Ep. #834 - What is the EARNft Network?

00:00.00

Matt DeCoursey

And we’re back for another episode of Startup Hustle Matt DeCoursey is here to have another conversation I’m hoping helps your business grow. So. Yeah, everyone’s talking about NFTs they’re all over the place I think very few people understand the mechanics of what they are and how they work and especially when it comes to how you earn with NFTs, and we’re going to learn a whole lot about that today now before we get too far into that today’s episode Startup Hustle is sponsored by Canva. Where you go to collaborate and create amazing graphic designs for free, whether it’s a presentation to share, an idea, a video to launch your business, or a social post to start a conversation with Canva, you can design anything and discover the magic of. Visual communication and how Canva helps you create a lasting impact today. Just go to http://canva.com to learn more I’m a huge fan of Canva took me and turned me into a graphic designer, and I would like to thank Canva for that because it makes my life a lot easier now. Speaking of making my life a lot easier, I’ve got an expert here today to explain to me how you can earn with NFT, so with me today, I’ve got Dan Novaes, and Dan is the CEO of mode mobile and the creator of the earn ft network I guess we should just go ahead and. Say you know, straight out of Chicago, Illinois, Dan welcome to Startup Hustle.

01:22.39

Dan Novaes

Yeah, thanks, man, thanks for having me I’m actually in now South Florida, but ah, you know, as the rest of the crypto boom of us have moved to, but thanks for having me on the show.

01:32.37

Matt DeCoursey

Yeah, well, so you know, I think we’re gonna let’s just dive right in so you know, as the creator, you’re talking about earning through NFTs and being the creator of earn ft, and you know you can go to http://modemobile.com, and that’s Dan’s what there’s a link for that in the show notes you can also go to earn ft that’s kind of spelled like an ear with an nft just to make it easy. There’s a link for that in the show notes too. But you know Dan, why don’t we just get started with a little bit of your backstory and what brought us to all this today.

02:02.19

Dan Novaes

Yeah, ah, yeah, so gotten into starting from way back a while ago I’ve always been an entrepreneur you know started rich. It was from Brazil and grew between us and Brazil my whole life started eCom business when I was in high school. And um, you know, fell in love with entrepreneurship and was able to scale that to a couple of million dollars a year in revenue by the time I was a senior in high school that then moved me into a kind of like digital web creation on a really large music website before the Spotify days. Um, and then that just kind of like propelled at this career of kind of. You know, building apps, um, and phone in love with the concept of like super apps and emerging technologies. Um, you know, but build today is focused around building this what we call an earning operating system, and the idea here is to reward users for their time and attention and data. And we do that by, you know, taking everything they do from the moment they wake up until they go to sleep even while they’re sleeping and create rewards for it. Um, that ultimately led to this ideation around what was happening with web three and because you know the user base that we focus on, at least on that side of the business. It’s more budget conscious, and so you’re trying to come up with creative ways to create value for people and expose them to new technologies as oppos them to value, and what three fit nicely into that narrative, and it’s just one of many things that we do, but that’s ultimately how we got to the earnft network and the creation behind that. Um. Today you know we have several millions of monthly active users using the product. The company has over a hundred team members. Um, and have raised over $40000000 in capital.

03:42.55

Matt DeCoursey

Well, congratulations on that. That’s no small task now did I hear you correctly when I heard you say that you had created Sas or some type of platform that was generating a couple of million dollars a year in revenue before you graduated from high school.

03:57.78

Dan Novaes

Yes, yeah, this is ah yes, so ah, my early 30 s now. So this was about like yeah, half my life ago. Ah, so it was like sixteen years ago it wasn’t a Sas though it was more eCom. Um, I think you know where I’ve at the time, like where I saw a big opportunity as you know, just growing up in different environments, I think. Having this worldview has always been a big impact on all the businesses I’ve ever launched. Um, you know, and the crux of it was that you know, there’s a big price arbitrage and price difference of when things come out in these different countries and so that’s really where we focused in was like reselling these services these consumer goods in Brazil and. UK Australia um, and then you know that just kind of got me into eCom right? and then that moved into then you know the digital side of the business because of that. Is a totally different realm, and then I fell in love with the concept of digital businesses because I was like, wow, you don’t have to have inventory. You don’t lose stuff like you know I had like a disaster that happened one time where one of our warehouses got robbed, and I lost like half of our inventory was not insured, and that was like this thing where I was like I need to find a different business line you know and then that was I found out of that. But. Com is great. You know that wouldn’t happen now because you have like the risk mitigation. But when you’re young, you know you’re low fast living risky. You know, you know you don’t think about those things.

05:17.53

Matt DeCoursey

So when we talk about Mode mobile, I mean, how are people using that to make money?

