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gbirb & NFT Summer w/ @spencer & @moonbirds
Recorded: July 22, 2025 Duration: 1:13:54Space Recording
Short Summary
Moonbirds announces a $3.5 million seed round led by 1K and Yuga Labs, alongside a strategic partnership with OpenSeed, aiming to enhance community engagement and launch innovative physical collectibles. The project is witnessing a resurgence in community activity and trading volume as the NFT market trends upward.
Full Transcription
you so many people Oh Oh
Ah Oh All right, everybody. We are just getting folks on stage.
We are getting organized, so please grab a glass of water, maybe some coffee, and we
are going to start very shortly.
Thanks so much.
GM, GM, everybody, welcome to another space.
Today we have such an exciting conversation.
I see so many familiar faces and some new faces trickling in.
Make sure to retweet the space to engage in the comments.
This is your host,
Laura Rodriguez, also known as the Miami Ape. And I'm so excited to continue this series,
and especially with this very special guest, someone that has been on top of mine for a long
time, but also I feel like in the timeline lately, it has just been all over the place. Spencer,
timeline lately. It has just been all over the place. Spencer, thank you for being here today.
The new CEO of Moonburst. And, you know, we just have such an exciting conversation. I can't wait
to not only learn a little bit more about you, but I know we have some special announcements or
prices. So, yeah, I can't wait for this conversation. Thank you for making time for us.
How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thank you for making time for us. How are you doing today?
I'm doing great.
Thank you guys so much for having me.
It's been quite the last couple of days, huh?
Not just for Moonbirds, but for the whole NFT space.
I think you aptly named this space as NFT Summer, right?
And I, for a long time, have loved NFT.
It's sort of what brought me full time into the crypto space.
And I've traded meme coins and done other things, but really like the most fun that
I ever had, and it's not even the most money I ever made, but the most fun that I ever
had in the space was definitely NFTs 2021, like that era.
And so even the inklings of that coming back is really exciting to me obviously
you know i've made a lot of uh personal like like life decisions and a lot of like you know career
decisions and those kind of things around you know wanting this come back so i have a large interest
in it but i'm also just excited because i have fun during these periods of time and like i think you
know look there's a lot of a lot of things in crypto where sometimes,
you know, crypto is its most fundamental core is this very like intense world shaping thing.
But also the way that you experience it can often be this very light and playful experiential
moment. And so zooming in and out of those dialectics within what like crypto is and means i i just i really enjoy the
space that that you know nft isn't really ip occupy within that absolutely and i think that
many of us have you know have been around to know that maybe it's not the most money that we have
made but for sure probably you know the best friendships and stories and things that you had to be there to sort of get it.
So I'm with you on that.
And, you know, you have done some pretty impressive things.
And we could talk about, you know, the $3.5 million seed round
that was led by 1K and Yuga Labs.
But we're also, you know, now the partnership that we're going to talk about
with OpenSeed, the deal, the reset division.
So just I think there's a lot here.
But for those that might not be familiar with you, can you tell us a little bit about who you are?
Just kick it off with a quick intro and how you landed as the CEO of Moonbirds.
Yeah, so I've got like a weird and winding path in life.
I used to be a competitive fencer.
I did like World Cups and Grand Prix,
CS and fencing, foil fencing.
Did that kind of in between high school and college,
started working in a tech startup,
you know, got promoted to C-suite,
run a few million dollars in contracts.
We were doing ed tech.
The joke at the company was
we were doing education technology,
but I didn't yet have an education.
So ultimately left that company,
went to the University of Chicago,
got an economics degree, was an executive at a couple more startups, had a small exit on one of them. And in 2021, sort of was looking at what to do next in
life, started venture investing with a group called Lofty Ventures. It started with our own
prop capital. We ended up running an angel syndicate. But one of the investments that I made was just like, you know, a bunch of people were making monkey noises on a
clubhouse room at the time. And I was like, I don't know, like, let's check this out. And
waterboard pretty early ended up getting into artifact pre-qualified items. We've got airdrop
clonex and then cool cats and kind of you name it, I traded it. And, you know, in December of 21, sold a lot of my portfolio, most of it to stables and looked
really dumb for about like two, three months and then pretty smart. Ended up raising a fund after
that. Our fund, you know, very active participant in the space at peak. We did about 5% of market
volume in NFTs, just trading all sorts of different stuff.
We're one of the largest holders of Pudgy Penguins.
I think one of the more well-known things, we liquidated the 3AC portfolio of Pudgy,
so we bought them all.
So that was something that was fantastic for us, and we were really close to that team
as they did it.
Fast forward, we ended up launching Orange Cap Games.
Orange Cap Games made Vibes TCG, which is the Pudgy Penguins trading card game. Um, you know, fast forward, we ended up launching orange cap games, uh, orange cap games made
vibes TCG, which is the pudgy penguins trading card game.
Um, uh, and you know, we did phenomenally well so far.
So we brought to market in eight months, physical and digital TCG.
Uh, it's on the star city game circuit, which is the largest game circuit, you know, in,
in TCG and in North north america um which was
fantastic the five games when we joined were magic the gathering disney larkana star wars unlimited
um flesh and blood and then the fifth game they added was vibes so that was a huge deal for us
we've also partnered with ebay um we're doing a psa partnership at san diego comic con this coming
week jim actually this week i'm leaving literally tomorrow for that. We have a partnership with CGC,
and we've also done promos with big companies
like VanEck, InTheSpace, et cetera.
So for us, we were able to bring
a very cool physical collectible to life.
We describe our tagline for Orange Cat Games
as bringing IP to life, right?
And then Moonbirds, right?
So throughout that time, very close with Garga,
that team, talk with him a lot, you know, there's very few people in this space who really see the chessboard, right? It's really easy to not quite understand what's going on here. And certainly,
you know, have always had a lot of respect for Garga. He's one of those people. I think that's
why he's, you know, him in the role that he's in now, stepping back in as CEO has me really excited
about what they're doing over there. And we were talking about it and it became clear they were sort of moving off
certain business divisions. And the elephant in the room is what happens to Moonbirds. And Moonbirds
to me had always been something like in my trading, throughout various periods of time,
I've held lots of Moonbirds. I've held at one point, I think it was the largest Mythics holder.
But it's just an IP that's near and dear to me.
And I think the peak of Moonbirds is the peak of fun for NFTs for a lot of people. And there isn't
another Moonbird, I think, out on the market. If you wanted to acquire a product, there just isn't
something else that is what Moonbirds is, at least to me. And so I spoke with Garga, had the
opportunity, look, we had this team that was really good at bringing IP to life. It makes sense to have our own IP. And so what we see, and I think this is the case,
is over the last several years, in crypto, the defining characteristic of the best companies
was having the best tech. But as we're seeing today, a lot of the tech, the rate of tech improvement in crypto
has really slowed. And as the rate of tech improvement has really slowed, the differentiating
factor for companies, for protocols, et cetera, is no longer tech, it's marketing. I think that's
something that Pudgy really showed us, right? That is what is the most interesting. If you want
to be on the forefront of crypto today, I think you want to be on the forefront of crypto today,
I think you have to be on the forefront of IP, of marketing, of awareness, right? More so than you
just need to be on the forefront of tech. And this is a huge paradigmatic shift in the industry.
And this is where, you know, very few people understand that like the forefront of marketing
is intellectual property, is IP, right? And so you have this historic, well
known NFT project that, you know, maybe is not, we're not at the time we were looking
at acquiring it and decided to do it. Like it's not in the best place necessarily, but
like you have this incredible IP, right? You have this huge shift in the industry that
I think is going towards IP. Many people may disagree with me on that, but that's where I think it's headed. And, you know, like if we weren't going to pick up
Moonbird, someone else was, and you don't get two chances of that. Right. And so it was just
a really exciting, you know, opportunity to, to, to, to get to really write our name in a very
public way on, on the space. And we're, we're super excited about that.
