 AlphaA is poised to become the Squarespace of Blockchain. Right now, if you want to utilize the Blockchain, you're gonna have to hire an expensive development team to create the coding for you. This is gonna cost you a lot of time and a tremendous amount of money and resources before you even begin your project. And we'll let's see if the founder of AlphaA is on a mission to remove this friction and make this process much easier. If you guys can remember, Squarespace came into the market and now to create a website just takes you a couple clicks and some templates. AlphaA is looking to do the same thing through Blockchain technology. Welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to AlphaA founder, Manu. Thanks so much for joining us. My pleasure. For people who don't know, what does your company do? So we do Blockchain for real assets. Essentially. Heavy. Yeah. It's just a very simple concept. But essentially what we are doing is allowing NFTs to be used as certificates of authenticity to solve for provenance, transactional history, resale royalties and all that good stuff. We started with the art market. We've been in this world for almost 10 years now. And now we're moving on to even simpler problems like POS integrations with luxury brands, for handbags, watches, all the good things. So the idea is, let's say you walk into Chanel, you buy a purse instead of receiving that little warranty card that would come inside the bag. And NFTs minted on the dot from their POS system that has the serial number of the bag, the color of the bag, the model of the bag, your name, where you are in the world. And that is now your certificate of authenticity and holds all the resale value of the item itself. That's awesome. And is it something that, is it like a late, like a SaaS, is it a SaaS business that you're pursuing? For a SaaS platform, 100%. Okay. And so the reason I wanted to talk to you is for multiple reasons. But one, it's very personal. This is a new, it's a whole new world, right? And so I think people, let's say most people today understand what the blockchain may be. And then how do we bring that to the daily consumer? Just like the everyday company, how do we bring in people like me? And the way to do that is to do it through SaaS where you guys sort of take care of the hard stuff. And so you used to be, have to build your own website using HTML. Then other companies started WordPress started, which is now like awful in Squarespace. And so you don't need to be a coder to have a website and you can have a website in a matter of minutes. And so what you're doing is kind of enabling people to play in the blockchain, leveraging all that amazing technology, but you're the layer on top of it. And so you take care of what I would call like the hard stuff. I'm gonna hire you. That's it, right? Yeah, you just explained to us in like layman's terms. But the thing is, we even have a lot of these conversations on the podcast where there's people calling, it's interesting that they're like, it's web 2.5, where the human being who doesn't have a wallet, let's say like your average street artist, who doesn't have a wallet to your point earlier, it's like, are you really gonna explain MetaMass to them? Are you gonna, who's gonna like, are you gonna keep a copy of their secret passphrase? Or are they gonna be left to do it? And then how do they transfer the money? So it's like a huge learning curve today. Yeah. So Coinbase kind of like started with these native layers, right? What they did was nobody wants to know what's going on inside the hood. They just wanna go and use the technology. They wanna know it works. They wanna know it works. And so, think of us as, as you put it very well, SaaS platform, think of us as Shopify for NFTs. So what we did is we got rid of the MetaMass wallet and rebuilt our own native layer, which allows us to provide a framework that makes it super simple for anyone to go in and mint a NFT associated to a physical or digital asset. So as I brought here, this is an example of one of our QR codes. It's a little bit bigger than our usual QR code because this is something we put together for an event. But through the QR code, you can then connect the physical and the digital item, which means that, for example, your beautiful mural here, let's say you wanna NFT the whole mural. You can attach a QR code to it and you can then add a bunch of utility to it too. So that could be if you own the NFT, you own the right to another mural in another location, or you can then kind of like hold meetings around people that are other owners of similar murals by the same artist, and you can kind of like unlock the whole potential of Web3. I kind of resent that term, Web2.5, because it's Web3, but it's Web3 for everyone, which is the direction of where the world is going. You don't have to be a crypto expert to be able to understand that blockchain technology is amazing for asset ownership, right? Like just think of the term blockchain. The way the technology is built is that there are blocks of information connected by chains, which means that you can contain the entire