Earlier this morning Gordon and Garga of Yuga Labs were the guests of Rug Radio’s GM NFTs morning show. The duo have become famous as the founders and masterminds one of the top consumer brands in Web3 (not just NFTs IMO). It seems like the duo has been on a PR tour of sorts:
August 2022: First video interview with Input Mag
August 2022: Podcast interview with Full Send
October 2022: Podcast interview with Decrypt
October 2022: Fast Company feature
November 2022: Nicole Muniz (Yuga CEO) to talk at Techcrunch Sessions Crypto
The company is growing into a serious brand while representing Web3 in a way as mainstream adoption grows.
What makes the Rug Radio interview special is the audience consists of NFT and Web3 natives. Most of us already know the story behind Yuga Labs and BAYC so there were some interesting details they shared about what’s been going on behind the scenes.
(notes are paraphrased along with my thoughts)
The founder backgrounds are a great fit for NFTs and Web3
Gordon and Garga are writers, literary nerds, and played MMORPGs. They understand the importance of storytelling, building narratives, and how to create universes. They met at a bar in Miami and spent 90 minutes arguing about an author 😂
Gordon was bedridden for 10 years due to an illness, so he has a deep and personal understanding of how powerful online communities can be.
Brand building, storytelling, and understanding online culture are skills that every company should lean in on. These are competitive moats that are hard to copy. These skills will shine as more pieces of the puzzle are put together, particularly with the Otherside metaverse they’re building.
The team has grown significantly
In January 2022 the team was about a dozen strong. Now the team is approaching 90. As a result, a lot of effort has been spent on onboarding and integrating the team. Due to the focus on hiring and onboarding, there have been delays in the roadmap.
Hiring is hard and making sure everyone gels functionally and culturally deserves prioritized attention. Headcount went from 12 to 90, (7.5x!). This isn’t a small scrappy startup, this is a $4 billion company.
Gordon and Garga did share that there will be announcements in the December to January timeframe.
Publicly addressing areas of improvement
The founders weren’t shy about calling out the lack of consistent and clear communication. Being mysterious and having once a month announcements works in a frenzied hot market, not in a bear market. Additionally, the company has grown into a globally recognized brand and as a result, communication strategy will need to evolve with that.
Over the next few months the team plans to improve this deficiency by:
Sharing more updates on ongoing efforts
Clarifying who is responsible for what
Providing more access to the community
Maintaining the culture and brand while raising the bar
The Yuga team has been working behind the scenes to ensure that each brand under the umbrella has its own identity. And if you aren’t familiar, the Yuga ‘family’ of brands is a lot. Here’s a simple breakdown of the portfolio:
Additionally, the founders want to keep the community fun, cool, and weird. Even though the company has pierced the mainstream veil, they want to keep reinventing itself in ways that keeps everyone on their toes.
Personally, I’m impressed with how Gordon and Garga have embraced the spotlight. I’ll be looking forward to the announcements in the next few months.
Have you listened to an interview before? If so, share or subscribe! If not, you should 👂 more.
What’d they do this time? Pay you?
Geez, I wish.
KPR shared an overview of the project in a tweet thread x deck format:
I’ll screenshot the thread for ease of viewing:
What does this remind me of?
A fundraising deck…but for the public.
Wait a second, if you think about it, aren’t the holders investors in a way?
Of course, the future holders aren’t ‘investing’ in KPR the same way a VC would (they don’t own a portion of the company, only a portion of the brand, more on that in another piece). But if you think about it, this tweet thread x deck functions as a pitch deck to the public as they evaluate whether or not KPR is worth their time and money.
When we apply the Announcement Experience (AX) framework to this, what is KPR doing?
Format
RTFKT accompanies announcements with videos. KPR accompanies announcements with images. This allows for a better hook (the visual) and also more information to be incorporated into the limited real estate of a 280 character tweet.
The tweet thread x deck format is an uncommon format, so that in itself is engaging too.
Channel Selection
Most if not all the info on the deck can be found on the KPR website. However, not everyone takes the time to go through the website. The team made it simple and turned it into a deck for their 46k Twitter followers. Meet your audience where they are 🤝
KPR is setting a high bar for what a good pre-launch looks like. Take note.
I came across a tool (thanks Tropo) that tells you how many Discord servers you’re in
Let’s make this fun. The subscriber who guesses (correctly or closest to) the number of Discord servers I’m in at the time of this writing gets a complimentary annual subscription from me :)
To enter, comment on this post (don’t e-mail me). You can comment here:
And if you’re a premium sub already and want to play, I’ll give you something of similar value, I’ll make it worth your while too 😉
See you next Tuesday folks! I’m attending NFT SF on Monday.
“The most highly-anticipated NFT conference of the year”...🤔
If you’re going, let me know. I’d love to say hi!
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