05:23.59

Dan Novaes

Yeah, so so moon mobile our whole concept is around creating like supplemental income for budget-conscious consumers and so we really focus. You know the effort on you know these households, and you know it’ll differ by country. But I say it’s like a 50 too. Or like ah a 20 to $60000 a year type household. So it’s people that like, um, you know 30 to 50 for extra bucks a month on average will make a big difference. So our vision is actually to um you know it’s not necessarily to you know change what they’re doing every day to create incumbents just to create a little bit more supplemental. And the ultimate goal is actually to be able to eventually fully subsidize the cost of their smartphone and data plan. Um so much so that we actually launched our own smartphone that actually pays you as you use it and this is like billions of consumers. It’s a very widespread problem. Um, and you be. Be shocked at seeing the ages of the demographics of the people that still use our service. You know, it’s very evenly distributed from 18 to 55 years old,, which is credence to the total addressable market size and that underlying problem, especially as we head into the recession or kind of like the. The weird economic environment that we find ourselves in today.

06:38.93

Matt DeCoursey

So and you can go to mode http://phone.com to learn more about that. So this is like might be like a total rookie or newbie kind of question where does the money come from like who’s paying the users to use mode phone or earn NFT.

06:47.28

Dan Novaes

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so the way the way I like to think about it is and and just you know high level to really sign up the framework here. Um so mode mobile is a traditional and kind of like web 2 company but I would say it’s like web 3 enabled. And so think about that like a web 2 platform so you know as a traditional corporate structure. Ah you know we control that underlying you know, company and fundamentally what we’re doing is we’re working with advertisers financial services game developers market research companies and there is like an earning rate. Um, associated to every action that you do within the software and you know they can be downloaded from Google Play you could use our phone and earn faster. However, you want to do it but fundamentally the more you do the more you earn and this really comes down to this principle of of kind of like you know, fixing the problem with the attention economy. And sharing back that revenue today when you use Google when you use Facebook when use these services. You’re not getting rewarded right? that data is is there and that’s the big problem. What got us into this whole webp 3 movement and ultimately the creation of earn ftnetwork which is um, it’s it’s it’s its own entity right? What? But like it’s it’s meant to be a decentralized. Ah, auto organization. That’s what we’re moving towards and so there’s kind of like 2 different entities so you have this web two company which is mode mobile and it is partnered with the web 3 company which is earn ft network but that’s not made just for mode mobile right? So the way that people are essentially earning is through this like web 3 enabled reward ecosystem. So kind of what you’re seeing in play to earn. And that’s what’s happening in mobile mobile we make it super easy for people. They don’t need crypto wallets they can earn in points if they want to play with crypto and redeem their points for crypto or Nfts or whatever they can but we don’t make it so be so and I think that that’s a really big opportunity and that vision behind our nfd network is really to interconnect. Millions of people that use these web 2 platforms. So cash back platforms gains. Whatever it might be um and and then and then expose them to web 3 rewards right? because I think the web 3 it’s like if we could take um you know a timeline back Twenty five years ago right to like the late 90 s and it’s not necessarily apples to apples. But and if you could expose that in some way like these people to um, you know a share of Apple stock or a share of Amazon that could materially change that life for that person right? that transition from web one to web 2 and web 2 now we’re in this transition of web three. We’re not fully there but that’s kind of the underlying thought of of being able to expose digital assets um to you know the everyday person and billions of people and that’s kind of like the you know mission behind you know mode mobile and how earnftt fits and intertwines.

09:38.57

Matt DeCoursey

So according to your site on earnft there’s 16 different ways that you can earn and yeah, go real fast. It’s every music games news surfing charging sharing weather tasks.

09:38.82

Dan Novaes

That mission.

09:54.19

Matt DeCoursey

Cash crypto finance data lock screen mode watching saving and fitness. So so who so let’s just say that all right? Well you mentioned music I worked in the music industry for 10 years so let’s just use music as an example because I think that makes a lot of sense.

09:58.36

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah.

10:09.90

Dan Novaes

Okay.

10:12.90

Matt DeCoursey

Um, so let’s take this back from like like I’m a musician and I’m so and I want to I want to I want to participate and earn FT so how does that work from from the beginning all the way through the part where people are earning through it. So.

10:15.35

Dan Novaes

Um.

10:23.12

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah, so so actually so yeah, so that’s on the mo phone website. So on the platform. Um, you know what we’re essentially doing there is think about it more for let’s think about it more from the end user perspective. So think about like a platform like Pandora. Right? or ah or or you know tune in or any of these platforms write this stream music. What we do is we aggregate hundreds of thousands of these stations that our consumers can listen to um and they’re listening music just as if they would on a Pandora or a tune in or anything like that as they’re listening. Um, they’re getting rewarded a certain amount of points per minute and that balance the accelerator of what they’re actually earning per minute goes up and down depending on them doing value at actions in the product. So the more value at actions you do and the more you want to do so it’s up to you. We don’t force you to do it the faster you’re on. More passive you want to be and if you just want to listen to music and be passive about it the less you learn, but you still get the music for free and what we’re essentially doing is um is is giving you the choice and that’s the most important thing is give people the choice and so as they’re earning those points they could then take those points and then redeem that. Or things like and Nfts or crypto or Paypal or both right? The idea is to give the consumer the end choice now on the creator side. Ah those streams like they’re getting paid for those streams in more of a traditional mechanic. So it’s less about like creating decentralized music in that sense at least on the mode mobile side. Um, because they’re still getting rewarded and still getting paid on the way that they would get through like you know, royalty rates, etc. But it’s kind of us focusing on the things that people do each day and each one of those modes represents something that we do um and we just expose them to other opportunities to you know, create. Um, you know a little bit of extra income. And expose them to other services. They may be interested in so that could be anything from like working with financial services banks crypto funds games, etc. And so we’re exposing them and those are the value of actions that I mean um, way that impact your earning rate if that makes sense.