asset lifecycle within that one thing, which is the NFT. And that's a game changer for everything. You're gonna start seeing NFTs attached to cars. You're gonna start seeing NFTs attached to houses, to apartments, which means at the end of the day, you'll be able to walk into an apartment and purchase something by scanning a QR code and bypass that escrow process that can take up to three months and maybe close in three minutes. As a real estate developer, it would complicate or it would make my life a lot easier. And so today it's like, escrow process is annoying. That's one thing. Once an asset is up and running and generating income, if there was, let's say every investor is an NFT holder, it's basically income would come in and instead of it going through an accountant or me sending checks to people or me literally typing in your account number, routing number, and then wire for like 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 investors, it would just automatically do that. And we pay those people to do it today. And so I give people that window because to me it's like, I do this in the world today and it feels dumb. And it feels like I'm using a fax machine. And I think if you're a real estate developer, you get it because that pain is real. You're also paying an accountant. You're also paying for QuickBooks. Maybe your investors are getting charged wire fees. The whole thing is like bananas. It's annoying. You have deals that open, right? That don't close because the documentation was incomplete. If you can have a process that is automated and technological that just goes through all the checks and balances, that doesn't happen anymore. When you first started, did you raise capital or did you bootstrap it at the beginning? Or people were like, you're crazy. What are you talking about? Oh my God. We're like, you're so early. You're right. It's been a journey. It's been a journey. Like our capital raising journey, I was telling a prospective new employee the other day that we've only raised $1.5 million to date. And we've been around for almost 10 years. And I would tell you this one little story. When we first started the company, we put together kind of like our first pitch deck. We found an angel investor, dreamer, crazy dude, like all the things. He's like, I really believe in what you're doing. I don't think you need 500K. That's what we were raising at the time. I think you need a million dollars. So we went through the process. We kind of like went through the due diligence and spent all this time actually physically moved to New York, most expensive city in the world. Where were you from? From where? Rio. I was spending some time in Rio. And then the money never came through. We got 200K in the space of two years. Oh no. That could have broken any company. Like because you make plans and contingencies for a new box. Like I've broken you mentally too. Yeah, yeah, but we found a way. We're like, okay, so the way is B2B. Like we gotta find bigger tickets. We don't have time to go after small tickets. It takes a road of money to make a B2C engine grow. We didn't know that the technology was blockchain yet, but we knew that we wanted to create more information, a more transparent universe for the creative world. And so the ethos of the company is still absolutely the same, to create opportunity, to create access to capital, which is what blockchain technology can do. And it's one of the things that I've been talking to a lot of the legislative side with. I got brought in by some of the Silicon Valley funds into the state and federal committee for blockchain. So I've been consulting with Senator Booker, Senator Gillibrand, the officer of the governor. And the things we want them to know is that this technology doesn't see color. It doesn't see sex. It doesn't see who is behind the screen. That's an interesting angle. Wow, okay. It's real opportunity. It's access to- That's totally true. Yeah, it's totally true. I've never heard that. We'll be right back to the episode after this quick break. Warby Parker offers everything you need for happier eyes. And you can shop with them online or in stores. Check out Warby Parker's home try-on program for yourself. Order five pairs of glasses to try at home for free. It ships free to you and includes a prepaid return shipping label. Try five pairs of glasses at home for free at warbyparker.com slash ship it. This episode is also brought to you by Fight Camp. They offer thousands of classes with new workouts added each week. So you'll always find something new. You can get a killer workout done in as little as 20 minutes. And don't worry if you don't have any boxing experience because Fight Camp has your back. They've created programs specifically designed to teach you the basics of boxing and kickboxing so you can build a strong foundation. Fight Camp even comes with all the gear you need to start boxing from home, including a freestanding punching bag, boxing gloves, quick hand wraps, and smart punch trackers that provide real-time data during your workout. So head on over to joinfightcamp.com slash start up to storefront