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No Roadmap, Just Goblins: The Power of Community Lore & Gaming FT. @AJT
Recorded: May 20, 2025 Duration: 1:20:06Space Recording
Short Summary
Goblin Town's founders discuss their innovative approach to NFT projects, emphasizing community engagement, the launch of a new game, and a commitment to building a sustainable brand in the evolving crypto landscape.
Full Transcription
Thank you. I'm going to go to the next video. Hello, everyone. gmgm welcome everybody we'll be starting in a few in a few minutes Oh I'm going to go to the next video. Thank you. GMGM, everybody, welcome to the Time is Wow.
I am your host, Laura, also known as the Miami Ape.
And today we are very excited to have such a fun conversation
with two of the founders of Goblin Towns, of Truth Labs, and just really get to know a little
bit more about their story, about what were they thinking when they not only created this company,
this community, but also what are they doing today. So I'm really, really excited
to have you guys here. For everyone that's joining us coming in, please let's make sure to retweet
the space, engage in the comments so more people could find us, more people could see us. It always
goes a long way. So I really appreciate each and every one of you engaging, being here, and also
retweeting the space. With that, Alex, welcome.
Michael, welcome to the space. How are you guys doing today?
Hey, it's Alex and Jason, actually Gray. Michael's one of the other co-founders, he's our CTO.
But thanks for having us.
Hey, thank you for having us.
Thank you for that. And can you remind me your name again?
I'm sorry.
Do you want to go by Gray?
Sure, that's fine.
Yeah.
Or what do you prefer?
The community knows me as Process Gray.
But I guess if you ever met me in real life, I would say, hey, my name is Jason.
Okay, so Process Gray it is.
And then when we meet in real life that we could we could
transfer to jason so thank you for being here and i'm sorry about that no worries
if we could get started just with with an intro for for each of you that would be great
okay great go first oh uh an intro? So, yeah.
Well, just yourself. Introduce yourself, not everything.
Yeah. Yeah. So my name's, you know, I go by Process Gray. I'm the artist and co-founder behind Goblin Town.
And we've been, well, Goblin Town and Truth Arts. We start with the Illuminati NFT back in the day.
And now we've been working on Goblin Town pretty solid for the last three years.
It's actually about to be our three year anniversary.
I think in like two days.
Crazy.
Yeah, we should probably do something for it, right?
Yeah, I'm Alex.
People mostly call me AJT on the internet
and I'm a co-founder of
Truth with Gray and our friend
Cesar and our CTO
Michael and
yeah we've been you know Gray and I have been working
together for now like a good three
three and a half years.
We actually like met a long time ago and then didn't realize it until much later.
We met at South by Southwest, I think in like 2000 and what it had to be like 2016, 17, right?
Yeah.
And yeah, we've been, we've been sort of at this. My personal background is I've been in startups and tech since basically 2008, 2009.
Always like early stage companies, usually software.
Haven't done hardware yet, but we're still young.
And yeah, I've sort of been in the, for a long time, the New York startup tech scene.
And then a few years ago, I moved down to Florida.
And, yeah, just we're trying to make something of ourselves now.
Yeah.
Man, Illuminati was like four years ago so like we're almost would it be fair to say we're we're we're a year away from our half a decade uh professional relationship which is crazy um
well i think we're still it's still three and a half years because
illuminati came out january 2022 so right but we did start working together in like September that of the year before.
So I guess we started working together September,
2021.
And then,
so yeah,
I mean,
it's been a while.
I don't know.
It feels like,
I've never not been working with you.
In web three,
it's that's,
that's three decades in the web three years.
That's,
that's a hundred percent,
especially to,
to stay consistent and to continue to, you know, to build and to pivot into the next, you know, the next thing that now makes sense.
And to continue, you know, like, I don't know, emphasizing what the community wants, but also what you guys as founders and the team truly believes in moving forward.
What was like the first conversation that led to this creation of Truth Labs?
And maybe let's make the relation of Truth Labs with Illuminati,
Goblins, and everything else you guys have built under Truth Labs.
I mean, Alex, I probably have two sides.
We have definitely different stories.
But I think it all goes back to the glue, which was Cesar.
And so Cesar, who I think on here is Time Hacker, but Cesar Kuriyama is the founder of One Second Every Day, also our fourth co-founder here.
Second Every Day, also our fourth co-founder here.
And him and I go way back.
We've known each other for probably 15 years at this point.
But Gray and Cesar were working together, I think.
Did you go to college together or did you just do each other for me?
Cesar, yeah.
I've known Cesar since I was a young lad of 18 or 19 years old.
So, yeah, we've been at it for over 20 years now.
Yeah. And so he was the, he was sort of the glue, but Cesar,
obviously knowing each other in the startup world, I had,
I, we were just buying and selling NFTs.
nfts i guess that was really like we were like we got pretty early in um uh um we were like early
I guess that was really like, we were like, we got pretty early in.
in like bored apes and and a bunch of different things and we were just in a bunch of groups
together just like buying and selling stuff and then i think at one point we were just like this
is so easy like we could do this you know like just naive uh people just like yeah this this
seems pretty easy like you just like so so he's like you know what i naive uh people just like yeah this this seems pretty easy like you just
like so so he's like you know what i've been thinking about some some collection with my buddy
um jason and you know uh but we don't like i i don't even remember what the idea was great but
it was like it wasn't fully fleshed out and um and then it's sort of it sort of came together when i was like so we were at
upstream the company i co-founded we were building a like dow infrastructure um and i sort of had
this idea about like what if you did an nft project where part of the sort of the mint went to a dow so the community
like had something to do you know because i found like a lot of these communities you just like buy
the thing and then you sort of like you know then you try to figure out what to do next and it's
like well what if you launched with a dow and you had something to do i didn't really have a great
idea around it um and then i i was sort of like noodling on that and then i
swear this is the actual origin story but i'll probably we'll probably have to change it in the
future because it's like it's a so i was i was taking my daughter to camp uh and i was driving
in miami i was taking her to camp and um i was just i guess i was listening to music like a mix
and you know the song um the rihanna song, like Diamonds?
There's a alternative version of it with Kanye West.
And he says like a line saying like Illuminati, something, something, something Illuminati.
And for whatever reason, I was just thinking about like the Dow or whatever.
And I was just like, you know, what if, you know, the Illuminati, oh, the biggest issue I was having was like, um, an NFT project
that like wouldn't violate, uh, someone else's like, you know, work or whatever. Cause I didn't
have any, like, personally, I'm not the creative one on the team. Great. And his, his side of the,
the, the team is a lot more creative than I am.
So I didn't really have like any original art ideas.
But then I felt like, oh, Illuminati, the triangle, the eye, like that is sort of iconic.
Like nobody owns the trademark of that.
You could probably make some pretty cool art around that.
And then like the DAO.
And so all that stuff was sort of jumbling in my brain.
sort of jumbling in my brain and I sort of just pitched it to Caesar and he's
And I sort of just pitched it to Caesar.
like, well, I'm actually working with my buddy gray, uh, on like ideas.
Let me see if he likes, let me see if he has any ideas around this.
Like I pyramid, I idea. And then, um, and then I guess great from your angle.
I don't know. Like what happened on your side? He just hit you up or something.
Yeah. Yeah. We all. We all connected. You gave me your pitch on your Illuminati thing and then the back of
the dollar bill pyramid thing, which poor Alex, after four years of working with me,
I had pretty visceral reactions to things. I think my reaction was like, oh God, kill me now.
There's no fucking way. Then I just went, I said, can me now. Like I, there's no, there's no fucking way. Uh, and then I just
kind of went, I said like, can you give me like a week or so to like noodle on this and like,
you know, see what I can come up with. So I kind of like went to, you know, went to my grandmother's
house for like a week in Maine, in the woods of Maine, and just kind of spent like a couple weeks
like noodling on this idea of like, how make this classic pyramid eye thing feel fresh, interesting, and also most importantly for me.
