Luke: [00:00:00] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Andrew Pelus, who is the CEO of Hebrew, the studio behind OSAs. Along with his co-founder and chief creative officer, Nick Cabana, Andrew leads the company’s efforts to turn OSAs from an internet native community and digital collectible project into a broader entertainment franchise, including his recent expansion into Amazon Prime Video.

Nick leads a creative vision behind clean of Soars, and it’s focused on building entertainment IP that brings together storytelling community and emerging technology In new ways. In this episode, we discussed the story of bringing OSAs to Amazon Prime and the way they approached this massive opportunity, their decision to give 15% of the business equity back to collectors.

how selling products is funding their content production and vice versa, and their approach to getting children and parents to engage with NFTs. this is a great episode. I hope you all enjoy it. and now for this week’s episode of The Brave Technologist.

All right. Hey guys. welcome to the Brave Technologist. How you [00:01:00] doing?

Andrew: Doing well. Thanks for having us, Luke.

Luke: Yeah, welcome back and Nick too. I, uh, think your first time on the show,but Andrew, it’s great to have you back. yeah, and, and, um, I’m excited to kind of go over this that I guys have had a lot going on.

I mean, just kind of set the table a little bit so. Clean of Swords started as an of the Solana NFT project and has grown probably, I mean, it’s grown. One of the biggest, as far as IP and, you know, getting out there goes one of the biggest, most successful Web3 projects we’ve seen. can you walk us through what the original vision was and how far, you know, in startup, it never goes according to plan really, but like, how far has your guys’ reality diverged from the initial planning or what you at least were thinking about?

Nic: it’s been amazing. the original builders of the brand, really started with, three animators. We were animators that came from, a film and visual effects background. we’ve been working on stuff like, you know, game of Thrones, Paddington, fantastic Beasts, a bunch of Marvel stuff I’ve done like Jurassic World.

We really wanted to build a brand for ourselves, and we felt we were doing it for the big [00:02:00] guys. We also felt that the creator economy was most likely going to boom. in light of this like. Oversaturated content market and also this fact that a lot of creators can sort of distribute for free anywhere they want, whether it’s like YouTube or Instagram and things like that.

And really, it started with that idea. And we wanted to do a, a brand. I mean, we were nerds, so you know, we loved like Masters of the Universe and things like that. We love collecting. So we felt, well why not, like bootstrap and start aa brand through collectibles, which is what we did with the digital collectibles almost in the same way that Mattel had done with Masters of Universe.

All these years ago and then figure out, okay, let’s get like community bought into this and let’s use that money for content and let’s, test alongside that community, all these other things like products and events and experiences. And, and that was almost four years ago and we had all these questions like, how do we grow a brand and how do we, grow an audience of thousands of people, which eventually became millions?

it started off as, as a spark and as a dream and as this crazy experiment, and [00:03:00] it’s now snowballed into this massive constellation of. Over a million fans of the, the company has made around $15 million. We’ve sold thousands of products, on, on the NFT and digital collectible sides. We have, almost a hundred thousand digital assets, across the board.

and it’s a ecosystem with so much depth. we’ve created experiences around the world with. Oftentimes over a thousand people showing up to these things, whether it’s Amsterdam or the NC Animation Festival, or places like that, Lisbon, all over the place. So it’s been, it’s been crazy. And, and now we’re on Amazon Prime Video for, some of the episodes, concept episodes that we recently tested where we’re finally introducing to our fans, okay, what the broader narrative is, what the lore is, the tone and, and, how these characters interact with each other and who they are really.

So that’s really the next step is to kind of delve into long form content. But most of what we’ve done up until now is really with short form content, Atomic content for like Instagram and TikTok. And [00:04:00] it’s been an absolute blast and it’s been a wild ride. And I think it’s a case study in where the creator economy is going that creators like us can be so empowered.

Luke: And you guys have this like great ability to nail the cultural side, but also, like you mentioned, and I want to get into this now, like the Amazon Prime video. I can’t think of another project that’s kind of had this much of an addressable opportunity to cross over like this, on Amazon Prime is huge.

how did that opportunity kind of come together and can you guys share a little bit more about that?

Andrew: The Brave Technologist is brought to you by the Brave Search, API access billions of indexed web results

Luke: from a simple API call with the Brave Search API join the leading names in AI and tech using the Brave Search, API to Power Agen Search.

Keep LLMs current with realtime data, train foundational models, and bring the best of the web directly to the leading edge. Get started today at brave.com/api.

Nic: I think a lot of the big wins we’ve had. Come from the simple [00:05:00] fact that our audience is pretty diehard and we’ve nurtured that community, but the product is there.

