Roger Beaman is the CEO and co-founder of Novel, a web3 commerce platform. He has 14 years of sobriety and is a passionate entrepreneur. Novel's technology allows for more secure, efficient, and reliable transactions, making it easier for entrepreneurs and builders to create online stores. Recorded on November 22, 2022 for Crypto Packaged Goods Genius Call series.
Roger Beaman is the CEO and co-founder of Novel. Roger's journey as an entrepreneur began when he was 16 years old. After spending a year in a rehab program, Roger was determined to take his life in a different direction. He studied finance and economics and eventually became a successful founder, but a misstep led to a setback. After his startup was devalued, Roger was determined to build something that was meaningful. He looked to web3 and commerce and Novel was born.
In this episode we'll cover:
Follow Roger at https://twitter.com/sirRodgePodge
Follow Club CPG at https://twitter.com/CPGCLUB
To learn more about Crypto Packages Goods, visit https://www.cryptopackagedgoods.com/
Mikey Piro
GM. GM. We are back. We are excited to have our special guest, Roger Beaman, the CEO and co founder of Novel. Novel is an amazing integration of our two favorite things web Three and ecommerce. We've been working with Novel behind the scenes for our Drop, and it's my pleasure to bring him here today to introduce Roger. Roger, thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing?
Roger Beaman 00:00:24
Hey, man. Doing great. Yeah, no, excited to be on. It's been a real joy of working with you and the CPG team for the Drop, but also just being a part of Club CPG. And it was one of the first NFG communities that I myself joined. And it's been a lot of fun, a lot of people this way.
Mikey Piro 00:00:46
We met in real life for the first time at NFT NYC. We stood outside in the rain and talked for a while after the pop event. And it was really amazing to get to know you even then. And we spent some time working together the past couple of months and then specifically for this prep call. So I find your personal background amazing and fascinating. I believe you should share it with our audience because it really sets the foundation for what an exceptional entrepreneur you are and also will set the tone of the relevance of, like, when we were talking. And we are both entrepreneurs. We have that entrepreneurial spirit and it's very difficult at times and it's very lonely at times. So where did your journey start and how did that come to be?
Roger Beaman 00:01:34
Yeah, well, I think that one thing that I guess I've experienced a lot, which I think is relevant in today's times, for sure, is sort of resilience training, you might say. Which I know you've experienced a lot too, Mikey, but yeah, and I think, though, really, that being very resilient is kind of a key element of being able to be successful as an entrepreneur, because you kind of just like you take, like, punch after punch right, a lot of times. Right. You start something on your laptop, you're trying to build legitimacy from scratch. And how do you make this thing into something that other people care about as much as you do? And so resilience is kind of a key thing to have there. You kind of just need to be relentless and unstoppable on kind of all fronts. It's like a multi front war and you're kind of just, like, pushing on everywhere you can get, right? But yeah. So anyways, that was a little ramble there. But yeah, I guess my own story, and I think the parts that Mikey is alluding to, we caught up before this, so grew up in great, loving household in Northern Virginia and outside of DC. At some point, I kind of went astray there, though, and went on this path and basically got very addicted to drugs and alcohol and ended up in basically, like, a kind of rehab slash jail for a year. A rehab that you're not allowed to leave and it's and it's not fancy. There's no celebrities there. And I ended up there for a year when I was 16 and that was like the kind of transformative moment for me that kind of got me to turn my life around completely. And then I've been in since then. I have like 14 years sober. I think that a thing that really kind of taught there was both the resilience but also most of the people that I was in there with are dead or in prison now. And so there was sort of this need to sort of find my own way and sort of go against the grain, right? Like going with the grain was not going a good way and so I really had to kind of find conviction in my own path to go and then similarly I had to do that again. I went to community college there a lot of people were not very serious students and were a lot of some crossover with the rehab into the community college. I kind of really had to keep my head on straight. And I took three years worth of community college classes one year, ended