This was really jumping into entities. I really just wanted to artistically make a mark on it.
you know, kind of seeing the collections that were being put out and kind of thinking about
the whole collection as like, you know, it wasn't just a collection that was basically meant to
shore up the ultra rare, but like create a collection that like, even if you got something
on the floor, it would feel truly special. So yeah, just like spent a couple of weeks digging
into that and kind of, you know, pitched Alex, my version of the Illuminati, which was a little bit
weirder, a little bit
more sci-fi, a little bit more about universe building.
And while I was working on this, you know, I also started to tap into some of my old
longtime creative friends who are still working with us today, Scott and Bruce, and, you know,
showing them what I was working on and then being like, you know, like us really getting
into the weeds on like, what would be the secret society that we think would be interesting to create? Like, you know,
cloak and dagger, discordanism, like, you know, just really have a lot of fun with the, with,
with, with making people, you know, you know, like suck people into a whole different visual
language. And so we got into the weeds and I i threw alex and caesar like i think the original
six or seven generations of the of the art uh and uh and it's still some of the best i mean
besides besides for the original ones that you sent that are amazing um i'd say like if you just
look up illuminati nfc i'm like open yeah it is man illuminati is like we put artwork wise
yeah pound for pound it's like the one of the best of it like some of the best stuff makes
great great like background and wallpaper i mean like uh it was a little bummed that like you know
like the ugly ass goblins uh weekend is always the thing that gets the the love because you know
like illuminati was it has so much personality too
yeah I also think you will find it today in the sun where at one point it'll be like just super
rare to own one and you're part of like the secret society but so so all that stuff happened and then
it sort of came together in the sense of like it was just like a ragtag group of people we sort of
all came together we we you know great put this
collection together there was a lot of meat behind it that it felt like there was more story and there
really was but it wasn't fully even fleshed out yet um and then i think when we like really
launched the the company it was it was sort of a combination of the idea that I had of this DAO infrastructure play, because that's what I was doing on Upstream.
Plus, one of the things that we kept saying when we were launching, and I looked actually back to the original launch tweet thread,
and it's something that was pretty prominent, is prominent is we, you know, we, we joke about like, we didn't have it. We don't have a discord.
We don't joke about it.
We didn't have a discord for an,
in a roadmap or any utility for goblin time, but we,
we didn't have a roadmap for, for Illuminati,
or we had like a, well, like a fake, a fake roadmap.
We had the burning roadmap.
Yeah. But there was like, we just threw out
a bunch of, like, there's nothing that anyone
can say that they know what the thing is.
It was a bunch of words that didn't make
much sense. I think, honestly,
right from the beginning, we were just super excited.
Like, oh, there's my dog.
Super excited
to make fun of the absurdity of
the whole space and, like,
some of the things that people were
you know leaning into like these these like really well written like these white papers that meant
absolutely nothing these roadmaps that meant absolutely the fact you know these these ridiculous
roadmaps that meant absolutely nothing for anybody that's been obviously been in this space up until
now like you know none of that paid off for pretty much 99 of everything that anybody put out so it was it was just like, at the end of the day, you know, like the space moves at lightning speed.
So we just realized that like, there was a futility to creating a rigid roadmap,
because at the end of the day, the only thing you can do is just react and evolve with the space.
That's the roadmap is react and evolve to the space.
Right. But at the beginning, I feel like at the beginning, that wasn't so obvious.
I feel like now in retrospect, it's a completely different story but we're speaking of you know
three years later um 100 but 2021 that was obvious to us that's why we that's what this
but hold on there's there's two things that are really important there one is all the people on
the team worked at like startups in some way and And like in when you work at like a startup, like specifically like a technology startup, you know that like the whole roadmap thing is BS because you're always like, and especially in Web3.
Because if you say like, okay, we're going to do this thing.
And right, it's going to take you six months to build a thing.
to build a thing and you get one month in and you realize that is not the thing you should be
And you get one month in and you realize that is not the thing you should be building.
building you should be building this other thing because the market's telling you that this other
thing is actually a lot more valuable a lot more sustainable and what if you can't you can't pivot
or you get the event event and like you get destroyed right like remember back in and and
they made a bunch of mistakes with moonbirds but but you know they had the conference for
for kevin rose and moonbirds and uh they canceled it and you know yeah they had the conference for for Kevin Rose and Moonbirds and they canceled it.
And, you know, yeah, they probably shouldn't have done a conference.
Right. But like you there's no wiggle room there.
So the whole idea of a roadmap in startups is like you're just you need to be flexible.
And when you're working in a startup, if you see something that's an opportunity, you need to be able to jump on it.
But the point I was really trying to make was that the only thing we actually did say that we were going to do is we or that we wanted to do is we wanted to be like
the company mischief uh the the brooklyn-based company uh most people are may not be familiar
with them but they're definitely familiar with something that they've done uh they they got you
know they did the sort of the angel and devil shoes they got i think sued by nike on one of
those things um they did the the big red boot that got really famous a year or two ago.
They did, like, everyone gets a Lambo with Mr. Beast.
And they're, like, a creative shop in Brooklyn.
And we thought we could sort of be this, like, Web 3 mischief,
where we, like, do something that gets a lot of eyeballs,
gets a lot of attention.
And it just happened to be that the first
mischief thing that we actually
did ended up being
Goblin Town. Actually, that's actually not true.
That's the second thing. The first thing
we don't speak of. We don't speak of
anymore.
The very first thing was...
I thought the very first thing was
handing out induction pins at
NFT NYC for a little bit. Yeah, but that's
yeah, okay. I guess you could argue that. I was
talking about the photography stuff that we
tried to push a month.
We don't do it.
We don't take swings.
They don't all. Yeah, we have to take swings.
But we did like a photography
NFT thing. And the funny
thing is we knew we were Goblin Town because we had
launched it and it was wildly successful.
And we couldn't, the person that we were partnering with,
we kept telling them like, please push it back one month.
If you push it back one month, I promise you,
this is going to be the most successful thing you ever do.
He's like, nope, we're launching it now.
And so we launched it like while we were Goblin Town,
before people knew we were Goblin Town,
it did not do like anywhere near what we wanted
it to do and i know if he would have just like listened to us we had really that was a
anyway yeah you got to take a lot of shots but um it was uh it's it the first really successful
thing we did mischief like was goblin town and then we sort of just doubled down on that
i i really like the the mystery of Goblin Town because at that point,
I feel like we actually knew each other already and you were in the same group of friends
and everyone is just talking about this project that you were behind,
but obviously no one knew.
So I always find that intriguing and kind of hilarious that you got to be kind of part of this behind the scenes
of what people really felt. intriguing and kind of hilarious that you got to be kind of part of this behind the scenes of
what people really felt um oh yeah that that was probably the most fun can you tell me about that
like how was that experience because when when it came out they're like oh this is oh my god this is
hilarious like we had all these conversations everyone like i don't know had whatever opinions
um good but in between um but i can't imagine oh no no people loved it they people people hated it
uh we saw like all it hit on all like emotions some people are like this is the dumbest thing
i've ever seen some people like this is the funniest thing i've ever seen um we like had
our little like you know discord like in-house discord where we could talk about it i think
it's hard to explain
how something is going
mega viral and then you're
only one of 10 to 15 people
who really even know that you're behind it.
Listen, some of my closest
friends were talking about it and I
didn't say a thing. You know I'm super
close with Drew. Drew had no idea.
He screamed at me after.
We all had Alex under penalty of death. Like, you know, like I'm super close to Drew. Drew had no idea. Like he screamed at me after.
We all had Alex under penalty of death.
He said anything.
And I was good.
Listen, I did not.
I did not.
Nobody knew.
No, literally nobody knew.
There's a like a bunch of like tech friends who also are now in Web three that Cesar and I are in with this group.
