The Exchanges

Q Yeah, so, so then what happened? I mean, because you're still like, I want to do this, but there's a barrier to entry, which is like somebody who knows how to, you know, type this stuff into a computer.

A Yeah, so, Krem was not crypto native. Um, I think he probably bought crypto a little bit in the past, but, but certainly not really paid attention to the space in the same way that Wiley and I had. But we were basically like, come on, come, you know, come be part of the team. And he was like, okay, like, Sure. Um, I'd also called my, our friend Zeeshan, who's a, you know, actually studied computer science with Karim. He was a little timid about jumping in too, but I think the idea that they would both have each other on, on their side of things to kind of lean on and get the technical part of the project done, they were like, okay, if we're all in it together, we'll, we're in. And so, you know, we added them to the LLC and, and we were off to the races.

AI assessment note: “we added them to the LLC and, and we were off to the races.”

Q So, um, did you have a vision for what that project was going to be? Did you think it was gonna be like Hashmasks, where you would release, I don't know, 5000 or 10,000 individual images? Tell me about the, like, workshopping process of trying to figure out what you wanted to do and make.

A We spent a long time batting around different ideas. And frankly, some of the times thinking more along the lines of what, what do we think people would like rather than, you know, what, what do we think is cool? And what, what do we think would be fun and strange? I think the first thing that unlocked for us was the idea of, Hey, this NFT, this non fungible token that lives on a blockchain and anyone in the world can basically audit who owns this token. Like how do we create A piece of art, a piece of storytelling, essentially, that embraces that aspect of the medium. And to us that was, well, if, if I can say that this token, one of 10,000, can never be confused with any other, then we can have, like, a part of our website that's gated only to people in this community. This can be kind of a strange little exclusive club. There can be utility associated with this token. Um, And so our first idea there was, hey, maybe it's a, what's behind this, this wall, basically this door, um, that you can only get in with the NFT. Perhaps it's a, like an art board. Where every 15 minutes you can put a pixel down on this kind of board, this screen, with the idea being that you essentially have this collaborative art piece that's being created pixel by pixel by 10,000 people in this weird little club on the internet.

AI assessment note: “We spent a long time batting around different ideas.”

Q You're wearing goggles, right? You're standing in a room, or sitting down, you're wearing goggles.

A You don't need to wear goggles. You can be on your phone, you can be on your computer. I think the, the important parts for us are, The interaction. You, you know, it's not a metaverse if you're playing Skyrim by yourself, you're playing Super Mario by yourself. What makes it the metaverse is you're in a virtual world that the community that people are helping kind of co-create, that it's maybe more akin to Minecraft or Roblox than some of these other virtual worlds. And actually owning your digital assets Is a super important part of this whole experience for us. As kids who grew up obsessed with MMORPGs, we really valued the idea of, hey, we can make the gamified, interoperable, fun metaverse of our dreams. This virtual world that anyone can participate in permissionlessly and where there's not like a really stringent terms and conditions that gates all your items. Like if you were to get Some item as your warlock in World of Warcraft, then you can actually take that thing off platform. When I grew up playing EverQuest, the best gift I ever got when I was like 10 years old was my, my buddy gifted me a, a sword that he got from like a dungeon. You could just, you could give it to somebody. You know, it was like you actually own the asset in some sense. That said, once, you know, the, the servers were all sunsetted off on, on that old game and everything like that, That all sto…

AI assessment note: “You don't need to wear goggles. You can be on your phone”

Q But how did you even get people to the website? There's 1000 of millions of websites.

A Yeah, so we were just on Twitter following, tagging anyone we could to get attention. And then what we also did is we, we thought, you know, wouldn't it be funny to make kind of honorary board apes? So like, you know, ones in the likeness of certain influencers or something like that, you know, like Kobe on, on crypto Twitter wears his like Bitcoin glasses. What if we put, put those on a board ape and tweeted it at him and tried to get him to like laugh at it, how ridiculous this was. Um, and so we did a lot of that. We've, you know, for a week there, we were trying to, you know, guerrilla market this thing in any way we could.

AI assessment note: “we were just on Twitter following, tagging anyone we could to get attention.”

Q And so what, what did you think you wanted to do?

A You know, I, I found out about this crazy world where you could get an MFA in writing and basically get paid a stipend to sit around all day and, and read books and, and try your hand at writing and, Go to workshops and that kind of stuff. And that sounded like the, the dream thing to do for a couple of years there. Um, but I didn't really, you know, there's not a whole lot of money in poetry as like, you know, um, I got a job out in California at a small publishing house and I worked for years as a editorial assistant all the way up, you know, to a senior editor. And so I was working on, uh, licensed books. So basically anything with certain video game studios or, Movie studios are the people kind of telling the stories behind games, films, other things, you know, really kind of lush, illustrated coffee table books.

AI assessment note: “sounded like the, the dream thing to do for a couple of years”

Q All right. So you start to work on this in, in February of 20, 21. And the idea was you would put these, these apes up for sale on an NFT marketplace. And if you bought it, you owned this piece of art, but you also had access to the, to this Bathroom wall, basically, right? That was the initial concept?

A Well, we tried to lay the groundwork a little bit firmer than that in the sense was unlike a lot of other NFT collections where it felt like, you know, the, the project say selling out or, or minting out, uh, was kind of the thing in itself. And then, you know, now this was fully in the hands of the community and, and, you know, we'll see what happens or it's just a collectible. We started to think about like, Hey, this is a, this is the board at yacht club. There's these 10,000 apes, but there's also this like kind of Hinting towards this lifestyle brand, maybe, like, you know, it has this weird logo, it has this, like, brand identity that we wanted to, to empower. And so, and, and the other aspect that we, we baked in here was the idea that if you owned a Bored Ape, um, 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, uh, to the commercial rights to use that. Cause that made a lot of sense to us. Cause it was like, this could be your, your identity on the internet. You could use it as your, your Twitter profile pic. You could do whatever you want. And if it's going to be your avatar and quote unquote the metaverse here, then, you know, you should be able to use it how you wish.