up a year ahead of my high school classmates, and then graduated at my class at William Mary and all these things and economics, the resilience. But also yeah, that kind of like if I've stayed on the default path, that wouldn't have worked, right? And so I kind of just had to figure out sort of my own truth and follow that. So that was like early life. Then got into I studied finance and economics then went I got a very weird finance job where my literal job was to value legal infractions. If you're a company and I'm a company and we're suing each other, how much do we get to sue each other for? I got to figure that out. But kind of as that wasn't what I wanted my life's work to be exactly. So I got really into while I was at that job, engineering and that was sort of like this light bulb for me. I fell in love. Someone showed me how to write code in Microsoft Excel, which if you have anyone that's been a financial analyst, you live in Excel. And someone showed me how to write this code VBA and I just took off with it. I was like, this is all I want to do. And I was going to tech meetups. I didn't know anyone that was in tech and I was just like asking people questions. Then eventually I kind of just brute forced my way into a tech job and then kind of went from there, ended up working, which is kind of crazy at my given all that I told you before, end up working at Goldman Sachs and all these fancy places. I got pretty good at engineering. I got like, three patents in different engineering things. And yeah, basically there was this guy that had kind of, like basically he was one of the founders of one of the companies that I'd worked at. He was a tech billionaire, and he had kind of plucked me from the herd and been like, you should start companies. And like, he'd kind of been relentlessly trying to get me to do that for years. Eventually, I said yes, but I guess diving into that just a little bit for me, I really liked engineering, and I didn't value money that much, I guess. And so I kind of didn't really get like, why start a company? And this is why this guy took it took me years to convince me to do it. What I saw, I worked at a start up directly before starting my first company. And what I saw there was like, this place that was very different from anywhere else in my career, where what we were doing was actually, like commercial real estate, big data analytics stuff. The end result was, like, making real estate investors richer. So nothing that we weren't saving puppies, right, but we were building something together, and that just kind of created this incredible energy. And it was like, I still have reunions with the people that I worked at that job with, right? And this was just like, man, this is what a startup can be. And it's because it's like this positive Sum game. It's like this team win that can happen when something's growing. So I wanted to make that for myself. I was like, I want to make a place where people have that, right? So then I went off on this journey of being a founder and yeah, I want to pause for like, a second. Just I talked a lot.
Mikey Piro 00:09:08
There's so much to react to there. I think I have a unique perspective in this particular genius call in that we've been working alongside each other for a while and watching you operate, but also watching how your team operates. They've been doing a phenomenal job with us, being very responsive. And that all starts from the founder for Club CPG with the builders that we have and the people who are passionate. I think one of our most important traits and one of our most foundational aspects is we have a lot of people with that same grit and burning desire who want to get better, who want to improve. Like, at each stage, you were like, all right, I'm going to kick ass in college, and then I'm going to kick ass in work, and then I'm going to kick ass in engineering, and then I'm going to kick ass in founding. That is not to say that any of those things go smoothly, but it is persistence that then moves it forward. And for our builders, it's the same kind of, like, reach out, find some folks, get some feedback, iterate get better onto the next. That is a special place, I feel, in Web three and on the Internet, and for our community and for us, it's the same thing. It starts with our founders, with Chris and Jamie, who have walked the walk, have a long history of really putting in the work, which is a key component of this. And I applaud you for, yeah, man, nothing goes. I mean, up and to the right is a fake story. When you zoom in, when you zoom in, there's lots of ups and downs. It's just depending on how you smooth out the curve over time. So we've been talking about and we haven't referenced it fully, but you found it novel, so let's talk about where that inspiration came from and where that started.