Absolutely. And I'm sure this wasn't like an easy journey from
not only making the decision that makes sense, and you touched on so many different points of
the importance of IP and the brand acquisition, but what were some of the challenges that you
faced kind of putting this together? And more or less, I don't know how much can you tell us about
how long did it take? Since many times, you know, we don't know the full picture, right? We see what the announcement
comes out, but everything that goes behind closed doors. So what can you tell us about
what those challenges for navigating that process look like?
Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, there's a lot I can't speak to. It was a several months process.
Like this was a very extensive legal document, et cetera. I would say like, you know, a lot of the things that people may have felt would have been controversial, like weren't like,
I think Garga and I and working through this, we're really aligned in just like, what is the
best thing for the Moonbirds overall, right? Like, I'm not even confident that we came in as like,
the highest bidder, so to speak on on this property, right. But like, you know, I think
the reason that it ended up in our hands was like, I think Garga saw the vision for what we could do
with it. And I think we were we were ended up in our hands was like, I think Gargis saw the vision for what we could do with it.
And I think we were uniquely situated, right?
As big traders, big participants in the space, like, you know, there's quite literally like
few to none people in the entire world who have traded more NFTs than me and my team
have.
And so like, you know, like our knowledge set of what has historically gone on in this
industry and like what matters, I is is is very substantial, right. And so you know, when we were talking to
the Gargoy like it was never like some sort of hostile, you know, back it was it was like, look,
like, we kind of both aligned on this made sense. Like, we figured out the financial terms, there's
a lot of, you know, lawyers, you know, always always do their thing, you know, but like, at the
end of the day, I think we were just very aligned on on what it was. And, and you know, always do their thing, you know, but like, at the end of the day, I think we were just very aligned on what it was. And, you know, there's a lot of logistics in the transition
and those kind of things. But almost nobody knew about it, right? Like, literally, my team found
out the night before the announcement. And I think you see that, right? It's one of the few
announcements in the space that didn't leak. And so we were very proud of that. Because that was
important to us. Like, you know, I come from a fund, like we're a highly regulated entity at the fund, right?
You know, like this isn't some cowboy, you know, whatever,
like we're not paying attention to the right way to do things kind of company.
And, you know, it's really important to me to show, don't tell, right?
And so, you know, that was, I thought,
a really good foot for us to start off on in terms of like,
here's the level of execution that we care about, right?
Absolutely, Spencer.
And you have called this before, you know, a hard reset.
What does it mean like in practice in the day-to-day
in how you're running Moonburst now?
And sort of what, you know, has there been any changes
in what the roadmap looks and what, you know,
the impact that it's going to have in the community as a whole.
Yeah, I mean, look, like we were very clear about this in all our discussions and all
of our communications since acquiring it.
It's like, you know, I have the context.
I know the history of Moonbirds, right?
Like, but we are not looking back and saying, what was the vision of, you know, Cairo or
Justin Mazel or even Yuga, right?
Like, that's not Yuga, right? Like that's not the
goal, right? The goal is like unburdened by what has been, like taking a step forward, right?
There's a couple of things that are really important in that, like, you know, hard reset,
taking a new step forward. One of which is just like, there are a lot of things that happened
in the Moonbirds Eco during a period of time when people weren't paying the most attention, right? Like Moonbirds Mythics,
like one of my favorite things about Moonbirds, people know this about me, I love Mythics, right?
Like the art is so good. And yet so many people have just never looked at it, right? I think this
weekend, basically every day, each day of this weekend, we did 10% of the lifetime trading volume
of the entire collection of Mythics was done each day. It's, we did 10% of the lifetime trading volume of the
entire collection of mythics was done each day. It's like Friday, 10%, Saturday, 10%, Sunday,
10%, right? Like that just shows you. And like, and like my view on mythics is one of the reasons
that I fell in love with it is like, I just like, don't think that you can browse mythics and not
find one that you fall in love with. Like, I think that that is more or less an impossible
endeavor. If that happens to you, you know, let me know. But like, the art is just so good. It's so detailed, so interesting.
And so, you know, part of that is like, okay, let's just bring awareness to things that people
don't know exist, right? Like, even the illustrated moon birds, right? You know, you guys change your
PFP on Sunday to an illustrated moon bird. And I saw some comments of being like, what NFT is this,
right? People do not know that every moonbird has both a pixel art version and an
illustrated version. Now, why is that, right? That is, and you know, look,
like I love the pixel art. I think it's actually incredible.
I love how expressive it is.
And I think it makes really good PFPs where the illustrator art comes in
really handy is like, as I said, IP is, is so valuable and important.
Like it is really tough, like not like many types of IP activations,
right, are tough to do with the pixel art. So for example, like putting the OpenSea logo on a pixel
art Moonbird is basically impossible, right? Like, it just doesn't look like the OpenSea logo. And so
having the illustrated versions, let's just do something like a collab where we put the OpenSea
logo on a Moonbird, right? As we develop more, again, we're about bringing IP
to life. The pixel art is great for a PFP, and we'll use it from time to time, but it has to be
really tasteful. It's really hard to get it exactly right. And I don't think it's hard and
worth the effort. You are much better off going with the illustrated side of things a lot of the times when you're utilizing the IP, right?
Now, most people don't even know that there was illustrated Moonbirds, right?
So starting to build brand identity around that figure, around that character, right?
This is something that our art director, Claire, has been working on,
and we haven't really started to roll out.
I think Claire's teased a few things here and there,
but really refreshing what is Moonbirds. One of the things that we've leaned into a lot, I think you guys teased a few things here and there. But really refreshing, what is Moonbirds?
One of the things that we've leaned into a lot,
I think you guys have seen this,
is BIRB, B-I-R-B,
as being sort of the calling part of the BIRBs.
The Moonbirds ecosystem is sort of the BIRBs ecosystem now.
We're gonna do a lot more on the intentionality
around some of that transition and how we speak about it,
but I like it a lot because I think
it's a little bit fresher, it's a little bit younger,
it's a little bit more mem. It's a little bit younger. It's a little bit more, more memetic, right? The, the, the burb, it just, it has good like
mouthfeel almost when you say it, it, it is like all sorts of funny, like G burb being the calling
heart of the community. Now I think it really works. It just hits. Right. I think the moon
part of moon birds, like is feels more 2021 than it does like where crypto is at in 2025.
Right. You know, in 2021, we had like safe moon. We had, you know, the,
the Terra Luna, like just to the moon was a lot more of a, of a,
of a saying in the space. And I think we see it a lot less now.
And so, you know, really that,
that focus on Burb is the beginning of what it's going to be a much larger sort
of brand transition. Right.
I think one of the things that Claire has talked a lot about our art director,
and again, we haven't, Claire hasn't really put out that much yet. It's coming, and this has been Claire's focus for the last few weeks is defining internally the brand, and then we're really going
to turn externally. But there's been a really big focus internally on let's define this brand,
and let's refresh it a little bit, and pick its lane. I think really the lane that we think makes sense for the brand is sort
of this edginess level like that's like between like, like pudgy and board Ape, right? Pudgy
is like, is like family friendly, like children friendly, right? And board Ape is like the
most D gen, like there's a key in a monkey's butthole, right? Like where Burb, I think we want to occupy is it's like this sort of adult swim that like 14 to 25 age range sort
of prime demographic of like, it's edgy, but it's not like, you know, like, there's not like a
monkey's butthole, right? I think there's a clear and interesting lane in that space between those
two companies. And I think that's really where Burb is going to occupy.
It's playful, but it's definitely a little bit edgier.
It's definitely not child-friendly in the same way
that Pudgy is, for example.
