 This is Start of the Storefront. This episode is part of our continuing series centered around NFT communities. Like any other brand, creating a vibrant and engaged NFT community is no easy feat. Yet it is this trait that separates those with staying power from the ones that are only in it for the rug pool. It requires management, moderators, and members to be aligned and in constant communication. Our guest today is Alessandra Morris, founder of Newdy Community. She has built a fiercely loyal and motivated base through creative and intentional marketing, which led to selling out all 10,000 Newdies in a matter of minutes. So listen in as we cover everything from why NFT communities are like high school clicks, why it's important to hire from within that community, and why your network is your net worth. Now onto the episode. Alright, welcome to the podcast on today's show, NFTs, the Newdy Community founder Alessandra. Thanks for joining. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. So here in the room today, we have Alexi Oh and myself. Obviously, we all are Newdy Community holders. I think there's like 11 that we hold between us. So thanks, like we're just fans and it's the best. For people who don't know about the NFT community, I'm a startup investor. And so as an investor, what ends up happening is like you're really betting on the person and where you think they're going to go. But you're never invited to like a Discord channel. People don't know what Discord is. It's like a Slack channel or just like a text message for the company. But in the NFT land, it's full transparency. You have 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 people that if they're unhappy, you'll find out pretty quickly. Oh, yes. And the roadmap is there and you know who the founders are. And so you're like examining like, oh, what did this person do? This person, this person. And so there's a lot of information and transparency instantly. You also realize if the project is going to flop pretty quickly, or at least the feeling of flop could happen quickly. Let's take me back to the beginning. What made you want to get into NFTs? So I actually got rugged and that's how I got into NFTs. So I tell people that rug means we have entrepreneurship community, maybe new to the term. So rug pretty much means you get the carpet pulled out from under you. You think that this project is going to be something great. And then either after mint or something happens and the rug just gets pulled. So you kind of get, I don't know. You lose your money. Yeah, you lose your money. Scam might be a word to put with it, but it just depends on the community. So I was seeing a bunch of influencers and people posting about NFTs about eight months ago, a year ago, probably now, and I was having FOMO. So I was like, you know what, I need to check this out. So I got onto Discord and I thought Discord was only for gaming. Silly me. And I got thrown into communities with 25,000 people, 50,000 people. And I was like, wow, am I like the last person to know that like this is going on? And I guess I wasn't. So, and I didn't even know how to verify at the time, right? So I was like asking questions and asking help. And I bought into these projects without really knowing what an NFT was. And then I got scammed and rugged on quite a few. And that's when I decided to do the deep dive into NFTs, figuring out like whatever utility is, you know, what's a good project? What's a red flag? And that's when I decided, you know what, I want to do this because I've always been, you know, kind of a startup founder myself. So I was like, you know what, I think I can do this, but I want to do this right where people will feel comfortable buying into a project. And that's where I thought like, okay, I need to put the perfect team together. And Haley was one of the first people that came to mind because she is a fashion designer. She's worked for Nike, Google, Coors, Xbox, Lori L. My little pony, you name it, she's done a collaboration with it. So she's kind of a collab queen. And I just personally love where she stood for morally. You know, she stands for body positivity. She stands for being inclusive. So that was the first stop designer there. And then the second stop, I was looking for developers for a long time. And that's when I was scrolling on TikTok and I came across Katia and she had a great following there and a great following on Instagram. And all the pieces kind of just aligned to make, you know, this, you know, woman led team. So you said you've always been a startup founder. Yeah. So can you give us a backstory on that? Like, what have you been doing before you got into Newtys? Yeah. So before Newtys at 18, I opened up my first clothing store in Logan Beach. I foregoed going to school and things like that. I was actually like a dropout. So I was like, you know, I have no other choice but to do things that I like and I need to make it. So it was actually very successful, but different things were happening in my life where I wanted to pivot away from kind of fashion. And that's when I went into music and arts and entertainment. And I was one of the operators of a arts and entertainment company that was just starting up. So I did everything for them on that end. And then I launched my own music career for a little bit. And then I went back to... As a singer, you would sing? Or what was the... I was a rapper. A rapper. Can you give us some? Oh, no. I'm too shy for that. But that's where like the name Lachey comes from. And also... That was your... Okay, I got it. Yeah. That's like a little tidbit there. And other than that though, I always had a bunch of different startups. So I currently have a pet line. It's called Purific Pets. I also helped with an immune booster startup. And I was also on the operation side for a lot of companies that were going public. So I do all their marketing, things like that. Influencer marketing. So I've