"Last year is when NFT started taking off and more of that aspect of things, that's the part that actually really drew me in because that to me from a technologist perspective, from a software developer perspective, that is where it connects to our world. And I can see the value in digital ownership and things like that."- Ian Landsman

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Ian Landsman:
Ian's Company: Helpspot
Ian on Twitter: @ianlandsman

Brian Casel:

Brian’s company, ZipMessage

Brian on Twitter: @casjam

Thanks to ZipMessage

ZipMessage (today’s sponsor) is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.


Quotes from this episode:

Quote 1:

Brian: I'm still learning and I'm still trying to figure out what I think about all that. I do think that there seems to be an opportunity in what people are calling Web3 and like "tokenization" and... 

Ian: Right. 

Brian: And and it does like there are like to me, there are like glimpses of, of potential possibilities of what this stuff could mean, like, you know, in terms of like smart contracts and how something can, like, grow in value. I like to think back to like an artist, especially like a musician. But I guess this can go for any kind of art where the original creator can be paid as their art continues to be bought and sold over time, which is like fundamentally not possible with like physical paintings. Right, right, right. That seems interesting.

And then I'm then I wonder how that can make you adapt to other use cases.

Ian: You know, I sort of see I mean, the three main areas I'm interested in and there are lots of other edge cases and people have all kinds of things they're attempting to do. Right. But the three main ones are I guess you have like the what is the most visible aspect is like the art, right? And you know, you have the one side that loves that.

You have other many people who make fun of it like you monkeys and dragons and whatever, right? Like digital art. And you have people who are very mainstream, but he's making still pretty weird art, Elon Musk naked and whatever. All kinds of stuff that he does not.

Brian: Even know about. These people are probably the most famous.

Ian: Right, right. Yeah. He's done he does one every day. And anyway, so it's like the pure there's the pure art aspect of like artists doing one of art. There are artists doing these collections like bored apes and things like that that people are probably heard of. And yet so what you're referencing there is and when you resell this art, the royalty a percentage of the sale goes just automatically to the.

And there are some details around that, whatever. But ultimately a percentage of that goes to the artist. So that's not just like when the artist is dead, maybe it becomes worth something or like whatever. Or they're forced to keep creating stuff because that's the only way to live. Like you could create a couple of things that are huge hits and make a lot of money, you know, ongoing because people are reselling them.


Quote 2:


Brian: If a software startup is going to become like Web3 enabled or whatever like associated with Web3, it means that they are at some point going to offer a token like from their brand.

Ian: Potentially.

Brian: And users of their tool. Like the more they use it or the more they help grow the tool and its user base, they gain ownership of this token. And I guess externally the token could be bought and sold just like any other token. A Bitcoin or Etherium or Solana. Mm-hmm. And that's the idea is like you're building it's almost like like the only parallel I can think of is like a publicly-traded company. Right? Like. Right. Like, I use an Apple Computer, but I could also own Apple stock. And but I guess the idea for this...

Is that you're it's more intertwined where, like, the more you use it, the more stock you gain in this equity that you gain.

Ian: Right, earning it for it. And like, it. Yeah, exactly.

Brian: So it's which in turn, like raises the value of that coin or that. Right?

Ian: Right. So I think there's this example of like you, you know, the way it works now is you go and get investment from rich people, but you're literally limited to people who make more than $200,000 a year or $3,000 a year. We can invest in private companies essentially as like an angel or things like that or VC. And so you get a handful of those you raise some money, then you start your software business and your customers have nothing to do with any of it.

They don't your first customers get none out of it other than being the first customers. Which is great. If they like your product, that's fine. But we all know that the first customers are actually super important. Like they giving you the most important feedback. They're taking the biggest risk because you're probably going to go out of business is the reality.

So like they're taking the risk, putting their time and effort into participating in your software product at very early stages. So they're not, you know, compensate for any of this. They can't even buy shares in your company because you are not a publicly-traded company. Yes, with Apple, I could buy shares but I can't buy shares in your early startup.

It's literally impossible. Right. And so like against the law, like you can't even offer its not offer-able. So I think that's where it's interesting because, with the coins, you do have this at least potential. I think there are not a lot of places that have realized that potentially it's still super early. But the potential idea of like both raising money for more people and then also rewarding early customers in tokens so that it's almost like growth participation.

Brian:
Yes, I think it's like a user activation play, marketing play for on the user side and then on the company side, it's like financing.


Quote 3:

Brian: What about getting back to basics of like you have to solve a problem that people actually care about? How does tokenization even help solve that problem or make it easier or, you know, aside from just giving users equity or giving them more of a stake in the early part of a company by using the product?

Is there anything else like functionally that a token could potentially do, you know? 

Ian: Well, some yeah, there is like and so like in the horse racing game, I'm involved in. The token is going to be like how you buy and sell things in the game. There are two tokens actually, and one of them is the transactional token. So it allows things like super low-cost transactions like there's no 3% stripe involved there. Now all the in-game transactions are basically free, even though there's real money moving back and forth between them. So like that would be like one example of like in the application, there's some benefit. So yeah. Oh, I don't think in this way always has to.

To me, like it's still interesting just in the like, is this a way to do equity that's better, which is where what I was saying before like I think you could just as they could just change the laws and make it so I could just issue stock to all my early customers like that could be a thing, right? Like it's not a thing.
I can't actually do that. But it could be a thing if we change the laws to make it a thing and then that would be a thing. And I think that would be you know, it's not a path for everybody. Just like this Web3 stuff wouldn't be a path for everybody, but it might be a path for certain kinds of businesses to raise money.