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Stuart Alexander Of Niftables - First All-In-One NFT Technology For Creators & Brands, Plus: Guest Host: Audrey Pichy, And More…
Even for a crypto user, the barrier to entry into the NFT marketplace is high. Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger sit with Stuart Alexander, the co-founder of Niftables. Stuart talks about how we need to target the 98% who don’t know what NFT is. What’s the goal? To make a zero-entry barrier. What Niftables did, is it built a full suite of benefits that most brands and creators were looking for. Tune in!
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Stuart Alexander Of Niftables – First All-In-One NFT Technology For Creators & Brands, Plus: Guest Host: Audrey Pichy, And More…
Stay tuned for this episode and find out how Niftables is creating an easy button for anyone to launch an NFT platform. Why our guest is inspired by solving big, hairy problems and why a rosary is our guest’s most prized possession. All this and more in this episode. Check it out.
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This sponsored spotlight episode features Stuart Alexander, Cofounder of Niftables, the groundbreaking all-in-one NFT tech for creating White Label NFT platforms for creators and brands. He has several years of influencer marketing experience and is a social media expert. He is the Cofounder of one of the largest influencer marketing companies in Central and Eastern Europe.
Niftables is the go-to platform for brands and creators looking to realize their NFT vision, whether they are an individual or the biggest entertainment company in the world. It offers a powerful NFT meta market that consolidates key NFT investing and interactivity features into one easy-to-use platform. Stuart, welcome to the show.
It is lovely to be here. Thanks for having me.
We appreciate you joining. We are excited about this. We love easy buttons here. We are all about it. What you are building out there and the vision is grand. It is phenomenal. It is the thing that, as NFT lovers and folks that have been fans of the space, dating back to CryptoKitties and the goodness that that brought to the market. We have been waiting for this, and we want to know how does this project come to life? What is the origin story behind Niftables?
The origin story is that several years ago, I left the influencer space. I found myself in the crypto space, quite remarkably, surprisingly. I was there for quite a while. I was working with a couple of people in the space and some other projects, advising some NFT projects, and so forth. I had updated my LinkedIn and had a couple of companies approach me that come into the NFT space.
There were quite large companies because I was in the space for a long time as an influencer. I had built up quite a few contacts. I had worked closely with these companies for quite a few years, and they saw the opt-ed, “This guy is into NFTs. Where is he going now?” They approached me with a couple of options that we are looking to get into this space but they had a problem. They didn’t want to launch collections on traditional marketplaces because they needed their own White Label solution, which could serve as part of a wider marketing campaign, the technology, and utilities. That makes sense.
This problem applies to pretty much every other brand circling the NFT space now. It is obvious, and I don’t need to tell you directly. That means every major brand. They do not want to be confined by the platforms that are out there at the moment. We saw that there were things that needed to be designed. I myself loved being in the NFT space but I found a lot of problems in the current marketplace. It was hard, especially for myself. I have been in the crypto space for a while. For coming into these marketplaces, if I had imagined myself as a non-crypto user, I would have been completely lost. You had all these tutorials online. You are 7 or 14 steps to buying your first NFTs.
Even for myself, being in the tech space for quite a while, being familiar with technology wasn’t the easiest thing to get into. I thought that these barriers needed to be broken down. We need to target that 98% and make this zero-entry barrier into the space. We saw the problems, and there was nothing at the time offering this full suite of benefits that most of these companies, brands, and creators were looking for. We built it.
There is nothing more enjoyable in life than crafting a vision and an idea and seeing it become a reality. It is a special thing. I wanted to take this moment to introduce to everybody my cohost, Audrey Pichy, who is our Head of Community & Partnerships at Edge of NFT and an amazing part of the team. Audrey, welcome. I’m curious if you have any thoughts on, 1) Being with us here on the episode and, 2) For Stuart as part of this origin story.
Niftables: We need to target that 98% and make this zero-entry barrier into the space.
I’m excited to be part of this conversation. Stuart, I’m related to what you said about all of the different courses on NFTs and mentioning that there are many different ways to find information out there. Having something that streamlines that mass adoption is important to me specifically because I have not been in this space as much as Jeff and Josh have been. I could relate to that.
We are here to help, hopefully, and get you into the space.
We are scratching the tip of the iceberg. We are scratching the surface. The more that people are focused on bringing mass adoption about creating those easy buttons for the community seems like the sky is the limit with what the potential is for the space. There is a high barrier to entry for established brands or creators that already have communities. Talk to us a little bit about the functionality of Niftables and how it will work for those creators in their communities.
In short, Niftables is a fully optimized, 100% customizable White Label NFT platform created about around the simple premise that if NFTs don’t limit your creativity, neither should your platform. Exactly what you said that there is this high entry barrier. It is not about crypto. It is also about the user interface, the experience, and what a target audience is there for these existing platforms.
We want to flip the switch. To make our platform the most user-friendly for people that are coming in from our creators and brands that have trusted us and decided to go with us for the platform, we have made this all-in-one account. It is the same way you can use nowadays Google or your Instagram account to log into different things.