Roger Beaman 00:11:01
Yeah, sure. So I started a company before Novel, and that was actually my first dip into e commerce. I won't talk about that, I guess, too much, but that's a subscription billing company called Smarter. And I'll just say that I did very well in terms of, like, the team and I did very well in terms of company trajectory. But unfortunately, we got to $75 million valuation in nine months, which, sure, it was 2021, but we were objectively doing better than I think, any other startup that I knew of at that time. And I think we were the fastest growing fintech. And basically, you know, there were a few mistakes that I made there. One when, you know, setting up the company, I was a first time founder. I didn't really know what I was doing. But I think the other is you just really need to be careful, kind of to the point that Mikey made there. You just really have to bring in people that kind of share that team win mindset, because, frankly, in a start up, people talk about in other people's work life, they talk about keeping work life and personal life separate. In a startup, you can't do that. It's like, all in, all the time. And you all need to be able to trust each other. So if you bring in someone that kind of breaks that, then you can really have it all kind of fall apart. And long story short is the night that this $75 million evaluation, series A that was led by one of the best venture capitalists in the world, possibly of all time, was about to close. Basically, that round was killed, and I woke up without the company that I had started the next day, and then basically all the friends that I had brought in were kind of screwed out of that too. So it was really like a founder's worst nightmare, in a way. So there are many great things about a start up, but there are a few things that you need to be very careful about, which DM me. But, yeah, anyways, really, what led to novel was like, all right, I kind of had all of these investors that were pumped to back me for something. They thought that they were going to back me for this one company that I was doing. And all of a sudden I was a free agent. So then it was like, all right, what would be like, a great idea to pursue right now? And what I had seen was, okay, this apple privacy change obviously well intended, but it had made basically cost of customer acquisitions skyrocket. And so I was like, all right, is there a way to kind of address that and make these businesses sustainable again? And I saw web three as like, really, there's two, two problems in ecom. There's, like, customer acquisition and retention. I mean, there's a whole lot of other problems, too that are, like, maybe physically shipping stuff and all that stuff, right? But with the website, you're kind of trying to drive those two things, acquisition and retention. And so I saw this way that, all right, web three could potentially address both of those because there's this ability to build this community and increase retention, and there's also this ability to partner with the community and perhaps acquire new customers, as we are going to see with club CPG this friday. Right? So that was what I thought was really interesting about this intersection of web three and ecom and had a bunch of investors and stuff that were at the ready, had team members that had been with the other startup or that I'd been planning on recruiting for it, who were ready to go. Then off we went to the races with novel. And it's been a heck of a ride. We've, we raised $6 million. Well, no, actually seven total from gary vee and lear hippo. They, they led the round. Brian sugar, it's been, like, heavily involved, as well as costa noah and john calgill from there. But, yeah, we've kind of just been running real hard. Brought in my co founder, anna mersey. She's been great too, and led like, the go to market side. But, yeah, we've brought on liquid death, as I'm sure you guys see if you, like, check out the website and stuff. Liquid death tyka a lot of people, I would say, that are doing interesting things that are kind of pushing the edge at this intersection of web three and ecom. And that's been a really exciting position to be in.
Mikey Piro 00:16:31
First, I want to say thank you for sharing and being like it's a vulnerable story and one that you've clearly come through the other side of and done with a lot of grace. So thank you for sharing. I also feel like there's so much to unpack with how you came to this particular idea and sort of probably resonates a bit in, like, how did you get involved with web three? Because I think that piece of it, in talking with you a number of times you have this really interesting Web Three kind of versioning that got you to where Novel is now and how you see that progression. And I think it's worthwhile to, like, share with people how you're thinking about Web Three, because it's a very interesting mental model that I think people can can learn a lot from. So what is Web three for you? And, like, where did you where did you start?
Roger Beaman 00:17:36
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I think well, so the interesting thing about Web Three generally is that it's a piece of technology, right? And I started with that because as an engineer, I was a nerd. And so any self respecting nerd these days, I would say has at least dabbled in blockchain. But actually a kind of funny story. One of the first companies I worked for as an engineer I worked on, I did this hackathon, which I won, which was we were like, oh, no one can do exclusive image rights. That's like, a total mess here at Shutterstock, right? Like, for someone to just buy exclusive rights to an image, and it's like, okay, what if you were able to put that image if someone bought it exclusively on the blockchain? And then, oh, yeah, there's this interesting idea, this thing, crypto punks just came out, and one thing they do is when people buy and sell it back and forth, the people that made crypto punks get, like, a fee, right? And so legit on my computer from this hackathon years ago. I basically have a shitty version of OpenSea, which, little did I know