And it's like people like, you know, Drew and, and like, so the only person who knew is Mike Dudas because we, you know, he was the one who tweeted about it. But he kept it a secret. He's
going to keep it secrets. And but yeah, like I, we knew we were launching a, like an announcement video
and, um, I basically scheduled, we knew it was going to come out at noon.
So at like 1150, I messaged the group and I was like, guys, emergency, like zoom call.
Uh, and I made sure that like, I didn't say a word until the video dropped.
And so while I was talking, like the video dropped, and
I wish we would have recorded that video. So Cesar and I were just talking to our friends
telling like, guys, I we know you're gonna be mad at us. But just FYI, this video is
dropping just dropped like 10 seconds ago. And like, we're behind Goblin Town. It was
it was it was super fun. Like uh because you got to see what people really
thought and and like super close friends thought it was the stupidest thing ever and that's totally
cool honestly you want love you want hate you the one thing you don't want is indifference like
so i i i personally don't take it personal i know people who do take it personal and it's hard not to take personal,
right? But I know it wasn't about me. It was just about the thing. And like some people
love, you know, different things and some people hate them and have polarizing opinions and
that's totally fine. But yeah, you don't, you want strong reactions. That's the worst thing
that could happen is you get no reaction or nobody cares.
I like that.
You don't want people to be indifferent.
And yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, this is like the attention economy and they're talking about it, right?
At one moment, did you guys realize like, okay, Gombling Town now is viral.
What do we do with this monster that we have in our hands because
i don't think that you could have possibly predicted this especially when at that moment
everyone had either a white paper or they had a roadmap or you know you're talking about utility
um and now here you come and say hey we have we have this thing we're not promising you anything
yet it it sort of went viral everywhere i even remember like nft nyc um yeah how was it
received i mean we we were we knew we had something probably the first 24 hours um i don't know great
when did you know like i felt like it was the first yeah like it minted out in 45 minutes, obviously, it's a free mint. Our biggest, honestly,
our biggest concern before minting was, and the reason why we went to someone, like we went to
Mike to tweet it out. It was because at the time, people were just doing a lot of wallet draining
and like contracts. And we were afraid because it was a free mint which wasn't a popular thing
at the time um that uh nobody would it wouldn't actually our biggest fear was it wouldn't be in
doubt because people would be afraid to actually um i mean i mean it's hard yeah if you like you
have to think about like the the culture of that particular moment in time, right? It was just like, I think everybody was feeling fed up
with kind of everything, right?
And so one thing that we wanted to do
is like we felt like we kind of creatively,
strategically did something interesting
with the Illuminati and we were onto something.
We had built a really cool team around that project
that was just really kind of taking and you know we were on to something we built a really cool team around that project you know that
was like that was just you know really kind of taking that mischievous approach to kind of
storytelling and and kind of trying to add a little extra flavor to this space and you know
one of the reasons you know one of the reasons behind the anonymity of goblin town was we just
like there was a little ego there in the sense that like i just knew we had a good team and i
wanted to see if we could do it again right like I think a lot of projects were starting to drop
derivative projects you know and you know they'd of course sell out or make a bunch of money because
they're just basically siphoning more liquidity out of their current community um you know and I
like didn't want to do that I wanted just to drop another project that looked totally different than
the last one we did didn't feel like it at all. Just, just,
just really bank on the fact that I, you know, like, you know,
shored up the idea, like, man, we, we made an awesome team. Like, can,
like, is it, was this like lightning for us with the Illuminati or can we,
can we do this again? Like, can we actually will this to, you know,
being, are we good at this whole, you know,
fun mischief style of marketing and um you know i
think it played out and i really wanted to like with that project just kind of again like it was
there's a lot there's a lot of like you know artistic emotional intentional baggage behind
the art of that collection but it was also a way for us to like pressure test the space and
kind of make art that was inherently like, you know, there was this kind
of in the wider population outside of Web3, right? Like people, the big thing was people ragging on
NFT art, right? Like pointing at this kind of clip art garbage or this kind of manufactured
on fiber garbage or the stuff that might have not given the artist credit, like all these things
that were kind of surfacing, you know, and I kind of wanted to lean into that, like make something that I knew was beautiful artistically, but also very intentionally
kind of made fun of a lot of what was playing out in the space, you know, all in good humor,
like very tongue in cheek. So it was great to like sit back and, you know, kind of put that out into
the, put that out into the world. I mean, I was, I created Goblin and, you know, kind of put that out into the, put that out into the world.
I mean, I was, I created Goblin Town, you know, over the course of like 48 hours while I was really, really sick the prior month.
And, you know, kind of got our creative guys to jump in, you know, whip up this absolutely incredible web experience and start to, you know, figure out the social side of things.
And obviously Alex and Cesar started grinding on like, what was the best way to launch this thing? And, uh, you know, I,
I think, uh, I didn't, you know, none of us on the team were allowed to mint any because, uh,
you know, we didn't want to give it away. Uh, I think we had a, we had a loose rule, Alex. What
was it like once we have once like 3000? No, no, no, no. So we we were allowed so we didn't want to give it away so we said only
after half of them are minted would we share it in the illuminati discord um we also put a thousand
aside for the community but like we had like an alpha channel so we we posted there and we were
allowed to mint uh once uh like at least a few thousand were minted and just you can mint one
yeah i still have the one i minted like i it all of it off it was like the first the launch day was the very first day that i was
like feeling healthy after like literally a month of being in bed it was like the most sick i'd ever
been in my life and i was so excited to not be in bed so like i handed off all the work we they were
gonna go live with the the project And I went to go see a
movie with friends. These was all I could handle. But I was just excited to get out of the house.
And so the mint went live while I was in the movies. And I'm just thinking when I get out,
maybe some of these will be minted and I'll get to mint one myself. I came out of the movie theater
like 500 messages from everybody on the team being like, Jay, did you get one? Jay, did you
get one? And then I ended up having to buy my own artwork at like you know a massive premium you know like because
i didn't get to the collection until 45 minutes after it all had minted out and the prices were
already shooting through the roof that had to be that had to be like a really mixed feeling of like
okay this is great but but why you're like i i made this this is my art i yeah i made i wanted to like i i hoped it
would mint out i hope it would make like people it also sees one thing we talked about a lot you
know credit to see that we you know one of the thing we we're constantly chatting through and
we've done this with every project we've launched in this space ever since is we're always thinking
about like what's what's going wrong like how are how's everybody else messing up this this whole
launch thing and like what what is everybody for? What are the changes that our people are hoping for in
each, you know, you know, these new collections, and nobody, nobody knows, right? Because the space
is moving fast, everybody thinks they're trying something new, everybody, then somebody comes up
with something new, and everybody jumps on that bandwagon. And, you know, so we're constantly like
asking ourselves, like, what's the thing that seems like everybody's craving?
So the no discord, no utility and the free mint really and the CC zero really came out of this idea of like, OK, let's just like the problem is, is like founders put too much of a premium on the product.
Right. And having absolutely zero idea because it's kind of like kickstarting, obviously, a startup, having no idea if the thing's going to take off, like what's going to happen behind it.
And then if it does, you're kind of in this crazy spot where it's like, you know, like now we've now we've created something we have to figure out what to do.
Or if it doesn't actually get the traction that you want to do, but it gets some, you don't have the money to accomplish everything you want to accomplish.
But you still have enough bag holders that you're like beholden to do something, but you maybe can't pull it off. Right. So we were like, let's just, the project
needs to stand on its own. Like, it's just free. Like it's just CC zero. It's free. It's not ours
anymore. It's the communities. And like, if it's successful, it'd be successful purely because
people value it and they're trading it. It won't be because we charged a thousand dollars per mint.
And it really, and it it's funny it's actually been
like something that's fueled a lot of at least like the creative culture behind the project ever
since like i still every single event we go to i draw hundreds of of actual physical drawings to
give out to to community that shows up to the events or even just new people that are just
coming to experience goblin town for the first time. And I think there's just, there's something beautiful about this idea of kind of creating
this kind of creative intellectual property culture around, you know, like anybody can
be a part of it because it shouldn't be expensive to be a part of something beautiful.