The product is so good when we built, I mean, we’re all professional animators. Most of us have been like supervising animators as well, and we know what’s sticky and we know what resonates with audiences. It’s just that in a previous life we were doing it for other studios and now it was time to do it for ourselves.

So. How we built this collection and how we designed these characters and all these like ideas that we had was built for Toyota Potential and was built so that one day it can exist on the shelves right next to Disney or Marvel stuff or Hello Kitty or even Pokemon. And not be weird. And so I think the fact that the product visually makes a lot of sense to people.

When you see it, it kind of looks like anything that, that Pixar would be doing or Disney or whatever, that was a big part of it. And so because the quality is there and because the tone is there and the characters are great and they’re funny and just really resonates with a lot of people. In an organic way.

[00:06:00] it’s really helped move the ball and create a lot of conversations, with studios and, and with potential licensing partners and things like that. And because we’re gaining so much traction in the industry from a creator economy point of view, because our strategies are so fresh and new, we also have a lot of conversations that, like biz to biz conferences, we get invited to speak at places like MIP Junior or kid screen or things like that.

So that creates this sort of flywheel effect where companies like Amazon reach out to us and like, Hey, we love what you guys are doing. The content’s amazing. We’ve heard a lot about you guys through this person and that studio. We’re looking for more content and actually we’re looking for content that can pull new fans into our platform.

Why don’t we get yours on, we love what you guys are doing on Instagram. This was over a year ago, by the way, but basically they approached us going. It was like a cold DM on LinkedIn actually places from someone that’s in charge of like kids acquisition and programming and was like, love what you guys are doing.

Let’s talk about getting that content on the [00:07:00] platform and figuring out, getting those shorts up. And we’re like, okay, that’s cool. They’re not, they’re vertical, they’re not horizontal yet, and we are building longer episodes. So would you be interested in, in that? They’re like, yeah, like once that. Happening and we’re like, well, okay, these are long episodes.

That’ll take a while. But we are building concept episodes that are like two minutes each as a way to just like seed on YouTube and get our fans to really understand and fall in love with these characters and discover them for the first time. And they were like, well, cool, and let’s bring those up.

And we’re like, really? Like, it’s like two minutes of pop. how do you feel about that? No problem. let’s just test it, which is. So cool. And I think a big signal of what’s happening where you’ve got big, amazing players like Amazon, Netflix, Disney, paramount even, that are having to contend with the market that YouTube is capturing.

And this expectation that fans have that content should be free. And content is mostly like unex expression of a brand, and it’s everywhere. [00:08:00] So as a way to compete with, the YouTubes and free distribution that’s scattered all over the place, and even, you know, Roblox is, you’re starting to see this trend, especially this year, like after obsession and what digital circuits just pulled off, where you have like, a platforms and distributors like the Netflixes, like the primes that are saying maybe there are no rules anymore.

Maybe an exclusivity deal makes less and less sense, and maybe it doesn’t have to be a full season and full episodes. Maybe we can, for lack of a better word, like ffo and fuck around and find out a little bit. Which is a beautiful thing for creators that do not have to go through the, the whole kind of legacy Hollywood gate kept approach.

We can make content ourselves, and I think that’s the beauty of it.

Luke: How is this affecting how you guys build IP and, I mean, these are huge distribution channels. Like for something, you know, originating crypto, this is like s tier or no one’s seen this distribution types of levels.

is that affecting the way that you guys approach the IP like [00:09:00] strategy or is it simpler than that? I’m just kind of curious.

Nic: we focused on short form because that just made sense. Why would you front load your whole budget on long form in the beginning when your goal is to focus on audience and fandom acquisition before focusing on content right away at the very least, like long form content.

So that was like year one, what we were focusing on. That said, once we started to say like, well, we do need content. How do you’re building a brand. How do you get people to like actually interact and fall in love with these characters? But we don’t have millions of dollars to spend on seven or 20 minute episodes.

Right. So Instagram and TikTok was the next play. But these are also amazing channels because you’re risking the money that you have on ten second, 15 second shorts, and it’s a test kitchen. And you can learn very quickly what’s sticky and what’s not. You know, we focus a lot on evergreen content.

We try not to copy too many trends because the, we actually wanna learn from data and the stories that, that we build and what the characters are doing and so forth. And so [00:10:00] building with short form content was an amazing tool for us. And then you do it long enough and you get a following, and then you start to gain this sort of toolbox, of knowledge of, okay, uh, we kind of know what the audience really resonates with and all that kind of stuff.

Let’s now give them something meatier to chew on and to watch and actually give them somewhere where they can actually fall in love with the characters. And it’s a de-risk mechanism. And now we’ve actually earned the right financially to make those episodes, but we actually earned their attention because the fans are there, they want more, and they’re asking for it rather than, you know, working on a, a season for two years with no fans and then hoping one day it’s gonna be sticky.

