Sep 1, 2022 · 1h 7m · how-i-built-this
HIBT Lab! Bored Ape Yacht Club: Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This Lab, Guy Raz interviews Yuga Labs co-founders Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow about how their literary backgrounds, shared passion for gaming, and crypto culture inspired Bored Ape Yacht Club. Together, they detail how a narrative-first approach and community-driven ethos transformed their startup into a multi-billion-dollar Web3 powerhouse.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 25.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.6 Guest teaching 3.6 Guest disagreement 1.4 Guy pushing back 1.9
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:00:46 Pushing back against dystopian metaverse stereotypes
Wylie directly rejects the popular cultural framing of metaverses as dystopian Neuralink headset worlds, insisting it is primarily about cooperative gaming and digital asset ownership.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 47:45 Guy challenges the soaring exclusivity of the clubGuy confronts the founders with the paradox that their project, designed to be accessible to anyone with two hundred dollars, has turned into an ultra-exclusive club for the wealthy.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 43:21 Correcting the host on NFT creator revenue mechanicsGreg corrects Guy's assumption that they profited by holding back a reserve of apes to sell later, explaining their egalitarian philosophy and secondary marketplace royalty model.
Guy holds their own ▶ 45:12 Marvel intellectual property analogyGuy synthesizes the unprecedented nature of commercial IP rights in Web3 by drawing a vivid analogy to Marvel licensing out individual superheroes unconditionally to buyers.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Promoting the How I Built This Official Merchandise Shop | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz presents an introductory monologue and merchandise plug for the podcast. Because this is entirely a solo host introduction, all interaction and pushback scores remain at zero. | |
| Origins of Friendship, Literary Debates, and Personal Adversity | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | The co-founders recount their initial meeting in Miami debating David Foster Wallace and open up about Wylie's decade-long battle with chronic illness. The exchange is deeply empathetic and biographical with zero friction. | |
| Discovering Cryptocurrency, Twitter Culture, and Developing Founder Synergy | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Greg and Wylie detail entering crypto during the 2017 bull run, trading on crypto Twitter, and forming their yin-and-yang creative writing partnership. Guy asks supportive clarifying questions tracing their transition from hobbyists to collaborators. | |
| Early NFT Inspirations and the Hashmasks Turning Point | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | The guests educate Guy on early NFT history, contrasting the unlimited breeding mechanics of CryptoKitties with CryptoPunks and the narrative-driven breakthrough of Hashmasks. They explain how Hashmasks proved non-technical storytellers could use blockchain as an artistic medium. | |
| Conceiving the Bored Ape Lore and Technical Assembly | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | The founders detail how an initially pretentious art board concept evolved into the irreverent Everglades dive-bar lore and describe recruiting their engineering friends. The discussion remains humorous and highly collaborative. | |
| Launching BAYC, Overcoming Presale Hurdles, and Viral Sellout | 5 | 6 | 2 | 3 | Guy presses on how BAYC gained viral awareness and probes their monetization model. Greg schools Guy by clarifying that unlike CryptoPunks' creators, they kept only one ape each and relied solely on secondary market creator royalties to preserve club egalitarianism. | |
| Expanding the Ecosystem, Mega Fundraise, and Building Otherside | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Guy pushes on the irony of an egalitarian club becoming hyper-exclusive and queries their metaverse ambitions. Greg and Wylie push back on dystopian tropes and hardware misconceptions, arguing digital asset sovereignty is the real future. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Aronow: Was approximately $40,000 in medical debt when co-founding Yuga Labs
“When we started Yugo Labs, I was approximately 40,000 dollars in medical debt, mostly.”
Solano: Entered crypto in 2017 with a $1,000 investment
“A thousand dollars was, I think, what I put into the markets in 2017, which was like, you know, half my paycheck, so it was a pretty big deal.”
Aronow: CryptoKitties' breeding model felt dilutive, not like a true collectible
“The model just felt a little dilutive. It didn't feel like a true collectible.”
Aronow: Bored Apes were flat-priced at $200 each to avoid unfair pricing advantages
“We were like, no, you know, we're gonna price this 200 dollars an ape, and that way no one feels like they've gotten advantage over someone else, and we can try and create a club around this, a community.”
Solano: Yuga Labs spent approximately $30,000 to launch Bored Ape Yacht Club
“And so I think at the end of the day, it was some, somewhere around like 30,000 dollars is what we ended up spending to do this.”
Solano: Bored Ape Yacht Club granted full commercial rights to token holders
“And so, and the other aspect that we baked in here was the idea that if you owned a Bored Ape and could prove that on the smart contract level, you had it in your Ethereum wallet, then you also had, by virtue of the terms, a full license to the commercial righ…”
Aronow: BAYC pre-sold only 300 to 500 NFTs in its first week
“We only pre-sold, I don't know, something like 300 to 500 of the NFTs.”
Solano: Yuga Labs founders own only one Ape each and will never sell
“Wiley and I were like, no, we've only ever owned one ape. We didn't even choose our apes, you know, and frankly, obviously we're never going to sell them.”
Solano: Yuga Labs collects a 2.5% royalty on OpenSea secondary trades
“So we do actually collect a two and a half percent royalty on, on the BUIC collection on OpenSea.”
Solano: Granting users commercial IP ownership unlocks Disney-level affinity faster
“And I think what we found is that when you do that, you're really empowering creators and the hive mind and the network effects and all of the benefits that you get from that are so much more powerful. Like you get to Disney levels of empathy and belovedness f…”
Aronow: Yuga Labs Was Wildly Profitable Prior to Its VC Round
“I mean, at the time, we were so wildly profitable that, like, we didn't really need to raise, but we started thinking, okay, well, there's a couple of reasons to do this.”
Solano: Gaming Is Most Ripe for Web3 Disruption via Asset Ownership
“Really I think the vertical that we're most bullish in and that we think is most ripe for disruption is in the games industry, like we're talking about, where there's already single companies that are doing billions in digital assets that you know, are essenti…”
Solano: Tokenproof Pivoted From COVID Vaccine Verification to NFT Ticketing
“And so an enterprising startup that had been working on a actually it was a COVID vaccine app, you know, for verifying that you had a your vaccine card pivoted to being an NFT authenticator for an event like this. It's brilliant. Loved it. They're called token…”