three and web two, again, they’re very different. It’s you can’t just have like an amazing art and just, you know, just put it out there and then everyone rushes rushes into buying it. It’s not like that. So you need to have a utility, meaning once someone buys your NFT, they need to be entitled to specific benefits. And so, benefits could be you know, they get passive income. Every month, they get some money back royalties, they could get exclusive membership to events, meeting people, if it’s celebrities, like I’ve worked with some celebrities as well. It could be like just meeting the celebrities for maybe dinner or some gathering, Gala, whatever that is. And so, or it could just be that, for example, a software that you will have access to many, many utilities out there. But there has to be something there has to be benefits. So the art alone is not enough for people to just buy it. Just recently, I saw something from that has a collaboration with NASA, where they will just make you an astronaut. And so like by just holding this NFT not like going through the entire training, but it’s just like a vase, obviously short, short experience. But that’s that’s what we’re talking about. Right? So those are the key elements for actually launching a successful NFT which is completely different than launching a product in E commerce or, you know, your small business or even like large businesses.

george grombacher 19:31
Awesome. I appreciate that. Appreciate you breaking that down and what it really takes to have a successful project and that that all make sense. I think it is really it is super interesting. Is this. Do you think that this is going to be the gold standard for just introducing products moving forward as well? Not just an NF T but kind of anything?

Unknown Speaker 19:57
Yeah, well, it certainly is. very important part of being relevant to the market. So which is why like all these even fashion companies, they’re starting to roll out some something as form of NFT. Because not because just they want to make money because they can already make money with many, many ways. But they want to be relevant to their audience. They want to be relevant to their fans, and they want it like people want it. They want to see what the NFT from Sony would look like, what the NFT from like Adidas or Pepsi or and by the way, I think Pepsi and Adidas both of them have NF T’s. So that’s I think that’s partly because people want it, it’s just irrelevant. And then partly because it could be an additional source of revenue. And then lastly, is when Facebook is going to distribute Metaverse on larger scale, then part of our everyday life is going to be in the metaverse. And if you don’t have for example, a car, which would be a NFT, then you can’t drive in the metaverse, which is really weird thing to say right now. But down the line is just as as is the equivalent of saying like, I don’t have a phone. Right, so I can actually function without a phone right now, in the in the near future. We will have it where you need to have certain nfts to be able to actually function on a daily basis. With everything that’s going on around us. I wouldn’t be at the party is that you going to the business meetings you’re going to so on and so forth.

george grombacher 21:39
Revenue world almost literally. Yeah. Our event? Yeah. I love it. Well over the people ready for that difference making tip? What do you have for them?

Unknown Speaker 21:48
Yeah, so as you know, as if they’re, if they’re obviously collectors and depends on when when they’re listening to this, but if they’re collectors, just paying attention to the arts that they really like, and they want to support and just holding on to and just because it’s not, it’s not just about making money. I think it was and like we obviously we all want to make money into this too. But there is a different side to this web three, where we can actually expand this and just make our life quality better. So NF T’s are not just about artists neither, like they actually solve real life problems, like for example, authenticity in fashion, there’s no solution for it, or like storing information, for example, in sports, where, you know, for, let’s say, athletes, they have something about their health, and you need to store that information, but you you want to make sure it’s not distributed. There is no other solution better than NFS for that. So there’s certain things that you can only solve it with NFT. So I guess the the one thing I would want from the collector side of things is to actually just supporting people supporting people basically stumbling their way through just building things in this new industry. And then on the on the founder side of things, really taking NFT launches very seriously. It’s not a it’s not a hobby, and just like doing literally everything that they need to do to like literally, we were talking last night a mastermind like 24/7 Like this is your thing. This is your new life, not as a side thing, not as a hobby thing, because then we will just get the the negative connotation for like everyone who is actually staying in this for long, we will get the consequences of that. So yeah, so for the collectors, supporting and then for the founders, really taking things seriously and just doing everything that’s required. Not doing it their own way, basically.

george grombacher 23:54
Well, I think that is great stuff that definitely gets come up. Ivan, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

Unknown Speaker 24:03
Yes, so Arvin K NFT, on all socials, so that’s a RVINKNF T. and on Twitter, I’m most responsive. And then also I have a lot of case studies, a lot of interviews, speaking that I provided on my website that’s sold out NF T’s dot io. That’s spelled as S O LD NF ts.io. And the case study is essentially our show have projects selling out whether it be a bear market or not bear market is when people can just learn, get ideas, do it for themselves as well.

george grombacher 24:46
If you enjoyed as much as I did, show on your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Find him on social media at Arvon k and f t and then check out sold out and fts. that I owe like all those in the notes of the show thanks good thanks for having me and until next time keep fighting the good fight we’re all in this together

Transcribed by https://otter.ai