So I think as we think there, there's
a lot more that you guys are going to see
over the coming weeks and months.
We haven't really shipped a product yet for Moonbirds,
but we will.
One of the other things that's really interesting
about the illustrated Moonbirds is how good they are. And actually also Mythics is like they do
like for whatever reason, like AI works really well with them, right? And we've got on the record
a lot of time saying like we're not intending to really use AI for like products necessarily.
But in terms of the day-to-day like turning out of content, this is one of the things that I think is a superpower in 2025 that was unavailable in
2022. Right? Like, and I think we're one of the few groups, the truth is basically every
product is using AI to do a lot of their content right now. They're just not so vocal about
it. But I want to be vocal about it. I want our community to upskill themselves to learn
how to use it like, like the amount of activating that you can do right now that would
have taken, you know, animators, illustrators, like hundreds of hours, millions of dollars in 2021,
2022 is now like an intern with a prime energy drink sitting on a computer and a chat GPT
subscription, right? Like it's, and 20 minutes. Like it's, it's so incredibly like an order of
magnitude shift of what you can do. And my belief in the long run, like the same way that I believe this about L2s, where I think L2, and I said this earlier in this
space, is there was this creep of the... There was this time when it was really important to
have tech. I think AI feels inevitable. And we can look at that and say, I want to make an AI
company. But the truth is, I'm not going to sit
here and make an LLM that's competitive to open AI. I'm not going to sit here and compete with
Cursor. I'm not going to sit here and compete with Claude. I have no idea how you'd even begin
doing that. But I think of those as all infrastructure. And so what I think you'd
want to be is the person that's really good at using the newest and best infrastructure that's growing most rapidly, right? And, you know, I don't think AI
today can make production-ready content, but it's so incredibly close. And the rate of improvement
is really good. And I think it's a worthwhile bet for us to say, hey, actually the big unlock that
AI allows is like, or one of the big unlocks it allows is you can now take IP and just do a lot more stuff
with it, right? Like one of the like workflows that we've been doing with our production side
of things is like, you know, Claire might draw a sketch, right? We might take that sketch,
then use AI to mock it up, to look like a product, then send that product to the factory to get a
quote, right? Like that mock-up stage would have taken weeks and tons of money in the past. And
now it's two minutes, right? Like, I don't think people have fully understood the impact of how much cheaper and easier it is, right? Like, when we
see, you know, these videos, like these hype, like these teaser videos that people made in NFTs for
many years, like, you know, people spent, there are projects that spent millions of dollars on
three-minute videos, right? That same million-dollar video is now like,
you know, like, I don't know, 200 bucks worth of credits to make. And, you know,
is it quite the same quality today? It's not quite there. I still think it justifies the difference
in where we, like, you can take all that money you saved and allocate it towards other things
in the business, right? But it's going to get there so soon, right? And so that's like a big bet we've made on the content side. That being said,
like we do have a full art team in-house. Like we have, I think like four now artists in-house
that just draw. We also have over 50 artists that we collaborate with globally. Both, you know,
and this comes from like what we've done with vibes and our promo cards and all sorts of stuff.
So like, I don't want people to misconstrue this. Like it is not just AI driven. Um, but you know,
some of the day-to-day stuff is, and one of the other things that we focused on internally is
like, we have a lot of interesting assets that we've made internally, um, that are hand-drawn
assets that are used in concert with prompts with the AI that we're using in order to generate
outputs that look more correct,
right? Giving them full turned around views of the figure really helps it produce something that
doesn't look so janky, if that makes sense. No, it makes perfect sense. And I think, you know,
you touch on different areas, but overall, like the community is at the core of any NFT collections.
And now that we're speaking about
like bringing this ip to life and utilizing all the tools that we have available um i'm glad that
you clarified that it's not about you know not having a whole you know art team but taking
advantage of the tools that we have in order to to deliver and ship things faster have you guys
thought about you know expanding, expanding beyond X?
And maybe what are some of those things that you believe are going to make Moonbirds, you
know, culturally relevant again?
And also with this rebranding, because, you know, it is, you know, you're trying to find
like a middle ground where Moonbirds is just going to take off and really bring the community
like a complete new vision.
And I'm excited to see that.
But what are some of those plans beyond, I guess, just X and utilizing this IP?
So are you talking about, you know, just the storytelling?
Is it gaming?
Is it physical products?
Is it utilizing Instagram, TikTok?
What are some of the of the ideas that
first come to mind absolutely i mean so there's a lot to unpack here there's a big question so i'm
going to try and take it step by step but you'll have to let me know if i if i missed some of it
um i think first of all is you know like we try to do this in a piecewise approach right
step zero was reactivate the existing moonbirds community like there are people you know a lot of people in the moon birds community just stuck around right or maybe
they like still hold their moon birds they didn't go join other communities they just sort of maybe
weren't paying as much attention to nfts and so when we first acquired the project our our zero
with goal was just reactivate see who's here and there was way more people who came out of the
woodwork saying you know hey like how do we support like we've always loved moon birds like
like you know how do we get re-engaged like like that was the woodwork saying, you know, hey, like, how do we support? Like, we've always loved Moonbirds. Like, you know, how do we get re-engaged? Like, that was the first
thing, right? We, you know, going around, just doing the rounds, making sure the community was
engaged and active, the one that stuck around and been there, right? And, you know, that was
faster and easier. And there's just a lot more there than even I had hoped. And I had hoped it
to be very high. You know, when we acquired Moonbirds, we were doing like a
half a million impressions on Twitter a day for like a week on that acquisition, which was awesome.
It's a very good place to be. And so that first is like reactivate people who own Moonbirds,
but maybe haven't been paying as much attention. That was the first one.
as much attention, right? That was the first one. Then the next step is reactivate the community
outside of Moonbirds, right? I think one thing that's been clear, especially this weekend, is
everyone just wants to see Moonbirds win, right? As I said, the peak of fun in crypto for a lot
of people was the peak of the original Moonbirds run, right? And so getting those allies, activating
them, who wants to ride with us on this journey?
I think Moonbirds occupy a really unique space in NFTs this cycle.
It's just a different thing than a lot of other projects.
And so I think people are starting to see that and understand it.
When it comes to domain expansion and reach expansion, Moonbirds is a brand that literally
only exists on Twitter and Discord, like when we acquired it, right?
We've done a couple of things to expand reach for the IP exterior to that. So like we, one of the
first things that we did was we launched a Telegram channel. Now everyone's launching Telegram
channels. We were pretty early. We weren't the first. We were pretty early to the Telegram
channel sort of like wave. And, you know, we see Telegram US, you know, launching their wallet today. Like,
it's very interesting to see the arc of sort of Telegram overall. The Moonbirds announcement
channel has 25,000 people in it on Telegram. And, you know, like maybe some are bots, but I think
it's like maybe 50-50 at most, right? Like it's still like thousands of people in this announcements
channel. You know, we see, you know see hundreds of reactions to messages we send
there. There's just a lot going on there. And this was pretty low hanging fruit. It was
a direction we saw a lot of companies going. We were pretty early to it. When we did our
sticker release on Telegram, it was $1.4 million got sent into the raffle to try and get the stickers.
We ended up returning like, well, I think it was 1.25 million, like, you know, because
that's how that that release mechanism worked.
But like, there's clear demand for the IP on that platform.
And that brought a lot of eyeballs to it, right?