that that was like a multibillion dollar idea, right? But missed out. Or, I guess shot expected. I guess I knew how to do it and what it was and what it wasn't. Just from that, right? But, yeah, I think what you're kind of getting at that we've talked about before is what are NFTs like now, and where do we at Novel think they're going? Right? And so, yeah, what we talked about was like, all right, like, Web 30, like, we think was like, digital art. And it's kind of funny because people lampoon that was kind of a thing that naysayers for NFTs would say is like million dollar JPEGs. But it's like, digital art is like a multibillion dollar market, right? It's a real market. And people were selling multimillion dollar JPEGs before NFTs, right? And I would just argue that NFTs made it better. They made it so that there's a secondary market and the artists can participate in that. It's just objectively better than the traditional digital art market. I would say it's just an improvement. So I would say, though, that was like, step one. Like, 30 was just digital art, right? And then 30 one, I think, was this community aspect and kind of building these, like, digital social clubs and club CPG are obviously an example of that. Right. I think that's super fascinating. Just because a sort of unsolved problem on the internet, I think is is meeting new people. Like there's just not that many, like, ways, like outside of online dating, right? Like there's not really like online friending. And I think that it's an interesting, a really interesting way to do that is to have this community that's built around this kind of shared passion. Like, you know, in club CPG, it's kind of like ecomm and tech, right? And you know, and I've met like a bunch of people that way, like through through this, right? And that's just really cool. And, you know, there's like, developer dows, like, you know, like, you know, kind of passionate engineers. And so so I think that that was sort of like 30 one was like, this idea of these online digital social clubs. And then I think that there's going to be this next iteration that I think like 30 two, if you will, that we're really excited about and we're starting to see emerge with Novel. We sort of get this like god view into all the interesting things that people are doing in Web Three because they're using our tech to do it. And so something that we think is really interesting is just like these situations that Web Three just kind of makes better examples of that are there's these markets like the wine market or the whiskey market, where people basically initiate creating the product years before it's actually delivered to the customer. You can imagine forecasting your inventory three months out is difficult. Forecasting it five years out is kind of impossible. And almost you don't even try. And therefore less of those products get made, less wine and whiskey gets made because there's a risk of just like who knows what the economy looks like five years from now. And so where NFTs come into that is you can sell an NFT that is a digital representation of this product before it's made that can then be redeemed later for that product. And it just kind of makes sense to do it that way. Like it's operationally better. On the merchant side, it makes it a predictable business. On the customer side, it makes it an investment. If you join AA with me in the meantime, then maybe you don't want the bottle of wine or whiskey anymore and you can sell it, right? But also it's an investment, right. That asset class has performed well over time that's I think the wine and whiskey use case we're really excited about a similar one is sort of shoe drops and fashion drops where there's this crazy situation right now where if you buy these shoes in the latest shoe drop or like a supreme drop, right? People then ship around on ebay these goods back and forth. And these are investors. They don't actually want the shoe. They just want to invest in the shoe and then it ultimately ends up at the person that wants to wear the shoe. Right. And it just kind of is objectively better if you could have an NFT representation of that shoe or that T shirt and have that get traded back and forth and then ultimately redeemed. Right. So we think that there's a lot of really interesting use cases at this intersection of Ecom and Web Three. And it's a lot of the reason that we built Novel in the first place is like, we saw this kind of future where that would happen.
Mikey Piro 00:24:57
Amazing, wonderful thing about what you've said is we've had guests on that intersect in a variety of ways with this. We had G money on a couple of weeks ago. We had Bobby Hundreds on all of them. Again, at that bleeding edge Gmoney specifically talked about vaulting his shoes and how that becomes a very valuable asset class for not only leveraging he's like, it's buying an option on an option, which is a really fun, novel way to think about it, no pun intended. What I find fascinating about this conversation is you're deep in the tech, like the things that Novel offers, of which I'm thankful and fortunate we have first hand knowledge of doing. No Alpha here for the folks that are watching right now, but there's alpha coming. What is the most impressive piece of the technology that maybe folks just don't necessarily get? I'm going to preface this by saying I bought a bottle of Mondavi wine a year ago. It has been produced. It has a generative art alongside it. I get to redeem it. It's a special bottle. There's also this progeny that it came from Mondavi and that aspect of it because counterfeiting is also a big issue where I think blockchain, again, just makes the experience better. Not that people won't try and mess this system up. There's always people who are trying to counterfeit things. However, we just see OpenSea and fake accounts and you just need to look no further. What is the most important piece of the tech for you right now in the Ecommerce vein that you would expect that Bleeding Edge people are doing now. But this is going to be a common thing for everyone to do going forward, and that Novel provides now.
