Amanda: 0:00

How do you align community interests and incentives to make positive world impact? Not just through one CryptoKitty being auctioned at an exclusive island resort at Sir Richard Branson's Island, but how do you make that available in four communities at scale with multiple collections?

Joeri: 0:18

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today we are thrilled to have Amanda Terry with us. Hi Amanda, how are you doing?

Amanda: 0:33

Great GM. Gm Happy to be here.

Joeri: 0:37

GM Amanda Guys, probably you're wondering who is Amanda. Well, she's a visionary entrepreneur, investor and community builder with over 20 years of experience in digital media sales and business development. As the co-founder and the CEO of Metagood, Amanda is at the forefront of innovation in the Web3 space, launching groundbreaking initiatives like Unchained Monkey and Osura. com. She also leads ACTAI Ventures, where she invests in transformative companies that leverage digital advancements to enhance efficiency and scalability while addressing global challenges. Well, that's a mouthful. It could have been longer, Amanda, but I made it short. So, to start, Amanda, your career spans over 20 years in digital media and blockchain. What initially inspired you to transition from that traditional digital media roles to becoming a leader in the Web3 space?

Amanda: 1:41

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, as you mentioned. Yeah, 20 years sounds makes me very old, but yeah, I did spend time. I worked at Twitter, NBC and five digital media startups are acquired by the likes of Google, AOL and, most recently, Capital One credit card company, and it was always interesting.

Amanda: 1:59

The business model in Web2 is really whoever's consuming the content, is the product right for the advertisers and it's always measured by eyeballs Twitter engagement rates. But what I found so empowering about Web 3 was that it's really more about your community and in the case of MetaGood and OnChainMonkey, all of our NFT holders are actually, in a way, they contribute to the community. Ideally, the price of the NFTs go up and they are not the product. There is no advertising. Instead, they're actually like ACTAI participants and owners of OnChainMonkey in our community through their tokens, and that's what I found to be really exciting about the Web3 model is obviously the importance and the value creation by and for the community of holders, and so I got into Web3 because of my co-founder, Bill Tai, who was our chairman.

Amanda: 2:59

If you don't know who Bill is, he was the first investor in Zoom, he seeded Canva, wish, dapper Labs and now 23 publicly traded companies, and I've known him for gosh over 10 years. Now, 11 years 2013, through his nonprofit ACTAI Global, and ACTAI did a NFT actually did the first NFT for ocean conservation. When Bill was investing in Dapper Labs in 2018, he told Roem, can you create a turtle cat? We're going to name it Hanukki, which is a turtle cat in Hawaiian, and we'll auction it off the Necker Blockchain Summit and give all the proceeds to Captain Paul Watson and to park the Sea Shepherd boat at Antigua to protect the turtle nesting area. And to park the Sea Shepherd boat at Antigua to protect the turtle nesting area.

Amanda: 3:45

And that, as I mentioned, was the first NFT for ocean conservation. I learned about NFTs then through his nonprofit ACTAI Global and then fast forward three years and the thought was how do you do this, but at scale? How do you align community interests and incentives to make positive world impact? Not just through one CryptoKitty being auctioned at an exclusive island resort at Sir Richard Branson's Island, but how do you make that available for communities at scale with multiple collections? And that was really the founding story behind MetaGood, which we started in 2021.

Joeri: 4:21

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I know that OnChainMonkey made history by becoming the first 10K PFP collection on chain in a single Ethereum transaction. Can you talk a bit more about that project and maybe some of the challenges and learnings?

Amanda: 4:37

Yeah, sure, as I mentioned, Bill is our chairman, I'm the CEO. Our CEO is Danny Yang, who has been building on Bitcoin for over a decade. He founded the Stanford Bitcoin Meetup in 2013. He also created what is now Taiwan's largest cryptocurrency exchange, so basically the Coinbase of Taiwan, which is called MyCoin, and he also created BlockSeer, which he sold in 2018. Blockseer was used by government agencies and law enforcement to do blockchain analytics. So Danny, my CEO, has really been a pioneer in blockchain for over a decade.

