Fraser Bell / OHO LabsWhy I joined MintStars.
Over the last 3 months, I’ve been working with MintStars to drive awareness of a groundbreaking new web3-enabled platform for content creators. MintStars’ goal is to reinvent the creator economy while putting creators first - maximizing their earnings, protecting their content, and reducing burnout. 3 notes on the space:Market size: The creator economy may be a relatively new field, but over 50 million people now work as creators.Big problems: There are major unaddressed problems in the space...
Fraser Bell / OHO LabsWhy brands and retailers should use NFTs to reward customers for their loyalty
NFTs or non-fungible tokens took the world by storm in 2021, with recent reports putting the value of the market at over $40 billion. In December, Nike made waves by acquiring RTFKT, a digital fashion and NFT studio, for an estimated $100 million. This year is set to be another year of explosive growth for the space. So far in 2022, brands including Samsung, GAP, Patrón, Hennessy, Konami, Associated Press, Budweiser, Barbie and Bugatti have all announced NFT launches, with many other organisa...
Fraser Bell / OHO LabsApple + NFTs?
While the Apple Event of September 7th may not have included any announcements relating to web3, what might Apple’s strategy for the space look like? 3 thoughts: 1. Integrating cryptocurrency into Apple Pay is an obvious quick win, and their willingness to explore financial services has already been proven with products like Apple Pay, Apple Card (a US-only credit card) and the related acquisition of UK open banking startup Credit Kudos. 2. More than 1 billion people use Apple products - most...
CMO at [MintStars](mintstars.com) Worked for 6 web3 startups in 2021/22 Passionate about the creator economy, ecommerce, brands and web3
After 6 startups, 12 months, and several thousand hours of marketing, business development, community management and all round grind, I was going to write a list of learnings and observations from 2022 in web3. However, I got distracted and decided to enjoy a few days off over Christmas.
Instead, here are 3 random observations from the past year:
The quality of founders and operators was far higher in 2022 than in 2021. There are more smart people with great ideas tackling big problems than a year ago. As a result, the bar to starting a startup, reaching customers and raising funding is much higher than ever, without considering the economic challenges in the wider world and crypto.
Separation of art and utility in the NFT space. Art is a valid and thriving use case for NFTs. However, pure “utility” projects are far more hit-and-miss, with only a handful of examples of successful utility NFTs, and fewer again that combine desirable artwork with genuine utility. As a result, I don’t think we’ll see many startups and projects trying to do both at once in 2023, which for a while was where I thought the space was heading.
Finally, I’m seeing a divergence between crypto-native, experimental, boundary-pushing solutions, vs mass-market, web2.5 solutions. VC-backable web3 products in 2023 are expected to solve problems and do so in an end-to-end manner - hence the shift to web2.5, where the burden of onboarding and understanding is largely taken away from the customer. The rest of the market right now looks either very niche or experimental. However, that’s not to say those areas are irrelevant, merely that the pure web3 solutions are still far from mainstream adoption and will take longer to reach the popular consciousness.
So that's the rundown from the past year. It's been a wild ride, let’s see what the next thousands of hours have in store.
Feel free to subscribe if you’d like my occasional thoughts on the NFT space or connect with me on Twitter.
After 6 startups, 12 months, and several thousand hours of marketing, business development, community management and all round grind, I was going to write a list of learnings and observations from 2022 in web3. However, I got distracted and decided to enjoy a few days off over Christmas.
Instead, here are 3 random observations from the past year:
The quality of founders and operators was far higher in 2022 than in 2021. There are more smart people with great ideas tackling big problems than a year ago. As a result, the bar to starting a startup, reaching customers and raising funding is much higher than ever, without considering the economic challenges in the wider world and crypto.
Separation of art and utility in the NFT space. Art is a valid and thriving use case for NFTs. However, pure “utility” projects are far more hit-and-miss, with only a handful of examples of successful utility NFTs, and fewer again that combine desirable artwork with genuine utility. As a result, I don’t think we’ll see many startups and projects trying to do both at once in 2023, which for a while was where I thought the space was heading.
Finally, I’m seeing a divergence between crypto-native, experimental, boundary-pushing solutions, vs mass-market, web2.5 solutions. VC-backable web3 products in 2023 are expected to solve problems and do so in an end-to-end manner - hence the shift to web2.5, where the burden of onboarding and understanding is largely taken away from the customer. The rest of the market right now looks either very niche or experimental. However, that’s not to say those areas are irrelevant, merely that the pure web3 solutions are still far from mainstream adoption and will take longer to reach the popular consciousness.
So that's the rundown from the past year. It's been a wild ride, let’s see what the next thousands of hours have in store.
Feel free to subscribe if you’d like my occasional thoughts on the NFT space or connect with me on Twitter.
Fraser Bell / OHO LabsWhy I joined MintStars.
Over the last 3 months, I’ve been working with MintStars to drive awareness of a groundbreaking new web3-enabled platform for content creators. MintStars’ goal is to reinvent the creator economy while putting creators first - maximizing their earnings, protecting their content, and reducing burnout. 3 notes on the space:Market size: The creator economy may be a relatively new field, but over 50 million people now work as creators.Big problems: There are major unaddressed problems in the space...
Fraser Bell / OHO LabsWhy brands and retailers should use NFTs to reward customers for their loyalty
NFTs or non-fungible tokens took the world by storm in 2021, with recent reports putting the value of the market at over $40 billion. In December, Nike made waves by acquiring RTFKT, a digital fashion and NFT studio, for an estimated $100 million. This year is set to be another year of explosive growth for the space. So far in 2022, brands including Samsung, GAP, Patrón, Hennessy, Konami, Associated Press, Budweiser, Barbie and Bugatti have all announced NFT launches, with many other organisa...
Fraser Bell / OHO LabsApple + NFTs?
While the Apple Event of September 7th may not have included any announcements relating to web3, what might Apple’s strategy for the space look like? 3 thoughts: 1. Integrating cryptocurrency into Apple Pay is an obvious quick win, and their willingness to explore financial services has already been proven with products like Apple Pay, Apple Card (a US-only credit card) and the related acquisition of UK open banking startup Credit Kudos. 2. More than 1 billion people use Apple products - most...
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CMO at [MintStars](mintstars.com) Worked for 6 web3 startups in 2021/22 Passionate about the creator economy, ecommerce, brands and web3
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