Roger Beaman 00:26:57
Yeah. And I think the Mandavi selling wine before it's made, they did that right. And that's a clear example of what we were talking about. I should have brought them up, but yeah, I'm glad you did. I think that the thing for us at Novel, basically, these concepts are kind of simple. And I guess some famous person that I heard say basically a lot of businesses that are good are simple on the top and complex underneath. And yeah, I think that this idea of selling the wine before it's made as an NFT and then redeeming it later, that's pretty simple. I can explain it to you in two sentences, but to pull that off is actually extremely complicated because ecom tech is actually quite complicated. And then blockchain tech is sort of too, I would say. I think that the main feat that we've pulled off is just being able to do all of that in minutes without code. And obviously there's customization that you can do as a developer to really specialize it, right? But it's not required, right? If you want to do exactly what I just said, if you're a wine maker and you wanted to set that up on your site, you could do that within minutes with Novel and you would not need to be like a developer or have really any technical knowledge or really any blockchain knowledge. Right? And so I would say that kind of like executing on every single corner of that has been that's what we pulled off. And I'd say it's pretty hard and I could go through I mean, it's like to be able to handle cash to crypto seamlessly like in a shopify checkout. That's pretty tricky. Making it so that we offer an option for customers that don't have a crypto wallet already with this partner Torus. And it was important to us to have it be okay. They can create a crypto wallet with a Google account using this partner tourists. And there's other solutions for making it very easy to create a wallet. The interesting thing about tourists is that it's also compatible with openSee. So it's like both it's an on ramp but it's also usable. And a lot of these other solutions that we saw were like not actually you would get this person that barely knows what crypto is, an NFT, and then they would not be able to see it anywhere else or use it in any other platform. So that's just kind of one example of something that we had to dive really deep into and figure out. Another thing that we did, we used Polygon to actually mint NFTs and that was a decision that we made before polygon had gotten this like sequoia investment and was kind of cool, if you will. And we did that because it was like, all right, ethereum compatibility. We figure that is going to be the win long term. Like to be compatible with like it's EVM compatible, but we can't deal with a world where like gas fees are like a $1,000, right, and merchants need to put like a million dollar reserve to cover that or something. And that was kind of what we saw out there. So we were like, all right, Polygon makes sense. It kind of is the perfect bridge of interoperability, but also usable. Hopefully that's a simple little sample size there. But there's kind of just like all the devil is in the details with getting these things to be like 100% right so that it's not just like a cool idea, it's actually something you can execute on like today.
Mikey Piro 00:31:05
Well, you have yet no code solution. So that's great. We love the polygon. Shout out to Ryan and his team for doing amazing things. I mean, I got my Polygon shrewd on it to everybody. It's definitely a big fan of it. Let's talk a little bit apart from CPG because there's no alpha here, no spoilers for what we're doing Friday, but what are some of the other fun brands that you're working with? You mentioned that Liquid Death is one of your amazing clients. What are some of the fun ways that they are leveraging this experience for their community that others are probably going to adapt as well?
Roger Beaman 00:31:48
Totally. Yeah. Liquid death. That's actually funny. You mentioned them. So they do these Murder Mondays, that's their thing for their community. They're just kind of a hilarious brand as is probably apparent, right? They've got Martha Stewart doing chopped off hand candles and they've let their imaginations run wild and it's worked incredibly well for them. They've raised, I think, over $150,000,000 and they're selling water and they're very good at it. The thing that Liquid Death is actually just this past Monday, they actually just launched this whole entire experience for their token holders. It includes merchandise, a whole bunch of discounts and stuff on that. It also includes these ridiculous well, maybe they're serious about them, but things that you could get one hair of the founder's beard and it was like framed and it was like use cases include flossing or cloning him to create a competitor brand. I think they've just really let their imaginations run with this engaged group of superfans and what they can offer them. But they obviously also have this discord and all that stuff like the kind of traditional things similar to what CBG has and the engaged community there. I'm obviously not running their business, but they have this engaged group that they can have this special relationship with and I think that that relationship kind of goes both ways where that community gets these special perks but also gives a lot of valuable feedback to the brand. And yeah, another one that I think is really worth mentioning on that note is this company Tyka, that they did something that I actually think is that is actually another use case that I think we're really excited about. So we kind of referred to it as a Web Three Kickstarter. What they did was they, they did an NFT drop which funded the creation of like their, their next flavor for their next drink. And I should give some context on them. They're a coffee company that's co founded by one of the, the top ten baristas in the world with competitions. He's, he was, he was number nine, I believe, in the world. So, so, so anyways, so that's the really great coffee company and they did this NFT Drop to fund the next flavor that they were making and so, you know, raised around like a million dollars off of that for to fund the. Product development. And then the community members that had had purchased that NFT, they got to vote on what that flavor would actually be. So it was kind of the feedback loop, like, into creating the product that's I think a valuable thing to do because it's like, all right, you get to direct, what, one of the top ten baristas in the world who can probably make coffee a lot better than you. You get to direct which flavor you're going to make. That's pretty cool. So they did that and then the token holders got to, they got early access to the product, like when it was first getting shipped as they were scaling the manufacturing up. And then now forever in perpetuity, they get a discount on it. Right. So it's like funded the product, then got to vote on what it was, then got early access, then now they get a discount on it forever. And on the merchant side, it's like, all right, they're not having to pay for a Facebook ad for that person to come back. So it's like, actually that discount probably works out because Facebook ads are really expensive now. So it's kind of like a win all around. I think that this kind of like Web Three Kickstarter is something that we're going to see a lot more of.