12:33.52

Matt DeCoursey

So and so and just to clarify with the value out that could be anything like you occasionally I don’t know you’re talking web to kind of stuff and you get an ad that pops up and it says take a survey and maybe you do Maybe you don’t or or do whatever them.

12:44.86

Dan Novaes

Yeah, maybe you do maybe don. Yeah yeah and it’ll it’s it’s it’s and it’s more of like it’s and we do it based on like a that or that rating and then you have like you know it. It stands there for a certain amount of hours if they do the survey um or they give us the insight. Um. They’ll get more points for that right? and then that will also impact their earning rates so they’re earning at the same time and again it’s like people people are going to listen to music. Anyways, they’re going to play games. Anyways, they’re going to read the news anyways, like so our whole focus like like literally we created a software that when you plug in your phone to charge it’ll reward you to charge right and you can turn it off right? and and some people don’t want that on whatever but it’ll reward you for that. But it’s like we know that people are gonna do that right? And the the thing is is like allow people to have that and I think today mode mobile is the closest company in the world to get to a point that we can create enough. Ah you know rewards. And revenue for this specific demographic to to create the first free phone a free device for people and our goal isn’t to be a phone manufacturer. We actually license this software to other phone manufacturers and really this concept of earn phones. But if you think about that that’s the future whoever creates that that’s a trillion dollar opportunity because you’re breaking down barriers. Communication knowledge and I think that that’s kind of like part of this whole web. 3 narrative is about um you know, opening up the borders of ah to anyone anywhere around the world. Um and breaking down those digital barriers.

14:13.73

Matt DeCoursey

What what else is this disrupting.

14:17.44

Dan Novaes

Um, ah well I mean in what sounds you like in in the the question.

14:23.49

Matt DeCoursey

Yeah, well so so yeah I look at like okay the way that music is consumed for an example like if you’re listening to Spotify. You’re either paying to subscribe right? and then ah then you don’t you’re not subjected to ads or you’re not.

14:28.31

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah.

14:34.53

Dan Novaes

Ah, yep. Yeah, yeah.

14:42.89

Matt DeCoursey

And then you’re subjected to ads so Spotify. Never pays me unless I’m an advertiser so something’s being disrupted here if if we’re going to now pay people to consume now part of which so you know one of the things has been a hot topic with web 2 type stuff and you’ll hear people say this like.

14:45.59

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah, sure. Yeah yeah.

15:02.70

Matt DeCoursey

So you know when you use Facebook for free which means you’re the product right? because you’re not paying them so are the are the people that are earning through this. Do they become the product still.

15:04.38

Dan Novaes

In the product exactly.

15:13.99

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah, well I think why.

15:16.93

Matt DeCoursey

You’re you’re not because technically by that definition. You’re no longer the product if you’re being paid to use it.

15:19.73

Dan Novaes

Well I think yeah, there’s 2 schools of thought and at least. Ah yeah, my opinion. Ah 1 is you know you can take the Apple route which is like you know, ah the the very like privacy focused but 1 can argue that that was also to boost the amount of revenue that they are on like the search ads for those of. Pretty pitiful business and now it’s a booming business for them and they crushed Facebook in several ways. Um and ios users tend to be higher income users right? because the ios phone is the iphone is expensive. Um, but that’s one round the other route is ah you know there is this subset of billions of people around the world that can’t afford. To spend like ten bucks per subscription for 6 services and that’s like you know $2000 a year and that is the majority right? It may not be the people listening this podcast. It may not be the people that you know work at our company but that is the majority of people and the idea is if you give the user the choice you don’t force anything down their throats. You just give them the choice. And allow them to earn or not earn as much as they want um that that is the most equitable model and I think that that’s kind of like where I talk about this web 3 enabled um platform is is is this is this general concept and and I think that’s what’s disrupting and while we’re doing is essentially sharing a portion of the revenue that. You know as a platform we’re earning. Um you know back with the consumer but we’re not incentivizing them to like click on ads and stuff like that like we’ve created a model that essentially is aligns incentives amongst the advertisers um of all caliber the the research providers etc the users and the platform and that is. And I think that that’s the kind of beauty of kind of this like more web 3 like philosophy. We’re just doing it in more like web 2 environments because that’s where we are with the tech today you know like web 3 is still pretty clunky for most people and and that’s why we kind of consider you know the mobile part of our business as a web three enabled company. Um. But it’s not full. What 3 whereas rft is ah is a pretty web full web 3 type of solution. Um, and they just have like a you know ah relationship with 1 another like partnership.