And now we have these beautiful, you know, Telegram gifts that a lot of our community
has and sticker packs rather that our community
has. And, you know, they're done by official Telegram artists. So it really was a way to
just expand platform. Some of the next expansions, and I've mentioned this before, you know, is
we want to do it piecewise. Like, again, internally right now, we're on the arc of defining the new
brand, right? Because you don't want to just hit the ground running on tons and tons of content that's not on brand and then shift. I think in
the next month or so, you'll start to see the new brand really come out and shine and we'll have a
lot more clarity on that. But some next steps that are low hanging fruit is start having more gifts
available, right? I don't think that that's some crazy magical rabbit to pull out of a hat. That's like in 2025, you're
an NFT product. That's like the bare minimum, right? Like start to do gifts, you know, having
an Instagram presence, right? Having a TikTok presence. I think short form video is really
where things are headed, right? If you see like TikTok, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, Snapchat stories, right?
You can kind of make like one piece of content and share it on all those different venues.
And really like in order to grow an IP and be meaningful outside of the bubble that we
existed on CT, that's like a must, right? So that's something that we're gearing up to do,
but we have to do it right. So that's not like rocket science. That's not some we're gearing up to do, but we have to do it right. That's not rocket science.
That's not some big crazy thing.
That's literally the bare minimum in my mind.
As I mentioned in the beginning, one of the strongest things about Moonbirds as a company
or I guess about Orange Cap Games as a company is our production capabilities specifically
for collectibles.
So this is what we're really, really good at.
We're really good at a bunch of things,
but one of the things that we're really, really good at
is making physical collectibles that activate IP
and bridge back to the sort of digital
and native experiences, right?
We haven't announced what that is yet for Moonbirds,
but there's a couple of things that we're working on
in the pipeline that I think are really exciting.
If you follow Claire, our director's account,
you might get some some little leaks here
and there. But you know, we're beginning on some of those
production timelines right now, like some of some of the stuff
is in process. Some takes longer than others, like we're
cranking on all funds fronts in the product side, right. And
again, like, this is where like, I'm dedicated, dedicating all
of our art resources right now, that like, not all, but most of
our resources towards that product side. And then that's why our sort of marketing team,
who is not necessarily drawing things, is like, you know, doing an AI-led approach to the other
side of things, because like, it's all hands on deck on making those physical products. That being
said, though, we're 51 days into acquiring, like, Moon right? Like for Vibes, the Pudgy Penguins trading card game that we launched, that took us eight months to launch.
And that was the fastest launch of a trading card digital and physical ever, right? By like
an order of magnitude of like, it was twice as fast to three times as fast as the next person
who ever met. So in the interim, like what we've been, you know, really rallying is like, who are
we in a rally with, you know, ride with, right? You know, one of the other expans what we've been really rallying is who are we going to rally with, ride with? One of the other expansions we've done, we expanded to towns.xyz, checking out more crypto-native platforms.
Moonbirds, Mythics, and Audis all get to participate in that towns airdrop.
I think one of the things that has moved the needle for a lot of projects that like, like that I've been a part of is sort of that,
like, hey, we as a community are a community and an IP. And so if you and we have momentum,
right, and we have it right now. And so I tweeted this out yesterday, like a lot of what we're
trying to do is what are cool opportunities for our holders that come from partners that want to
experience the shill power of our ecosystem, essentially.
Right?
Like, how do we work with other brands where there's this exchange of our community gets
something that they want and that lets them rally behind another brand and help promote
the brand and help engage with it.
Right?
That's also something we think about in products.
Right?
That's why in the past, we did a VanEck promo with VanEck.
It was handed out when they did the bell ringing of the New York Stack Exchange for Vibes TCG, right? That's a great way, that type of collaboration, it just benefits
everyone, right? That's kind of how I think a lot about sort of airdrops and things. And
so while we work on the physical collectible side, which I'm very excited to sort of tease
more about, but now is not the time. I'm very excited to share and announce with you. And
it's something that's going to coming you know this year right a
lot of physical products our bar though I should say on physical practice is very very
high so like like you know I could get you a gildan shirt tomorrow but that's not the
type of thing that we do right like if we're gonna do you know something we're gonna do
it like really right and like really right in a crazy way right like I've said in the
past that like like one of the things that my team is tasked with right now is like, I want to do me, I think it'd be funny to
do Moonbird's fanny packs again, right? But like, the bar for quality is like, it needs to be like,
I would rather wear the Moonbird's fanny pack than my Toomey fanny pack, which they have like
a very high bar, right? So but that that's how we think is like, it can't just be like good for
web three, anything that we put out has to be good, period.
Right.
And so while our like physical production team is at the factory, is, you know, making
the molds, is doing the prototyping and all that sort of stuff, which is all going on
concurrently, like what we've also been doing is who are the crypto native brands and how
do we collaborate with them and how do we work with them and how do we do interesting
and fun activations with them that will really get the community engaged not only
keep the community at the forefront but vice versa and where our community has really shined is like
is like they are ready to fill and partner and collaborate with those who collaborate with us
right like like the amount of people that hopped into our towns like i think we're close to hitting
the the thousand person you know number in there i think it was like 400 in the first day or so, right?
Like that was really, really substantial. And, you know, that's the beauty of where
the community is at today is like everyone in Moonbirds just wants to win and wants Moonbirds
to be relevant again. And we are relevant again. And that's, you know, only going to
be increasing. And so what do you do with that relevancy, right?
Because relevancy in crypto can be very fleeting, right? But to maintain it, you need to parlay
every moment of relevance into the BD work, the, you know, community growth work that gets you to
the next moment of relevance and so forth and so forth and so forth. You know, I think like we
really, we had a moment this weekend where a lot of people just woke up to like, here's actually like, when and if NFTs are back, like Moonbirds
is so well positioned because here's a thesis that I have is like a lot of people just checked
out of the NFT space and for good reason. Like there weren't volumes, there weren't
a lot of like crazy runs. It just wasn't as fun as it had been in the past. It had been so fun. And they went to meme coins. They did all
those kind of things. And meme coins are great. It's a different game and whatever. But every
friend group of crypto traders is one person who still held their NFTs. And as that comes back,
that's the person that the rest of the friend group is going to go to and say, who's relevant
today in 2025? And that's the conversation where I want Moonbirds to be at
the forefront. And what does that mean? It means partnering with great partners like OpenSea,
who are market leaders. OpenSea, number one by volume right now. We'll talk more about that.
But Moonbirds should be partnered with a number one, right? That's about, you know, getting the Moonbird's community engaged with products like Towns,
getting them airdrops.
You know, Towns is a company backed by Andreessen, Benchmark, and Coinbase Ventures.
This is a very real company, right?
Who knows how their token will do?
That's not for me to say.
But regardless of outcome, like, it is still something that is worthwhile for us to be
engaged with, right?
And, you know, And really solidifying,
how do we do cool activations? And I think there's two levels of activations. There's the
really big stuff, which you'll see, I'm not making announcements about that. I'm not making commitments
to it. The way that I like to operate is we will announce things right as they're ready, right? Until then, don't believe anything
I say, just look at what I ship, right? In the first 51 days, you know, some of the activations
need to be the town's activation. We did an activation with a company called Fidgetals,
where we gave every holder a Moonbird, Mythic, or Oddity, a free Pokemon card. You know, we did
this big activation on Telegram to just sort of grow relevance, demonstrate that Moonbirds is not only a relevant brand, but a revenue generating brand, right?
And, you know, we're announcing our partnership with you guys. Like, this is 51 days in, right?
And there's a lot of stuff that takes a lot longer than 51 days. But I'm also very cognizant that,
that we can't wait eight months. When we acquired eight removereds, we said, okay,
like, we can't wait eight months, right? You know, if when we acquired Moonbirds, we said,
when we launched Orange Cap Games, we didn't even announce the trading card game or do the sales
until pretty close to the launch of it. So those eight months, we were in silence.
Here, I didn't want anyone really knowing about this acquisition until everyone knew about it.
And so that's why we announced it immediately
instead of keeping this quiet
for several months to build, right?
But I know you can't wait eight months, right?
That's not the speed that Krypton moves at.
