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July 20, 2022

Anthony Mongiello Of Bulls & Apes - Money-Back Guaranteed NFTs, Plus: Chief NFT Vibe Officers, Reddit’s NFTs, And More…

NFT Anthony | NFT Buying Experience

Currently, the NFT buying experience remains fragmented and full of friction and risks. Typically, when a user buys an NFT, it begins with signing up for a wallet, funding it with crypto, and connecting it to one of the NFT marketplaces. Although the process may seem simple to crypto-savvy people, the complexity still deters many. On today’s show, Anthony Mongiello of Bulls & Apes Project shares how their transformative project de-risks the NFT buying experience. Check out this episode to discover how Bulls & Apes is transforming the industry by setting a new standard for what NFT collectors should expect and demand.

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Anthony Mongiello Of Bulls & Apes – Money-Back Guaranteed NFTs, Plus: Chief NFT Vibe Officers, Reddit’s NFTs, And More…

This episode’s sponsored spotlight episode features Anthony Mongiello, CEO and Cofounder of Bulls and Apes, the transformative project that de-risks the nifty buying experience for you. Anthony is a Senior Operations and Technology Leader with almost twenty years of experience driving broad culture change, sharp business intelligence, strategic transformation programs, and technology road mapping.

Anthony helps companies release their potential. He integrates technology, sound business acumen, and change management to deliver operational excellence, build competitive advantage and exceed customer needs. Bulls and Apes Project is a generative 3D NFT project that aims to transform the industry by setting a new standard for what NFT collectors should expect and demand. They start with de-risking the NFT buying experience. They back their products with an industry-changing six-month money-back guarantee built right into the smart contract. That’s bold, Anthony. It’s really great to have you here. Welcome.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

We talked a little bit before we jumped in. I guess you are out in Connecticut, living the life. Working out of Oz, we spent some time out there at decentral and consensus, having some fun and doing good things. I’m curious. Those guys are out there, you are here. How did you guys get together to launch this thing? Tell us a little bit about the origin story.

I got involved in NFTs just as a collector. I was pulled in by the whole community aspect. I got involved because I saw this as the next wave of web and tech, but then when you saw the community aspects, I was like, “Holy crap. There’s something pretty cool about this.” I come from a corporate background, and it’s all about the business operating models, how to be most efficient, scalable, and all that fun stuff. When I saw the community aspects, it was a brand-new way of operating a business. For me, I call it operating a business in the town square called Discord or Twitter.

You’ve got this tight community that’s right in the face of founders, of people trying to build a business, and the business owners are trying to build this business in this new dynamic environment with this quick feedback loop. That was fascinating to me. I started raising my hand and volunteering my time with different projects I was involved in. Through one of those projects, I met one of the cofounders, Manny.

He introduced me to his longtime business partner, Gui. The two of them are serial entrepreneurs, and they’ve done a bunch of business together. We started putting our heads together and looking at, “Can we do better? Do we have something to offer? Do we have some value to bring to the table?” Inevitably, we thought we did, so we decided to start our own project.

That’s like Web3. You’re volunteering, giving your time, giving value as a community member, as a part of this community, and you find like-minded folks and build something amazing. Here you are. It’s a great story.

The key there for me is that they explored. They tried different things. They went down the rabbit hole, as opposed to jumping into the industry and saying, “I’m ready to build something right away.” That comes from your business background. Knowing that you have to get into the dirt before you can figure out innovation.

NFT Anthony | NFT Buying Experience

NFT Buying Experience: The exact reason why we’re getting involved is to help drive the space forward in a positive way.

You are right, Josh. For a lot of people and me, you learn by trying. The best way that I know how is rolling up your sleeves, jumping in, and taking some lumps. There are plenty of lumps that we took along the way. Some of these projects spin up overnight and are pumped with hype, they make it look easy, but to do it right is not easy.