My vision is to have the Niftable account as your core login to all White Label platforms or secondary marketplace, and also, in the future, to connect the Niftables account to different metaverses, even to Spotify to play your music NFTs. To have that cross-compatibility with this account for all of the areas that we plan to reach in the future, and the account gives you a lot of different features. I’m not sure if I could list all of them, but from the traditional fiat or crypto payments but the great thing in this respect is that you can connect multiple wallets. You can connect your credit card to this one account. Once you are logged in to another platform, all of that data is transferred over.
It is one-time login. It is the same. If you are signed in on Google all the time, you don’t have to keep logging into your emails. In the same way, you don’t have to keep inputting your data and information but it also works as a centralized exchange in the respect that we can hold the custody of your NFTs for the new users coming in until you are ready to withdraw them.
While you are learning about the space, we are not limiting you to buying the NFTs. You can purchase the NFTs by connecting your credit card. You can pay in fiat. You can keep the NFTs within the platform. You can trade them gas-free because we can do it from user to user, from the centralized approach. When you are ready to do that, you can withdraw your NFT to an external cryptocurrency wallet if you decide to create one in the future.
The great thing is, with Niftables, you don’t ever have to create one because all of the things you could do with your NFT collection are built into that White Label platform. From the building side, you can add full customization of utilities. In fact, everything is customizable, to be honest. From the rarities, we have built-in rarity scores, so no more plugins from Rarity.tools or Rarity Sniper. I have always used that. I thought, “Why is that not built-in?” I build it in, and there it is. It is done. It wasn’t that complex.
From these simple features to more complex features such as an escrow service for trading NFTs and sending NFTs between users in the Niftables ecosystem, the reason this came to me is that I would follow Gary Vee sometimes. I keep seeing that he is warning people, “Guys, you need to watch out for the NFTs on getting airdrop. I’m not buying some of these NFTs. I’m not supporting it. I’m just getting an Airdrop.” People are following this.
We know these new users are going to come in. They are going to be liable for all these scams that are happening in the market because all these users are coming in the first time and us, the young NFT natives, already know these scams are going on. We want to approach from the safety side to make sure that the new users coming in are safe.
From the technical side, we have the features such as adding that full utility. It can be bonuses, services, experiences, rewards, metaverse experiences or a piece of merch. You can divide that merch into a hat or a T-shirt. All of these elements are searchable when you are browsing the collection. You don’t have to see that this NFT has unlockable content. You can browse a whole collection for directly that specific piece of utility that you are looking for. Five percent revenue share in the company, this piece of merch, digital or physical asset. All of those things are built into this fully optimized search engine. It is quick to find the NFT that you are looking for.
Understand what you’re getting into to feel safe. Click To Tweet
We have implemented things such as categorizing and organizing the NFTs from A to Z, from rarity score high to low. Certain things that people have always wanted to have. From my experience, I have always wanted to have, and the people I have spoken with added these things. The main topics are the centralized approach so that anyone can come in, use the technology, and buy an NFT. They can redeem that NFT for its utilities within the platform. You don’t have to track these users across Instagram and Twitter. If you do, a lot of projects have utilities now, heavily utility-focused, little platforms building for utility, we will build exactly for the utility.
I felt it coming because I have been tracking this space for a while. I know that is the next step from the art and the utility metaverse. In a year or two, it is going to be everything NFTs, even apartments and all these bits of pieces but circling back. I’m getting on off-topic. Technology-wise, we are keeping people safe. We want to make sure everyone who is coming in is not getting lost in this space and that everything we do, all these White Label platforms, we also have them verified and no entry barrier. They can have all this technology.
We have full optimization of the utilities. Without having to track everyone across Discords, Twitter, and Telegrams for your giveaways, you can do all of that as the owner of the platform from 1 command system or 1 centralized management system. You can do your Airdrops and giveaways and connect via emails or online in a different matter of ways to utilize those utilities. You don’t have to have the need to be everywhere at once with your collection.
What that means is that collections that are looking to go heavy utility, and most are now, can manage it all from this simple system without having to use other social media but it also means that they can add more utility because they will have more time to manage it. It will require less time to manage them the traditional way.
With our platform, there is going to be the ability to add a lot of different customization utilities. On top of those utilities, you can add merging, breeding, combining, upgrading, and fragmenting NFTs, and you can customize it all in your own way. I know there are quite a lot of things in the background but I try to scale it down as much as possible.
I wish you were a little bit more passionate about it, Stuart, to be honest, but you are all about it. This is amazing, and what a comprehensive vision. There are few companies and projects that have such a comprehensive view of what they want to accomplish and want to deliver as part of their core offering. As you said, you have this piece of mail. It is here and there. You got to use this product. You use different Rarity.tools, and so on. I commend you on that vision and the execution side of it or executing against that vision.
One piece of that that jumps out, and we touched on it a little bit before, was mass adoption and how do you achieve that. I’m curious as to your thoughts on that. What are the things that are at the forefront of your mind that you have to do to get that adoption? We talked about some of those features but what about those features? How do you market that to the broad audience out there? What is that trigger that gets you mass adoption?