And that's why, again, across those first 51 days,
we really wanted to begin to show
that we can do interesting and cool partnerships.
And we just want that to build over time
to more and more interesting and cool partnerships. Spencer we just want that to build over time to more and more interesting and cool partnerships.
Spencer, and I think you guys have done like a great job at utilizing where the attention is, right?
And I think I read a post that you had the other day about, you're like, oh, now everyone that I share my calendar with now, all of a sudden they're like booking time with me.
booking time with me. And it made me laugh a little bit, but I'm sure, right? It's like where
And it made me laugh a little bit, but I'm sure, right?
the attention goes now, everyone wants to have a conversation or find out more and kind of get all
these details. I think that... That just is how this industry works, right? I think one thing is
that I've watched and it's frustrating or it's not frustrating. It's like timing is everything,
right? And so how I think about it is we we have, you know, bullets in the chamber,
right, ready to fire.
And when the timing is right, it's when we fire them.
And like, you need to just continue to go search for more bullets and continue to pick
time and pick moments correctly.
And I think like this, you know, last weekend was a really good moment for us.
And, you know, part of how this industry works is like,
look, you are more relevant. We're number two on volume today. We are number one a bunch of
days of the weekend. It is important as you're talking to partners, they are more interested
in working with you if you are more relevant within your industry. And that is this like snowballing compounding effect. Right. And so again, like,
like, like the goal always is how do you take momentum and use that to generate future momentum?
And everyone as a baseline just wants to see NFTs win. Everyone wants to see Moonbirds win.
And so it's not the hardest reach, right? Like this is where our team is primed and ready to go
for moments like this. And that was actually like my next question, because we did talk about this pretty significant seed round of three from five million dollars.
Some of the things that you're going to be focusing on, especially products that is going to be available now because of this.
But also what kind of team have you been building around you and
you did mention that they didn't even know about it right but it sounds like from the art director
to everyone that is working behind the scenes um this is like a really big part of it can you tell
us about you know who who who's your team and that is helping you accomplish all these things
and actually deliver right not just have empty promises, but more like, hey, this is what I'm shipping and this is where we're going next.
Yeah. So we have about a 20% full-time team at OrangeCap Games. The benefit for us is we're
already a revenue generating company. One of the things for us is the number one thing I think
about crypto companies, you just have to keep the lights on, right? That's your primary objective.
You will win given enough time. Right now, I think it's a time you just have to keep the lights on, right? Like that's your primary objective. Like you will win given enough time.
Right now, you know, I think it's a time to be a little bit more aggressive on how you're
activating because I think the moment is now, but like, you know, you also want to be in
a place where if there's a bear market tomorrow, you're fine, right?
Our team is split up in a couple of ways.
You know, we have four full-time on the art side, but again, there's like 50 people that
we work with from time and time on the art side,
like externally as contractors, right?
We have a bunch of people on the BDE side.
You know, Sneaker Dad, shout out to him.
Leads a lot of our, leads our Web3 partnerships.
So if you guys know Sneaker Dad, big Sneaker Dad shill.
We have recently brought on a new Moonbirds intern
who some of you will certainly know.
We have not announced the new Moonbirds
intern yet. We've got a couple other people too. We're going to be announcing a couple
of the Moonbirds dedicated team members this week. I think a lot of people have been asking
who is really the core Moonbirds team within OrangeCap. So there's about five to six people
who are really just like fully Moonbirds dedicated. There's about five or six people that are
fully vibes dedicated.
And there's a lot of overlap in between on the other things, right? Like our team that's boots
in the ground in Asia doing manufacturing, like helps on both sides, right? We're only printing
so often for vibes. And so like, you know, we actually have, you know, Orange Type Games is
working with even other companies outside of our own umbrella to manufacture stuff for them with
our manufacturing team.
But that means that like when we wanna do the Moonbird stuff,
like, you know, we're talking to factories anyway,
like they're boots on the ground there,
they're having those conversations,
they're getting the prototypes.
Like there's a lot of synergies across it.
You know, art team wise too, like, again,
we're very, very fortunate.
Claire, who's our art director,
is our super secret, not so secret weapon um clur
if you're searching on twitter clu you many use and then an r um and like they're just so good
like we're really really lucky like claire is a really uh claire's backstory and she'll claire
for a second um claire was a very very in demand artist assistant in the fine art world so claire
did a lot of work with other artists,
from Jim Dine to Curtis Coolidge to like really big names, like sort of ghost making art for them.
This is how a lot of like the fine art world works is like, you know, there's an artist whose
name's on it, but they have a whole team that kind of works with them. And Claire is basically
one of the most, if not the most in demand of these people, right? And what vibes got to be
for Claire for the first time was Claire, you know, Claire's name is on all the cards they've done, et cetera, like really taking that forefront.
I think what Claire did an incredible job of is, you know, from that experience of being a printmaker, being an artist assistant in like, is really good at like chameleon into styles and like, you know, adapting to them and defining them.
So what is exciting is, you know, like if anyone who's seen, if you haven't checked it out, you have to go check out Vibes TCG.
Look at the art that Claire did. Um, and it's just so good. Right. And
especially this new set there, um, what moon birds, then burb and the new rebrand and the new sort of
like re invigoration of this brand identity is going to be is like, this is Claire's first stab
at like defining from scratch, not quite from scratch, but like really being like, you know,
creative direction of a full brand. And, and, and I'm just like, so incredibly bullish on the output. And what's
been really great is like the rest of our art team kind of recognizes the talent they're working
with. And so we've had the ability to work with really great artists, you know, you know, from
all across the world, you know, shout out to stupid penguin who did your guys's, I'm not calling them stupid,
that's just their handle, but Stupid Penguin who did your guys's PFP basically on a few hours
notice. She's an incredible artist too. There's just a lot of people who want to work with Claire
and recognize Claire's ability. One of the things too that Claire and I are really aligned on in the
business, I think this is important, is just really, really high quality standards.
I've mentioned this before, we threw out almost an entire print run of the first set of vibes
because it wasn't up to our quality standards. We donated a lot of money to a rainforest
to offset the sort of paper that was, but we just don't ship products that they're not
to our quality. And when we did that, it really
set a tone internally. It was a very expensive decision. It set a tone internally where everything
must be insanely good or we just don't put it out there. And everyone must know that we
in leadership hold ourselves to the same standard, if not a higher standard than everyone else.
the same standard, if not a higher standard than everyone else. I have never seen Clare ship
anything that is not incredible. And a lot of people, when they first join our team, they're
like, oh man, this is kind of intense. But it's just like, it's how it is. And it's like,
you either succeed or very quickly, like some people, it doesn't jive with them,
but that's just how we are internally. We're really sort of intense, focused,
we only ship the best kind
of stuff. But we're also like, you know, we're spanning two worlds. Like part of our team is
incredibly crypto native, right? Like, you know, and then part of our team is really just like
product art focused, right? And I think those two things kind of come together. But even the
product art focused folks like our team have very quickly become a lot more crypto native and active, which is great to see,
right? Because sometimes as people who have been in the space for as long as I have, you get a
little jaded, you maybe miss the new trends, you miss the forest for the trees. One of the other
things too is on our marketing side, we have a bunch of very young people. I think it's really
important. Again, I'm convinced in most cases, six Gen Z
people with a bunch of prime energy during locked in a room will produce better marketing outcomes
than hiring the most expensive marketing agency in the world. And so one of the big arcs for me
is I'm now unk. I used to be cool and it will happen to them too, but I used to be the young guy in the room and I'm not anymore.
And so one of my longtime mentors, about a year and a half ago, was like, look, you have several cycles.
You have probably two cycles where you're hyper relevant.