So it was an amazing way to build. Amazon is an amazing distribution. Like you say, like in, in Web3 is a massive deal. I think there’s a great sense of pride across the entire ecosystem for what we’ve achieved. Does it affect how we build content? No, I think it’s still the same approach, which is okay.

Now we did, we went from super short [00:11:00] form, then we went from. Less short, but still fairly short by most like industry standards where it’s like, okay, two minute episodes, it’s enough to get to know the voice actors. It’s enough to get to know the characters, and you’re building in the open, you’re showing your fans like new stuff, and it’s super exciting.

Now the next step is, okay, well why don’t we, let’s get into the seven minutes. Use all of our learnings to apply that and de-risk it and get the fans hype. And we also sell product at the same time, which I think is a really important piece of the puzzle, which Hollywood is not really yet equipped to do.

oftentimes their approach is let’s make content and if it’s successful, we’ll have to play catch up and attempt to sell stuff after. Like you see the same thing with like K-pop demon hunters. They were almost a year late with their licensing strategy where our approach is. Because we’re focusing on fans as we build, anytime we release like a meaningful, amount, or length of content, we try to make it a party and we try to create ancillary products we can sell.

Oftentimes that’s digital collectibles [00:12:00] for us, or maybe chat stickers or maybe like a capsule kind of product. But you gotta do that because it’s almost like, well, the content funds itself. Actually selling stuff is a form of content and is a form of distribution. people don’t just buy plushies ‘cause they want plushies, they actually love to display it on their shelves and that’s free marketing and then they’re gonna make user generated content and all that kind of stuff.

So you’re creating this massive flywheel effect that kind of finances itself and proves that the brand as you’re building it, has a lot of leverage. Mm-hmm. Which is an amazing way to build.

Luke: No, that’s awesome. I mean, like, and you know, I think it’s, it’s pretty forward thinking too as far as like the way that, you know, IP and merchandise and all of this is kind of evolving in, in, in a game where attention is like.

You know, has even more and more, you know, scarcity, right? Like with where everybody’s consumed. and you know, it’s a quick note, like as a parent too, I appreciate the short form approach. ‘cause it can, can be [00:13:00] like, hey, like, uh, seven minutes before bed instead of 30. It makes bedtime easier.

But, you know, when you’ve got these, this kind of approach, and I’m sure as you guys hit Amazon, this becomes even a bigger deal. Like there’s probably, I would imagine a, like a passive element. a cohort and then a really engaged cohort when you got collectibles and things like that.

Like what have you learned about what audiences really want, to participate in? You know, like versus simply just consuming, through this process?

Nic: I think more than anything, they want to feel seen and they want social equity. Alongside the growth of the brand and oftentimes alongside the creators, that’s a major part of the creator economy.

You look at all these influencers on YouTube as they build their brand, whether it’s like a chef influencer or someone like Mr. Beast, the ability to comment and get replies back from that person and see the growth of that person and feel like you’re like part of the family is huge. That said. On YouTube, it’s not.

The reality of it is it often boils [00:14:00] down to like, well, comments and replies, and what we’ve discovered is. They wanna meet us. They want to, of course, be able to opine on things and comment and give feedback, but we’re with them in group chats. We’re there on Discord we’re, they’re of course, on X and other platforms.

But it’s the channels where , they can really feel like they’re participating, that are, important, but not just participating with us, but participating with each other. these fans. Especially on the collector side, we’ve noticed it’s a big thing, but these fans create. Culture, they create collector language, they meet each other, and we enable that sometimes.

We’ll, we’ll make sure that we have like satellites across the globe where we have, you know, like, community managers that can help enable those meetings as well. It’s a really important thing. So I think people are looking for connection. They’re looking for identity. And I can say the same thing about anyone that shows up to Comic-Con.

When, when you go and you cosplay as Louie from, from one piece, what are you really hoping for? You’re hoping for someone across the street to go, oh. [00:15:00] He likes this person likes one piece, like I’m gonna go talk to them and we have, um, shared experiences, or we can find friendship over shared fandom. It’s a massive thing today.

And I think post COVID, that’s ev that’s even more true in the brands that can foster those kinds of memories and experiences and connections and a feeling of identity will be the big winners. that’s what community is. And so for us it’s a really powerful thing. We don’t take it lightly.

We focus on that stuff, and we appreciate that. fans want to also feel like they can say, I was there on this moment. I can prove it and I matter. And they can show that I matter. Meaning anyone that was there when we launched on Prime Video. We kind of made it a party online, but we also have these tools where we have the data points of who really engaged with that.

so let’s say like one of our holders, like BH engaged with that at the right time. Well that person gets a digital badge, which is like [00:16:00] a memory shard and we can identify that, that fan and go, yeah, a hundred percent. You were there. I know you were there. And have that kind of fun, interactive kind of communication and feedback loop with them.