Mikey Piro 00:36:25
I'm a big coffee fan, and I would love to dig into that a bit more. It sounds really interesting, this Kickstarter. I mean, I think Kickstarting has existed for a while. I think the follow on accountability of it and as you said, the ask not to track drastically changed our industry of which customer acquisition costs. I mean, Nick Sharma was on talking about that specifically. It's really been a fun time to watch the creative solutions emerge around that and Web Three provides some interesting angles on it. One thing that caught my attention was this in perpetuity permanence of an NFT transaction, we've spent a bunch of time talking about subscriptions and how subscription NFTs or programs specifically are evolving. Do you have any insights or any projects that you're impressed with or taking note of that are using that type of system and what is attractive to you about them?
Roger Beaman 00:37:32
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of funny that you say that. Obviously the first company that I started was a subscription billing company. Yeah.
Mikey Piro 00:37:41
I do my research and actually a shout out to Janet, who helps me.
Roger Beaman 00:37:45
A lot with the research, but I do my research. Yeah. And I'm now an advisor to the CEO of Recharge, which is like the largest subscription billing company in the shopify ecosystem. Actually, they're beyond it, too, like big commerce and stuff. But yeah, if there are two things that I know and have thought a lot about, it's probably Web Three and subscription billing. The interesting thing is that and there's kind of some irony in it for me is that you think about it, subscriptions are sort of like an auto pay system that basically automatically deducts money from your bank account on a recurring basis. And what really is required there is in sort of web two world you need a payment token which is authorized to do that that is authorized to basically bill without you kind of clicking on approved button that basically does not natively exist literally natively in the EVM or in Bitcoin blockchain either as the user and the owner of the wallet. You need to sign every transaction. You can't sign a transaction that says I allow in perpetuity until I cancel it the transferring of ethereum on this given interval. Right, yeah. And so you can't do that with the native coin with maddock and polygon or with ethereum. You can do it with ERC 20s. So there's one project that I saw that I thought was pretty interesting called Superfluid that looks like they're doing that. I think that the interesting thing. There probably the single biggest problem, or at least one of the biggest problems in crypto is this sort of like cash to crypto, basically the transfer between currencies and making that seamless. I guess the concern that I would have is that if this only works with ERC 20s, then that's kind of deeper in the rabbit hole than a lot of people have gone today. But, you know, that could change and I obviously hope it does. It, I think, benefits, you know, all of us that are building in the Web Three space if it does. But, yeah, I guess obviously we could focus on that and perhaps building something like that into novel. And I haven't because I think that it's like, you know, just because of that requirement of it being an ERC 20, like the friction there makes it tricky to pull off. But I would love to be wrong and there's new projects coming out all the time and maybe someone's going to DM me right after this and be like, there's this one that you haven't heard of and they make it all super easy in one click. But as of this literal moment, that is my understanding of it.
Mikey Piro 00:41:36
Again, I think Apple has this approach of being resilient and kind of slow to the table that will force people to be thoughtful. Specifically, their changes to subscriptions has been a really enlightening change of policy. I don't think that people are thrilled about it because I think a lot of the value in content gating is specifically nullified with what Apple just did. But also, I think, makes for a really interesting approach of you really have to get the normies to understand what's happening and not just promise them with a hand wave that this will be fine, you've got to commit to it. And I think it's the same, like you said, the details of an ERC 20 contract and then the complexity of moving money around as a result of it which could be ripe for scamming, like how much infrastructure is set up right now within banks for fraud detection, like billions of dollars. And it's not perfect, but it's working. And some people see it as a hassle, but along the lines of a subscription. If you just went full on into Web Three subscription, I feel like there's a likelihood that something is going to be unintended of that consequence at this juncture and you can be on that pioneering edge and you can take that risk. And I think there's going to be a lot of people that do. I think there's got to be some balance in at least the way that I'm thinking about subscriptions specifically from the app side of things because it is so easy to just look at your phone and pay for stuff and that's how it should be for buying an NFT and it should be as safe as that. But we've got a gap there and it's rapidly closing.