Speaking of right and bringing your own flavor to things, you’ve introduced this de-risking feature. Pretty much everybody, upon hearing this as I did are like, “It’s definitely something I’ve heard of before but not very much or at all in the NFT space.” I’ve used it in various business projects of mine in terms of having a money-back guarantee. It really gives the consumer confidence and helps them make sure they can trust the product. What was the impetus for you guys to include this in this NFT project?

In January 2022, we started pushing forward with building our own project. In February 2022 is when we launched Twitter and Discord. It was right around Squiggles and the whole Squiggles controversy. We were looking at it, and the three of us got together. We were like, “What did we get involve in? This is crazy.” We got scammed by some marketing agencies and lost some money. These are some of the mistakes that we made along the way.

We looked at each other like, “Really? Is this what we are getting involved in?” Inevitably we said, “Yeah, this is why we are getting involved.” We want to bring a level of professionalism to the space. We want to bring the sound business practice to this space. This is the exact reason why we are getting involved, to help drive the space forward in a positive way.

We were like, “If that’s the case, and if we believe in what we are trying to build,” which we do, “If we believe that we have the experience required to build what we want to build, then how do we lean into it?” Gui looked at it and said, “Let’s do risk reversal. It’s used in other industries. It hasn’t really been widely used in the NFT space.” We come pre-funded. We are a pre-funded project, so our mint wasn’t intended to raise capital.

We had the capital that we needed to build what we wanted to build. Instead, we said, “If that’s all true, then why not build it right into the smart contract? Let’s do 30, 60 or 90 days? Let’s do 180 days. Let’s exaggerate it.” That’s like a lifetime in the NFT space. That’s what we did. We said, “Let’s do it. Let’s do 180. Let’s build it into a smart contract and move forward with it.”

Can we ask that the million-dollar question, which is what percentage of the community is taking you up on that offer?

Zero at the moment. I’m actually a bit surprised. I know the floor price is roughly triple what most people minted. I still thought that there was going to be somebody that was going to test it out at least, but nobody has tested it out yet.

Congrats on that. It’s definitely a testimony to the value that you are creating a great community. You’ve also designed names for this tokenized gamification approach to try to add more value to the ownership experience. Why don’t you break down the tokenomics for us a little bit more in-depth?

If we believe in what we’re trying to build and have the experience required to build what we want, then how do we lean into it? Click To Tweet

I look at it as adding value in two different ways. Number one, it’s fun. Some of the people that get involved in the tokenomics, initially there are a number of layers to it, so people need to wrap their heads around it a little bit. It’s economical. We are seeing that now. It has been in place since July 1, 2022. Our model is an owned-to-earn model, so there’s no sticking involved. If you hold 1 of our OG Bulls, you earn 10 tokens called BAP methane.

You earn ten methane a day per Bull that you own. You are just accumulating it and you can collect it whenever you want. You hop on our website and collect it. You can let it sit there for a while. You could collect it every day if you wanted to. Once you have that methane, you are able to participate in the tokenomics, the gamification.

The first step is an incubator. You can use 600 methane to purchase an incubator. You breed two bulls together, and you get your incubator. There’s a whole storyline behind it. The incubator has a fast growth process, so you use another 600 methane to get to a Teen Bull. Now you’ve got a Teen Bull, you can use your Teen Bull to get to a Merger Orb, and then you can merge four additional teams with the Merger Orb to produce a God Bull. The God Bull is the rarest and pretty darn cool art also in the collection. There are only 500 God Bulls in the whole collection. We’ve done 32 of them so far. It has been a pretty exciting process to see a new God Bull revealed and everybody gets a little pumped up about it. They are pretty impressive.

What are the features of a God Bull versus a Teen Bull?

OG Bulls and Teen Bulls are similar in that they will have different clothing traits, headwear, and eyewear, whereas God Bulls are more a character. There are ten characters. There’s a forest God, a mechanical God, a hell God, an undead God. There are 50 variations of each of those characters. The God Bulls are much bigger and more impressive than the Regular Bull.

In terms of utility, is there a variance between a God Bull and OG Bull?

Yes. A God Bull earns twenty methane a day, double the amount of tokens than a Regular Bull.