And then outside of that, I think they just want to be heard because that’s a part of the journey. Doesn’t mean that we have to listen to all the feedback all the time, like on the creative side, for example. But the fact that they watch us build it in the open and come up with ideas and that they’re able to pitch their ideas or toss, I don’t really like this version of what the Rex is doing.

And maybe that version is kind of funnier and then enough people are like, oh yeah, yeah, that would be funnier. That’s a part of their journey, and these are memories as a fan that you build while the brand is in its infancy. And it’s a really powerful thing because years later you can say like, Hey, while they were building something like the next Pokemon like man, I remember those days.

I remember how tough it was for them to build that. I remember how exciting it was and to this day I’m still a VIP super fan and recognized, and I can prove it. Now, of course [00:17:00] we just did an equity play, which Andrew can get into, so that also helps give them a feeling of ownership. But people just wanna be seen and they wanna be part of the journey.

Luke: And that the equity thing is like super interesting too. I know Andrew, we might’ve broached on this a little bit on the last appearance, but we didn’t really get into it too much. like you all are giving, you know, 15%, right? Like of the business equity back to collectors. I mean, that’s when you think about what you guys are doing, you know, with Amazon and kind of having this model.

Nic: Where,

Luke: you know, collectors can have a piece like this. it’s pretty awesome. It’s one of the things that gets me excited about seeing these opportunities go more mainstream. I mean, what was kind of the thinking behind that and did you face any resistance internally? what was that like? What kind of went into making that?

Andrew: so I think it, it goes back to a lot of the things that Nick just spoke about, but. It’s ultimately this idea that the fans, especially early on in the life of the brand, add a tremendous amount of value to that brand. and you mentioned earlier like this intention [00:18:00] scarcity, right? And this open distribution.

So because at this creative level, there’s just so much competition amongst different, videos on YouTube streaming and so forth. The fan or the early fan, you know, entering your property, participating in our case, collecting, you know, the digital collectibles, building herds and pods. But even like doing, you know, user-generated content, all of these things are super, super valuable.

And then even like, you know, between super active and down to these more passive fans, there are other things that are also very valuable, even if it’s just sharing it with your friends, talking about it in conversation, participating in Discord. early on, it’s like very, very important. And we think it’s so important, especially given the com competitive nature, of the business today, that it’s actually warrants like a degree of a real value add to the property, right?

Like without that, we would not be where we are, like without those fans. For claim stores in particular, we wouldn’t be where we are. So, you know, I think that paradigm is relatively important for brand building even into the future. and I think we probably spoke around, [00:19:00] you know, the more theoretical like version of that last time.

Luke: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: and then, you know, KLEO is, is like our test kitchen in many, many ways. And, and this is one of them too. It’s like we own that property completely. So we have like the freedom to operate and do these kinds of things that are a little bit more innovative. no, we did not face any tremendous amount of resistance.

Because I think everyone internally has bought in on this idea. We thought about it like, you know, for a lengthy period of time too. And it made sense to us, maybe in a more funny manner, like, speaking to lawyers about it or like, distribution, you know, stuff like that. They’re like, so wait, you wanna do this for free?

Like, you’re just gonna give the equity away, you know? they’re like, I don’t understand. Like, we don’t have a business model for this. That doesn’t make sense. You mean you wanna raise capital, right? and we’re like, no, no, no. Like we’re not raising capital. We’re distributing the shares for free.

Obviously once you get them under the hood, they get it, you know, they’re like, I understand. and you know, it’s sort of like hit or miss. I think people are either like, get it right away, like, oh, I actually see how that could work. and others are a little skeptical, obviously. We believe in it. And yeah, I think it’s, it goes back to this ultimate idea that like the fan is incredibly valuable today.

and without that, [00:20:00] that person that you don’t have a brand to begin with, it’s that sort of reconciliation of that. It is that bringing them under the hood, bringing ’em on the train with you, bringing on the boat, you know what I mean? Like taking ’em on that journey together. And in our case with Plano, you know, we started this journey at this 0.3 and a half, four years ago.

But without those fans. It would not be possible. Right?

Luke: At brave. It’s like user first, user always kind of like, ethos and, especially like when you’ve got these really strong principles on the, high integrity, all of these things like with the tech and that. But there’s so few, really good examples of projects that like are able to do what you guys are doing.