17:25.40

Matt DeCoursey

So you get 16 total modes in here for earning like what is one of these just clearly the champion right now. Yeah.

17:32.80

Dan Novaes

Well, we so we started out the whole concept of this of this was actually kind of somewhat brought on by accident like you know we the way we stumbled upon this concept as I mentioned earlier was around this. We really like the super app concept right? That’s always been super. Um. You know, interesting to me like the we chats of the world cacao line these absolutely super apps of Asia and then you know really thought that that was gonna be the model for here and and it took a bit longer now we’re moving towards that again, but initially what we built was a music super app and we aggregated like 7 different music services but we weren’t rewarding people what we found those hosts that. Ah. You know and I think this is a great entrepreneurial lesson right? since a lot of people that listen to your podcast are entrepreneurs. Um, we weren’t getting great traction and and you know but we were getting some users in there and then the users that were using it. We’re like asked like hey like why are you using this product and they’re like well I don’t pay for. Streaming services and this has the most amount of Apis and music services in 1 place and so instead of doubling down on like more music services. We asked? Well why don’t you pay for them because I mean I mean I pay for streaming like my cofounder pays for streaming like we’re not this sort of the audience but we found that a this is a certain type of person like this is. Person that lives in a certain type of income bracket has certain types of opportunity and is with no way whether they’re either fully against it or they can’t afford it. They are not going to pay for streaming and then then we’re like well what if we focus on that problem instead. Um, and then we just put up a lander right? at the time it was like get rewarded to listen to music. And suddenly we had like three hundred thousand ah you know people sign up for that you know and then that was a very interesting medium method built yet and then we’re like okay we’re in focus on that and then that’s actually what led our revolution into the crypto side of things and more thinking about web 3 and rewarding people. Um, you know for that data time and attention and then that. Changed our lives. You know, kind of what we focus on that was like in 2016 2017 um, and that’s how we got here. So I say music is is like kind of the initial. Um, we’ve now moved into you know games and music together. But it’s it’s hard to say like financial services is a really big component of our revenue isn’t necessarily why people come into the product in the first place. But you know we see our product more as a financial service product than anything else because that’s a relationship that we’re developing and now we’re developing the solutions to be able to have that um like a wallet inside the product and then be able to buy like crypto fractional stocks, etc and create that portfolio for that cohort of user. Just through their attention time and data. Um and and allowing them to you know invest those earnings and grow their wealth. You know.

20:11.18

Matt DeCoursey

So many more questions so many more now before I get into those as a reminder today’s episode of startup hustle is brought to us by canva with canva you can design your ideas with ease. You can get inspired. They have over half a million free templates and a rich. Content library that helps you and your team achieve your goals sign up and start designing for free at http://canva.com now you know just as ah as a quick statement here you know canva changed yeah I canva changed the way I did business and it did it for free and I ended up becoming a subscriber afterward. But. Use it for so many different things. Everything from like social media posts I often make ah very quick and crude drawings and and wire frames and stuff like that for our developers and a whole lot of other people and it just really made ah life easier for me when I was able to visualize so many things that are stuck in my head I think that. As an entrepreneur you often know what you need to describe show demonstrate and then if you’re not a graphic designer you are usually drawing it on the back of a bar napkin. So I got away from that and that was probably a good thing for me Dan so now. Back to our conversation and once again I’m here today with Danda Vaas and he’s the Ceo of mode mobile and the creator of the earn ft network this is yeah I mentioned before we hit record that I employ a couple hundred developers and they’re all in the Philippines and.

21:36.97

Dan Novaes

Um, but.

21:39.25

Matt DeCoursey

Um, as I was doing research for this episode and this whole series on nfts I realized that the Philippines is one of the top places for play to earn games and it really like that. That’s where this starts making sense because.

21:47.97

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah, yeah.

21:53.92

Matt DeCoursey

Also mention a couple other things too so like over like here in the us it’s like so many people use Apple it’s almost all Android in the Philippines because the iphone’s super expensive and also you mentioned like so there’s just these big differences and like.

21:57.50

Dan Novaes

Yeah, my am is not.

22:08.65

Matt DeCoursey

And economics and you know how much things cost so a $20 a month to give you some perspective as a listener a $20 a month subscription here in the us I say here you were. We’re in the Us.

22:10.14

Dan Novaes

Yep.

22:23.11

Matt DeCoursey

But in the Philippines that that would be like 6 times more that would be the equivalent like would you pay one hundred and twenty dollars a month to subscribe to Spotify probably not and you know you now you start stacking these things up and now you you know you got 6 of them or 8 of them or however, many.

22:30.61

Dan Novaes

Yeah.

22:40.12

Matt DeCoursey

And it makes a lot of sense I you know I I totally get the music thing because um, if you’re just listening to music like I do all day I mean the music’s still the same still the same song I don’t think any if you’re going to get paid to still listen to the same stuff. Why not now.

22:50.54

Dan Novaes

Yeah.