Amanda: 5:13

When we launched initially the collection, he wanted to do something in a very energy efficient way, and so he created SVG files of the monkeys on-chain monkeys and, as I said, launched the first 10,000 NFT collection in a single Ethereum transaction. So very small file size, which I couldn't comment technically on all the things he had to do to get them into that efficient of a form. But he did write a great Medium post called the Making of On-Chain Monkeys. But then, when the Ordinals Protocol came out a year and a half ago, he also had the foresight to move that whole collection and inscribe them in inscription 2021-9, so that we were the first 10,000 NFT collection on Bitcoin, which is also historic.

Amanda: 6:02

We've been innovative both on Ethereum, on Bitcoin, which is also historic.

Amanda: 6:06

We've been innovative both on Ethereum then on Bitcoin and in the course of the last year we've had multiple portals where our holders can basically upgrade their assets from Ethereum to Bitcoin and they get four inscriptions. So it's not just the monkey, they get a certificate of ownership, they get a more modern art rendition of their monkey, so they literally get four inscriptions. And in terms of that process, there was a lot of education right People going from owning MetaMask wallets to at the time, x-verse was the only wallet that could support our assets and educating people on why ordinals, what's the difference between Ethereum NFTs and NFTs on Bitcoin, why should they move their assets over and I'm proud to say I can get into that if that's of interest to your audience, but that was a process that took over a year and we have over 80% of our 10,000 collection who have now moved from Ethereum over to Bitcoin, and that was also the first 10,000 collection to do something like this to try to move from Ethereum to Bitcoin.

Joeri: 7:11

Thanks, for sharing that. So it's interesting also for my audience, the differences, because you're using Bitcoin, between Bitcoin and NFTs that we all know, and the transition from on-chain market to Bitcoin seems like an important milestone. So talk to us a bit about that.

Amanda: 7:29

Yeah. So, as you probably know, most or actually a lot of people don't know and they're just learning this but most NFTs on Ethereum are actually pointers to offline file systems, the file storage systems, IP file systems. If a founder of an NFT project or decides not to pay their AWS bills or just decides to leave, you don't actually own the NFTs. They're stored off-chain and what you're trading are digital certificates of these NFTs, but not the actual NFTs. When you think about Bitcoin being on-chain, the real difference with the Ordinals Protocol, which was not available before Casey Rortimer developed this a year and a half ago, you can actually inscribe data, so art, music, I think they did. The World Wide Web source code was recently inscribed and then auctioned directly on the Bitcoin L1, which means that these assets that are stored on-chain will outlive us all as long as Bitcoin is in existence, and that's the real difference is on-chain ownership means you own your assets. You custody your own assets versus them being not necessarily on-chain.

Joeri: 8:45

That's interesting to know, Amanda. I was not aware of this. I think a lot of people are not aware of this difference. Now, something that is like every project that is important is community building, and it's also a core focus of MetaGood is community building, and it's also a core focus of MetaGood. So I'm wondering what are the strategies that you have found most effective in fostering a strong, engaged community around your projects?

Amanda: 9:13

Yes, community building is key, obviously in Web3, and you know. To start, I think it really comes down to core values, articulating values that attract the type of people you want in your community. And when we launched OnChainMonkey back in September 21, we created the values rise, typing exclamation point R-I-S-E, which stands for R, is for respect treat everyone with respect. Integrity we strive for the highest ethical standards. Sustainability we build for the future in a sustainable way. And enrichment we want to enrich our community to then create positive impact in the world, and I think that has really attracted people that are interested in building the long term and who appreciate basically our innovation and also our impact. And so I'd say it starts with the values we do.

Amanda: 10:14

Weekly space days, we've done poker tournaments where we've had some of our monkeys play poker against Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson or some investors. And almost every NFT, typically either Danny, my CEO, or myself are speaking and we get monkeys together. We were both in at Bitcoin Nashville last week and we both were speaking and describing Nashville. We also organized a breakfast for our monkeys and helped to sponsor a couple other events. So we're always creating offline and online opportunities for our community to connect. I think that's like a key part of community building.

Joeri: 10:55

Okay, yeah, so I love that you also mentioned Twitter Spaces. You worked there Twitter. You also mentioned Twitter Spaces. You worked there Twitter. So, with your experience in business development and sales at these companies like Twitter and other startups of course, what are the key lessons that you have applied to your ventures in the Web3 space?