worked with or started over eight startups, some successful, some not. I mean, that's how just the name of the game goes. But that definitely gave me like the knowledge to really put that into NFTs to like make it and to also have that drive. So when you started in October, the three of you get together. Was the art clear to you at the time? Or were you like, what are we going to make? What was that like the creative process there? Yeah. So for October, like I was already starting on the foundation. And then when I brought Haley on, we had a couple of different ideas. So I initially really liked the hairless cat idea. And I had a couple of different mocks made up prior by different artists. But then when we and Haley got on a phone call, she wanted to do six different characters. And we were going to do full body because she's very big on fashion. And then the more we dove into that, we're like, all right, this might be a little too crazy for the first time go here. We went back to the hairless cat idea. She loves cats personally. I own three hairless cats. So that's kind of the muses behind them. And they kind of just fell into place from there. And her best friend owns a hairless cat. So kind of was perfect. Yeah. I am not a cat guy in any capacity. And the fact that I own six of these things is like so fucking crazy, to be honest. It's like, not a cat guy, but I actually do like the art. Well, now you're a cat daddy. No, I'm a cat daddy. That sounds so sexy, cat daddy. It really does. You got a nice spin to it. I do want to talk about the 22 minute sell out as well, because that's just so impressive in and of itself. But one of the things that I remember from your Twitter space, like the day you sold out, you said that people were coming to you the day before in the day of saying that you weren't going to sell out. And you got emotional about it. You were saying like people were saying I wasn't going to succeed about it. And I want to know how that moment was like when you did sell out and you were like, oh shit, like I just proved them wrong. Yeah. I was actually crazy. Before I was having DMs on discord from people who have been in the industry and are like in whale groups and things like that. And they were telling me you're probably going to have to burn 2500. And I was I was mentally prepared for the best outcome. What did that mean though? So like that we wouldn't sell out. Okay. And it'd probably be like a long process for us to sell out 10,000. And so then the 2500 would have to be burned in order to keep the collections floor price going up and things like that, which a lot of collections have to do. Sometimes when you have a 10,000 piece collection, you don't sell out. And, you know, those are like the realities you have to think of. You don't know what that's like though. I don't. I was going to say unfortunately, but no, it's very fortunate that we sold out so quickly. It was incredible. So I still feel like it hasn't sunk in that it sold out that quickly. The day of everyone is celebrating, but I was still like behind the scenes, like doing everything. So it didn't really sink in 100%. I feel like I still haven't celebrated it. Right? I feel like we all need to go to drink sometimes and go sober. So let's do that. But it was really cool. It was really cool just to see that the community rallied around and like all the hard work and all the effort and the sleepless nights. Cause I was literally getting maybe two to three hours a night asleep. So it was like Katya. So it was Haley most nights. We didn't sleep and especially leading up to it. It was insane. But it was also a blessing and a curse to sell out in 22 minutes. And I can cover that as well. Why a curse? So here's what a lot of people don't realize. And I think unless you're on the back end of it, you would never think of these types of things. So when you sell in 22 minutes, it's your NFT gets put onto like IC tools, gets put on all these top sites. So flippers going by and people who are in alpha and will groups, they get sent that project that morning cause it's hot. And so they all buy in. So that means that 90% of the people that kind of bought that day had no idea about our project or like they're not in the discord. They're not active community members. Yeah, they're just flipping. Yeah, just flipping. Got it. And so the other portion of that is since they don't know anything about the community, they're not attached. They're not emotionally attached. And since a lot of community members probably didn't think that it come in 22 minutes, they didn't get a chance to buy in that 22 minute window either. So the biggest thing that came out of that was the whales, right? And so what happens with whales is sometimes they'll buy off of metadata that isn't actually actualized or they'll somehow get a leak to the metadata a few minutes before the general public does. So what they'll do is they will buy the ones that they find rare on like rarity sniper or rarity sniffer. And what happens is when we changed our metadata to be corrected after the fact, the whales were very upset. And I was getting DMs and things like that. Like what can you do to change the metadata back or what can you do to change the rarity to be like when we first bought and got messages like we will undercut you for infinity just for fun. And so I even at the time contemplated changing it and even contemplated changing the weights. But then I was like, you know, I've never been one to rig anything. And I'm also a woman in NFTs, which is not huge. I'm not going to roll over now, especially in the beginning. So that kind of bit us in the butt that we didn't roll over. But it was super interesting to see that type of side of the industry, right? Because you hear about situations kind of like this happening in Web 2 and Web 3. You don't see everything that happens behind closed doors. So to have it happen to you, it's like, okay, you kind of have to