And I kind of put brave in this bucket too, of like. Being able to put something out there that your neighbor or your friend can enjoy and use that is backed by these kind of fundamentals. But it isn’t all about, it isn’t hitting you across the face like you guys have a thing and it’s out there. And I can count maybe on one hand the amount of,

Web3 originating projects that I can say that about. Which, I mean, it’s like, [00:21:00] it’s amazing that you guys are able to like, get it to this point. And I’m super excited to see like where you guys go with this too, because, you know, this is such an a awesome opportunity to bring these types of models to huge audiences and show other creators that.

You can actually achieve this, which is huge. it’s a kudos on that. I mean, you think, how do you guys kind of balance this community ownership model with maintaining kind of a clear creative vision? I mean, you’re, you’re having to kind of expand into these like longer form things and anytime you add, you know, to something that community is gonna have opinions and things like that.

I know you touched on like commentary earlier, but like, how is that approach or impacting the creative side?

Nic: Look, the North star is always, it’s gotta be good and we have a creative vision, you know, that’s where it starts. But oftentimes a lot of the answers are, it’s not a pure science, but a lot of the answers are in the stats, the certain comments that we see that are repetitive.

there are patterns in these things where a certain character is just. [00:22:00] Really kind of, seeing a lot more engagement than another one, in these very specific situations. And so it’s kind of, some nuanced balance of, you know, maintaining your, like your artistic and creative integrity, and having a, a clear vision, but giving yourself room to, experiment.

To inject some of the stuff that might actually just make it even cooler and more creative. One of these examples is like, I mean this is an old example, but you know, our community just started calling the, they build pop culture inside of our brands. They started calling Dacko Sky chickens. We thought that was hilarious.

Luke: That’s

Nic: awesome. And then we started using that and. That’s something we would’ve never come up with. And it just makes our brand richer because it kind of feels a little bit meta. It kind of feels all different and sometimes the, the collective brain allows for that. And so it can be a really empowering thing.

and I think really ultimately it’s, if we like it. And if we don’t. Then it’s still, [00:23:00] you know, it’s, we choose whether we incorporate it or not, but oftentimes we do when it’s something that we think is actually just hilarious or makes the brand richer. So it’s kind of like, uh, yeah, it’s a balance you have to find and it’s really just based on having good taste and also based on, well, look, this resonates so hard.

Obviously a lot of people think this is funny, so why don’t we just do it? Yeah, giving them a, giving them channels and, and places where they can interact and give us the feedback is, is the most important thing.

Luke: That makes, a lot of sense. and you know, part I’m kind of, I’m curious your guys’ take on this too because, we also are in the token space and have, have product, et cetera, like in, you know, the NFT market just like so much of.

The crypto market kind of goes through these volatility swings, and especially the past year, it’s been pretty brutal, and a lot of projects haven’t made it through. I mean, it’s gotta be an interesting balance for you guys where, your consumptive or engaged audience is probably.

Cannot, I mean, they don’t even have to [00:24:00] be aware of what crypto even is. But then on the other end, you probably have like a savvy token community, right? Like that, that is, kind of living and dying by the charts. Like what did you, do you guys do anything differently to kind of on the community side to try and balance those two things?

Nic: a few things and, and I want Andrew to opine after, but we were unreasonably trans. I think that’s always been our superpower. We, you know, there was a bit of a filtering in the beginning be people were there for the wrong reasons and it was, they might’ve been there for financial reasons, which by the way that’s okay.

and that’s a big part of collecting as well. You see the same thing in Pokemon. But what we had to make everybody understand is guys we’re here for the long term.

Luke: Mm-hmm.

Nic: Which was a rarity at the time. We’re not here for what the charts are doing tomorrow and the day after. we’re here for the value that the brand’s growth will bring back to the collectibles and we’ll bring back to you guys as, as supporters and things like that and, and to the brand itself.

And so we were over repetitive about that mission statement and what we wanna [00:25:00] bring to the table as far as Web3 is concerned and how we want to be representative of digital collectibles and NFTs in a way that hopefully. We’ll onboard a lot of, of, of, you know, like the normies of the web two demographic and just make it make sense.

And so I think just having that open channel and the confidence to be very crystal clear about that mission and not do too many side quests kind of, almost in a way turned us into this like. Blue chip ecosystem where people understood, okay, we know what these guys are trying to do and the brand is dope.

We actually support that on the crypto side if they wanna like play with other things, that there’s other places to do that. But over time, that created a substantial value proposition, which is. This is a really fun ecosystem to participate in. It feels, safe. It feels like I know what they’re trying to, what they’re attempting to do, and I wanna support that.

And today our collector base is [00:26:00] incredible. It’s like we’ve never pegged our efforts to what the charts are doing. We’ve pegged our efforts to, let’s do everything we can to make this brand a success. and you’ve got, like, you know, you have almost 40,000 character NFTs that we’ve launched and 1.5% of that.