Amanda: 11:15

I think we use Twitter Spaces, we use Discord because those are the tools available today, but I think that there is a lot of opportunity to improve communications for NFT communities. I'll mention, as you said at the beginning, I am the co-founder of Metagood, but I also co-founded a small venture fund with Bill Tai before we started this company called ACTAI Ventures, A-C-T-A-I, ACTAI Ventures, and we just invested in a company called Gigaverse, which is actually going to be a real-time video version of Clubhouse, so people can come in, you can watch people ACTAI and you could also come on with your camera and ask the people and the host different questions with your video on, and so it's a way to enable more authentic communications, and it's still in private beta. But I think there are better ways for communities to interact than just today what we have, which is pretty much Twitter, slash, x spaces and Discord, and I'm really excited about this tool, gigaverse to enable communities to interact authentically and with their cameras on as well.

Joeri: 12:25

Yeah, I'd love to try out that tool too, because I'm always interested in new tools. I was one of the first on Clubhouse too, and yeah, it's good to have alternatives to Telegram and Discord and Twitter spaces. You mentioned you're with ACTAI ventures, so you invested in that company, but I'm wondering how you identify actually and evaluate startups that not only promise growth but also create social as a difficult word societal benefits.

Amanda: 12:58

Yeah, when we're investing for ACTAI, we're always looking for markets that are undergoing large structural change, where we can invest in market opportunities, and we're looking for companies that are making basically leveraging digitization to make industries more efficient and processes more scalable and replicable. So if you look some of Bill's track record whether it was being the first check in, zoom, seeding, canva, dapper Labs these all fall within the general thesis of digitization making processes more scalable and replicable. The fund we've done 27 investments. Almost 70% of the fund is in crypto and AI startups, but we do look at other spaces as well.

Amanda: 13:44

The second thesis to our fund is believing that technology is the best way to make a positive impact in the world.

Amanda: 13:52

We've seen so many companies use technologies to improve our world, to hire more people, to do things in a more efficient and effective way, and we do. The other lens we look at outside of just digitization is are these companies making positive world impact, aligned with the UN SDGs? And so that's another kind of investment criteria we look at. Obviously, we're always looking for strong teams and understanding what their track records were prior to starting this company. We're looking for large, total addressable markets to the problems that they're trying to solve. We're looking at how differentiated their solution is and ultimately also what evaluation where we'd be entering the company and how much growth do we think there is in terms of what's the potential down the line, which is sometimes hard to evaluate. But we are looking for returns on our investments, so we want to make sure that there's a lot of room, if the company executes, to have a very successful exit so we can produce returns for our investors.

Joeri: 14:55

Makes sense. I also want to go back to the Azurecom sorry, the Ordinal's marketplace, because Ordinal it's really a passion. I know a lot of listeners want to learn about that and I know azuracom is onboarding top artists to Bitcoin. How do you envision the future of digital art evolving with these advancements in blockchain technology?

Amanda: 15:22

Yeah, we basically set up Osura and created Oshura, which is O-S-U-R-A dot com, because we wanted to launch our OCM Dimensions and we were finding good options in the current marketplaces to display our own art. Ocm Dimensions was the first NFT collection to use parent-child provenance, which is now a standard for what defined the collection for ordinals, and also use recursion, which is the ability to call for a piece of code to call other pieces of code to create a collection, which is also a standard kind of regenerative art on Bitcoin. But the existing marketplaces weren't really showcasing our own works. So we created this marketplace for the Mint, which is the sale of the OCM Dimensions, really for our own purposes. And then we started getting a lot of artists reaching out to us and said hey, can we launch on Asura, because you have a unique value to artists, both in showcasing their art, in making sure that a mint is provably random and fair, that there's no front running.

Amanda: 16:30

And we worked with Patrick Amidon, who's a well-known LA-based artist, to launch his Disobedience Collection, his first collection on Bitcoin. And then last week we minted out Alexi Andre, who was a top Artblocks artist. He did friendship bracelets with Snowfro. He had only done works on Ethereum and Tezos previously, and he did his first collection on Bitcoin with Osura. So that was a 10,000 collection, so it was a long form generative art.