It is a wider understanding of what NFTs can be used for. The core of this is going to be showing people that the NFTs can have a much wider scale of utility than they have had to date, mainly to date, JPEGs, and everyone is going around and saying, “I can copy and paste that.” That kind of argument. We know that argument is invalid from a technological point of view but it was the other side’s argument.
If you can say that this NFT is backed by an exclusive experience with so and so, this NFT gives you partial ownership of this hotel, which is normally valued at $1.2 billion, maybe going into a project we are planning to do, maybe not. You can’t afford it yourself but maybe you can come together with a couple of hundred people, and now you are the owner of this hotel. It becomes a DAO, where everyone can manage that.
For me, it is showing people new opportunities. What the NFTs can bring to the space and from the blockchain side, the security of those, and the way they can be managed. It is a lot safer than a lot of things that we have in this space now like in traditional banking, other bits and pieces that have been functioning for a long time. It has been functioning for so long that we need something new. Something new comes along once in a while. Before you know it, it is the talk of the town.
I had this exact same situation with YouTube because I was on YouTube at the very start, maybe a year or two after it had launched. Having 1,000 subscribers that were big like, “Whoa.” Having 30,000 subs was huge. After my time in the space, I had amassed six million subscribers across all my platforms but I remember when it started. I feel this excitement because I’m at that same point where YouTube was when I started around several years ago recording my first videos. I feel like I’m in that exact same spot in the NFT space now. It is exciting.
In regards to that mass adoption, it is going to prove itself with time, the same way YouTube proved itself when people started using it more, and we are getting more users in the NFT space all the time. Once those new functionalities were added on YouTube, when you could start watching these videos, you had some experience from it. You had some joy and fun. You could learn things. You could be in part of specific communities.
Niftables: We want to make sure new users who come in are safe.
It is different space from digital video content and NFTs but I have noticed that there is so much crossover on the underlying layer in regards to the way we as humans approach these things. It is not whether a massive option is coming and what we can do to bring it in. With Niftables, we can maybe speed up the process. It is something that is coming inevitably. You can see it in this space with Instagram and integration against all other big projects that are getting into the space. For me, it is a matter of time until it is proven. I’m happy and excited that I got in early in the same way I was on YouTube back in the day.
Audrey, I’m curious, from your perspective, as a relatively new entrant into the crypto realm here over 2021, in particular. When Stuart talked about this, what are the things that are most important to you as a relatively new entrant to the space?
What Stuart said that spoke to me is to mention that his platform doesn’t have what the traditional platforms have, which is a place for you to put your NFTs. Tell me if I’m wrong, Stuart, that there is way more to it in the sense that you could do your marketing, your branding, all of this together if you White Label your project that way. It seems to me like there is more. You mentioned you used to do marketing or you are pretty connected in that sense. There might be something in there that could be useful to those brands other than what the traditional marketplace has.
To nicely summarize it at this moment in time, most projects, either way, from launching on OpenSea and having that integration with Rarible from the OpenSea side, most projects are making these basic landing pages. They want that element to display their project and roadmap in some way, to have a little bit of customization, rather than launching on OpenSea and Rarible.
OpenSea and Rarible are built traditionally for that secondary market. What we are doing is saying, “If you are building this very simple minting page, here is your full marketplace and your customization.” Now you are not anymore limited by OpenSea and Rarible interface and all of the customization features that you can add there. You can do it all yourself.
You have your own mini OpenSea Rarible but with everything that you want to add and you are not limited. You can be creative with NFTs nowadays but you can’t be creative with most of the platforms that you are launching on. There are many marketplaces upcoming, and with all due respect to them, a lot of people are trying to get quickly into the space but a lot of them that I have seen are mainly basic Web2 eCommerce platforms with a connect to your wallet. That is not what we have wanted to ever do. We are coming from the other approach like building everything NFT first and then adding the working eCommerce site second.
It has that working backend functionality in that respect. That is exactly what we have. We are an all-in-one solution. From the clients that we partner with, we even help with the strategy and with the roadmap advisory. It is all negotiable if someone wants to do that themselves, they want a drag and drop marketplace. Here, you go, design it, happy days, do your thing.
That is another problem with all these no-code marketplaces. They are there even if there is no code. The companies don’t even understand what an NFT is, what NFTs they should do, and what people like. We are there to help as well. We are not a marketplace. We are your go-to guys. We are the guys that are going to sit down with you on the call. We are going to talk with you about everything. We are going to tell you what is working with up to date in the space.
We have some tricks on the marketing side. We have these strong partnerships with different chains and technologies that we can help. We can connect you with the best 3D artists and designers. It is your shortcut. It is like the difference between trying to launch YouTube yourself and having the whole platform. There is no code. You can just upload a video but you can also go to someone who is already famous, and they can say, “Come, I will teach you how to do everything.”
In regards to NFT projects or general?
I’m ready. Let’s go.
None of that when you were three.
It is all good. You have been doing a lot.
That is cool, the first Minecraft server.
Time is precious.
Forgiveness.