22:57.60

Matt DeCoursey

Yeah, one of the things Dan that I’ve I’ve got notes here. Is you guys currently have billions of hours are spent on. Yeah you know web 2 platforms the time data and attention invested by those users provide the foundation for what you guys are doing at earn ft.

23:12.10

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah.

23:14.16

Matt DeCoursey

But yeah I’m curious about how you go about capturing that like how do you bring this like I get the idea I get the concept I think it’s cool, but you mentioned like all of a sudden now. We’ve got 300000 people that are listening that weren’t before how do you get this out for people to even know it exists.

23:28.58

Dan Novaes

Yeah, so so yeah, lots to unpack there. So the the first um, kind of thing that you mentioned here is is yeah Philippines is one of the most interesting places we seen in in like you know, not only web 3 but also just ah, what I’ll say is like broader reward and earning apps. Um, it’s 1 of our largest user bases. Um and and like it’s a certain type of consumption habits and part of the vision of what Rft was um is that you know we designed it so that. It’s targeted to kind of like that more budget conscious consumer and there’s opportunities for them and then there’s it’s also targeted to higher income consumers. So because you ask this question around distribution. That’s where this this kind of comes in so things like the axi infinity effect is what I like to call. And this idea of like using these platforms. Um is is is really a product of using you know reward platforms play to earn gaming etc and so what earn ft is essentially is kind of an evolution of the play to earn model but expanding it outside of just gaming expanding it into any type of system where there is a point and reward. Type of mechanic whether it’s in gaming whether it’s in reward apps whether it’s in you know, cash back portals. Whatever that might be and the thought process here is um, we don’t actually make the consumer choose just the web 3 reward. Um, they can. But the idea here is like so say that in any platform you go in. You are in like say 5000 points and the 5000 points is usually related to the in-app currency of that platform. So the web 2 platform and so what we’re pitching to essentially platforms is well. Give them for that 5000 points say you get a dollar on Paypal. Whatever it might be give them a free web 3 reward as well. So it’s actually just an additional reward right? and in in that web 3 reward which is kind of ah is ah is an asset that we for Earnft called an eft which is an r ft- backed nftt. It’s backed by a ver amount of coins so you don’t know if there’s half a coin inside of this eft or 100000 so there’s kind of this gamified earning mechanic and so now that consumer is earning a stable reward. Maybe that web to reward. Maybe that’s that dollar on Paypal but they’re also getting this variable reward that they don’t know whether it’s. Half a coin or one hundred Thousand coins and they’re getting that free web 3 award because the fundamental goal is um, can you reward them better than what they were getting rewarded before and then can you do it in a way that’s easy for them to get exposed to it and that’s how you get massive distribution and there are millions tens of millions of people every hour

26:08.89

Dan Novaes

But uses these various platforms these earning platforms. Our platform included right? and we’re the launch pad for this network but this is designed for any type of web to kind of earning ecosystem. Um is what we call it and that’s how you get that mass distribution Now. So Those earners are the exact people that are going to proliferate the Earnft assets. Yeah worldwide and that’s that’s essentially how we design the model.

26:30.97

Matt DeCoursey

So on your site your the site talks about an upcoming sale for a blue three is that it blue 3 chip blue chip. Okay sure. Okay.

26:38.55

Dan Novaes

Um, ah, blue chip blue chip. It’s just a 3 is like to play on the web 3 But yeah, but we call it the blue chip mobile and Nft collection. Yeah, yeah, so the idea with that is you know it’s like.

26:48.29

Matt DeCoursey

So so how are people going to earn from that. How is that going to work. Well.

26:56.11

Dan Novaes

Basically it was it was an iteration for Rft around. Yeah, if you think about what we do on the web to side of things like but Mobilebi you know we created a smartphone and smartphone software that earned you rewards um and and your everyday life. Um, and that’s a specific target market that is focused in on that. Um the idea for this collection. Was and basically the launch of the network was like what would um, a smartphone that earns ah look like in the metaverses and so each of these ah you know what we call like plans like these Nft plans um are essentially examples of blue chip nfts that already exist. So like. The the board. Ape the mutinape the doodle the cyberfound so these are all kind of what they call blue chip just how you know blue chip stocks whatever it is and that was the play on words of the whole blue chip mobile nftt and then we’re like okay now we have this metaverse smartphone. Um, and then every time that there is a drop. A platform. So what that means essentially is um as I mentioned earlier like the way that the platforms work is earn ft partners with platforms like mode mobile or like a rackutan or or whatever it might be um and the governance essentially issued a certain amount of coins to hand out to the users. So a percentage of those coins that are issued like 22% are reserved for blue chip mobile Nft holders and so this is designed to happen on a monthly basis per platform so there could be 10 of these drops so ten million coins every month. Go out to the communities. And 22% of them are reserved for these holders of these various tiers and so you’re essentially earning these efts. Um as a holder in addition to that you get like the first ever nft- linked smartphone. Ah you get a meverse phone and you also get membership to the underlying community of other like blue chip traders and. Um, that are that are in that Target market because there’s only a limited amount of them. But this is the first ever metaverse and nftt phone right and forever and always that rnftnetwork is watching. Ah first one of them.

