Luke: [00:00:00] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Andrew Pelus, CEO of OSAs, a leading digital entertainment brand building, expansive storytelling world and, Web3 collection is also behind the nobody’s sausage project. The viral character phenomenon turn entertainment franchise that blends humor, art, and digital culture into a global fan experience to over tens of millions of, users so soon will be launching an entertainment studio operating at the intersection of blockchain, NFTs and digital media, creating an umbrella for content and future projects. In this episode, we discussed building an entertainment brand in the Web3 space, how audience participation has changed, what new revenue streams have become possible, and how creators are being impacted, what they’ve learned from prior cycles, and bringing blockchain projects to mainstream communities.

Luke: the challenge of protecting original IP and the new fan intelligence system they’re buildingand, and much more as things as you guys are really gonna enjoy this one.

Luke: Now for this week’s episode of The Brave Technologist,

Luke: Andrew, [00:01:00] welcome to the Brave Technologist. How are you doing today?

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

Luke: Yeah, thanks for joining. You know, this is kind of a, cool opportunity. We haven’t had somebody, like from a brand that’s trying to do what you guys are, trying to do across, a lot of spinning plates.

Luke: So, super interested to have this conversation with you today. to kick things off a little bit you guys are bringing kind of Web3 to a community with like. 22 million Instagram and TikTok followers, first, can we kind of set up like these, players in this game, right.

Luke: A little bit for the audience. and then can we get into a little bit of detail of some of the challenges that you guys are encountering when you’re trying to kind of bring these things together?

Andrew: yeah, so you’re referring to nobody’s sausage and that’s one of the biggest, I mean, actually it is the biggest character brand on social media, so it’s 22 million on TikTok and then, then another, you know, 13 million across YouTube and Instagram.

Andrew: And yeah, it’s, the challenges that exist today is, how do you take that brand and, build it into something that has a little bit more of like a tent pole or more emotional utility for people. You know, typically you’ve got movies and TV shows, but [00:02:00] you know, original movies and TV show brands are very tough to build in, in 2025.

Andrew: Attention scarcity and all that stuff. But socials and like clips and gifs and all these kinds of things, people relate with them, but then you don’t have enough time with them to get that sort of buy-in, if you will, from an emotional and sort of brand building perspective. And that’s where, sort of as you say, it’s like, well.

Andrew: You know, often people are like, well, what’s the friction? to bring those folks back into Web3 by example, which is where the company that, that we run is born. But the reason that it’s born there is because it kind of solves for some of those things, which is, you know, that emotional utility, that, sense of community and purpose and the advent of digital ownership, it allows you to kind of build up more of a, you know, emotional feeling towards a brand as a consequence of those things.

Andrew: Today, while all the tools are there to do it. It’s sort of this relationship between Web3 and call it just the rest of the world, if you will, or these other digital activations or even physical. So if you think like plushies and things like that, the friction is really like how do you get from one to the other?

Andrew: And [00:03:00] because Web3 is relatively nascent, most of the user experience there is very, I don’t wanna say very technical, but it requires some degree of. Of tech and understanding, or has a little bit of friction in it. So you’ve got, mm-hmm. You know, you gotta download a wallet plugin, they gotta, then you gotta connect the wallet and then the wallet string of numbers.

Andrew: And that’s different than an account that just says, you know, Andrew. Right? So little things like that and day over day, those things are getting much better, but there’s just a load of friction for the average user. So today, Web3 is a lot of technologists. It’s forward-thinking, people who are prepared to take on that sort of education and.

Andrew: Enjoy Web3 as it should be. But when you talk about 35 million social media followers I think it’s a lot. You, you need to really break down those, barriers in such a way where it’s a frictionless experience. And people say that a lot in Web3, I think a lot of people know that’s what they’ve gotta do.