Listed,

Luke: wow.

Nic: and some people have held for years and they’re happy to, and they don’t much care about, what the price action of the now is. their assumption is that they’re holding a potential Char ARD collectible for the next decade, and they’re helping to build that, and now they own a piece of that company.

It’s amazing. I should also say that from a demographics perspective, what’s really cool is that. We have like hundreds of these cases where you have, oftentimes it’s the dads, but we have a lot of women too that are. Kind of coco collecting with their kids where they might be crypto savvy, but they’re asking their kids to pick, you know, the dinosaurs.

And you have a lot of kids that, um, have been in the range of, I think from like four to about nine [00:27:00] that have grown up with KLAS over the last four years. Their fathers or their mothers being like super fans. Which is a really cool, superpower because then we leverage those fans and sometimes, we’ll do polls with them.

They’re gonna give us feedback on the latest episodes, and, and we have like all these stats that they’re just so happy to provide us. Where we can actually kind of even have a pulse on, okay, what do the kids like most about this episode? What don’t they like? And, and we, and it’s awesome. So it’s like we’re co building with those fans and we are getting a lot of the kids involved.

And then, like you said, the brand itself in Web two sells itself. I mean, it’s, it’s, you’ll, you’ll get that audience just by virtue of the content being amazing and the products being awesome.

Andrew: Yeah. On, on that side of the things, I’ll expand a little because there’s like this approach to the Web3 audience that Nick describes.

But then there’s this question that I think you, you sort of alluded to Luke, which is how do you get like a kid into NFTs? Right? Right. And I think that’s like a, a tougher question. But ultimately, [00:28:00] like Nick said, the product is, you know, this really high quality 3D animated dinosaur. Obviously, you know, someone who’s that age conce and say like, oh, this is, it’s age appropriate.

And on the other side of things, when we build products on the web two side. Especially as we think about these like growing communities that we believe are digital first, maybe not Web3 savvy if you’re like 10 years old, but digital first. Nonetheless, you’re still able to build these really great products on top of this Web3 layer.

But,obfuscate the entire Web3 noise part of it, right? And so that’s what we work towards where it’s like you get all the good parts of, you know, this great experience and OSAs and the underlying infrastructure is sitting on top of Web3. And it’s sort of like, if you know, you know,so both audiences can participate, but you know, you’re not adding all the financialization of the NFTs inside of that platform, for instance.

You’re not, you know, there’s no trading activity, but the underlying, you know. Assets are NFTs, right? so we just did that watch and collect launch in July. That was [00:29:00] pretty successful. If you come onto that from a non Web3 angle, put in your email, put in your credit card, you know, rock and roll, and you get your, you know, your digital collectible, right?

And that’s like the objective. so, you know, I think ultimately the underlying product makes sense for, um. For that audience. And just a matter of keeping it like obfuscated on the Web3 side and like Nick said, our Web3 audience, like that’s awesome. Like that makes sense, right? They get it. Yeah.

Nic: Well, the Web3 guys, like they have first movers Advantage in, in helping us build this brand and having a piece of it.

kids understand collecting, I mean, they’re, they’re in Roblox. That’s what they’re doing. They’re literally like, you’ll see kids that are like nine. That are kind of opening up trades with, other people trying to, literally they’ll use the word like, oh, I’m just flexing on this, on this guy.

Right? Like showing them the rare items. And then you have Fortnite and you have guns, skins, and, you know, all these digital assets that they don’t actually own, that are pegged to an account that’s in a closed loop and that the parent or they themselves, have no way of eventually offloading the however [00:30:00] thousands of dollars they’ve paid over the amount of, time that kid has played that game, you can’t garage sell them. With NFTs, you can. Now I know the world is not there yet, but eventually, I have no doubt that the eBays of the world and the Facebook marketplaces and secondary markets will open up the floodgates for digital assets and for us to integrate that blockchain tech is the way to future proof those collectibles.

But kids understand it’s so,

Luke: so. Yeah. Yeah.

Nic: They understand it. So collectible.

Luke: that’s one of the things where you see like, the name Amazon, and you’re like, okay, wait a minute. this could be so huge here. You know, like with, I mean, like AWS powers so much infrastructure, on, on the, the crypto and AI side, and like.

then you’ve got this content distribution model that, that can totally work. And, I don’t know. there’s a couple things that really resonate, the coco collecting thing you guys were talking about. I used to do that with my kids where we’d like print a contact sheet and have ’em pick a logo, right?

and you know, you know, swap or whatever. Or you would be like, you know, call my daughter loves it, you know, that kind of thing. but that ability, it’s like there aren’t very many like things [00:31:00] that I’m gonna dare to say, like wholesome, you know, in this space where you can actually like, yeah.