Roger Beaman 00:43:31
Yeah, I think on that note, one thing that you haven't even talked about thus far, right. Is the obviously insanely tumultuous time that we're in generally, but also obviously in Web Three and crypto. It feels like a different world back when we were there in Nfcmyc at that event, right. Like times have changed. I think that really kind of forces anyone that's a founder like you and me here, it's like you kind of have to keep a level head and keep your own conviction strong, right? And just like there's just so much noise that it's like you have to have kind of your own clear understanding of what's true and you kind of can't let that get swayed all over the place. What you made me think of is with talking about Apple and their various integrations and bringing those natively, what you made me think of is the incorporation of Web Three into Instagram. And obviously we've already seen it be incorporated into reddit. That's obviously a great thing, I would say, for Web Three generally and as a concept, right, it's going to onboard just a ton of people. Around 25% of the world is on Instagram, as you know. Yeah, you used to work Meta and so so, you know, that stands to be like that'll just like dramatically, I think, you know, increase adoption, you know, and for the creator economy, I think it's, you know, that's kind of a fascinating thing, especially like doing an NFP drop if you think about it. Like all these creators are they're sort of like bootstrapped startups. They never kind of get to do this venture round, if you will, to sort of fund them, quitting their day job. And so I can see that taking off as a thing and then kind of rewarding their early fans forever. That I think is like a really great piece of news for Web Three and anything around it. Obviously, a week later, FTX exploded and that whole thing, and that was not great in the opposite direction, but yeah, I think one thing that I think most people would agree on, even most of the skeptics, I think would agree on, is that crypto adoption will probably go up long term betting against crypto. I think you would have to be actually crazy to do that. I'm not saying that price equals that's. Maybe not the best way to measure it. Maybe adoption is a better thing, but that's obviously gone up a lot over time, too, from just Silk Road users. If you just look at the price, the ethereum price is like around where it was at the peak of the last boom in 2018. Right. And so it's gone down back to the last peak. Right. I think that yeah. Long term, it would be hard to imagine that Crypto is not here to stay. Right.
Mikey Piro 00:47:37
100%. The tech works. I think it's been used for some nefarious and unintended results. I think Scamming and I'm sort of of the opinion that it's really cool that anybody can create their own currency. And also, maybe not everybody should be able to create their own currency. And that's generally, like, there's a lot of things in life like that. I think it's cool that everybody can drive a car. I also think that maybe not everybody should be driving cars. For me. I want to touch on a piece of the experience that I think is uniquely captured with and differentiated by the idea of an NFT. I am a couple of things. All of it is, I think, passion. I'm a passionate moviegoer. I am a passionate collector. I collect GI. Joes and comic books. And I'm also a giant hockey fan. My son and I go to lots of hockey games and I'd bring this example up. A couple of weeks ago. I went to the Sharks game, attended it, got the tickets gifted to me and showed up. But at the conclusion of the game, when the score was finalized, I received an NFT from the San Jose Sharks as a commemorative experience. That ticket is not worth anything to anyone except me because I have this great experience of watching the Sharks lose to the Anaheim Ducks in overtime in a shootout. And that memory is now tied to in my mind because I'm an NFT nerd. That NFT. What are your thoughts about in e commerce? Because there are so many people like you mentioned, supreme. We have Bobby. Hundreds. There are so many folks that lining up to wait and buy stuff. I know chad, our producer, is very much in this camp of totally waiting to buy something that is in one of his collectible areas. And it's not the collectible that needs to be the NFT, but encapsulating that experience. And maybe there's some Alpha here for CPG on Friday. Maybe not. What Are You Seeing in Terms Of The Experience Going Forward of how NFT is at kind of each stage being an integral part of the proof you were there.