Andrew: But not a lot of people have actually done it. Because you’re talking about, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I’m just, I mean, I think

Luke: almost nobody’s really done it really well. You know what I mean? Like Right. [00:04:00] Candidly,

Andrew: a hundred percent. And I think it is something that we’re working on too.

Andrew: But you know what it is? My experience is, is people compare themselves to other people in Web3. Mm-hmm. And what we do is we’re comparing ourselves to like, well, if these are 35 million people, their optionality is. Playing Fortnite or watching Netflix or whatever, entertainment or digital entertainment they enjoy.

Andrew: Like those are the competitors. When the consumer is making that entertainment decision, like, do I wanna do this thing? Like that’s the user experience they’re competing against, right? So it’s not about our being more frictionless than another collection or another token or another thing like that. It’s about being as frictionless as the existing experiences with whom you compete.

Andrew: And so that’s the end to which we’re building. And not, you know, to compete at that level, you know, requires a lot of building and sometimes patients so quickly with new technology.

Luke: If it ain’t as easy as TikTok or YouTube, then you’re not doing it. Right. Right. Exactly. Like, it’s awesome.

Luke: I mean, like, I think that’s how the industry kind of has to pivot anyway they want to grow that level. And I [00:05:00] think you guys, having such a huge follower base kind of makes you stand out. Like, I know we we’re in a similar pool of like, you know, once you get to tens of millions of users on anything, you really kind of see how.

Luke: Broad, the audience is right. And how different it is from end to end. And, you’re gonna find people that are gonna find different things difficult. So if you don’t make it easy for everybody, it’s just you’re losing. that’s super interesting too. ‘cause I’m really curious on this point, I mean, when did you actually get into crypto?

Luke: Like what year?

Andrew: So personally probably started exploring crypto around 2017. I think I got first big cycle. I would say that was more DJ and Andrew. Then in my, you know what I mean, things are moving. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to work in sort of a traditional finance role, hedge funds and private equity funds.

Andrew: And so, you know, things are moving, charts are popping off. So there was a bunch of guys that we were all kinda messing around with that coupled out with reading some white papers and trying to understand it more and more. A few books then in a more sort of real world asset capacity, again, more explorative during my, my tradify years.

Andrew: But then really jumped [00:06:00] into it with OSAs and the sort of the studio now that we’re building in 2022 after they launched that inaugural collection

Andrew: So my first foray onto the cultural entertainment side of things is really in 2022.

Luke: Yeah. And so, so this is what I’m kind of, getting towards. Like somebody’s been in for several cycles at this point. one thing that I noticed, ‘cause when we even kind of dabbled with this, during the last kind of big bull cycle, it was like you really had a lot of interest in NFTs from players outside of the space kind of for the first time.

Luke: And then there was just like a ton of backlash too. You know, I think, I think Discord, a bunch of others started to do stuff, but then like. Yanked it back because the backlash was so strong. I’m really curious now, several years later and, and also like with ai, kind of like, as this new kind of nascent hype thing.

Luke: are you guys seeing some of the same challenges? Bringing together Web3 with a, with more of a, like a mainstream brand now than what you saw back in that previous cycle when like Discord and other folks were just catching flack for kind of [00:07:00] introducing crypto into what they were doing.

Andrew: Yeah, I think, I think back then it was, I think it’s better now to answer the question quickly.

Andrew: Mm-hmm. Like, I think that right now people are more accepting of it because I think people have done more homework and have kind of seen and, and lived with it a little bit longer. But yeah, that hype cycle, it’s that it’s hype and it’s, I mean, I don’t use like bubble, but you know what I mean. Like, people get interested in something and prices go up, and then everyone’s like, I want to participate in this.

Andrew: It looks great. And people stop asking like these fundamental level questions of like, well, what’s the, like, what’s the purpose of this? What’s the value of this? And the value doesn’t have to be cash flow, but it, you know, what’s the thing, right? And I think you see this with all kinds of, different technology or even historically things get really, really out of hand very quickly, and then they skimmer down, I think.