Only 500, and the deal is ever. Get in there on the God Bull, folks.

That’s a lot of fun building those new characters, and the Teens are really cool art too. We took a high-quality approach to the 3D art. We’ve all seen some 3D art projects that are out there, and their marketing assets look cool. They use layering and cheat the process, and when they go through the reveal, everybody is disappointed. Ours, every single piece of art is a fully rendered 3D model. That means that we had to build programs within the 3D software to do all of the randomizations. In this way, you get the lighting and reflection right. All of them are very impressive.

NFT Anthony | NFT Buying Experience

NFT Buying Experience: Tokenized gamification adds value in two different ways. Number one, it’s fun. Number two, it’s economical.

On the economic side, people are realizing that owning four OG Bulls gets you one Teen a month. By owning four, Teen four now is about 0.3. You are generating for free, you’re generating a Teen Bull, which is worth about 0.3, and with owning 4, you could do about 1 Teen a month. People are looking at that. They are flipping Teen Bulls and buying more OG Bulls so that they can earn more over time. It’s really fascinating to see some of the different ways that holders take advantage of tokenomics.

You had mentioned upfront almost the Discord aspect of this and the town square type of feel. Your community has been pretty paramount to what’s going on here. You have been a part of communities as well. You have this Living Your Best Life Program. Can you tell me about what that is and how that gives access to the community?

The theme of our community is Live Your Best Life. We call our community The Inner Circle. We’ve got kick-ass art and some cool tokenomics but at the end of the day, your NFT, if you own one bull, it’s a lifetime membership card into the inner circle. We are taking that very seriously, and that’s where we are going to drive a lot of our future utility. It’s going to be through what we offer the inner circle, initially, from having our first course, which will be offered for free to our community, to NFT one-on-one course. We are in the middle of developing a security course as well. We want to be one of the projects that helps onboard people.

We want to make sure that this information and education are accessible but in addition to that, a part of Living Your Best Life is about financial growth. One of the things that we’ve offered to our community, Manny is very heavily connected in the Angel investing world, and he’s using those connections to make deals accessible to our inner circle. We’ve already connected our inner circle members with two deals through Angel investing, and we are working on a third.

Those deals are relatively accessible with low entry points. One deal was $1,000. Another deal is $2,000, and they are able to get involved in some pretty cool companies and invest in early-stage companies where they wouldn’t have had that ability if they weren’t members of that inner circle. That’s another utility that we’ve delivered.

Is the thesis of the investments shaped by the community or is it, at this point, a little bit more fluid?

At this point, it’s a little more fluid. Manny is invested in over 600 deals through VC channels. He has set criteria that he follows that have been proven. He vets the deals going through those criteria. He’s only publishing deals that he’s comfortable with and investing in himself. I’ve jumped in now and invested too. My first deal is through this process. I’m taking advantage of being an inner circle member also.

I want to know how he’s keeping track of all those different things he’s invested in. It’s awesome.

It’s a type of engagement with the community that works in a bull market or a bear market. We all know when there’s blood in the streets, those are some of the best opportunities to build and find the gems of the future. It gives your community something to occupy them as the market regains momentum. What are some of the other types of partnerships that you are cooking up and thinking about as you move forward with this venture?

Part of living your best life is financial growth. Click To Tweet

For us, it’s listening to the community and let in the voice of the community come into our strategies and where we are going to focus our attention. We’ve got some things around the education piece that I’ve already mentioned that we’ve partnered with and some of the bigger partnerships that we are exploring. It’s really coming from listening to the community and where their desires are. We know that the financial growth is an area that people have been asking questions about because of the bear market and the blood in the streets, as you said, Josh. People want to know, “How do I diversify. How do I diversify within the Web3 space but then also, how do I diversify further?” We do want to listen to the community and offer value where the community is paying attention.

Tons of value, it sounds like it already, and I love the vision and focus. When we think about the next steps for you, give us a little insight as to the roadmap. What else is forthcoming that we haven’t touched on yet?