learn to pivot. And like that's being reflected currently on pricing and things. So it's an interesting learning experience. And I can't wait to take it and, you know, utilize it in the future. So then how do you handle all the haters? Like I see the comments in the discord about like the floor is dropping. Like how do you respond and like how do you feel confident in your project? Continue to go forward watching that. Exactly. So those comments can be very discouraging, especially when you personally put like, like I said, the long hours of blood, sweat and tears in and you are fully doxxed when other, you know, founders, they're not. And when those comments happen, they leave, right? And they leave with the money. I just love the nudies, right? I'm so passionate about it. It's like what gets me up in the morning. It drives me to do better, not only for the community, but for myself. So when I see comments like that, it definitely at times like hits home, but I have to remember that everything that I'm doing is for the greater good of the community as a whole. And in business, you can't always please everyone. And that's something that I feel like was the hardest realization because for the first two weeks after launching, I was trying to please everyone and I was trying to, you know, bounce back and forth and do that. And then I realized like in order for this to be successful, I can't do that. So difficult. Yeah. And you have to treat, you know, your community like a business because technically everyone who bought in is an investor. That's at least my opinion on it. And so, you know, not everything that people buy into is successful, but you have to, as a founder, make it successful if you truly love something. How did you go about marketing it? And so I found out about it through an NFT on Instagram. I forget what page covered you guys, but that's how I found out. Was it at NFT? Probably. And it seemed like the discord went nuts after that. It did. It went insane. So NFT actually is no longer a page on there, but we were very fortunate because the new creative director that came on at the time, he was featuring woman artist and he reached out to us. And that was kind of, you know, history there where we were able to connect and he was able to feature our project. And he was also featuring amazing women artists, which was honestly, I think very refreshing for that page to see. And I think that's very awesome for people to see that was lacking in the industry. So we were very grateful. His name is Jeremy Jeremy Fall. He actually has a page now called probably nothing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I love it because it's so educational. Great name, by the way. Epic. Epic name. I think that page is awesome. And I can't wait to see that page grow because it's just super refreshing for the NFT community. So he left and started his own thing or is he still with the NFT? The NFT page. I'm not quite sure what's going on with it now, but I know before like that ended, that's like his own thing. Also, the NFT page doesn't always do research that deeply. And so I think sometimes it's like hit or miss and it's problematic, I think, when you're trying to be like at NFT as an example and you're not doing your research on the projects. Exactly. So I feel like when people like that do take the time, though, to reach out to the founders and reach out to artists, like that sets apart from other people who are just, you know, willy-nilly putting anyone out there. Did you learn this all like, for example, like right now I'm in maybe 12, 13, 14 discord, something like that. And so as I'm like, I'm just analyzing them, startup investor. So I'm just like doing the calculus. And I'm like, the NFT community definitely has it right. Like you guys have moderators. You guys are active all the time. You're creating content, which I think is something people don't, at least when I compare it to the other discords, they don't do. And so you're creating community, you're creating content for the community to share. The Twitter rates are part of that, but it's like creative content. And so it's fun and it's new. Whereas on the other channels, I mean, it doesn't exist. And so did you, is that something that you learned or is that something that you were like, this is intuitively feels right? A mix. So before you've been starting our own discord, I probably was a member of over like 90. Discords? Yeah. And I would go through them daily and like learn from them and like learn certain layouts that I liked. And also just kind of learn certain wordings for like the channels and stuff. And also watching like, you know, the different conversations being had. And I was also buying into some of the time too, but not obviously all 90. So the whole content part, I think was really cool because it's kind of mixing web two into web three, but in a different way, right? Because web two, you know, you want to put out good content. And I feel like for web three at the time when we started, it kind of like wasn't there. So like making custom duties for people doing raids. I feel like people weren't necessarily doing that. Right. Especially on the TikTok aspect. So smart. For sure. I've never seen that. And honestly, I have to give a lot of props to Haley there because sometimes like the day of I'll be like, we need to Justin Bieber one. Like, can you do this? He just bought a board ape. And she's like, okay, okay, I got you. And then she is like adding the tattoos even on the neck and the Serena Williams one we did for the girls and women's in sport day. Incredible. Like she matched the necklaces. She had, you know, the whole outfit, even like the stripes, everything down to a T. She crushes it. So when I'm checking out NFT communities, like seeing the founders docs is like a huge green flag. So I'm like, oh, there's accountability. They got skin in the game. Now the flip side is you were talking earlier about how