But it's like getting in early is where the value is.
So, and I think that's one thing that we're kind of constantly working on.
That was such a beautiful way of putting it.
And also so welcoming, right?
That it's not just, oh, this is only for us.
You can't sit with us.
This was more of a, everyone could be part of it.
Everyone could enjoy it.
And it's not about, you know, charging a bunch of money to be part of it.
And I really like how you're doing that, you know, in I of money to to be part of it um and i really like how how you how you're
doing that you know in irl community events um to have something like a piece of art from the
actual artist of you know this very successful project um give something as you know as a thank
you and something that people would like value and treasure that's really awesome i didn't know that um and by the way laura it's also funny
though you know i think almost i would say like a overwhelming majority of the things that we've
ever done for goblin town specifically has been free um and i mean don't don't don't think that
protects you from people you know saying that you're trying to steal money yeah everything
no just like we still get complaints that people are like you know because that you're trying to steal money yeah everything the most heartbreaking no
just like we still get complaints that people are like you know because listen in the space you know
the thing is free we we let people mint it for free then someone buys it for 20 bucks and someone
buys for 100 bucks and someone buys for for 500 bucks and a thousand bucks and ten thousand dollars
and then the expectation is on us not on the person they bought it from. So it doesn't protect you from the same criticism that everyone else gets.
Yeah. It's funny. I think one thing that we would talk about a lot over and over again,
again, Cesar was a part of all these conversations was just like, we often talk about a lot of these
NFTs as being an extension of collectible card brands that we all loved growing up.
But like, I don't know about you, but I didn't, I didn't spend thousands of dollars on my magic or my Pokemon cards.
So like, so it's like, there's this really weird, like it's, yeah, it's definitely like it's the adult money extent, the big kid money extension of the collectible card brands we love.
But obviously, right.
That's not, that's not something that's going to help mass adoption at all if you're trying to build a
brand. So, you know, we created another problem with Goblin Town. The initial hope was I was like,
I kind of hope these would just kind of stay reasonably, like, you know, reasonably valued,
like more so capped at what a normal digital collectible at that time would be,
that these things would be more tradable and more fun, that they were not created to be
multi-thousand dollar assets. So the fact that people were at the hype, we all know how the
cycles work and how mint cycles work and how like mint cycles
work and you know the hype and the speculation and this and then the speculation around us being
anonymous obviously added a whole nother hype that we actually didn't plan on um you know that drove
prices further um which actually on my end was more heartbreaking because literally goblin town
was like the whole point of it quite honestly was to be like no like we're gonna give something away
people are bummed out like they're getting trashed by these founders
that are making projects and and siphoning liquidity out of the entire space like let's
just give something let's give something like funny and weird back to everybody that makes
them all like smile again and like create a culture of like you know a a creative culture
for a project that is like about just being part of, you know,
Goblin Town, like it's a place, it's not a main character, right? Like, so it's, it's just like
anybody can be in Goblin Town, let's just create this like really cool welcoming space where the
barrier to entry is really low to be a part of it. And of course, like, you know, market cycles,
and, you know, and, and, and just like the, you know, the supply shock and all that kind of stuff,
like doesn't play by those rules. So, you know, we, I kind of sat quietly and, you know, the supply shock and all that kind of stuff, like doesn't play by those rules.
So, you know, I kind of sat quietly and, you know, in a little bit of horror as the price just spiked out of control for those couple months.
If you actually, great.
And if you actually look at the first post we ever did for Goblin Town, we specifically said this is to commemorate the crash.
Yeah.
Right.
Like that was the whole, that was the whole idea is like, let to commemorate the crash. Yeah. Right. Like that was the whole, that was the whole idea is like,
let's commemorate the crash.
And,
and,
you know,
it's funny when we were actually deciding,
like,
should we charge for the mint?
Should it be free?
All the different stuff.
I think it was like,
you know,
everyone's so down already.
Like we shouldn't be charging for it.
And we also thought like,
you know what?
Let's like,
let's make it on the,
like,
if it's successful, we could do well. And that was the whole idea of like, let's set, you know what let's like let's make it on the like if it's successful we could do well
and that was the whole idea of like let's set you know royalties we put a little higher than normal
like seven and a half instead of like you know five percent but it's like okay we're not charging
for the mint and you know if it works we'll we'll we'll like like we'll earn it that was the idea
and the other piece was like we will um you know're not, we don't want to say who we are, because we want people to focus on, because part of this was performance art, you know, part of it was, you know, you know, like storytelling and, and, you know, there was characters and, and we were doing, you know, you know, funny things on Twitter and with type with like writing and everything.
And so a big piece and there was also like an NFT.
Like one of the big things at the time was you don't touch the metadata.
Like people don't think about it now.
But at the time it was like if you mess with the metadata, like it's blasphemous.
Like you that is the fastest way to kill your your thing and like the
first the first thing we did was there was like five nfts in the collection that like changed
every three days and it was telling a story um what you if you stuck around long enough you found
out about a month and a half later it was the like villain origin story of the sort of the big bad
the darth vader of goblin town. But it told the story over time.
Yeah, we had to project ourselves that.
We had to, unfortunately, I mean, I would have loved to keep the project anonymous forever,
to be honest.
But like at that time, you know, anonymous projects, like, unfortunately, like there
was a dark side to that, which is like there was, you know, people are now spending a lot
which is like there was, you know, people are now spending a lot of money on this asset.
of money on this asset.
And then like there's no, you know, meme coin culture as it exists today, right?
Like wasn't there a couple of years ago.
So, you know, where now it's funny, like if there's a meme coin that like boasts utility
and who the founder is and they put a face on it, it's like it actually has a harder
time than a meme coin that's just like, you know, like doing its own thing and surviving
on its own merits but like you know a couple years ago like if there was no founder recognizable
founder behind the project there was a lot of speculation of you know like is this a rug is
this nefarious like what's going to happen so we just kind of felt there was like we we did
like we had to do a lot of soul searching to like decide you know how we wanted to handle it but we
decided for the amount of trust and
you know money that people were putting in goblin town that like we needed to kind of give it a human
face to let people know that it was like hopefully they would see that it was good humans behind the
wheel like not people that were just planning on dashing well we always had plans we always had
plans to um reveal ourselves the thing is we could have like maybe pulled it back.
I think one of the,
I think I remember one of these conversations we had internally was like,
ultimately like there's enough people who know who we are.
You'd like not in the space.
Cause we were pretty good at keeping it tight,
but like there's enough people that like either we can control revealing it or
someone else will eventually control it.
And I think that,
and we also like,
it was right about before NFT NYC and we wanted to do things like events
there and a party.
And we had a big plan and we ended up doing it.
And we felt like it would,
and we wanted to do,
we probably could have figured out merch without,
but we felt also merch to do merch.
And probably that's one of the biggest mistakes we did is we didn't do
merch early enough
because there was like a moment
where we probably could have sold
like so many Goblin Town shirts and visors
like right at that, like in that June month.
And we didn't do merch until like late July.
And it's because we didn't really think
we could do merch without like revealing who we were.
I probably, we probably could have figured it out
if we, if we would have like, like we also were like sleep deprived so probably didn't make the best decisions you
know like i'm sure if we like were clear-headed we probably would have made a few better decisions
i think one of the the things that you guys started using when it wasn't um just so obvious
it's like the mystery meme culture and then the power that the community engagement just organically came about.
And then the story, even though obviously there was a lot of thought and a lot of plans behind it for the team, but it just became sort of this decentralized story that you guys couldn't control.
that you guys couldn't control and process grade,
And Process Gray, you also mentioned this.
you also mentioned this.
You're like, oh, well, we had, this was our idea,
but now the floor price is doing this
and people are speculating A, B, and C
and doing all these things.