Roger Beaman 00:50:14
Yeah, totally. Well, I think that there is fundamentally, I guess, a very base level and sort of like, I guess technical level in a way. Like the like, I guess economics technical. Like there's two things. Like NFC is a public indication of private ownership similar to like probably the most similar thing in like the like outside of tech and just in the physical world is like fashion. Like you can see what clothes I'm wearing. The interesting thing about it being in the digital world is obviously then it can kind of be used in scalable ways. The interesting things that are enabled, the sort of building blocks that NFTs give you, there's this secondary market and then there's interoperability. You can buy and sell an NFC because there's a standard of ownership and then built into that secondary market, there's the royalty fees for the creator and that's its own interesting thing. Right. But yeah, so I guess that's kind of like how I think about it as a base layer. And the interoperability, I think, piece in what you're saying there I think is really interesting. And yeah, because basically getting a bunch of different pieces of technology to talk to each other is actually really hard. It's really tricky. At many software companies, there's like an integrations team, right? And so it's really interesting to have these NFTs that sort of stand apart from that that everyone can read and refer to as a source of truth. And so I guess what comes to mind to me that's really cool about you getting that NFC for that game, for the Sharks game is like, okay, you can then get for attending that game, they could give you something special on their website, right, that would be a discount on a game jersey or something like that. And you know, and like in theory, that would be something that they could orchestrate with like Ticketmaster plus this, like plus this, right? It's just that doesn't happen because it's so much effort. But when it's made easy with NFTs because there's this kind of interoperability out of out of the box, then you can kind of just do it. And so what I think is really neat is that you can like it's sort of if you want to think about it this way, it's sort of like a marketer is like Swiss Army knife, right? Like you can, I can give you that NFC for going to that game and then that could unlock maybe early access to buying tickets for the next game. It could also unlock maybe like maybe only people that have ever gone to a game get like an exclusive set of merch, right? Like there's just kind of all these different things that you can do to sort of treat your customer in a special way if they have done a certain thing and that could be an IRL event that could be listening to a podcast that could be kind of like any number of things, right? And so I sort of think of it as this NFTs in a way as this sort of universal, like if this, then that engine and as these platforms that we kind of have our eyeballs on all day incorporate these more and more like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, that will just become more and more true, right? There will be more and more things that you can do in terms of offering special experiences for people that have fulfilled a certain criteria. That's maybe not the most sexy way to say it, but I guess that is what I think is really exciting about the potential of the technology. And I think that Ticketmaster is now making their be. Like they've partnered with Flow and basically you get an NFT Ticket stuff for every single ticket that you buy with Ticketmaster. Right. And I think that people are going to start to see and they will have this kind of light bulb moment when you going to that Taylor Swift concert. Gets you something special after the concert, right? So anyways, that's a little bit of a rant slash ramble but hopefully made some sense.
Mikey Piro 00:55:07
I think it's a great way for us to start to wrap this conversation. We've covered a lot of ground here. I want to thank you for first for being so open and vulnerable about your journey to get to this point. I think your technical and your founder knowledge shines through on this and I really thank you for being with us today. We've got a couple more minutes. We're sort of overtime, but I want to leave the last word with you. I would ask that you hang on here because we've got to do a couple of tidy up things and I didn't see anything come through the chat but I don't think we have any questions. But if you could pop into the pop chat, pun intended, answer any sort of questions that come up. This has been a fun adventure. I'm excited for people to see your product in action this Friday. I'm excited for us to continue these fun conversations about how web three is transforming a lot of things. And so I'll leave it with you of the last couple of words before I hop back on and say goodbye.
Roger Beaman 00:56:22
Oh man. A closing statement, I guess because I think that a lot of people that are listening are going to be founders in web three ecomm and obviously it's kind of a crazy time for both. I think the advice that I got from a friend a long time ago, which is actually I had a job interview that I was really nervous about. But it's kind of been this thing that I've just stuck with me. And I just think it's so succinct and just really applicable is to be more excited than you are scared. Because I think that it's inevitable that there's going to be some degree of fear. And kind of like when you see things drop, like double digit percentage points in days, you can't help but be shaken a bit. But I think that don't kind of try to suppress that. It'll obviously be there, but feed the excitement and kind of the thing that got you to kind of do this in the first place. Right? And focus on that and have that be kind of the base that powers you rather than letting that fear take over. So that's what I got.
Mikey Piro 00:57:52
Thank you, Roger. All right, folks, we're concluded we've got so much exciting things planned for the next couple of weeks. Please stay tuned. Please make sure you like and subscribe the Crypto podcast goods wherever you listen to your podcast. This will drop pretty soon. I'm not sure it will be Friday. We'll hopefully get it Friday. We'll restream this as well. I hope everyone has a wonderful, thankful, reflective Thanksgiving and know there's so much craziness going on in the world. I think it's important for us to take these moments, in spite of everything that's Craziness going on, to appreciate what we do have. Reach out and check on your friends, because it has been a tough couple of weeks in crypto, and I applaud everyone who continues to show up every day and throw those GM.