Andrew: Because I mean, we actually, you know, funny enough, the first collection we did OSAs, when we launched that, it was November, 2022. It was two, three weeks after FTX collapsed. So we kind of just, we caught, we just started building at the very bottom. So, so for us it’s been the kind of up the whole way. But from a narrative [00:08:00] perspective and from the, you know, the universe in which we’ve operated with NFTs, the very beginning was oof.

Andrew: Yeah. No way, guys. Right. And we had conversations with big studios. Today, even bigger studios you know, producers and people like, you know, gaming companies, sort of call them traditional media, entertainment companies and stuff like that. And they were sort of very hesitant and you could tell, eh, not here, not now, not today.

Andrew: And you fast forward to, today and even, conversations as recent as this week and last, but even throughout the year and people are a lot more I think, you know, prepared to discuss this and prepared to employ these types of things. Whether it’s NFTs or crypto in their, in their underlying strategies.

Andrew: But I also think that the market has matured where mm-hmm. the players who are saying, Hey, let’s go fast and quick and launch NT collections and then we will make a bunch of money. We’ll figure it out after. It’s very tough for that to be a successful thing in the long run.

Andrew: But now for the people who are still here. You start to, uh, weed out those [00:09:00] players and you know, the strongest survive. And then those are the people who are really building and bringing value and suddenly all the noise is gone and, and the builders are still here. And that’s what you start hearing about.

Andrew: So we’ve had great conversations with people from big toy manufacturing companies and big studios on the entertainment side and the gaming side. And everybody, I would say unequivocally knows and understands that there’s something that they’ve gotta do with this technology. and I think it’s, a lot more acceptable now.

Luke: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I think, it definitely has matured. I think too, it’s a different, you were there in, 2022 and I know we, launched an NFT collection like I think maybe a week before you guys, and it was just like, it’s just despair, and you’re just like, we’re just still gonna do it.

Luke: We’re not gonna not do this. You know, like. This’ll be part of the story, or whatever. but I think too, like aside from those types of events, right, like the environment’s a lot different now as far as having certainty around or better clarity around not having a adversarial like federal government that is [00:10:00] kind of blocking a lot.

Luke: I would imagine that’s probably helping with some of these discussions too. It’s gotta be right? with some of these larger companies.

Andrew: Yeah, I think, I think it helps in a lot of respects because like you said before, the current administration, it was not, it wasn’t that there was black and white, there was a lot of gray area.

Andrew: And the gray area is like a, a place where nobody wants to play because if you know you’re not supposed to do it, it’s easy to make a decision and if you know how to do it, you do it. and so if you’re an investor or if you’re a big studio or all those people, I’m naming, or not naming, but describing, you know, you’ve got reputational risk, right?

Andrew: And you don’t wanna necessarily go down that endeavor. If you don’t know how to do it. And I think, you know, the, the qualms at the time were not, we don’t wanna be unregulated. We just wanna know what to do and how to operate in this space, for the predominant majority of of people really building, which goes for us as well.

Andrew: So then when you have those conversations, in today’s day and age, is all of the legislature there? No. Is is it a hundred percent buttoned up? No. Is it a hundred percent Way more clear? Yes. [00:11:00] And it’s not about having all of it done today, but it’s having like a path to clarity and people knowing that, well, okay, I know it’s coming.

Andrew: I know it’s an acceptable thing that we’re working on from this sort of judicial perspective and from a, you know, these other things that, that are important to us from a big business perspective or from an investor perspective. Therefore, it’s something that I know I should be looking at, and if I get the right teams who are.

Andrew: Matching what they’re building with the incoming new regulation, legislation, laws, and so on and so forth. Then I know I’m getting in at the right time and I know these guys are gonna do it the right way. And that’s kinda what we do, where we’re like, we’ve got great lawyers across, you know, we’re in Canada, so we’ve got lawyers here, we’ve got lawyers in the us, we’ve got great advisors all across, and we kind of, we wanna know where things are going so that we can always be at the front of that, of that curve and take advantage of, you know.