like some people are mad about the rarity and like the drop and things like that. Have you seen any negative consequences by being docked or people like try to connect with you in real life or anything like that? Not necessarily negative. So I've actually had a lot of positive feedback when people have met me in real life and I haven't really had anything negative no matter like what the situation is, which is lucky, but I know on the flip side, like if it was a whole different situation and I feel like if we didn't build such a great community, then who knows what could have happened because I hear things like every day from certain people that have docs themselves. So I think I'm very fortunate that the community is how it is and I kind of always wanted from day one everyone to be super respectful of each other and there's always going to be flutters and things like that. But the whole baseline was our community, if you're coming in, you kind of need to be respectful and if you're not going to be respectful, we either have to put you on time out or something like that. Let's talk about the roadmap and so how did you guys go about that decision? Yeah, so the main thing I wanted was I wanted a community to be Dow based. So the initial roadmap was kind of some giveaways and things like that. But after the sellout was when I wanted to transfer into Dow, you know, having our Dow up and having voting. And I wanted that because I wanted everyone to kind of feel invested in the decisions. Obviously I wouldn't put things so in front of people that weren't able to be accomplished or just buzz words for fun. I always have to like research things and like make sure the team or add more members on, like team members on before we accomplish certain things. So our first style vote was merging into the metaverse. Yeah, how many people voted like percentage-wise? I'll have to double check, but I believe it was over 700 people voted, which is good, but it also shows you, right? There's like the core community members. And then there's people who like either have it, like set it and forget it or the flippers in it. So it was really cool to do that. But the base roadmap, we've pretty much accomplished everything. We actually have some billboard campaigns that didn't get approved like the New York Times Square was. He won. I was the winner of the billboard. Oh, were you really? Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. You're like, what ended up going down? Like you guys got it and then it didn't work. For people who don't know, just describe it. So for people who don't know, part of the roadmap is we are going to get a billboard in Times Square to promote the community. So we had a competition where we all could submit designs to design the billboard. But the catch is that we can't have Newdy's on a billboard in Times Square, despite like that is the name of the community. Like the word is a no-no? The word is a no-no. So what happens from there? Next step. Yeah. So actually the alternative route is, I know you guys see like in LA here in New York, there's posters flooded throughout the city, hundreds of them. So that's the route we're going to go next. We're going to paste up on a thousand. And the vote's probably going to be whether people want to see it in LA or New York, because it's pretty much the same pricing. Let's go to LA. LA, sure. I kind of like LA because, you know, It's also not snowing, so the posters won't get ruined. That's true. And a lot of them stay up for a while, you know? Sometimes they say like they won't even get plastered over for like three months, you know, for some. And that's exciting that you could be up for that long. Yeah. So is it going to be the same art? I think I might have to have you do the art. Love it. Love it. Love to hear it. He was so excited. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to have to have you do that because the posters, we have full creative freedom. You can put anything on them. The billboard in New York, we got not approved by multiple landlords for the word nudie, which was surprising. And I thought about, yeah, maybe foregoing it, but then that's the whole part of it. Like who's going to know the name? Or I couldn't even do a very small at nudie community for like Twitter. They wouldn't even let me do that. And they were even kind of being picky about the scan code to pull up to certain things. I was like, okay, it's not going to work out. What I love about what you're doing too is that you're also like hiring people from the community. Like you're hiring people from the discord. Yeah. And so where did like genius idea, by the way, like that's so good. You just hired two people? I did. Yeah. Okay. So we just hired two community managers and one of them is actually directly somebody that was from the discord there and the community, which is super cool because they give the community's perspective, right? So there are people that I noticed were very active and she would come onto Twitter spaces and she would participate and also be there during the day in the discord. So she was kind of a perfect fit. And she also has already related to the community. She's been in talks of like where their concerns is or questions are or comments. So it's kind of like a perfect integration there. And then going forward, I want to hire as many people from the community first as possible because we put up a hiring duties page. And after going through it, you realize how many talented people lie within your community, which is absolutely incredible. So if I can hire within there, like, why not? Yeah. That's why you're here right now. Yeah. So many cool people, so many fans. And you guys are absolutely incredible. Thank you. I can't believe we got to connect like this, right? Because it's different like being able to talk in discord or other things, but then to meet in real life. It's super cool how NFTs are kind of bringing that together. I was