Create a bond and then also kind of get them into this stuff and teach ’em a bit about it. But then also too, I mean like so much of this space is focused on like, okay, well why can’t I see a trading thing there? But like, you know, working against that, like just for the sake of kind of moving it forward, that’s what it’s all about.

So like, I wanna commend you guys to who on that part. ‘cause it’s not, it’s a no brainer to somebody in the web two side to do it that way. But like in the Web3 side, one of the biggest problems has been we haven’t been able to get out of our own way, in order to hit that next ring of adoption.

Yeah. So I think it’s like really, really cool that you guys are disciplined on that approach. But

Nic: keep in mind, like Gary V talks about this shit all the time, which is there was a day when trading cards were weird. It was weird to people and, and they were over in the trading of them was overindexed mm-hmm.

As they started their life cycle. Same with sports cards. and I think we’re in that phase today where a lot of people that are in those trenches have a hard time kinda wrapping their heads around, here’s what it looks like, zoomed out for the normies [00:32:00] over, the next decade. Because right now it’s like you say it’s, I’m just checking the charts, all that kind of stuff.

and I think it’s, o over time I’ll find balance, but I just have no doubt in my mind that at some point all that stuff gets abstracted. And yes, the great thing is you can sell them on any secondary market across the internet, but you can also have them because they are an awesome flex mechanism.

I think what we have to work on and as a, as an industry, because they’re digital and they’re not like physical and tangible. Is, and that might cause some psychological friction, is to have better kind of digital shelf space to be able to display them correctly. you know, sticker book mechanisms, things like that where vaults, where everybody understands that, oh, this is this person’s sticker book.

Once, once those things are in place and we’re working on that for ourselves as well, then a lot of friction is removed because then I I can showcase. The stuff that I vibe with. and people get that the same way. you invite someone to your [00:33:00] place, say, Kate, come see my collection of, all this stuff.

Right? And, and I think because it’s really difficult to do that in digital so far, aside from maybe showing your wallet that’s caused some friction, but it’ll catch up and, and we build towards where we think this heads in the next five to 10 years. we don’t build for what it looks like today. That said, we do find balance, like we understand the culture very well and we do lean into it in a way that makes sense.

But we’re also clear about the, the ethos of helping the landscape, shift towards where we feel it, it should shift.

Luke: Having it on the, the screensaver moments with your, your cleaners on the, uh, TV

Nic: as you

Luke: walk in the house, right? Like there’s, the Amazon thing is huge. Like this is my wife does with our, our family pictures, right?

Like, it’s like, yeah. There’s

Nic: so many use cases. Like think about the fact that we, we have collectors where, you know, they can sign up to sheet and sometimes just as a reward mechanism, we feature them in our content for us. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s how we build. Awesome. The collections, it’s a 3D asset.

We quick skin swap their collectible. Features as a cast [00:34:00] member on the TV show or on the Instagram content. That is so cool. Amongst all the other things you can do, loyalty system because they are digital, all that kind of stuff. Andrew mentioned about the watch and collect thing and you talked about Amazon, so I think it’s a really cool thing to kind of mention where to Yeah.

When you think of all these platforms. Some of which are already doing retail in an amazing way, like Amazon. Most of them that are doing content like Netflix and so forth are looking for gamified experiences that could enrich the experience of watching. Otherwise, everyone’s competing with the same product, which is like content and mm-hmm.

And, and oh my God, you’re like a, a needle in a haystack when you’re trying to like, please, please watch my content. Right. And what we love about this idea of watch and collect is, can you imagine if you were like watching Pokemon. On YouTube or on Netflix, and when you go through an episode, boom, you get a booster pack in your digital sticker book that everyone else can see and that you can show to other people.

That’s what we’re building. The [00:35:00] important thing is that yes, it is pegged to story, which means it’s related to the stuff you might be seeing on screen or the rest of the, the season. It’s very similar to panini or like what Twitch drops do. Twitch drops. It’s like. If you’ve never like used them, it’s kind of awesome.

It’s like you’re watching a counterstrike match and every round that you watch a match in, you get a digital blind box. And what’s in that digital blind box is stuff you could only get for that round. And we’re like, well, oh my God, we could do that for like episodes. That would be so cool. And that makes every launch of an episode kind of a party and kind of like, Hey, I gotta watch it in the first 24, 48 hours.

And then you can also reward. Behavior you wanna see. So let’s say it’s like a dad and, and his son is tuning into, to the system in between episode launches. Well, wow, they’re logging in without having to look at the content. They’re still engaging with a platform. We can reward that. Let’s give ’em another booster packs.