and get free shipping with your first order. Now back to the episode. I'll tell you what I wanna do. So this is like another reason I wanted to have you on. So this is you giving me free information. And I think we can actually partner on this. So this is interesting. So we own a building downtown or like Lincoln Heights right by Dodger Stadium. And it's got a obviously it's got a huge exterior wall. And so on one side of it is basically this massive exterior wall that there's a bunch of street arts that normally tag, right? And so as a developer, before we start any building, I usually reach out to whoever has a tag on the building being like, hey, we're acquiring this asset. We may or may not remove your art. Ideally we keep it. Sometimes the city makes us like paint a portion of it. But in the event that we do, I'm just reaching out to you now and hopefully we can collaborate, maybe put your art on the inside or just whatever we do something interesting. In that, I've made a lot of friends in the street art space, which is cool cause they're like, thank you for reaching out. And I'm like, just being a human, no need to thank me. But now I'm like, this is interesting. How do we get street artists who I would put in a community that's so distant from the web three community, right? And so what I wanna do is do this thing where big picture I wanna create an art walk. And so there are four city walls and I own one of them. And so the four, I wanna make the whole thing like a very Berlin dope farmers market activation and artists all around. And it's gonna be a vibe, kind of. But it's got more of like, it's next to the railroad. And so to me, it's more like, it's got a vibe. It's got a vibe. And it's the best view of downtown LA. Like I think no one, no one knows about because you wouldn't go there because there's a railroad and it did ends. I know where exactly what you're talking about though cause I liked that river path a few times, yeah. It's around there. And so the whole concept is I wanna use my wall and I want to do it out words. Like we invite different artists on a quarterly basis to bring their art. We create an NFT. The NFT funds it, right? And so we do some marketing. We do this thing. We basically put a year of a year plan together saying like James Peter Henry is doing this quarter. This artist is doing this quarter. This Peruvian guy is doing this one, right? These Mexican-American street artists are doing this group and like this is their vibe and we do it on our wall but they get the residuals also, right? And so in this, you become like the SaaS platform that allows it so I don't have to hire this dev team and keep up, right? That's exactly what we're here for. So we'd set you up with an institutional profile which is available for companies, galleries, museums, et cetera. Right now we're doing something very similar for a few Burning Man artists. We're doing funding for High By Cozo. We're doing funding for Laura Kimpton. And for Laura Kimpton, it's even more complex cause we actually built a 3D version. Is she with like Kimpton hotels or is that? No, no, she does the giant letters. Believe, love. Sorry, okay. Yeah, she's a big Burning Man artist literally. And her story is amazing. She struggled with mental health, most of her childhood cause she was in an undiagnosed dyslexic. So she had serious learning disabilities and was called a moron in class and all those things that kids do unknowingly, right? And so after she dedicated her entire practice to words once she was, no, finally diagnosed cause words are so powerful. And we paired her with a company called Blue Fever who is developing a safe internet space for teens. And we put together an NFT for both of the companies benefiting Mental Health America. So it's a digital version that- So you're matchmaking, you're doing this too. We do that too. That's pretty deep, yeah. That's more of like a passion project as well. The NFT for good side of the business is so important. And there's so much capability to fund. As you said, you could fund a wall. You could fund a giant installation. You could fund, and you can build in such core utility features that maybe the person that buys your NFT that's gonna be funding the production of that wall also joins your street art club. So they're invited once a month to come to the art walk. They get like a free drink. They get whatever you wanna build into that community. They get a voting decision on who the next artist should be. They get to meet their peers, which is what everybody just wants to belong, right? There's a great quote from Mark Andreessen from the beginning of the 90s talking about what Netscape did. And so the whole point is the internet grew at a pace that nobody had ever seen before, and it made no sense. And so Mark Andreessen was like, people just wanna belong. They just wanna be part of something that is bigger than themselves. And that's what Netscape did. They allowed people to communicate, no matter where they were in the world, whatever system that they were operating. And so we're seeing something very similar right now happening in the web