28:56.34

Matt DeCoursey

And who would have thought that a board Ape or a crypto punk or a mutant would be the leader in something new and technology. It’s just ah, it’s a fascinating economy and don’t try to explain it to your parents folks. It’s it’s It’s a long.

29:11.10

Dan Novaes

Um I got not mom my parents were like I literally like they saw like my profile picture was this ape and then i’t like.

29:13.92

Matt DeCoursey

It’s a long beefy conversation that will ah that yeah.

29:23.98

Dan Novaes

Honestly, when I was explaining to them I was like man I saw’m stupid like I was like I can’t believe I’m having this conversation you know and I was like now I was trying to explain it and I feel like actually towards the end they were starting to get it but but they were I think it was just like 1 thing like you know we love you anyways, you know type deal so that 1 confusion.

29:40.33

Matt DeCoursey

It’s ah yeah, that invariably will usually result in and the comment of so you’re buying and selling jpegs.

29:48.00

Dan Novaes

Yeah I mean that’s potentially I mean we we don’t personally trade them like we’re like kind of holders long term ah because that mean that’s the whole design of like the ecosystem. But um, you know I know a lot of people that do you know? and that’s what they’re you know, essentially enjoyed doing spending hours on discords and reddits and.

30:02.40

Matt DeCoursey

Yeah. Yeah I’m I’m not to that. Ah I’m not that progressive I’m maybe more of a follower in that regard I do find it to be completely interesting though. I understand you know I mentioned working in the music industry I was also a ticket broker for several years so

30:07.78

Dan Novaes

Things like that.

30:25.23

Matt DeCoursey

You don’t have to explain the concept of scarcity and supply and demand on those days. But yeah, it’s ah it’s really interesting. How how this works. Yeah I think one of the things that that somewhat is confusing for people is when you hear crypto you the word currency. Being in it. So I think that people that don’t understand what it is and like how this works this this is transactional value and different things that exist. But you know they say well is this currency like you’re not going to take apecoin well at least not anytime soon and go go to seven eleven and buy a slurpee with it.

31:00.94

Dan Novaes

Yeah, yeah.

31:02.85

Matt DeCoursey

It’s not necessarily how that works but you know we’ll figure it out eventually or we’ll just all get old to the point where maybe apecoin will be how we get paid I’m thinking about telling my employees that they’re going to get bonus soon and then just paying them with Nfts that we created and.

31:18.83

Dan Novaes

Yeah I you know? yeah well we we learn a lot of our tubers. Ah they get. They can get paid in tether or bitcoin I mean we go through a pro form on this. But yeah, we did feel that it would make sense to enable the the crypto payments for the team.

31:21.50

Matt DeCoursey

You know, maybe maybe they’ll be worth something. Maybe they won’t.

31:29.91

Matt DeCoursey

Yeah.

31:35.85

Matt DeCoursey

So How big but you know we’re we’re sitting here kind of chuckling and joking about explaining this to our parents and in general I mean sometimes one one of the biggest problems with anything that’s new or emerging and I go back to like a couple comments ago about you know, having been a ticket broker. For a while like I was there when E tickets came out and people just didn’t get it. You know they’re like where’s my ticket stub you know and you’re like no, you can same thing with like mobile ticketing and stuff like that now eventually people just figured it out and some of it was because the primary issuer.

32:01.17

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah.

32:12.00

Matt DeCoursey

Said tickets Finally said you know what we’re not even sending ticket stubs anymore figure this out people Now how big of a challenge is that with what you do is just getting people to quote, get it right.

32:15.30

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah.

32:22.80

Dan Novaes

Well I think ah depends who we’re we’re talking about. Ah yeah, so so I think that’s a constant challenge that everyone in in web three will is underlyingly facing right? If we’re still talking in the relatively early. Co or like even some of the people I interview from like amazing silicon valley companies like super smart, bright people interested in cool ideas. They know what through’s here but or is is is hot but they don’t really exactly know and it’s not like you know risk mitigated yet, you’re seeing all these funds that are coming out. So I think that we’re moving towards that direction. Um, but that’s kind of like goes back to the underlying principle and actually the foundation of how we have approached the model which we’re like okay um, web three I have no doubt my mind ah in the next decade will proliferate like you know and and like the tools of servicing all that stuff will be here. But right now we’re just not fully there I would say like we’re in this transitionary period. So what we’re focused on is can you expose people in a way that’s easy doesn’t necessarily require a wallet um is part of like you know their underlying daily like reward or habit and how do you just bring the barrier down to just expose it. Um, in the very lowest common denominator way and we do that we believe to do that in in web 2 platforms and that’s why we say we’re web 3 enabled right? Um, and so I think that that’s the best way to kind of explain that and expose it where there’s a very low risk of you getting in because literally it’s just getting rewarded to you as part of something else and I think that that’s. Um, how we intend to expose this to tens of millions hundreds millions hundreds of millions of consumers. Um, you know through not only our platform but the broader platform that will eventually adopt or an Fta network.