Andrew: Change. And this is sort of like if you’re a big studio, well you might not have that department. You might be learning might be catching up. So they’re looking for partners like that who are mm-hmm not pushing the envelope, but know exactly where the edge of the envelope is. And the clarity comes. But it doesn’t have to all be there all at once.

Luke: No, that’s awesome. [00:12:00] Yeah, so, and I’m, I’m really curious about this too. So, like with OSAs, you’ve got kind of two really interesting things that you’re straddling here, right? OSAs is like one of those collections where, I mean like, like Anatoli had a Solana tweets about it a lot.

Luke: Like you, you’ve guys have really kind of become. Fixture in the, native crypto community. Right. As, a collection that’s like super popular. And then on the other end you’ve got this other brand too, like with sausage and, that’s just like tens of millions of people are into it.

Luke: are there common threads around those needles that, you guys were able to use to kind of scale in both of those different arenas? Or was it just two completely different strategies to kind of like, get those communities to where they are today.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s different for sure. I will say that, you know, on the Nobody Sausage side, this is a brand built by Kyle Krow.

Andrew: That’s the artist. He did that on his own for five years then Wow. Entered the Web3, four A and then we came in to sort of say, oh, we can help and mm-hmm. Because he’s, you know, he, and now we. Try to take that [00:13:00] mega social media brand and say, okay, well we got social media, but this is one person by himself, which is an incredible feat.

Andrew: But

Luke: that’s incredible. It’s such a, it really is insane with this just like animated brand. Yeah. Is so kind of magnetic too. It’s cool. It’s

Andrew: incredibly impressive. But when you work with the guy, Kyle is. This is a man who is up day and night like he is working all the time. He hits the trends because he just, he sees it, he knows it, he does it right away, does not sleep until it’s done.

Andrew: So he’s, he’s earned it very, very well. But also he’s just hilarious. And the brand’s great. So that’s one community and that’s, and that’s, that’s like a social media thing. And I think, you know, a lot of people understand the social media and what he was trying to solve is, well, kind of what I was saying earlier, which is, you know, how do you.

Andrew: How do you translate, flicking a funny, meme or sharing a GIF into a brand. You don’t have enough time to build up that empathy and that love for the brand when you’re just flicking or you’re just, you know, sharing a gif. But there’s something magical there nonetheless. And a lot of people we’ve talked to like, Hey, I know this.

Andrew: Yeah, I’ve seen this before. But they don’t know that this is nobody’s [00:14:00] sausage, right? So I think this is where we, or he wanted to explore Web3 and then we jump in because. It’s like, I think there’s something special here in terms of the advent of ownership and the advent of building community and culture digitally, right?

Andrew: This is where we, this is sort of, today’s town hall is digital, right? That’s where a lot of us interact, whether it’s social media or through video and stuff like that. So that’s one direction, and it’s, and it’s, it’s there, but there’s this piecemeal approach of, you know, I, I’m an artist by myself throwing things out into the universe and seeing if it’ll work.

Andrew: And it’s not necessarily about. Deploying a whole bunch of capital and, and, and building a brand that direction the way you would traditionally. And Cleo was the same thing, but, it starts on the other side where it’s a bunch of artists doing 3D and that’s small group of guys and girls who built up the initial collection, launched the NFTs.

Andrew: maybe it’s not the right time of the Web3 crypto cycle, but nonetheless, you accrue a whole bunch of following and fans and interest in the brand. But unlike a traditional brand. You’ve just got these characters that are NFTs and collectibles, but you’ve also got a community of fans, which is mm-hmm.

Andrew: [00:15:00] Kind of an oddity. ‘cause usually the fans come after you’ve done a movie or a show or comic books or something. So, you know, kind of tent polling a brand around something that’s not the whole story is what the new thing is, I think. And this is what we explore and it’s not just, it’s crypto and Web3, I think you, they empower this ownership and community and culture that’s super, super important to that.