in a Twitter space when I mentioned the space right here. And I was like someone, and then somebody hit me up that was in that space and they came and met with me here. Oh, wow. Yeah. Like they're another, I think they're in Orange County also actually, like they drove here and we just had a chat and they were in real estate development also. See? This is so crazy. You never know where like certain connections will like become or lie. So that's like the super cool thing about Twitter Spaces. Like yesterday I was at an NFT meetup. You guys should go, they have it every Thursday at the coffee shop here in Venice Beach. And it's part of the Crypto Venetians community. And then they also, every single week do like a art gallery after and also like an alpha educational thing. So it's super cool to go to those because, you know, there's normally like 40 to 50 people that show up every week and everyone, you know, is either you've met them before somehow on a Twitter space or, you know, just meeting them for the first time in real life. And it's just really cool to see these in real life events go down to. Yeah. What's like your biggest hope that happens between now and let's say May for the nudie community? For the nudie community, I have a lot of cool things coming. So. Drop it. Let's go. Let's drop it. Let's drop it. So we have had a companion collection. Oh. And I'll give a little bit of companion. Okay. Little bit of a secret. So there was something that was in the original promo banner, right? A character in there. And they did not get added to the collection. So we are utilizing them in a different way for the companion collection. So that's going to be really exciting. And what I want to integrate is if you own a companion and if you own a nudie, you'll be able to breed them. Oh, wow. I'm in. I'm in. Yeah. For sure. That's so exciting. So I think people will be really exciting for that. And then me and Hailey, after you know this week or even this month, it's been absolutely insane. How many rugs that are happening? Even like the day before mint things that are coming out. We've always kind of had an idea of like what the future of NFTs would look like. And we want to be involved in it long term. Not only with the nudies. Like the nudies is going to be here to stay. But we came together me and Hailey and decided to make a lab. So it's called the outlier labs. Because as you know, like a outlier is somebody who's like detached from the rest. And that's kind of fits with decentralization, right? You're detached from the rest. And also we want to be different than everyone. So it's rugged. Everyone. So I'm going to be, you know, the president of it. We have Hailey, who's going to be the creative director. And then I've brought in people from real life business world. So I have a CFO who's actually a CEO of a public company. And then I brought in a bunch of lawyers to, to be the advisors. And I have a bunch of other cool people on the software side for advisors. So we'll put like some more drops and tid bits about that soon. Because you'll be able to buy anything from this lab or invest in anything from this lab. And no, you're not going to get wrecked. Like these are people that sit on SEC, you know, approved public companies. They're not going to rug you. You know, we have a project already out that, you know, we've, we've showed that so far, you know, we've been somebody to trust and we want to continue on that trust with the new community. And then real issue. You really trying to solve the rugging issue. Kind of am here. You're like on a mission. I am. And I want to be in an incubator eventually. So eventually other. You want to create your own incubator? Yeah. So the labs will eventually be an incubator. So if somebody else has a project, but they don't have funding or it's like some sort of idea like that, we have people that are ready to invest and us personally are ready to invest to, you know, help you build out your concept. And everyone's going to be, you know, why Combinator NFT land? That's so fast. Incredible. And the nudies will always kind of be a skeleton key. So if you own a nudie, then you're always going to have access to whitelist spots or discounts or certain things like that for anything that would come out of the lab. So that's going to be super exciting. I love all the art that you guys are featuring, like all the other women art that you've been featuring recently on Twitter. Epic art. Like I think for me, the thing is like, I want to like the art that starts. It sounds kind of like from a startup perspective. If I'm investing in a company, the art doesn't matter. The product matters and the founder matters. But when it comes to the NFTs, like I really want to like the art. That's key for sure. I feel like one of the main things when buying into a project, you have to like the art because whether something goes right or wrong at the end of the day, it's going to still sit in your wallet. You've got the art. Yeah. And you have the art. And I have so many pieces that sit in my wallet, but I like the art. So I'm happy with it. And you also have to be, you know, very careful about the team and the roadmap and things like that. You always have to do your own research and never like buy out of FOMO. Like I've made that mistake. I'm sure maybe some of us in this room have made that mistake. Right. So art is very important. And so that's why we also want to highlight other female artists, like you said. And we have four artists that are, you know, women in NFTs and some that are coming new into the NFT world who are featured in our airdrop of all different sizes. So some have only following size of like 500 to 600 people and some have 20,000 and just bringing together four different art styles to airdrop to the community. And we want to continue going with that. And, you know, spotlighting women. So every Wednesday we're buying a piece from a woman led community or woman