34:11.65

Matt DeCoursey

You’re talking about how do you explain some of this stuff and you know a lot of things in life and especially as an entrepreneur or anything that you’re selling peddling pushing has to do with just getting in front of the right people.

34:21.60

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah.

34:23.42

Matt DeCoursey

You know in the in the Twenty Twenty Two super bowl the ad that was the most talked about was the key. The bouncing qr code that coinbase put out now whether you use coinbase or not a lot of people thought that that was brilliant marketing because it basically to me and I agree because. It said if you don’t know what this is. We don’t care like if you don’t even know what a Qr code is at this point you’re not going to be in our platform buying crypto you’re not going to be doing any of it because you don’t get it and.

34:48.13

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah.

34:54.46

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah, grow right.

34:58.94

Matt DeCoursey

I Thought that that was the the most brilliant part about that play was saying hey look Okay, we’re fine if you don’t know what this qr code is what it does or how to activate it. You’re not our target user. You’re not our target customer and you aren’t likely to be for quite some time.

35:13.81

Dan Novaes

Yeah, yeah, well I think it makes total sense I think also you know coinbase is pretty genius around it because you know covid propelled the use of the core of the victorr code again like my parents would never have known to pull out a camera and scan a Qr code. Ah, year and a half ago tours are maybe more sorry, not a year now it me two and a half years ago but then covid came out and then tor code became like the norm because people don’t want menus and then now but that in itself is also this evolution of just like the speed of which things are moving like covid accelerated even further that digital trans you know have people that were like in their sixty s and 70 s. They even know online grocery delivery exists and suddenly in their mind like wow I don’t need to go to the grocery store and now I order grocery store time but that in itself allows them to even wrap their head around what is bitcoin what is crypto and now you have like people of my dad’s age. You know I’ll random them like go visit my parents and then there’ll be a dinner then people were like can you help me buy bitcoin like and I’m seeing that from like people that I grew up with that like super huge skeptics saying that and I mean the fact is I mean it is moving towards that and now that Biden and this executive order came out around the digital dollar and all this stuff. You’re just seeing more buy-in of that right? and I think that that’s. It’s inevitable. What 3 movements ineffable and so it’ll happen again in the next Decade we’re not fully there but we’re heading there and we’ve been in the space for like 11 years and I mean it’s it’s much larger now if it has ever been. You know even though you know we’re down whatever 50% 40% of what it was. Like a couple of months ago but like these are short-term births right on term this is um, it’s going to be very interesting.

36:48.70

Matt DeCoursey

Yeah, if you’re looking for stability that crypto might not be there for you. Yeah, by the way the most genius part of that ad was that the square actually squared itself up in the upper right? Hand corner activating the memory of all of us that obsessed over the office. For several years and you know always just yeah, that was that that was the main thing that was the most genius part about that and I don’t think most people even caught that. But yeah, so in the office they were like there was an episode where they were sitting there. You know there were.

37:06.92

Dan Novaes

Um, ah yeah.

37:13.56

Dan Novaes

Um I didn’t even know that? No yeah, that’s it that was news.

37:21.90

Matt DeCoursey

You have these old screensavers and they never the box never made it squarely into the corner and that’s how the coinbase ad ended which was pretty genius because that gave so many of us office users our watchers a sense of satisfaction that.

37:24.00

Dan Novaes

Upper it? yeah.

37:39.44

Matt DeCoursey

Hopefully all you listeners and I can’t even tell you what episode of the office that is so watch all of them and then and then email my business partner Matt Watson Not me that you finally get it so well you know once again, a big thank you to today’s episode sponsor that was canva. You can find more info about canva in the show notes.

37:42.41

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah.

37:58.00

Matt DeCoursey

Http://canva.com and with canva you can work together from wherever and you can get on the same page as your team with seamless real-time collaboration. So what are you going to design today. You know the explore and start designing for free at http://canva.com maybe you have a concept for your own. Ah nfts and that’s a good place to get some of that started and. And I’m so fascinated. But I love anything that helps creators get paid and I think the flip side of that is letting the people that support the creators get paid. So um I like what you’re doing Dan and I really do I think it’s really cool now. Ah, yeah I end my episodes startup hustle with what we call the founders freestyle and that’s a chance for you and I to both kind of talk about what we talked about and what made sense and what didn’t and you know I say my episodes startup hustle I’m not the only host of the show make sure you tune in because we now have weekly episodes from Matt Watson you’ve got Andrew Morgans talking about e-commerce and and Amazon brand acceleration and Lauren Conaway the founder of innovate her who talks about a lot of stuff that quite honestly I’m not brave enough to talk about. So you know all doing some very specific things and I’m very interested in the way this works because imagine what it would be like if you could get paid to listen to startup hustle. We probably have more people coming through the whole lifetime of the show. Yeah there’s a couple There’s a couple people that have reached out and there there. Trying to catch up. You know we’re ah coming up on 850 episodes by the time this one had come out and and some of these people have gotten mad at us because we were three days a week then we were 4 days and then we were 5 and they’re like what the hell I’m never going to catch up so anyway back to the.

39:25.60

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah.