So what are some of like the,
I would say like the highs and the lows
from seeing that and then later on
kind of seeing the whole space
lean towards meme culture
because it wasn't a thing
right yeah i i yeah everything you just said yeah it was it was it very much felt it you know in
hindsight i don't think we felt this necessarily at the time but like you know we i think alex and
i both kind of look back at goblin town as being like oh like what we did like what we did in
today's terms was really launch a meme coin right um and you know it was an art meme coin um you know and that's really but like
that wasn't really happening at that time so we were we were kind of like riding this new wave
kind of fighting a bit of a counterculture to like the way nfts the way that art was perceived
though you know and i i loved lurk honestly my favorite memories were like not like literally just lurking
about on twitter and watching the mixed opinions about the art you know seeing you know seeing
people that actually had some art and design sensibilities like look at it and go like yeah
like i see why people think this is ugly but like this like this guy definitely knew you know he
knew what he was doing here right like seeing the intentionality behind the collection uh And then some people just not getting it all and just thinking that it was just more
trashy NFT art. And I just, honestly, I loved it all. It was part of the, it was part of the art
experiment. Like I genuinely loved seeing, you know, I love seeing that discourse and people's
reactions come to life, like that visceral reaction. And it really did provide visceral
reactions. Like people just genuinely hated, hated what they provide visceral reactions like people just genuinely
hated hated what they saw and then some people just like looked at the collection as a whole like i always intended and it was like you know like this looks really nice when you actually
zoom out and like look at the whole collection and see the grouping um so it was a roller coaster of
of just kind of like you know the expectations of the space colliding with people that were just vibing with the kind of the meme potential of the product.
And it was all just kind of colliding at this whole, like, you know, this whole moment of
also people, you know, everybody feeling, you know, like down financially based off
of everything that was happening.
Hence why we launched God of the Down in the beginning.
So it was like, it was just this amazing, like crossroads, like all the tides were like
smashing into each other, which just created, like Alex said, like it's just, it's, you
know, you just don't want people not to care.
So we were kind of hit on all these notes that, you know, gave people all the things
to care about, even if the caring about it was just hating it so fucking much.
So yeah, I would say to add to that, there's like two or three things.
One is like, the way I like to describe it is like we were sort of like the, like French
bulldog or like the pug, you know, like meaning some people love pugs and think they're the
cutest things ever.
Some things think they're the ugliest dogs, you know?
And it's like, that's what we were.
Like you had just a strong reaction.
Either you loved it or you hated it.
You know, we were, we were, we weren't the first,
but we were definitely one of the more successful or popular,
like me, you know, NFTs that were like meme NFTs, I guess, you know,
like I'd say who else would like even really fit?
Maybe like, maybe M'lady, maybe, maybe MFers, maybe, you know,
I guess you could say like Meme Land even, but like there, there were,
it was most of the projects weren't like that.
We're definitely one of the most in terms of like, you know, volume,
probably top five, but yeah.
And it's, it was definitely, you know,
it was definitely like a rollerco in the sense that, like, we definitely sucked up the oxygen in the space for some time.
You know, we had the intention to, like, hey, focus on the thing.
You know, at the time, we didn't anticipate that, that like the fact that we'd be anonymous would become
one of the focal points of what people cared about. And just, you know, fueled more speculation.
But it was also like, it was fun, you know, it was fun. It was fun seeing, you know, people
probably not seriously think like Snoop Dogg's behind it, or like Steve Aoki or whatever.
And so it was it was enjoyable. Like, was enjoyable. That whole experience was really enjoyable.
And honestly, those two, three weeks
at the end of May and beginning of June in 2022
was some of the most fun.
And listen, we also, besides for,
so I think idea to launch,
it was about 10-ish days.
And like Ray said, he was like in a thick,
like infused like 103, 104 degree fever.
Honestly, I think Gray does his best work
when he's either sick or angry.
Angry or sick.
I think the best art comes out of Gray.
But no, I mean, and then it was just like, and this is also comes out of Gray. But, so, but no, I mean,
and then it was just like,
and this is also, this is Gray, I've said
this before, I don't think I've said it to your face, but
I also know, like,
occasionally I'll give, I'll suggest
something to Gray, and I know when
he likes it and when he doesn't,
because if he likes it,
he just starts doing it and it's done really quickly.
If not, he'll be like, well, this is going to take me like two, three months of work and this and that.
And I'm like, all right, I know you don't want to do it.
Just like, I'll move on.
I will continue.
Because I know when he loves something and when he gets inspired, he just like, he does it.
He doesn't even, he doesn't even give it time.
He just starts like, he just starts going.
Like he describes, like I just did a sleep and I just went for it.
So kind of like. But then we ran with it.
Like, we were, you know, within the first week, we launched a whole, and this is a shout out to a combination of people.
It's also, this is a testament to that. and gray and like, like, we basically put together a burger, a burger making experience,
where you if you owned a goblin, you could make and claim like a unique burger, which also people
don't remember at the time, but it was like, it was one of the first entities that let you
like the determination of rarity actually came from the people making them yeah because you had to you whatever things you pick to put on your burger the more people that picked it the less rare it was
and so the game of the one that you liked versus the one that you thought might be rare but also
yeah this is a good opportunity to shut out like you know this goblin town got to exist because we
did the really hard work of building like an exceptional creative team, like starting with the Illuminati.
So by the time we got to like Goblin Town could exist because, you know, sure, I knocked out the collection pretty quickly, but it was because I was able to hand it off to Scott and Bruce and, you know, and Sydney on social and, and and and alex and caesar obviously like are uh you
know uh amazing at just like you know the kind of the launch mechanic stuff and it was like because
like we had such a well-oiled team up at that point it was just like we could act like really
quickly and aggressively on the idea and like you know like that that goblin town website might have
been one of the things that because it gave you the context for the brand, the vibe.
Like, I mean, Scott and Bruce might be as equally responsible for the vibes of what came out of Goblin Town as, you know, as I am.
They kind of wrapped up Goblin Town in this amazing paper that, you know, like people were listening to that pendulum, that Goblin Town Pendulum song on repeat, um, that Bruce made and, you know, revisiting that website that Scott made over
and over again to, you know, to, to just, just dig into the weirdness. Um, so yeah, it was, uh,
it was good. It was a good culmination of everything that we had worked on the previous year,
um, you know, to make that happen. And actually that's why we can move so quickly is because we had all the
pieces in place that like, once we had an idea, we could, you know,
when I say like, you know, 10 days, I mean, obviously we,
we worked like 24 seven those 10 days, but it was just,
it was just like, we had all the pieces in place. So like, you know,
it's a lot easier to, to go and to run when you've got all the things you need to do the thing.
Absolutely.
Like having the right team, like ready to go.
It's not just, you know, let's get ready for launch and then that's it.
And then let's see what happens.
It's more, okay, we're ready to work at it, whatever comes our way.
And yeah, I mean, it sure sounds like it was a team effort at the end of the day. And that you guys have continued to work at it, whatever comes our way. And yeah, I mean, it sure sounds like it was a team effort
at the end of the day
and that you guys have continued to work at it.
Time is flying by and I have so many questions.
So I'm like, let me remind everyone about the PO-op
that if you send a DM right now
to the World of Women account for being here today,
you're going to get your PO-op.
And the key word that you have to DM the account is being here today. You're going to get your pull-up and the key word that you have
to DM the account is goblins. I want to make sure that everyone gets their pull-up today.
And just to continue with the conversation, we spoke about floor price expectations,
even though it was a free mint. How do you guys have managed this expectation from
community members, from holders?
Because I think that's one of the hardest.
We haven't, we haven't, I don't know.
Alex and I, we haven't, we haven't done a great job.
Alex and I are a good team because we, we both, we both have slightly,
slightly might be, you know, a bit of an exaggeration, you know, different
points of view on like, you know, on how we've, how we've kind of maintained the brand. Like,
you know, I think, I think creatively, there's a balance to be made, like Goblin Town, some of
the charm is to kind of stay a punk rock counterculture, you know,
not really put up with, I don't, you know, we don't, you know, like, I don't,
I don't feel,
I don't field requests from like the noisiest, you know, assholes in the room.