three space, not the web 2.5 space. And the web three space will be complete once everyone has access to the technology. Once you don't need a developer to go and build out whatever it is for you to mint a smart contract. Once you can just click on the alpha platform, pay 10 bucks a month for 10 tokens, which is what we charge for the emerging plan and just start minting your own tokens, doing your own projects, connecting with your own community, providing physical giveaways as well. As I said, this is the token for our DAO. It's a physical bracelet. And so the token for your art wall could also be a small scale poster. And maybe every time someone funds one of the projects, they get a miniature. Yeah, yeah, we're playing with all that. We can put that together together. Yeah, I need help. What's the hard part that you've seen? Is it the people thinking about the utility? Is it people following through? What has been the part where it's a draw? Like as a business, right? So let's go back to, there's a hard part of executing any project, any NFT project, whether it's Board Ape or whether it's this new person emerging. But then as a business, you're kind of, you specifically are really tied to their success. Yeah, so as I said, we're Shopify, right? Which means we do want our clients to go well, but we're providing an infrastructure and we're providing the best infrastructure possible. We're providing these event pages. We're providing shareable links. We're providing embedded products that you can throw onto your website. But I think the biggest challenge right now is interchange our upper ability. Like as a company, and what does that mean? Let's take a step backwards, right? Like blockchain, there are several different chains that are around. There's Ethereum, which is a very popular one. There's Solana, Avalanche, EOS, you name it. No one ever says Cardano. Never. No, just on Twitter. But there's a bunch of chains, yeah? There's a bunch of chains, yeah. And there's like dirty chains. You guys are built on Ethereum, I would imagine. No, we hate proof of work. I think proof of work is the dumbest thing to work on right now because there's been several other solutions that have been proven that are just way more energy efficient. And as a company that is very ESG focused, I could not spend 66,000 times more energy to mint. That's the ratio, by the way. Interesting. Solana to Ethereum or EOS to Ethereum, 66,000 times. Wow. So that's why we can mint for a dollar because we're on proof of stake. And what we're working on is we're chain agnostic. We just wanna be on proof of stake because we just think it makes more sense for everyone. It makes more sense for the planet. And we're working on converters so that you can actually import and export across several different platforms. And I think that is one of the biggest challenges of the industry right now. You have private blockchains, you have people that are just on one of the marketplaces, but how can you actually have all the smart contracts communicating within each other and actually have the rules of engagement being followed? And then obviously there's an issue of fraud around the marketplaces. So there's ghost wallets that are getting pulled from or hacked and there's fake NFTs out there all the time on the bigger marketplaces. And that's one of the reasons why we decided to be a closed-ended system. So that, think of us as like a blue checkmark on Instagram. A Alpha smart contract can only be issued by the artist or by the brand or by the creator of whatever piece that is. And so we're being very cautious but we're gonna start allowing exports soon onto secondary marketplaces. And that is one of the biggest challenges that we see right now. On the business side, there's endless fundraising, hiring, et cetera. How did you figure out, or maybe you're still figuring out like what market to focus on? Like who your customer, so you said it's B2B, but within that? Collectibles. Always collectibles. So then you fashion- Fashion is top of mind right now. Fashion for us is a market that people have not cracked yet. And walk me through it. So you're like, okay, who do you talk to at like? At the head of digital transformation. So speak to brands like Chanel, Gucci. Do they get it? Do they all have it? Yeah, they're comments. They know the problem from obviously fraud. Yeah, I'll give you some numbers, okay? There's a brand that's fresh because we might or we might not be working with them. But Chanel, their resale market on the real real we did some analysis in terms of numbers. And one skew, so the flap bag, which is one bag, one vendor on the real real, that could increase their annual revenue in 5% if they started charging resale royalties. That's a quarter of a billion dollars that is transacted on one skew, one vendor. So we estimate that the resale market could actually bring 20 to 30% additional revenue for brands. And the luxury market holds its value. So that's a smart pitch though, right? So how did you, at some point you were like, oh, I see the value is in the resale. Let's, so it's not, it's not blockchain to them. It's