39:30.87

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah, yeah, we actually so.

39:38.80

Matt DeCoursey

Back to the freestyle. What what did we leave out what stood out or what would you like to say as we as we come to a close here.

39:45.76

Dan Novaes

Ah, well I get well just on that thought I you know being able to get paid to listen toer school is on our product roadmap. We do have the ability to embed podcasts into the service. You just haven’t done it yet focus more on the on the music side but it is something that’s. And the roadmap by no for sure. So I think that will come true. 1 day you know and then I’ll let you know when that happens that we could feature it to our millions of users.

40:13.17

Matt DeCoursey

Overall like when we as we talk about earn FT and what you guys are doing at mode mobile I mean out of our conversation today I mean what’s the what’s the what’s the key ingredient. What’s something that you really want everyone to make sure they heard.

40:26.92

Dan Novaes

Yeah I think um, you know more more from a broader sense I mean I I know that there’s you know we talked about some of the skepticism of kind of like where we are in the space and you know, ah you know this is still a very new industry right? and we’re kind of at the tip of this but I think that we’re in the bit the midst of like the biggest wealth transfer in history. Um, and we’ll continue to be over the course of the next few years and um I think the one difference this time is that it’s not just for the insiders and I think you know for what at least we focus on is like you know our products are traditionally focused more on the budget conscious consumer especially at mode mobile but the things that were. Moving towards this industry are targeted to all types of backgrounds and and users and I think that just getting that initial exposure is is kind of the 1 thing that I would you know advise anyone to do and even if it’s like point one percent of your net worth um, don’t sleep on it right? It’s going to be a massive movement and it’s very exciting and you know. Listening things like this I think will definitely move forward for a lot of the people listening.

41:27.81

Matt DeCoursey

Yeah I agree and I hope all of you listening have been joining the Nft series I’ll just tell you I had to learn I had to get it really dive in and learn a lot of this myself and I and before we go in and do a series. You know it’s what you think you know.

41:31.81

Dan Novaes

Ah.

41:46.96

Matt DeCoursey

About crypto and Nft is probably far different than what you should know or could know I mean I did a whole lot of stuff. Man I did I bought and sold ah Nfts and I’ve mented them at this point and you know I mean I’ve learned the difference between all the different kinds you know and what they. What they do and how they do it. It’s not just buying and selling jpegs which is honestly what too many of you think is what Nfts are. Yeah yeah, yeah, right.

42:06.79

Dan Novaes

Um, yeah, it’s community. That’s that’s the future of this internet is community and creators and that’s what people are buying when they buy a board day because the is is is is a member is essentially the acceptance of that community right? It’s a limited thing and. We see that happening in Society. You know, think of country clubs people memberships like so house etc like people want those things and that’s what essentially people are getting when they buy that board a then it’s a movement right? and a movement that resonates with them. So I think that.

42:36.77

Matt DeCoursey

Yeah, and and and that’s and that’s the that’s the key point here is ah yeah, know there. There are just so many people that well I’m old at this point I turned 47 this year. So I remember people talking about when the internet was going to be a fad.

42:52.85

Dan Novaes

Yeah.

42:54.74

Matt DeCoursey

and I’m and I’m even so old that I was I’m old enough to remember when the personal computer was going to be a fad and yeah I even had floppy floppy disks at 1 point Dan that’s how fricking old I’m getting bro and now we’re going to have to have a whole nother.

43:00.54

Dan Novaes

Yeah.

43:11.20

Matt DeCoursey

Episode to talk me down but no I’m I’m just kidding I mean I think I think this ah I’m experienced. Well maybe not as experienced with this stuff as I need to be now like I look at this stuff and it’s like hey if you’re interested in entrepreneurship technology like change all of it.

43:12.47

Dan Novaes

Um, ah obviously think you’re embracing and and you’re you’re you’re getting you’re you’re you’re diving in you know, a lot I’m fucking. Yeah.

43:30.98

Matt DeCoursey

This is a great thing to dive into like you know whether it’s for you or whether it’s not and I do agree with the diversification thing like I know a lot of people that have made a lot of money on a lot of this stuff and and it’s the funny thing is it’s a lot of them are actually kind of the people that I on many levels thought would never make any money. And now I’m realizing that they’re hell a lot smarter than most of us. So I’m going to maybe go do a little tears and beers and cry about that because I was talking to a buddy of mine who by the way owns a very large slice of mutant apes and he called me up a while ago and he. You know he said to me he said so of all the things we’ve talked about over the last fifteen years that we thought would get rich. Did you ever think pictures of apes would be on my list and I so I said no dude that was about five hundred thousandth on the list but you know it is what it is so.

44:17.80

Dan Novaes

Yeah, um. You know.

44:27.37

Matt DeCoursey

Dan thanks for joining me man I’m gonna check in I’m gonna give I’m gonna give ah all of the all of your sites and all of your stuff a really hard look I really appreciate you clarifying so much of this and teaching me about so much more and hopefully everyone else listening learned a bunch too. So check check it out.

44:42.64

Dan Novaes

Thank you for having me really appreciate it.