If anything, like it, like, it like peaks my,
it peaks my obstinate defiance and I just want to do the opposite and make a
new collection and leave everybody behind if they,
if they like throw shit at me like that um alex on the other hand just just say i'm your pain sponge it's okay yeah alex alex is the pain sponge so alex is way more willing to put
up with all that stuff but that being said like one of the things that has made goblin town absolute
magic creatively right from the beginning is the absolutely incredible community voices the good
ones um even so even
occasionally some of the bad ones but like really like one thing that especially when we were you
know we were still anonymous you know that that the team and i loved was you know um the we liked
the idea of goblin town was great because it's a place right and it can kind of contain all these
things it can contain infinite possibilities for stories and the you know and i it can kind of contain all these things that contain infinite possibilities for stories. And the you know, and I was aware of kind of creating, you know, the kind of the lead characters and starting to develop some of the main characters for the world that like, you know, crowdsourcing like weird, interesting energy from the community and understanding like what they got excited about would likely inspire our team to kind of want to lean into something. So there's characters and kind of meme pieces of our
universe that we've leaned into that entirely came out of just like community excitement. Maybe it
was like we dropped a weird note and then the community got really excited about it. And then
we yes anded, like we've literally tried to be a creative company around the concept of just yes
anding ideas. And, you know, so when good ideas erupted or fun jokes kind of emerged in the community,
especially when we were anonymous and it was super fun, was just honestly like grabbing onto
that stuff and being like, you know what, that's kind of awesome that they're excited about that.
Like, you know, like Alex mentioned, like the initial collection had, you know, a knockoff,
you know, McDonald's, a McGoblin Burger visor is one of the traits. And obviously that idea took hold in the community and McGoblin Burger franchise kind of got
solidified as, you know, a main piece of our Goblin Town lore.
And we've built that around.
We've built around that.
We've written epic stories around that.
We're currently obviously just launched a game that is entirely anchored onto kind of
the McGoblin Burger lore.
And we've created main characters that directly came out of the community or ideas that they were excited about. And I think that's been a bit of the joy of the creation of
that world is that it kind of brings full circle. Like when I was a kid, experiencing all the,
you know, the, you know, the amazing brands like Marvel and, you know, in DC and Magic Cards and
all the things that like I loved growing and all the things that I loved growing up
and all the comics I loved growing up, right? That urge, I think a lot of us in the space,
like the intellectual property that we were fond of, we were very much consumers of that
content, right? We kind of came at it once the brand was formed and we kind of just absorbed it,
right? And I think that some of the interesting parts, NFTs and blockchain is this ability to,
you know, obviously get involved with brands when they're starting up and then have,
have a, you know, have a stake in the success of that intellectual property growing in a way that,
you know, I felt left out of when I was growing up. But I think Goblin Town took that a step further.
And we said like, this is a place like everybody can be in. And also like, maybe you have an idea that actually the founding team, the artists in the team will actually like love
and then like, yes, and that idea. And so the idea that some of what Goblin Town is today is
the result of yes, and in the community and getting excited about some of their ideas and
pushing it forward and kind of evolving and then seeing what they loved and letting the world
of Goblin Town kind of slowly take shape over the course of a couple years and continuing to flesh
it out that way. It's become like one of the most exciting things for the team to kind of continue
to stay engaged with Goblin Town. And I think it just continues to be what makes it a strong brand.
Even now with the game, as we're meeting up with people that are no longer in Web3 and going to
these conventions and meeting hundreds and thousands of people that are just like, you know, what we call normies, you know, still kind of introducing to them to that goblin town creative culture of like, you know, we are you're meeting the artists, you know, the creative team that's behind the brand, like, you know, getting a piece of that, you know, getting a piece of concept art from the artists, you know, like, I mean, God, like what I wouldn't give to go back in time and be able to get a piece of concept art from Stan Lee or Jack Kirby, right?
Like when they were working on the comic books I loved and feel like I was really a part of, you know, helping them succeed.
So I think that's what's been really inspiring for us as a creative team to kind of push Goblin Town forward, kind of gives us the energy to kind of want to keep working on it is that and hopefully bring more people into town.
Yeah, I would love to to touch base on what is it that you guys are doing right now with this IRL experiences because they have seen massive.
And I know it involves like gaming play, but then it's also Web3 people but not Web3 people
I think seeing that mix it's quite interesting and it has you know built so much more like
momentum and and perhaps something long-lasting right that it's not just it doesn't have to stay
just in the Web3 space for people to interact with you know with the IP and with the brand
and you could see I'm like I just mean a few things here up top from from the event that you web3 space for people to interact with, you know, with the IP and with the brand.
And you could see, I'm like, I just made a few things here up top from the event that you guys had in New York City.
So I would love to know, you know, what's the plan with that and how has it been received
in the outside world?
Great.
I want you to talk to this in a second, but I just want to, because I know what I said
is going to be taken out of context.
It's not that we're, and this is more cheeky,
it's not that we're not good at it or whatever.
It's like an impossible task,
and it's why no project has been able to control floor prices and this and that.
Ultimately, we gave it for free.
People charge what they want to charge.
People pay what they want to pay.
There's nothing you really can do.
And I think we came to that peace of mind
or just that we came to the peace of knowing
that no matter what we do or say,
people will either take things the way they want to take it
and feel that they want to buy something for whatever.
Ultimately, it all really comes down to, is there value being provided back to someone who's holding an NFT? That's really
what it is. And that value, it depends on the community, right? It could be access to something,
whether digital or physical. It could be of monetary value, right? That you're, you know, some people have launched, you know, ways that, you know,
people can make money off the IP
of their pudgy penguins or whatever.
And so our thing is like,
let's go build the biggest brand.
Let's build a forever brand.
Let's do our best to try to do that.
I'm glad you circled back to this.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, because I think you're, yeah yeah because it was a thing right i think the i think that was this part of the conversation was like there is something very debilitating to be like okay like
is the conversation here like how do we provide value and make goblin town a brand that's worth
supporting going forward or the worst conversation the one that felt debilitating in the beginning
is like wow we just had somebody buy a Goblin Town NFT for nine ETH like so it's my job now
to figure out how to provide somebody with adequate return on their $20,000 investment
and I think that's the pet like I think that paralyzation like definitely permeated the
space it absolutely it feels crippling when you're like watching that happen
and you're like, well, I'm not collecting the $20,000 from that customer, but like,
you know, they're clearly spending it and there's an expectation on that return. And I think where
we landed was like, like Alex said, there's a tide that you're kind of riding in this space or
any space that, you know, has speculative returns. And what we decided to focus on was
like, hey, we can't focus on those prices. That's absurd. We'll be spinning our wheels all the time.
What we can focus on is just building the brand that we want it to be, or more importantly,
building the brand that we would like to be. If we were owners of this brand,
what would we want to see the founders working on? And that's kind of what we leaned into.
to see the founders working on. And that's, that's kind of what we leaned into.
Yeah. And yeah, so it was just more of like, what could we control? Right. And we can control
trying to build the biggest brand possible. We can control being getting creative on finding
ways to provide value back. And what we would find valuable and useful and interesting,
and what we would find valuable and useful and interesting,
whether it's access or monetary or whatever.
But that's like, you, you can't,
you can't beat yourself up about it and you, and it's debilitating.
I mean, you see people go through, you know, there's definitely,
I don't want to name names, but there's people in the space,
very public that just like went through that whole hype cycle of trying to
figure out how they can do this. And they,
you just, you end up crashing out and you end up actually not doing anything.