artists and giving it back to the community and then doing a lot of like women led community whitelist spots to everyone. So that's just something I feel like we can give back because we currently have the platform to do so. And so why not utilize it for good? And one of the things I said when we sold out was the sellout was not just for like me or the team. It was for all women in NFTs because we only make up 16% of the artists and 5% of the sales. And for me that is way too low. And so to have that happen so quickly and to sell out and to do that as a woman in the space, you have to help others. So I was actually just going to bring up that statistic because to me as a woman that means a lot to me. So what can we do, including our listeners, what can they do to increase that number and turn it into something better? I feel like some of the main things is, you know, if you see women in NFTs support them as much as you can, right? So a retweet, a like, a comment on their art goes a long way. And if you are viable at the time to buy into their collection, do so. But I feel like even not on a financial side, just a support on social media goes a long way. Also sharing them or for instance if you see a comment or a post from a different community saying like, hey, we'd like to know about women artists, tag them there. There's so much to do on like a social media side. And then I feel like on a different side of things, just bringing more awareness to trying to not repeat our same mistakes that we made in Web 2 and to Web 3, right? And being inclusive, not only for women, but like all genders, all communities, you know, all races. So I feel like the more that we can try to include them into the conversation, the better. We were just talking about this, like right now we're featuring this thing with cat footwear around like women in construction. And it's the same thing. It's like today people are talking about women, but they shouldn't. But it's always the first thing, right? It's like male dominated, then it becomes woman, then it becomes LGBTQA, and then it just continues to trickle down. And so it's like while women have the spotlight, they also realize that they're just ushering in all these other groups later. And I think that's like super powerful. And it's cool to see it. And you guys are kind of leading the charge in some way or part of the charge. Yeah. And there's so many amazing women collections out there right now. Some known, some not known. And you know, people like Fame Lady Squad, they've had their own trials and tribulations, right? And you can look at their chart and see so and see how they're doing now and see the way that they've done things and structured things. It's amazing to see not only their perseverance, but you know, seeing their community rally around them. And then on the outside perspective, everyone that's come in to support them as well. So even communities that are at that size, or even ones that people don't know about, really cool. And it's also really cool seeing different celebrities organically endorsed communities. Any celebrities on tap for duty community? You know, Paris Hill announced to. Is she going to go public? The one? Is she going to make the PFP? I wish. I wish. So Haley was super excited yesterday, actually, because she got a printout of it and she hung it up in her house. And it was actually Paris Hilton's birthday yesterday, but Paris has retweeted a couple of her tweets. She follows us. That's cool. Very awesome to have like a woman in NFTs supporting other women in NFTs. And we've also when we on our whitelist, I feel like we had probably eight to 12 players from the Baltimore Ravens. Why is that? One of my close friends, he's friends with the brother of Kocab, and he kind of brought them in and Kocab is super awesome. Like he's a gentleman that, you know, has a charity for lupus and, you know, he's super cool. And he just recently did the dive into NFTs. And so he kind of brought the whole team with him and was educating. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So I really love stories like that, right? So people from all different walks of life, all different professions are now dipping their toes into NFTs, which in my opinion is kind of going to be the future. How do you view like the future like right now? Everything's on Ethereum, right? Everything. Do you view that changing? Do you think there's like, like if you were to launch a project, maybe in, let's say four or five months, do you think it's Solana? Do you think it's Cardano? Or do you just think Ethereum one? And this is it. This is where it's going to stay for a while. I think Ethereum has won for now. I also think once like the 2.0 comes out, it's kind of going to maybe be game over. Like they're going to definitely dominate the market even though they already have. I think that there's some altcoins and stuff like that or Solana that, you know, is definitely going to be a front runner for people who like that platform. And I think that a lot of people currently are sleeping on Solana, myself included because I know some people that just only buy Solana projects or they're now dipping into Solana and they're going crazy over there and they're doing very well. So I think Ethan Solana probably will be the main ones. I just bought Claymates, Clay Nation, which is a Cardano. It's kind of like a Cardano blue chip. It's like top five, but it's just interesting to see how these different networks operate. And what I learned is like it's kind of like high school where it's like the cool kids are over here and like the super nerdy tech kids are over here in Cardano land. And then like Solana is like kind of a hybrid of both. It's like super fascinating but I'm like, I'm just going to play and see what happens. I have no idea. Right. I mean it's totally different. Like every single currency has kind of its own demographic, but every single community does too. You