And then in your third cycle, your goal is identify the people who are in their first
two cycles and work with them. Right. When it comes to crypto, I think I'm still in my first
two cycles, right? Like 21 was really my first. This is my second. And this is why we're winning
this one. When it comes to content, like I did marketing on Instagram and those things like,
you know, back in the day on Facebook, right? Like when I tell our marketing interns about,
you know, the stories of doing marketing on Facebook, they look at me like I'm geriatric. Like this is just
not where things are. Like I'm not in my two cycles for marketing outside of Twitter anymore.
Right. And so that's why like, you know, bringing in people who are like, it's been a really big
transition. Right. And one of the big things, you know, we've grown the team substantially since
that round. One of the big things, you know, this is not my first time running a company, right? This is not my first time running a company. I've
invested in literally hundreds of companies. I've watched this all play out, right? One of the
biggest transitions that I am trying to make myself right now is like, you know, for a period
of time, I was the Moonbirds intern tweeting, like, for a period of time, like, I was doing kind of
everything and like, you know, not micromanaging and taking a step back, but still having a
hand and pushing the direction the right way and navigating that balance that line is so
important.
And that's what we've really been working on is like, how do we spin up a team where
everyone can execute the highest level?
Ideally with some oversight, but without oversight, it's okay.
And then also like, you know, I think we saw this a lot in the Vibe side, that transition,
we kind of knew who we were going to hire immediately on the Vibe side. The Moonbird
side, we're still sort of figuring out, but I think we've got a really good and solid team
behind it now. We're going to be announcing it pretty soon, who the people are that we've brought
on there. You've already seen their work. You just don't know who they are. But we saw it immediately.
As soon
as I handed off the keys to the Twitter account on the Vibe side and the Discord announcer channel,
I mean, our engagement's up 10x since I did that. It was just the right decision. It was time.
And so what my role is in this company now has really shifted, and I think in a good way.
And now my goal is go out, focus on setting high level vision and also having the big conversations,
the 10x conversations, the things that really move the needle, calling up the people that I've
known for five, 10 years, right? Who are the people that I can call in and talk to and share
the vision and get support from? That's where I get to be operating in the most effective way.
And I'm very lucky to have such a good team behind
me. I mean, almost everyone on the team too, I've worked with either in a prior business
or for a long period of time, or has gone through some sort of hiring process where
like, when we do hiring processes, usually we'll interview like 300 people and choose
like one, right? One maybe, one to none. So like everyone at the company is really, really
good at their job. And if they're not,
it's very apparent very quickly, right? And it don't last too long. And so that's just like the
environment that it is. And I think that's the environment that it should be. That's how I like
to build a business. This isn't a casual thing that we're doing. We are out to win. Everyone is
here. I think we were discussing bringing someone on recently. And one of my
team members asked in, I was like, do you have any questions for this person? And they asked them,
they're like, yeah, well, you do anything it takes to win. I was like, well, that's a very
blunt way of putting it. But the answer was yes. And so we brought that person on. And that's kind
of how you have to be, right? I don't think you can have something like this. Spencer, you gave
the alpha here. If anyone is in the interview process with you guys, they're going to be right like i don't think you can have something like this you you give the alpha here
if anyone is in the interview process with you guys they're gonna be like yes i'm gonna do
everything to win um but it just i mean there's one right answer that question right there you go
you're like at the very least you're gonna get one question right um but i i just think it's like the
the standard and the passion that you're sharing just by, you know, by giving us a little bit more insight that you're conducting the team and that everyone in the team is setting that bar,
you know, to the highest standard. And you said earlier, it's like, it can't just be like good
for Web3, it has to be good, period. And I know you were referring to the product, but then now
when I'm asking about the team, it sort of translates to that too. So it's exciting to see.
And I think that at the end of the day,
it's all fun and game up to a certain point.
There are real businesses and real work
and a lot of talent.
And the admiration that you're sharing
for some of the team members is just,
it's good to see and to kind of let go of certain roles that perhaps before you were able to do, but now your skill set is needed somewhere else.
And with that being said, I want to transition into the partnership with OpenSea that was announced yesterday.
Can you tell us a little bit about that and why is it important to you and the team?
and the team. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, you know, I'm so I think like we're for us, right? Like,
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's clearly a moment happening in NFTs right now. It's really important for us,
for Moonbirds to be at the forefront of that moment. Right. Uh, you know, OpenSea and, you
know, for a period of time, wasn't in the best footing in the space. I'm a big blur trader,
right? Uh, something that's part of my history and history and, you know, it was a great part of our
returns for my fund. But, you know, I think the new OpenSea and what you guys have done
to kind of come back and really regain a lot of market share, like it, you know, again,
I'm a big believer of like, show me, don't tell me. And like, you can just see, right,
the market share that OpenSea has on NFTs right now is very, very substantial, right? The market share that OpenSea has on NFTs right now is very, very substantial, right?
Like it was not for a period of time and it's back, right? And so the new OpenSea, I think,
is a much stronger product for a lot of reasons. It's got more clear vision. Working with you guys
more closely is really important. And again, I wanted to align the number one brand in NFTs, which I believe to be Moonbirds, with the number one exchange, which is OpenSea.
I think it's really just that simple.
I don't know if you want to share more from your side about what it means to OpenSea.
You know, I think that I would let probably this question be answered by someone in the team.
I don't want to get too many on my end.
But do you mind sharing what to expect to see from this partnership?
That perhaps people that didn't read the announcement or that don't have a lot of details, what can they expect?
Yeah.
So, well, I think that someone from OpenShare should respond in Slack because I don't want
to misspeak.
I think that they should be the ones to answer this question.
Fair enough.
I was like, fair enough.
We'll be patient.
I'm going to invite a few people up and see if they could give us a lot more details.
But Spencer, you were sharing before that, you know, this is not the first company that you're running and that you have a lot of experience.
And at the beginning, we didn't get to chat about that.
So I would love to learn a little bit about what those experiences have been and, you know, just background before the web 3 space
um yeah yeah so so so i you know i used to do um a variety of things uh uh a lot of them were on the
uh you know in the cmo position or the ceo position so i used to um it was a cmo of a
fencing equipment company um had a startup called best. I sold another company that was at that time called intro.
We were doing virtual introductions for highly influential people, but a funny kind of story
behind that is also beginning of each of those companies. I used to, um, buy and sell, um, uh,
buy and sell, uh, trading cards as a way to fund the companies when I was starting off, uh, you know, um,
growing them. And so kind of did a lot of different things, um, across that journey.
Um, you know, when I was in the investing side, I think a lot of what I learned was like,
how do you look at and evaluate teams? Um, you know, and, and I think what is the commonality
amongst the teams that I've backed that done the
best and like it's always the people i think like you can have really good teams with like medium
ideas that then end up executing into really great ideas you cannot have like really bad
teams with great ideas like those just lose 100 of the time um um and so like for for me, the most important thing for us is for me as a founder and an operator,
so much of what I'm doing comes from my prior either operating experience or investing experience.
As an investor, I'm a much more hands-on investor than most, right? Like I'll get in, get down and dirty,
discuss the difficult decisions, like those kinds of things. Like where we tend to be at Spencer
Ventures and at LoLT Ventures is like, we want to be the investor you come to when things are going
bad, right? And it's not because you come to us and things are going bad and we're going to like
freak out and do something crazy. It's because you feel like you can tell us that something is going bad because we'd rather
you tell us than we learn when the company closes.
And so what we've done is find a lot, we've helped a lot of product founders in their
lowest moments come back and figure it out, not just in the NFT space, but sort of overall.
And I think there's like really a commonality, right?
One is just you have to be
incredibly pragmatic. You're not running a charity. You're not running a feels good thing.
You're running a company. And you need to be some level of cutthroat aggressive,
like just getting things done. You have to ruffle some feathers. If you've not ruffled
anyone's feathers, you're not being aggressive enough.