Because it just, it consumes you. And, you know, I can, yeah, I mean, that's just,
I think this is a good segue back to Laura's question, because I think that's actually, is the connective tissue behind like the inner life experiences and stuff that we're doing now with the game that we launched is this this is it right
like we like I think I genuinely I feel to my core this is a core belief of mine is like as a collect
you know as a holder or a collector of Goblin Town like one of the biggest values I can give back to
everybody that has supported the brand is
the brand having a bigger reach. And we, we, you know, we all believe if we're on this space or
listening to the space right now that we think we can, we see the promise in NFT in, you know,
crypto backed projects or blockchain backed projects. Right. But, you know, we, we often
like toggle between this web three and web 2.5 or you know we're still in the middle ground
here right and so there's still you know mass adoption is is not not here even remotely close
especially with you know these over inflated you know highly priced nfts so like for us you know
focusing on like we need we want to build the reach of the brand we want to build the growth
of the band like more eyeballs on the brand becoming a more worldwide well-known beloved brand that isn't necessarily anchored into something as
niche as is web3 will drive people back here and then in in a long enough time horizon that you
know that will provide like these will become the historic goblin town you know nfts and these will
become the historical digital collection that kind of kicked it all off, right? We're just not there yet, right? Well,
in my head, it's like, we, and I think this is where Alex and I really align, you know,
all of us on the team align is like, you know, there is just a, there's a brand book,
there's a strategy book for, you know, launching intellectual property, you know, in the wider world. And it's a, it's a, it's a big ambitious
thing to accomplish. I mean, there's some people in the space that are doing it incredibly well.
Like, you know, it's amazing to watch what, you know, like Doodles is doing and Pudgy is doing,
obviously. And, you know, so like we, we think at its core it's like there is baggage still associated with nfts
there is some divisive nature around you know blockchain and gaming there are very separate
worlds there's like blockchain gaming and then there's gaming right and they're not the streams
are not fully integrated yet um so again i'm in the eyeballs game uh you know i'm i i want to get
humans through the door and so for us to do that, it's like, let's focus on beautiful, fun products that, you know, people can really accept and get excited about that
are cheap to buy and enjoy and play and be a part of their everyday experience.
And those people, especially if you're talking about gaming, like, you know, the really hard
driving game we just launched is a rated E for everyone game, right? Like you get 14, 15, you know, 16, 17, 18 year olds playing that game.
10 years from now, all those kids are, you know, grown, having jobs, making money.
And then suddenly they're like, man, wouldn't it be cool to own like that OG Goblin Town token?
You know, that, you know, when, and I think obviously if we're talking a decade from now,
when and i think obviously if we're talking a decade from now yeah maybe finally then right
yeah, maybe finally then, right?
nfts have finally made that crossover okay even maybe sooner to like mainstream and it's more
accepted and everybody's walking around with digital wallets attached to their amazon account
or whatever and then finally it becomes a reasonable lift for you to go like oh man wouldn't it be cool
that i had like a you know an og you know uh you know um goblin town collectible you know because i've been a fan of this brand since I played their really
hard driving game when I was 14 years old. And so I think it's like the focus for the team right now
is like just create a great brand that people can age up with. That's how it's always been done.
I'm not saying it's the only way to be done, but it's definitely a tried and true method. It takes
time and it takes grit and you got to stick with with it and it's definitely not an easy path especially when you
have you know d gens shouting at you for an immediate return on their you know nine eighth
investment that they made not long ago but like you know i genuinely that's the path forward to
creating eyeballs on goblin town creating long-term value for the brand and allowing us to continue to
expand out in a meaningful way and goblin town will just continue to be and and and kind of anchor itself as a
historic nft in the space because of that yeah but it's also something funny i think it's a line
i'm probably going to butcher the line that you use gray but like you've said basically since day
one like your i think it's like your time horizon is not my time horizon. What's that
thing you said? Yeah. That's always been my... I think
the frustrating thing is that it is an incredibly fast moving space. It feels like a month in
Web 3 is like a decade in normal human world. There is this it's like, there is this, there is this like impulse, if you are truly
entrenched here to feel like, why, why am I not getting a return? My meme, my meme coin got me
a thousand percent return yesterday. Like why doesn't my Goblin Town thing return my, my investment?
I'm like, you know, I'm like, it's, it's, it's just, that's an impossible argument to have right
now because, you know, I, I think the, I think the Goblin Town tokens
have done what they're supposed to do.
And we are a long-term thinking team,
and our time horizon is not,
we're not saying like, what can we do in six months?
We're saying we wanna be around in 10, 15 years.
Like we wanna be a weird brand that people love
and enjoy for a very long time.
Unfortunately, that doesn't always sync up
nicely with you know web3 and also just uh and sorry to keep going back but the other thing is
like we've been asked from the community over the past two years two three years now like to do
different things you know um launch an ordinalsance collection, do something on Solana, like launch a meme coin,
like we've been asked this many times, we hear it all the time. And it's not like we don't want to
do something like that. It's just we, unless we're like adding something to the sorry, it's like,
I want the prize. It's like, it's like, you know, it's a million voices in the room. And you have
to have a North Star or else you just like constant oh yeah but it's not even but it's not even that it's like we're we're like that's a piece of it but
the other piece is like we're not doing it we wouldn't do something just because everyone's
doing it um to make a quick buck like we could have done we could have done so many things when
goblin town was the talk of the town to make so much money that like you know like we could have done so many things when Goblin Town was the talk of the town to make so much money that we could have just launched a new collection, a paid collection right in the middle of Goblin Town.
Probably could have cleaned up.
But that wasn't the point.
We do something because either we came up with something interesting or new or something to add to the conversation.
Or we had some unique insight that allowed us to think.
And by the way, that doesn't mean it's always right.
Like so many times we've tried things and it's been wrong.
You know, obviously people remember the things we do correctly,
but we've made as many, if not more mistakes than, you know, than right.
I mean, it's sort of like baseball, right? Like, you could be,
you know, if you get up to bat 10 times, and three times you get on base, you're going to Cooperstown,
you're going to Hall of Fame, you know, and so that's, that's more of the way we think about it.
And so, but yeah, it's like, it's not that we don't, like when Gray was talking before about,
like, listening to the community, we listen all the time.
We hear all this stuff and we think about it and we talk about it a ton. Um,
we move on things when we feel like we have an interesting angle or get
inspired,
or there's something that we think we can add to the broader conversation,
whether it's in Web3 or beyond. And so, um,
it's not for the lack of like, yeah,
it would be really cool if we did an Orinals collection.
We just don't have any good ideas for an Orinals collection
or something that could be unique to Orinals to do it.
And so just to launch an Orinals connection
to launch an Orinals connection is not something
I don't think we'll ever do.
Yeah.
And actually, it's funny.
Out of this conversation came a couple.
That's a pretty common one.
I'll give credit to Cesar. He's right. He's always been the, you know, every, every launch that we've done for anything. It's always, it's a mantra that I think we've all started to echo, which is just like, how do we add to the conversation of the space? Right? Like, how do we not just create a derivative move off of something else somebody else has done? Like, how do we genuinely add a new thing to this space? Like in an interesting way that makes people maybe want to leap off of something else somebody else has done? How do we genuinely add a new thing to this
space in an interesting way that makes people maybe want to leap off of what we just did?
So that's always been a pretty constant guiding principle. I think another one that we're,
at least I'm always harping on is everything that we do is a design decision. We are a creative,
heavy brand. I mean, the founding creative team is still here, you know, working every day.
You know, we make all of our art, music, websites, games, all of it's done in-house.
You know, so every move we make, we try to, as poor Alex will point out, as dealing with a whole team,
like, you know, 10 creative humans all the time uh driving an obsolete batshit um probably
uh you know never uh like every everything for us is a thoughtful design decision like you know we
we're we're we're pretty you know pretty rooted in our in our like art fine art background all
wanting to kind of create something that feels meaningful that if I look back on it I'm not like embarrassed that I put that out and rooted is another way to say stubborn you know I I just want to thank both
of you for this conversation it really I don't know it gave you so much insight of everything
that happened behind the scenes that sometimes we really have no idea. And also, you know,
it took us back to memory lane and to see, you know, what,
what was it like,
but also that you guys are still very much here and working every day with
intention. And that says a lot about, about the team.