AI assessment note: “we tried to lay the groundwork a little bit firmer than that”

Q So March of 2018, this is going on. And meantime, You were batting around potential ideas, but before we get to this idea that you land on, Craig, why did you think you wanted to work with Wiley? I mean, it's, it's actually amazing because the two of you really only met in person a few times, but there was some connection in this desire to maybe work with him.

A I think we have a very strong kind of yin and yang relationship is how we like to talk about it. You know, there's a, there's a boldness to Wiley. That's incredibly powerful in how he like approaches things and a willingness to keep focused on an idea for a long period of time. I liken it to if you want to get really fit and you got to find the right gym buddy who's going to push you and go as hard as you and not call in, you know, sick and be like, no, I can't go today or whatever it is, make other plans. And when I had an idea I was extremely passionate about, you know, he was down to To work through that idea, and, and I think vice versa, and where he is kind of a maximalist and wants to pile on more complexity and ambition and, um, just more to a project. He's a maximalist in that way. You know, I was a, literally an, an editor and a poet, and I'm always about simplifying things down to their core and what's the, like, most viable, minimal thing that then other people can take and run with. And I think The process of working together has been really fruitful and meeting somewhere in the middle. And, you know, I, I rein him back and he pushes me into the pool.

AI assessment note: “I think we have a very strong kind of yin and yang relationship”

Q Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious about this project, Hashmask. It was released in early 2021, I guess, and that flipped a switch on for both of you. Tell me about that project. What is Hashmask? Why was it different from anything before it?

A Yeah, so it's, um, it was this project where each one is kind of this painting, and each of these characters is wearing a mask. And there was a lot of kind of intrigue To the project. Um, ideas about how you, you know, if you looked at the collection as a whole, kind of mapping up, you know, putting certain masks side by side that the backgrounds would connect and maybe tell you something. It felt kind of cryptic and, and fascinating. And more than anything, it really captured, like, you know, it's not just us that, that we're intrigued by this project. I mean, everybody on crypto Twitter, when, when this Was released was talking about it. You know, all the biggest accounts were, were buying them, talking about them, excited about like what this was.

AI assessment note: “it was this project where each one is kind of this painting”

Q Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and I'm talking with Greg Solano and Wiley Arano, creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. Okay, so you guys were looking at things like CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks, and Hashmasks. What was a spark that had one of you say to the other one, hey, you know, let's do one of these NFT projects?

A I think our relationship came out of being obsessed with MMORPGs where we're, you know, frankly, the pursuit of digital assets is everything. And out of the fascination with cryptocurrency and with the culture that we saw on crypto Twitter and the idea of wanting to make something, but kind of always falling out, like, you know, we, we'd work on a, a literary magazine together. But, you know, well, this, is this actually gonna be that big? Is this gonna be that special? There's already McSweeney's and Paris Review and these other things. Whereas it felt like this unique moment where we actually know more deeply, perhaps, the crypto space than a lot of people, uh, with our storytelling backgrounds. And it felt like, you know, maybe this is our, our moment to make something together that's special and really just contribute finally to this space in a way other than as spectators, frankly.

AI assessment note: “felt like this unique moment where we actually know more deeply, perhaps, the crypto space”

Q when you are not a known quantity, is very hard. I mean, this is the story of every business on how I built this. It's like, how do you get the first person to buy something? I mean, you're talking about it so casually now, but was any part of you surprised that you sold them so quickly, or were you pretty sure this is what was going to happen?

A So to, to frame it even more, you know, That week, I was kind of despondent, almost. Like, you know, I, I was sure that, like, it didn't work, because when this, when projects succeeded, they succeeded almost immediately, and if they didn't, that was it. And Wiley was pure fire at wanting to push through, and, and brought me along, and we, we hustled. But I will say, I think the, maybe the part that you're missing there is, A lot of the people who minted these were crypto native to some extent or another, and were excited about something that maybe felt like it was pushing the space forward, that was doing things right, that was offering like an interesting take on this thing that they'd seen before. If, if you work hard to try and build things for the crypto ecosystem, then I think it's a rewarding feedback loop if you're opening up the space of possibility.

AI assessment note: “That week, I was kind of despondent, almost. Like, you know, I, I was sure that, like, it didn't work”

Q So what explains how you got the visibility? I, I get that it's cool and interesting, but sometimes that's not enough. You gotta get people to, to be aware.

A I think it was actually that, number one, it was cheaper than almost everything out there. Number two, it was a flat price, so it wasn't getting more expensive, which is what was happening to a lot of these collections, where like, Cool. The first round of NFTs, say, 500 or 2000 or one price, but now the next batch is more expensive and nobody wants to pay that. And the other thing was that, you know, there was something that you could do with this. There was an idea that this was kind of a mysterious club and that you could get access to this, like, bathroom wall. Like, there was a direct utility around the token that I think kind of was exciting and And I think some of what we were trying to do from a storytelling perspective and just frankly, the sheer effort of the website kind of shine through to people that once we got eyeballs on it, And all the, on the treasure hunt, what we're, you know, the IP rights and everything else that we could do, it just felt like, hey, maybe these guys are doing it right. Let's take a chance on that.

AI assessment note: “I think it was actually that, number one, it was cheaper than almost everything”