But there's some amount of that you need to do. On the flip side of that, there's also a too far that you index there. People and retaining top talent and retaining the good people who are
really good at their jobs is also the most important thing. Because really good teams
do just win over the long run. There's a couple other principles. One is strong opinions loosely
held is a big principle of mine. You should have a really strong take and that should be the thing
you're very headstrong pushing towards, but you should be willing to think about it in different
lights. I think one thing that we saw in the NFT space was NFTs in many ways are a platform.
And so for, you know, Yuga Labs, right? When DAOs and Metaverse was the main thing,
they launched it down at Metaverse, right? When it looked like Ordinals was going to be the big
thing, they launched an Ornals collection. For Pudgy, like, you know, when they, you know,
in the cycle where NFT or Solana meme coins are the main thing, like they launched a lot of NFT
and it was a very successful launch, right? Like the platform of NFTs, I think is a really
interesting thing. And so much of your goal as an NFT product founder and owner should be to
position yourself to execute on some of the best platforms, right? That's why when we do certain partnerships with the Moonbirds brand, a lot of them are partnerships,
right? Because it's how does the growth of the IP is the central goal, because growth
the IP lets you partner with others and do activations on the platforms that matter.
Absolutely. And thank you for that, Spencer. I see that Oliver, who's the head of business
development and partnerships at OpenSea, came up.
So maybe he could give us some details about this partnership.
Let's see what he could share.
I don't know, no promises.
But Oliver, welcome up.
How are you doing today?
Yeah, good to hear, Spencer.
Good to hear you, Laura.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm just excited.
I mean, generally speaking, partnerships are pretty broad at OpenSea.
We do them on a kind of a case-by-case basis based on a lot of different things that are
going on in the space.
And, you know, I've known Spencer for quite some time now.
Spencer, I think we met at the first ever VCon, I think, if I recall correctly, in person.
So a relatively long time ago, in this space, at least that's a long time.
And so, yeah, I mean, I think what he's done with obviously Orange Cap Games and the Vibes TCG
product, as well as now taking over Moonbirds, he's got a very, very interesting lens on what
this space is, how NFTs and how this space have evolved.
And as well, I think he, you know, obviously as discussed on the spaces has aspirations
to bring more to spaces, sorry, bring more to this space for Moonbirds.
And so for us, it's really important that we align ourselves with the brands that are
building in what we
believe is the right way in this space. And so this partnership, you know, there's a couple
pieces to it. Obviously, Moonbirds having a preferred marketplace, a destination for people
to go and buy, sell and trade Moonbirds, obviously. But alongside that, I think it's about collaboration
and just trying to understand, you know, things that they're seeing, things that we're seeing, how we can work together to help each other in this space.
And, you know, I can't touch on all the details, but generally speaking, that's like the broad aspect of partnerships here is just the idea that there's a kind of a one-stop shop or a home for folks in NFT land and making sure that
we're aligning ourselves with the right brands and products in the space. And I think, you know,
like I said, I can't speak enough about how highly respected Spencer is in this space,
how highly regarded he is. And I think the Moonbirds acquisition and some of the
other moves that he's made over the last few years are indicative of that and kind of the way he
operates. And so obviously I think we're excited about it and just want to help kind of support
the narrative of what Moonbirds is doing and help build the best know, the best marketplace possible for Moonbirds and
obviously the rest of the space as well. But it's just really important for us to collaborate on
these sort of things. And there's just things that come up naturally over the course of time in this
space where you're like, I actually open see, it'd be cool if we could do XYZ or if we could
add this to the mix or if we could play a role in an event or play a role in,
you know, a number of different things. So for us, it's just about trying to
partner with the best and collaborate with the best and understand where we can kind of fit in
in this space. And so, yeah, like I said, don't want to go too deep, but broadly just want to
maybe that you can speak to, too, and this is like a historic thing,
but there's some really cool parts of the Moonbirds
and Mythics and Oddities pages on OpenSea, right?
Like, you know, one of the things is,
obviously, every Moonbird has both an illustrated
and a pixel art version,
and OpenSea gives us the ability to take a look at both.
I don't know if you can share kind of some of the other...
There's some cool uniqueness to what it is.
Yeah, it's a great, great point.
I mean, like I said,
I think it's more than just an NFT
is kind of the way,
more than just a JPEG in our opinion.
And how do we illustrate that?
Not only to people that use the platform every day,
but to people who are coming into the space
being like, oh, I heard from Spencer that Moonbirds is a cool thing. How do I find out more information?
Or how do I figure out what this Moonbird does for me? Or what do I get to be a part of? And so
we have these really, really beautiful kind of overview pages and about pages for every collection.
collection. If you have a collection today, you can actually do this yourself. So, you know, you
If you have a collection today, you can actually do this yourself. So
can customize it, but Moonbirds has a really awesome page at the current moment. They've got
videos and things like that, and you can customize it. You can have links to your website. You can
have links to your other collections. Like, the sky's the limit to what you can do with these
pages, but it's really just the groundwork to drive people to the brand and bring awareness
to their collection and kind of show them the entire ecosystem at play. I'd highly encourage,
like, I love Moonbirds. Pudgy and Doodles also have really awesome pages. You know, most of the
big collections in the space, I'd say, have some form of customized overview page. And so if you go into OpenSea, you go to Moonbirds' collection and you hit the About tab, which
is on that collection page, you'll see what I'm talking about.
And it's really just your surface to do whatever you want with it and to drive kind of the
narrative you want around your collection.
And so, yeah, it's something that we've worked really, really hard on as a company.
I think we have well over a thousand across tokens and NFTs now.
And the goal is to just make sure that people have like a place to go, like I said, to kind of educate and understand what are they buying with this NFT?
What is this NFT about?
And so, yeah, like I said, I think with Moonbird specifically, you guys have some really awesome pages across oddities, mythics and Moonbirds.
And I actually think, you know, pre-acquisition, Moonbirds was one of the first about pages, if I'm not mistaken, on OpenSea.
So it's actually kind of a cool little like nugget there.
But something that I think is really powerful. And Spencer, as you mentioned, as we continue to iterate and understand what is it you guys are looking for and your community is looking for,
we'll try and continue to iterate on the product and make sure it's the best it can possibly be.
And so partnerships like this are just a great way for us to establish grounds and a relationship to be able to build off of and continue making as know, making as good of a product as possible.
And like, there's a lot more coming, right? Like, and, you know, one of the things too,
like we saw just the beginnings of this, like the PFP change on Sunday, like there's like,
you know, like, like just the reach that OpenSea has is really substantial, right? And again,
like one of the things that we're working on really actively and being vocal about is just
growing the reach of the Moonbirds brand.
Right. And so doing that alongside a partner like OpenSea just makes a lot of sense for us.
And I think, you know, we're happy to find alignment with them.
And, you know, I've done a lot of volume on OpenSea.
So that's, you know, that's my historic.
I've done a lot of volume in other marketplaces too, but coming back to OpenSea, if you had told me, call it 12 months ago, that in 2025, I would spend a lot of my time browsing Moonbirds on Open you know, like, look, like even, you know, for reach of our brand, right?
I've done a lot of volume on other marketplaces too.
Like the, not only like the PFP change,
the announcement did 38,000 impressions.
The PFP change did 156,000 impressions, right?
And even like you guys tweeted out a photo yesterday
that had a Moonbird in it, which was your guys' Moonbird,
the only branded NFT in that one, which is cool.
That had another 154,000 impressions, right?
And so this is kind of what this is about in part.
There's other elements to this too,
but it's just aligning with a brand
that has that breach at a time
when I think breach in NFTs
is going to be very valuable and important, right?