Amanda: 16:58

Generative art means the art is generated from code collection and it was the first collection to also incorporate traits from our on-chain monkey genesis collection. So if you're an ocm holder, you could choose your monkey that would then influence the frontline art that you got. So it was pretty cool collaboration with him where he basically infused the on-chain monkey fur traits, the rare earring traits and your Genesis ID number into the art that was created on Frontline, and those were released last Monday at 10,000 collections. We also have a number of other artists that have approached us about doing really interesting innovative things on Bitcoin as a medium, for example, interesting innovative things on Bitcoin as a medium. For example, patrick Amidon his collection we did on rare sats and inscribed them on Silk Road sats. We have the capability, through this marketplace, to do things that are not available in other marketplaces, that are a bit more cookie cutter, and really showcase the art of the artists in the best way possible and do innovative launches with them that have not been done before on Bitcoin.

Joeri: 19:01

A lot is happening on your site, A lot of things, innovative things, a lot of, I would say, fascinating things. So then I'm wondering now what is it that you're now the most excited about, Amanda, be it in your companies or things that you see in the markets? I'm curious to hear.

Amanda: 19:29

Just frankly, coming back from Nashville last week, it was very clear that crypto and Bitcoin are not by topics in at least this US election, and I am very passionate about finding ways to increase adoption of crypto. It is about freedom. It is about the ability to custody your own assets and have more transparency, and freedom and transparency through the use of crypto and cutting out a lot of middlemen and intermediators that don't need to be part of many ACTAI across many different industries. So for me, I get really excited, both from an investing standpoint, finding companies that are reducing the friction and making it easier to use crypto in some cases for the Bitcoin ecosystem, since Ordinals is so new and Bitcoin previously was really just a store of value, there's a whole host of infrastructure that needs to be built around the Bitcoin L1. That has been done in some cases on Ethereum and Solana, but not yet on Bitcoin, and so I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

Amanda: 20:38

From an investment perspective, I think that there's a lot of interesting opportunity around L2s that have real world applications, kind of high volume real world applications, and so that's something that I'm exploring both on the investment side and with MetaGood and, yes, I think, generally I think that there's a ton of opportunity for making crypto, reducing the friction for the use of crypto, crypto reducing the friction for the use of crypto and, as we just saw last week and as we'll see, I think, going into the at least the US election policies on crypto are really coming to the forefront right now, which is very exciting. Obviously, with all the ETF approvals as well that have happened both on the Bitcoin, ethereum side, there's a lot of demand for these digital assets and to me, that's very exciting. I think we're at a really exciting time right now in the crypto space.

Joeri: 21:29

Absolutely so. I'm in Belgium, moving to Portugal next week, but also following the US elections and what is happening, and also when I heard that Larry Fink of BlackRock said that he has made a mistake, that Bitcoin is not fake, that it's something real. Yeah, all of these evolutions, I think, are really good sign. But I said it in the beginning, Amanda, you have 20 years of experience. You are doing a lot of stuff in the space. So then I'm curious what personal philosophies or guiding principles helped you along the way, because tech, entrepreneurship, it's a fast-paced world. Maybe can you give some advice to the people that are now listening to the show how to make an impact in the reptile space.

Amanda: 22:17

Oh, wow, that's a good question. Yeah, I think, at the end of the day, just looking at what motivates you and being really clear and always like why are you starting a company? There's always going to be in some way a sacrifice at some point in your life to build a company. It takes obviously a lot of energy to do that and I think before you start an entrepreneurial journey, you ask yourself why do you want to do this and what are you willing to do? What it takes and I think, even from the investing side, when we look at entrepreneurs, do they have the grit to deal with sometimes challenging market conditions or fundraising conditions etc. Do they have the grit and kind of resilience to keep persevering?