like legitimately growing their revenue numbers in a significant way. Their biggest issue is authenticity. Yeah. Like art, right? And even the real real has a bit of a. Yeah. So I'm sure you see it walking around the streets of New York City. Of course. The knockoffs. If you end the paper certificate and move it into a digital NFT, that's the authenticity problems over. Because even if you attach the NFT to a fake, then the real one has no sales value. So the scarcity is there. You're actually defining scarcity for the first time in the fashion market, which is something that has not been done successfully over the years. That's amazing. So are you raising? What are you doing? We are raising. Yeah. What are you, are an A round here? How much are you raising? I would say A round. What are we doing? No, no, no, no, no, no. We were in the middle of an A round when this whole crypto winter number two hit. We decided to pull that quickly and we're like, we're not gonna do a price round right now. Market dynamics are not there. It's not terrible. And so we're just doing a quick close and a save. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts then about the future of crypto. Like we are in a crypto winter two, as you put it. And I'm curious about how long you think that will last for and what would be the instigator for coming out of it again? For sure. So I'm an economist, by the way. And so market. So you love this recession that we're about to implode upon. No, it sucks. Like it's always sucks to be in a recession, right? And I've been in so many like in my young age. Yeah. Yeah, we're all in same boat. As a developer, I'm dealing with this every day, like interest rates today, I think got announced until it's going up again. But you'll find some good buying opportunities soon. So I bought two buildings during COVID. That was amazing, right? Because it's like the debt markets, this is like on a 2.97% interest rate this building right here. And so it's like, but now every day, it's like six, six and a half, seven for commercial development. And that's only going to go up. And so I think by November, the world will know. And then I think by February, we'll feel it. Well, the Fed's going to stop at some point. You think so? I think so. I hope so. I think it's going to be next year. Jay Powell's all about the light touches as opposed to going too far. Look, I just think it is not going to stop until February. That's where I'm placing my bet, March. I go March. Yeah, but these cycles are usually two years, right? Exactly. That's how long it takes. So if you haven't have cash to weather the store, you're good. And you have to be opportunistic. Like in 2020, we ended up doing an equity crowdfunding raise and raise 120K in a month and a half because I was scared. Like I had all my investors calling me up saying, the world's going to end, COVID, blah, blah. And it ended up being the biggest period of growth for us. Totally. We blew up during COVID. And so it's kind of like blood on the streets. Yeah. Going buy some stock. Like there's so many interesting opportunities right now in the market. Even Solana, I picked up some Solana recently. Nice. I haven't been a big crypto investor, like I have to say. Like this was the first period that I actually started buying crypto. What made you want to be on the sidelines? And then where were you like, oh, this is the right time? One, I wasn't really sure of what the utility behind the coins was. Now I have a clarity around that. Like you know that if you, Solana, I'm really bullish on Solana. I think they're doing all the right things. The development is super easy. And there's going to be a lot of projects that are coming out of it. They're way cleaner. They're already on open sea and on most of the market places. So there will be liquidity behind that. And it's just a better way of doing things, right? Then you know, Bitcoin has proved itself a store of value. It's a way to transfer funds across different geographies. Like even if you do see kind of like tightening and monetary conditions, you see governments getting into little fights, which makes it usually harder for you to move capital around. You just move your Bitcoin wherever you go. And so there's a few things that made me kind of like change a little bit my mindset. But you know, there's great opportunities right now in blue chip tech. They can just go pick up and buy some apples, you know? Sure. Well, right on. Well, listen, tell everyone where they can find you. Find me. All the good stuff. Personally, I'm on Instagram, ManuCV. But the easiest way is through the company. It's alpha with 2A. So alphaA.io. AlphaA.io. I love it. Right on. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Well, thank you for having me. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Thank you. Hey, it's Owen and Oscar here. We just want to say thank you so much for making it to the end of the episode. If you want to see the full, uncut, unhinged, unedited episode, go check out our paid model on Apple Podcasts. We can't wait to see you again next week. And maybe Oscar will stay in my arms.