We’ve developed a pretty comprehensive Lore. We’ve got a fifteen-minute Lore video on our website. That’s four chapters of lore. It’s pretty cool. We talk about the creator character that’s there, and the creator created these bulls, and the bulls are exploratory and fun creatures. Towards the end of the Lore video, we talk about there being too much order, and with too much order, there’s now attention, and attention is what you need to drive and reach your potential. We hit that, why it’s called the Bulls and Apes Project, so Apes are coming next. That’s going to be part of our storyline. Our next big mint will be the Apes.

We’ve got some pretty cool ideas about how we are going to introduce the Apes and what unique things we are going to do around the apes as an NFT themselves. I’m looking forward to what the Apes are going to bring. It’s going to be interesting. They are going to be synergistic. We’ve already announced that they are going to be synergistic with the bulls in tokenomics. Bulls will be the ones that generate the methane tokens but the Apes will have a multiplier effect on the bull. You are going to want to own both. They play off of each other.

Following suit with what you’ve already built, which is really awesome. In terms of timeline on that, do you have some definitive here that we are working off of?

No, not yet. It will be a full-time period. We want to make sure that we do it right and have it set up right. We delivered a lot in a short time. We call it our first mint but it’s the OG Bulls, the Teen Bulls, the God Bulls, an ERC-20 token, the inner circle community, and the fifteen-minute Lore. We delivered a lot in a short time, and so we want to make sure that we give ourselves the space to do it right.

You mate the Bulls, and it gives you extra. Is there going to be some freaky Bull-Ape mating stuff going on too?

We will see. One thing that I will say is each bull has three breeds. If you do the math, it comes out to roughly 15,000 breeds that you could do across the collection. We are only going to have a max of 12,450 Teen Bulls. That means that there are going to be breeds left over. I hit that everybody, I’m like, “We don’t like unused utility,” so we will figure something out.

Is this a little bit more based on Greek mythology or Roman mythology? Which group was a little bit more polyamorous? It sounds like you are going down that direction.

NFT Anthony | NFT Buying Experience

NFT Buying Experience: Listen to the community, and offer value where the community is paying attention.

It’s possible. We did a little bit of research. Greek mythology has some of the combined characters. We haven’t made any definitive plans on that but there will be breeds left over. We will do something with it.

We are going to head on to our next section here in a moment, and we will have a lot of fun with Edge Quick Hitters. Before we get over there, this whole project grew out of your inspiration from the space, so we would love to know where else you draw your inspiration from in Web3 land these days.

For us, it’s looking at projects that are looking in the long-term, not just trying to flip NFTs and do things around the art and the rarity in that, which is important. We think it’s fun but it’s not the thought leadership that we are getting inspired from. It’s the people that are driving education mainstream adoption. That’s one place. The other is ones that are building utility around the community. We were trying to connect with other founders or influencers that are trying to push the envelope in those two areas.

Mainstream adoption and community-based utility are key for us. The word utilities is thrown out as a term that means so much. It’s about having a tangible value of that membership card thought process, where if you are a member of a country club, you get access to their restaurant, their golf if they have tennis lessons or a pool. We are viewing the community in the same way as projects need to have a tangible value of what you get for being a member of that community.

Hearing you talk about it reminds me a lot of listening to guys like Yat Siu and Robby Yung over at Animoca Brands. A lot of the same DNA goes into what they do and what they live and breathe every single day. A lot of cool stuff in there. We appreciate you sharing that with us. We want to take a little bit of a right turn here and shift gears. We want to do a little section on what we call Edge Quick Hitters. It’s basically a fun, quick way for us to get to know you a little bit better. There are ten questions. We are looking for short, single-word or fewer responses but we might dive in a little bit more here or there. Question number one. What is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?

It’s a 1977 Nova.

It’s probably floating around out there at a step of value these days.

I bought it when I was real young. I used to work on cars when I was like 11 or 12 years old with my father.

It was a brand new car.

NFT Anthony | NFT Buying Experience