Amanda: 22:57

But I have to say, like having worked at in corporate and at different startups not as a founder as well I couldn't be more happy and feeling like I'm in this awesome flow in my life where I feel super fortunate to have incredible co-founders and teams that I work with both on MetaGood and the fund, and there's just so much alignment. Like I go to a conference and I'm talking about MetaGood but then people are coming to me for investment. It's very aligned, I think what I'm alignment. Like I go to a conference and I'm talking about MetaGood but then people are coming to me for investment. It's very aligned. I think what I'm doing and I think doing both actually makes me sharper and better on both sides, both as an investor just being in the deal flow and being on the ground with so many other startups at MetaGood, and then also from the MetaGood standpoint, having eyes on how investors look at companies and what they're looking for and even different models of investing, which, for crypto, is not so new.

Amanda: 23:49

But for a long time, the idea of doing kind of a token launch was not really a way that venture capitalists looked at investing, and I bet it's in a lot of ways, at least in the crypto space, not just on equity. It's also a potential token generating event in the insurance. There's a lot of new models that are coming for crypto investing. It's hard. I do feel like there's a lot of time you're in an ocean and you're just like, oh kind of you have to keep. Things are going super fast on you all the time, but it's exhilarating and I couldn't imagine going back to a different life, because I really love what I do every day and I feel super lucky to work with people. I work alongside.

Joeri: 24:34

Oh, yes, I feel your enthusiasm, your passion, that you love what you're doing. That's what we all want doing something that we love. Why I made this podcast episodes?

Amanda: 24:45

because I love doing them yeah, we are coming at the end. It's like life is too short, right. It's like we have brain rate time and give to everything. It's not just your work, get your own personal health and if you have a family and all like your friends. You gotta pick and choose, and I think my guiding principle is giving energy to things that give energy back to me, right.

Amanda: 25:09

Whether it's like in my personal life or my professional life, I'm attracted to things that replenish me and give me energy, and so far, the entrepreneur journey has given. While it's tiring at times, like ultimately, I just get so much energy and positive feedback from it that it's something that I want to keep pursuing. And same thing with my. I have a daughter and I get so much like positive feedback and love and good energy from her too. So those are that's really where I kind of focus most of my time. But that also means I've had to cut out certain things and I probably don't have as many social friends as I did before I started all this stuff, because I just can't keep up with everything.

Joeri: 25:49

But but to me it's just yeah, you have fine energy and you gotta put it first thing that if you turn absolutely, and I think we could talk for hours about that, Amanda, but we are at the end of the episode, so what I always ask to my guests is if people want now to learn more about you, about Ordinals, about everything that you are doing, metagoods or Shura, where would you like me to send them?

Amanda: 26:17

Yeah, I mean you can follow me on Twitter at Amanda Terry, t-er--r-y I'd say our on-chain monkey account, o-n-c-h-a-i-n. Monkey. We're tweeting very regularly Following my co-founder, danny, which is H-U-E-P. It's actually Danny upside down. People always wonder what is that, but that's his Danny upside down. It's also he tweets great stuff. Ashura is Ashura O S U R A underscore com and we also are also on Shane monkey and Ashura Shane monkey is on Instagram. Osura, I want you to give it. We all have socials on LinkedIn as well, and I've been ventures. If you want to follow more of the investing stuff is on Instagram and LinkedIn as well. I ACTAI. If you want to follow more of the investing stuff is on Instagram and LinkedIn as well ACTAI, ACTAI. So lots of ways to follow what I'm doing from an investment and building standpoint.

Joeri: 27:13

Okay, I will for sure mention those links and your accounts in the show notes. There is always a blog article for every podcast episode, so you can find Amanda links over there. Yeah, Amanda, and maybe we also meet again at the conference, because I didn't mention that we met in Austin at Consensus. So, Amanda, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show.

Amanda: 27:38

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to share our story. It's always an honor to get to come on the podcast. I know you have a lot of followers and we're fortunate to meet at Consensus. I'm really hoping to meet again soon. So thank you, I appreciate it.

Joeri: 27:54

Thank you so much, Amanda, to be a guest on my show. So, guys, if you know people around you that can benefit from learning more about ordinals or everything else that Amanda has talked about, be sure to share this episode with them. If you're not yet subscribed to our podcast, this is a really good moment to do this. If you haven't yet given me a review for the show, these five stars would really make me happy and give me a boost to get even more listeners, and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.