We see the beginnings of treasury companies
coming into the space. We see adoption coming
in from all angles. One thing that people forget is the thing that really drove the 2021-2022 cycle
and the projects that won that cycle was if you are the crypto friend and your friend is coming
into crypto and they want to buy something and they ask you, what do you tell them to buy?
And so the quest, and this didn't matter then for the
next few years because there was no new inflows of people doing that. It was just, how do you
become cool amongst the seven people that are still here? Well, there's new inflows coming
again. There are new people coming into the market. And it is now more relevant than ever
to be the answer to that question because people are texting their friends, et cetera. Where are
they coming in? And the answer just has to be Moonbird.
And I think aligning with OpenSea helps us make that answer.
Well said.
Well said.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
I love what Spencer's brought to the table, like I said, with Moonbirds.
And Laura, I'll let you continue your conversation or hosting ability here.
But I appreciate you having me up to kind of explain a
little bit more in detail and excited about what's to come. I can't, like I said, we can't,
can't reveal everything today, but more so excited about where we're going with this and excited for
what Moonbirds and Spencer are doing. Oliver, thank you so much for coming up. Honestly,
we couldn't have planned this better. And I really enjoy how eloquent you express the why.
I think it's really important, you know,
to lead in this space with a real why.
And I think that you convey that
and why is it important
and why is it meaningful to OpenSea.
And one more question for Oliver before he leaves.
For sure, go ahead.
So Oliver, I'm putting you on the spot.
Among pixelated moonbirds, illustrated moonbirds, mythics, and oddities,
which is your favorite from a pure art perspective?
Okay.
This is going to get me in some bad blood with people,
but I like mythics personally.
Look, the pixelated moonbirds, it's like a nostalgic,
like, you know, take me back to the time when they were minted.
So many people talking about them.
But I personally, I like the art of the mythics
the most of all of them.
See, Laura, I told you at the start of the spaces
that like, this is the thing.
It's like no one can look at the mythics collection
and truly browse mythics collection
without having that feeling, right?
It's just impossible.
A hundred percent.
I love how you put Oliver on the spot.
Oliver, thank you for being a good sport.
No, it's fine.
For coming up.
It's like, maybe next time I'm not going to accept this request.
I know.
I'm sure Oliver was sweating when I said I was putting him on the spot.
No, no, no.
Not sweating.
Not sweating.
Yeah, no. I think all the collections have a very unique aspect to them, though,
right? I think that's something that reigns true with Moonbirds. And I do think, man, of
collections out there today, one of the more diverse from an art perspective, right? You have the pixelated
kind of crowd, you have the new art of kind of the mythics and the vibe there. You've got the
oddities, which bring obviously a ton to the table with like the artists behind it and things like
that. So I think just in general, the kind of ecosystem is very diverse in the art that's
displayed. And I think that actually, to your points, Spencer, around bringing attention and getting
reach and trying to reach specific audiences or different people, that helps a ton when
you have a diverse collection like what the Moonbirds ecosystem does.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
But, you know, I think, again, like the beauty of the Illustrated and the Mythics is like
they are actually somewhat similar, right?
And so like there is diversity, but we can have kind of one one
brand within it, which is sort of the part of that, like, verb
concept is like, what is the alignment of the one brand
within the many? And, you know, one thing I think too, is
exciting music, I just, I love oddities, I understand why
people do not like there's some people who really don't like
oddities, like my take on audiences, the taste level is almost is almost too high. It's too artsy, which is a huge compliment
in many ways. I tweeted this out. We want to keep oddities odd. Oddities to me is your friend from
Brooklyn who doesn't shower very often and you're not sure if they really have a job or everything
they do sounds like not a job, but maybe is like but like they just kind of exist and
they say smart things and they're funny like that's what an oddity is to me and i think it's
like kind of like like oddities to me is like in the like dick butts like crypto punks like bucket
of of where things are just like like the goal is just keep oddities odd, right? That's what they should be.
Spencer, I just, you know, I want to thank you for this conversation.
I think I could stay here like another hour, but I want to be mindful of the time and make sure that you have, you know, the opportunity to share maybe some closing remarks.
I'm really excited to see what comes next with this new era of Moonbirds.
I'm really excited to see what comes next with this new era of moonbirds.
I mean, what you have been able to do already in 51 days, it's impressive.
So excited to see like this strong leadership and stepping into the space.
And I think it brings a lot of excitement into NFTs.
And what better moment?
Like I feel like you said, Mike, this last week has been very um exciting for all
of us um anything that you want to that you want to share with us what's what's next for moonbirds
or um something that you would like everyone to take away from this conversation before we go
yeah i mean look like this is something that i said from the get-go when you acquired this which
is like i am so excited for the people that want to ride with us on this journey.
Right?
And that's what it's going to be.
It's going to be a journey.
I can't really promise you anything else.
I can't promise you price action.
I can't promise you anything besides that we are going on a journey together.
If this momentum, all these kind of things is the moment you're like, man, I have an opportunity to leave.
I'm also okay with that.
No self-shaming, nothing like that.
If this is your moment to step out, you don't want to go on the journey with us, that's totally fine with me. I'm so glad that
you got the opportunity to take a step back in a better way. I'm happy if that's what this is to
you. If you're excited to go on the journey with us, if you're excited about NFTs over the next
unit of time, if you believe in the vision that we're putting out there, if you believe in our
ability to execute, then I'm so excited to have you be part of our community and go on this journey with us.
Again, I cannot promise price action. I can't promise anything. What I can promise is that
me and my team are going to work tirelessly, as hard as we can to continue to do cool things for
you, the community, cool things for the holders. There are few to none other people in this space
with as much experience,
as much training background, and as much ability to make stuff happen besides the scenes as me and
my team, right? We are going to do what we think is world-class in this space. We might fail.
We might win. I don't know. I think we're going to win, but I can't promise you that we will,
but I can promise you that we're going to do stuff, right? That's our leadership of this ecosystem is going to be defined by just ship it. We're going to do
as much stuff as we can. We're going to do cool things. We're going to try and get the best
outcomes for our community. And at the end of the day, if you want to be a part of that, you want to
join our journey, we're so excited to have you. And we're so excited to see how you contribute
and be a part of it. And if you don't want to join our journey, that is fine too. You know what? Like I'm not going to say, sit here and say
that we need to be the perfect thing for every single person in the room, right? For some people,
it's just not the right thing. If they're not excited about the uncertain, if they're not
excited about what we're going to do, if they're not excited about what we've done,
then it may not be right for them, right? But if you're sitting here saying, hey, you know, like
Moonbirds and Orange Cup games, their ability to deliver physical collectibles, their ability to grow
mindshare, their ability to, you know, bring Moonbirds back from where it was to being,
you know, one of the top collections by trading volume, right? Like, if that's something that
excites you, and you think that our first 51 days was a good example of that, then I'm so excited
for you to join us in this journey. And I
hope you come along and be a part of it. That's really the message I want to see. And, you know,
I'm so thankful to having a partner like OpenSea, you know, the number one marketplace,
because that's really, again, that's where Moonbirds are and should be. It's the rightful
place, you know, is there's certainly like nowhere else to be, right? It should be alignment with the number one.
Absolutely.
Thank you again.
Thank you for joining us today.
Thank you for all the insight.
Like I said, very excited for this.
Thank you to each and every one of you that gave us their time
and to tune in every repost, every comment.
We really, really appreciate it.
And if for some reason you're not following Spencer yet or Moonbirds,
make sure to go ahead and give them a follow.
Make sure you're following the OpenSea account.
And I can't wait to see you guys next time.
Set those notifications so you don't miss one of these wonderful spaces.
And thank you, OpenSea, for the opportunity.
I hope everybody has a wonderful, wonderful day.
Awesome. Thank you, guys. And I'm excited for, you know, the future of this partnership and
the rest of what's in store. So are we. Thank you.