So as an engagement loop, it’s incredible. And these would all be like NFT assets, so they’re future-proofed. [00:36:00] And it would all be kind of pegged to this overarching sticker book mechanism where the goal is just to collect trinkets that are representative of all these moments that are happening.

And that’s really what collectibles are and should be. And it’s like, what an amazing way to create like a, a viewing experience in a world. That’s where attention is becoming evermore scarce. And so that’s how we see, that mechanism.

Luke: Gosh, I was gonna ask you guys where you guys see this going in the next five years?

I think you just answered it, so I think I, but I want to be really mindful of your guys’ time. but was there anything that we didn’t cover that, that you want people to know about? And where can people find, check if they want it? They’re not familiar with, uh, with clean out. Like where, where can they go to get familiar?

Andrew: To go get familiar with OSAs at OSAs, on Twitter. That’s mainly where we funnel most people through in terms of like news and stuff like that. if you wanna get even more involved, we have Discord open and stuff like that. obviously osas.com, it’s the website. We’re updating that too, but [00:37:00] it’s there.

If you wanna get a look at things, take a look at things there. outside of that, people may or may not know, but we’re evolving the company into something a little bit bigger and more expanded. We obviously have this really interesting history that includes this creator first community first approach to building.

We’d layer that with all these Web3 tools that we’ve used, I think, in a very, very useful and scalable manner. And now we’re building that into this 21st century studio called Hebrew. and if you wanna learn more about Hebrew or if you’re a creator or a fan that’s like heavily involved in something, it might be very interesting to you.

And that’s a platform for building and unearthing the greatest sort of IP of the future in a similar manner to what you just heard about claim source. So you can check that out on hebrew.com.

Nic: Awesome. Well, and if I can synthesize like what the intent that is there is, like, you know, from a creator’s perspective is when we started like.

I had a, maybe like a loose understanding of what we wanted to do, which is okay, like, let’s see the content, whatever that may be. [00:38:00] Maybe concept art, maybe some videos, maybe even a couple tweets online and start to show people that, Hey, we’re working on this brand. Like this is cool. You might want to like start to follow us.

Then after that, you know, over the years we’ve learned so much on like, how do you actually coldstar a brand online? It’s not just seeding the content. It’s okay, it’s experiences, it’s finding interesting ways to monetize, but also making sure that the fans feel seen, that you can have the right community channels to enrich that, that sort of community experience and get those fans bought in and feel seen.

and create all these loyalty systems. So, you know, we took all these learnings from building, an NFT brand over the years and from leveraging Web3 tools and actually helping, you know, the progression of Web3 as well. And we’ve kind of asked ourselves, okay. Let’s remove all the chaos.

Let’s take everything we know that can scale and that could work for creators, across the globe in web. Two people that really want to start [00:39:00] brands outside of like the gatekeeping of Hollywood and let’s scale them and let’s make them accessible to those creators. But let’s also make the loyalty systems accessible to those fans.

And that’s, you know, that’s where the token will come into play, which is essentially a, a currency that can be used inside of the platform and. All that kind of stuff. But really it’s our answer to a platform we wish we had when we cold started and began our OSAs journey as creators. And I get approached all the time by, people in, in the animation world that are like, man, I wish we could be doing what you guys did.

It’s amazing. Like, how are you doing this? And we’re like, well, we’re gonna show you. And in fact, we’re gonna. Kind of empower you to do the same and find your tribe and reward that tribe. Really, really excited about that, because I think that if you could do it correctly, you’re gonna find, you know, you’re gonna open up the floodgates, you’re gonna have thousands of creators using this, millions of fans, and you’re gonna find super franchises outside of the entire Hollywood system.

Luke: [00:40:00] Amazing, amazing guys. Well, you know, you all are cooking with the right ingredients and, it’s been amazing. I mean, just in, in the time since Andrew and I last spoke to now, like the progress is amazing and these new opportunities and I’m really excited to see where you guys go. And I appreciate, both what you both have done, you know, for the broader crypto space and kind of getting a lot of these cool things out there to bigger audiences.

And I’d love to have you guys come back too. so, Andrew, Nick. Really, really appreciate your time and everyone go check out with their stuff. It’s pretty awesome. thanks again for coming on.

Nic: Thanks for having us, Luke. Thanks for having us, man.

Luke: Absolutely.

Andrew: Thanks for listening to the Brave Technologist Podcast.

To never miss an episode, make sure you hit

Luke: follow in your podcast app. If you haven’t already made the switch to the Brave Browser, you can download it for free today@brave.com and start using Brave Search, which enables you to search the web privately. Brave also shields you from the ads trackers and other creepy stuff following you across the web.