know, you can be in some communities and they're like super like alpha. You can be in some that super tech. You can be in some that are like super like a mix of everyone. So it's just super interesting. And I feel like as more celebrities come in and as more big brands come into the space, I'm more curious to see where that's going to take it because I think when that happens, it's going to be the real boom. And right now we're kind of in at the infancy state. So to see where this is going to grow to going to be really cool. Right. Yeah. Cardano, prenups, house titles. You never know what you know what could be next in NFTs. And I think it's really cool that art was the front runner because in my opinion, I gave people an easy way in to understand, you know, the blockchain or, you know, to understand how NFTs worked. So it was kind of easier and more digestible before coming in with like the serious stuff, which it could definitely be used in all different ways going forward, especially like in law and stuff. So I'm excited to see that in the future as well. So for people who do want to start their own NFT community, if they choose to do either Twitter Spaces or Discord, what's the best way for people to connect with that audience? Like what do you recommend for them to get more involved in? Because you do a lot of Twitter Spaces and you're active in Discord as well, which is both great. But what have you found brings in the most engagement and connects with people the most? I would say Twitter Spaces. Like if you're going to make an NFT community, or even right now any sort of community, I would highly suggest Twitter Spaces. I wish that I would have hopped on it like a month sooner. Like when I first launched the Discord because I was kind of like, oh, like, oh, not a big deal. No, when I dove in, it's a big deal. There's hundreds of people in rooms, even thousands of people in rooms at times. And you can literally connect with anyone that likes similar interests. So 100% do Twitter Spaces. And even if you're not opening up your own, go into others. Because the biggest thing that I've probably said so far too when people ask is I believe your network is your net worth in NFTs and in Web 3. So it's all about who you can align yourself with and also who you can meet. And that's what really benefits you at the end of the day is those connections that you make. One thing Diego always talks about is once you change your profile picture on Twitter to whatever NFT community, seeing how many people follow you on Twitter in such a short span of time is an easy way to measure how loyal and dedicated that community is. And the Newdy community was insane. In like 24 hours, like hundreds of hours. I was like, whoa. I mean, it's insane. I'm not surprised you, I imagine. How quickly it happened, right? Oh, yeah. It was very quick. I, beginning this, right, I was like, oh, we need to get certain numbers. We need to do certain things. Like I need to have like a super hype community before launching. And then we totally pivoted towards no, it needs to be organic. And then seeing how when we switched to being organic, those things that I originally wanted came into place naturally was absolutely incredible. So that's the biggest thing too is like, if you are going to start an NFT community, don't do paid promotions. Don't do shilling. Don't do things like that. Just grind it out. People see through it too. Like that's the thing that bothers me. It's like, it's so abundantly obvious what you're doing. Oh yeah. That's so important. And like you lose so much loyalty that now you have to crawl back from. Yeah. Right. Like even if you just were like, oh, let's just try this. See what happens. It's like, no. You're a negative 10. Now you got to do 14 things to get back. Right. So people like you. Anything we should know, okay. We do have a really exciting collection launching, but I'm not going to share too many details about it, but Haley is on board with it and it's actually going to be a 3D collection. It's not connected to the nudies, but like I said, duties will be like a skeleton key that will always have whitelist spots. And what we're going to be doing is we're going to have to really big billboard campaigns here in LA. We're going to wrap some buildings. We're going to actually have an in real life pop up store for it where we're hoping to do like a live mint for some people there as well. And we're even ordering custom physical goods. And so we want to sell the physical goods that will go on this collection. You know what we should do? We should get like a 10 foot sculpture of a nudie. We really should. And just like place it. Right there. And I really want one. Like I legitimately, like that corner to me says bring a big piece of art. Yeah. That's one of one super unique. I don't even like cats. I can't even believe I'm saying that. It's really that crazy. I'm like not a cat guy. Like I'm allergic. Oh, okay. But not to nudies. Not to nudies. They're so crazy. They're digital. They're not physical. You don't have to touch them. You know, you don't have to you don't have to feed them or scoop their litter box. That's perfect. Anything interesting that you learned like in terms of who purchased like what countries may have been involved that you would have thought like what the heck is this country doing here but they're in. Oh, there's a lot of countries that you'd be surprised. You know, like there's a lot of people from China that came in. There's a lot of people from like Brazil, Argentina, Germany all over that you would never kind of expect. But then you're like, oh when I was dealing with my own startups, you normally focus on like U.S. Totally. Plant your flag somewhere local. Yeah, local. So this is totally a whole different animal than a lot of things that I've done. And I want to say that this is probably the most successful thing I've done just based off of Kudos. Kudos to you. Everything. Crushing it. Thank you. I want to switch gears though. I know a lot of like the pressures probably felt on you, right? So you're you're doing this. There's three of you, the founders, a lot. Right. And so from your perspective like pure empowerment mode, what can the community do to like take this project to the next level? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Because they have a real power outside of the voting. But what do you think they can do to like make this project just a slam dunk? That's something that's big, right? Because I feel like the community is your biggest marketers. And so I'm not going to say if they fall short or something like that, but if they are not doing their fullest to help, it's kind of almost doing a disservice, not only to themselves, but to the community and your own wallet at the end of the day. So if you're in any community, NFT-wise, and you really like and support them, the biggest thing you do is, you know, I know discord announcements and things like that are annoying and sometimes you mute your notifications. Keep certain channels notifications on. Like keep the announcement page, even keep the tweets page. Whenever you see a tweet that they put out, you know, retweet it. Like it. Quote, retweet it. Every single time you see an Instagram thing, like it. If you can't put it on your story, if you don't want to, aesthetically, I get it. Don't have to. Put a comment. I say bucket, do it. You need to be shameless about it. I'm an investor in Orabora. I'm sitting right here on purpose. Oh, I love it. Delicious. By the way, shameless plug, best water in the game. But you know, I think that's right, like shamelessly promote. Because at the end of the day, as an investor, there's a reason it's on the table, right? If you're an investor in the community, if you're committed into something and you absolutely love it, you have to kind of be shameless. I mean, I was shameless about, you know, all the Twitter spaces. I'm, you know, wearing this. I was about to actually wear the full sweatsuit today, but I thought it was borderline too much, but I probably should have, you know, if you really believe in something, you have to like go full force into it. And if momentum dies on certain things like that, like if retweets go down or legs go down, that ultimately can be changed by just the community coming forth. Or even if there's a Twitter space, if you can pop in for five minutes, little things like that, or, you know, wearing your PFP, if you see a TikTok, like save, send it to somebody because the algorithm sees that. So you kind of have to do your, the most, if you want to see, it goes far. You gotta pet the algorithm. You have to, especially like Twitter and things. It takes a lot of work. It does. And being like consistent with it too. One thing that I think is super cool about the community is you guys have a VR app. So you can see your nudies in real life. How did you guys get the idea to do that? And like, yeah. So the biggest thing is I wanted to have a utility before Mint. So I was looking into different developers at the time that could do that. So I hired somebody to make the app for me, which was super awesome. And they were able to whip it out within like a couple weeks with an approval time. It was a couple weeks too. But I knew I wanted to have it out before Mint. So to have that out was absolutely incredible. I'm not going to like shame other communities or anything like that. But if you don't have some sort of utility out before Mint and you have all these big plans ahead, you really can. It's not like it's going to cost you an arm and a leg. You can do things that don't cost a lot of money. For instance, like our VR Hangout, which was made on VRChat. That didn't cost a lot of money to build out. Technically, you could have a build out on VRChat for under $1,000 if you'd like to. Or you could physically build it out yourself. You know, the app. Different story. But still, there's so many ways that you can find different people or even connect with different people before your things launched to have some sort of utility. It's important, especially if you're going to be here, you know, taking people's money, I guess in a sense, right? To help, you know, the future of the community. It's only kind of right to try to put your best efforts in or to have some utility beforehand. And I'm really hoping going forward, more communities will have a utility out before launch. Yeah. Well, listen, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Tell everyone where they can buy and should buy a nudie. I mean, you can find your nudies on open seas and it's nudie community official. So what we need to make sure you're on the right page is that it will have our Twitter link to it and it will have a check mark next to that. And then if you want to be ultra safe, which I always suggest, you can go on to our Twitter and on our Twitter or even on our Instagram, which is at nudie community. We always have a link tree in the bios and that has all the official link. So make sure you're not getting scammed out there. And on our Discord, we have an official link page as well. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. This is our conversation with Lysandra Morris, founder of nudie community. We know there's a lot of interest in NFTs right now and our goal is to inform and offer insight as we shift to Web 3. Since you've made it this far, I'm guessing you enjoy our show. So consider subscribing if you're not already or better yet, leaving us a review on Apple or Spotify. It's one of the best and easiest ways you can support us. We are at Startup Storefront on every social media platform except Twitter where you can find us at STS Podcast LA. The Startup Storefront team consists of Diego Torres Palma, Natalia Capolini, Lexi Jameson, Owen Capolini, and me, Nick Conrad. Our music is by DoubleTouch. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.