I think it's interesting that, you know,
one of the teams that, that originated with this idea of like meme culture, but also,
you know, no discord, no plans, like not making many promises, wanting it to be
easy for people to join with a free mint. We have seen so many people, founders just leaving
the space overall. And what I hear from both of you and from the whole team is, you know,
let's pivot to something that resonates with us, that we think that it's going to have traction,
that it's going to continue to build something long lasting. And to me, that's exciting and
that's inspirational. And yeah, it just, it truly feels that you guys continue to work on something
that you could be genuinely proud of. And there's nothing more beautiful than that i always think that yes there could be many things that could be done that could
be um quick reward but overall you might just regret it at the end of the day but like hey why
did i spend my time doing this or it didn't feel authentic to us it didn't feel um you know like
that it that it kind of lines up with our core values um so i i not only enjoyed you know, like that it kind of lines up with our core values. So I not only enjoy, you know, the creativity behind all of it,
but also the why.
And I think that that is very important.
And sometimes it feels like it's not when things are so,
I don't know, when the attention span in the space,
it could be so small, but that you don't get distracted with that right
that we don't get distracted with okay well people want this or everyone is doing this so I guess we
should do this um so so leading with intention with intention yeah I think I one of the things
that I heard like when we when we first I mean this was before Goblin Town it was actually even
Illuminati stuff like you know being you know, like Caesar and Alex were my gateway into
like kind of understanding Web3. So I was kind of new to, you know, just Web3 and NFTs when I,
when I, when I was working through, you know, the Illuminati collection. So I wasn't ready for
kind of the overwhelming, like, you know, like the idea of like these kind of discords that
suddenly, you know, holders felt like they had, they were, they were, they deserved and they had access to, like, they were supposed
to have unlimited access to the team behind the project. And, you know, that I was suddenly like
paid for and I needed to be, you know, responding, you know, and listening and coddling every single
voice in the room. And, you know, there was just this, it was very different
from every version of the art world I had known up to that point, you know, where artists kind of
had their zone, people experienced the work, but, you know, you didn't often get to interact with
the artists behind the work and NFTs really flipped that on its head. And I had a couple
founders that I was, you know, chatting with that had been in the game longer than me. You know,
they had, you know, been through the ringer for a year or so.
And they just, they kind of just went like, dude, it's a time game.
Like, you know, like everybody, you know, it makes sense.
Like everybody's a bag holder, right?
Whether you intend to be one or not, like everybody's a bag holder.
And like, you know, when you launch a collection, even if the collection is great,
you're just going to end up with the full spectrum of people, people that bought you know because they love the art they love the project
the people that bought because they thought they could exit they just weren't able to um
and what ends up you end up with a mixed bag you end up with a lot of voices in the room that don't
matter because they're fueling energy towards the idea of you trying to help them create a quick
exit you get voices in the room that people are excited to be there for the long haul and love, they want you to stick to your roots. And it's hard to, it's hard to like,
cut out the noise from all the good signals, right? And, you know, one thing that they told
was like, just give it time because, you know, after, after a while, the community kind of
consolidates and, you know, after a while, you're left with the people that genuinely dig what
you're up to. And I think we've actually seen that play out. It's obviously it's taken quite a few.
It took three years, but I think maybe Alex will agree that I think we're actually at
a spot where the community members that are still that have stuck around are pretty amazing
at this point.
They're awesome humans.
They've given us awesome advice.
We've made some amazing contacts.
And the new humans that are joining goblin town
are joining it for the right reasons right they're not jumping into some sort of crazy hype cycle
they're joining it because they see the we're doing in video games and we're working on a comic
and we've just finished pitching our show to a bunch of studios and they they're hearing that
news and they see like the vision behind the thing and they're buying in at a much lower price
you know uh then obviously that crazy all-time high and they seem to be at a much lower price, you know, uh, then obviously that crazy all
time high.
And they seem to be here for, you know, for us, what we're up to now, they're not buying
on speculation.
They're buying for the brand that we are today.
So, uh, that's exciting.
So I think, you know, it's like, I think the end of all this, the one big takeaway I've
learned, if you're making a new project, your founder space, like there is a, you know,
keep doing what you're doing.
And then you end up with the community that you want
as long as you,
you know,
as long as you keep doing,
you know,
what you intended to do
all along
and not get distracted
by all the noise in the room.
And just,
I would say,
I don't know
if we're wrapping up,
but I would say
the last thing I would say
is this is,
you know,
we're doing a lot of stuff.
It seems pretty heavy on Web 2 stuff or making a game. We're doing some animation stuff. We're doing all this, you know, we're doing a lot of stuff. It seems pretty heavy on Web 2 stuff.
We're making a game.
We're doing some animation stuff.
We're doing all this, you know, all this great stuff.
It also doesn't mean we're not doing, like, Web 3 things as well.
We just, it just means, like, we have a lot of, like, irons in the, was it irons in the fire?
Is that the phrase?
We have a lot of different irons in the was it irons in the fire? Is that the phrase? We have a lot of different irons in the fire and sometimes
things jump in priority when
when like inspiration sort of
jumps. I feel like Gray has like
I feel like I've seen
five
new collections Gray has drawn
in the last like two years
that are just sitting there waiting for the
right moment that like the right thing
happens in the
market or in the world or in his brain or something that makes us want to do something and so it's
like you know art is still a big core like we understand our web 3 origins there's no separation
of that we do want to reach the bigger world and And so it's just, you know,
right now the main,
the big focus is the game and getting as many,
like,
this is the first introduction to a,
called normie audience of the world of goblin town.
most people who see it don't know anything about the web three components to
Um, and it's, uh, you components to it um and it's uh you know
it's it's sort of like we're we're thinking in a lot longer time horizons than like what are we
going to do in the next 30 days to make uh to make you know something pump yep a hundred percent and
well i'm very excited to continue to see, you know, the journey.
And it's good to hear also that like you could focus on both, right?
You don't have to focus just on the web through space or the IRL events and really bringing
in people from outside and appealing to them because it speaks to a greater vision.
But yes, thank you.
Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation.
I love hearing,
you know, both of you and different perspective, but also like where everything kind of aligns.
And I'm grateful for all the people that tuned in for all the retweets and the engagement that
we had through throughout the conversation. I feel like I could spend hours speaking to both of you.
Yeah, time flew by. We're like, we're already past our time.
So thank you for being flexible.
I know you have, you know, things to get to.
So I really do appreciate it.
I had a few reminders about the POAP.
If you DM the World of Women account, the POAP is goblins.
So make sure to send that in.
And also that the gala for World of women is june 5th in
portugal if you haven't claimed your tickets go get your tickets make sure um that you attend
you're not going to want to miss it and yes if there's anything else either of you want to
mention before we head out this would be the perfect time and thank you again uh yeah no yeah
thanks for having me great chatting yeah and thanks for having us
and definitely um people want to follow along obviously we're goblin town on twitter but we're
also on tiktok at goblin town and goblin town game and also instagram now official goblin town
um and then uh yeah if you're in dallas or the dallas area this weekend we will be at DreamHack, which is like the most successful, popular
competitive
eSports sort of
event. And we're going to be bringing
the McGovern Burger truck.
The whole gaming rig.
It's going to be there.
A lot of the team will be there.
I'll be
chatting, running the... We'll be
there, boots on the ground, actually running the space, chatting with everybody. Come hit me up if you
tell me who you are. I got artwork with me to give out to people. So yeah, it's amazing.
Yeah, it's going to be fun. Awesome. Can't wait to see the recap from that experience. And I hope that some people that are tuning in today could join.
Have a wonderful day, guys.
I'll see you all next Tuesday at the same time.
Set your reminders.
And, yeah, enjoy the rest of your week.
Thanks, Laura.
Thanks, guys.
Bye. Thank you.