Andrew: And then distribution being, you know, on social media. So, you know, nobody’s saw, starts on social media translating back into Web3. And then, plaintiff’s words is Web3 and then translating into social media where we’ve also got almost a billion views and, and you know, almost a million followers as well.

Andrew: So small to nobody saw, but we’re going different directions and

Luke: yeah.

Andrew: So the commonality is, is an approach, and maybe the directionality is opposite right now. But then on the go forward basis, you’re still building these really great, awesome brands that touch, and it can still be tv, movie gaming, and it can still have, you know, licensing and merchandising consumer product and events and all kinds of things like that.

Andrew: So, it [00:16:00] just building a brand differently in the entertainment space that is just so different than it used to be. You know, just 10 years ago, let’s say.

Luke: And social’s such an integrated part of the Web3 side too, to where like, I mean, you say a million, like that’s nothing to sneeze at. in the, crypto space.

Luke: that’s like a good cohort size, for that. But I think it’s one of those interesting things too with like crossing over, like kind of crossing this chasm between, you know, especially on social to kind of branch out. Like crypto is in its own bubble, right? and I think like what you guys are doing, kind of what, what pudgy has kind of done too, where it’s just like.

Luke: You find a thing that can connect beyond the, beyond the realm. Maybe it’s just characters, right? Yeah. Like, and, maybe it’s merch, right? Like, and I’m really interested too to kind of get your take on, what revenue models are kind of possible here that weren’t possible without the Web3 side.

Andrew: It’s the secret sauce, Luke? No, I’m checking. No, no. Or

Luke: uh uh, you can high level it or, or secret sauce. I think the secret sauce

Andrew: building really great things, and if that was as easy as it is, you know, there wouldn’t, it’s not as a recipe, but no, yeah, there’s new revenue models [00:17:00] through Web3, and I think those are, sometimes people think of those as the obvious ones of, oh, you know, launch a token, make some money do an NAT project and make some money, you know?

Andrew: I think those models exist in other places too. And then, you know, social media too. You can put stuff on social media, make some money there. Not like Web3. But Web3 definitely unlocks more freedom in the sense that today or not today, Web3 unlocks. But if I go back like 10, 15 years, if I wanted to launch product.

Andrew: Or a show or, or something like that. And I’m like, I’m gonna put in the hard work. I’m gonna build it myself. Sweat equity. Well then I need to go to a distributor of some sort, whether that’s a physical product distributor or manufacturing or TV or, or cinema. And then that person kind of intermediates and gate keeps, where things go.

Andrew: Right? And as a consequence of that, they take a massive margin. and often. You know, the creator who’s put in all this time work effort honestly love in many cases because this is, this is, you know, I think it’s a, an art of passion and, you know, to build really great IP like this kinda gets left behind despite being the creator of this thing.[00:18:00]

Andrew: And there’s many stories of this, and you can, it’s not, I’m not gonna air out other people’s dirty laundry, but you can just Google it pretty quickly and find it. But the. Advent of Web3 is this direct connection mm-hmm. Where you sell a product, which, you know, now we’re more digital in the world.

Andrew: So you could build it digitally, you could distribute it digitally, and you can, you know, link it directly on blockchain. The royalties come back to you. It’s, it’s like completely transparent. It’s very empowering. You know, social media platforms. As well have, you know, okay, they’re fine, they’re centralized, and it’s not necessarily Web3 today or yet, so to speak, but it, you know, I think it’ll happen.

Andrew: But even on that trend, you see more distribution coming from, okay, now it was YouTube, but then you’ve got these other platforms that start coming out as well, and what are they doing? They add more percentage take to the creator, right? Because they’re competing with each other. Instagram and TikTok kind of sit in a little, you know, pool of their own.

Andrew: But through time, I think. More and more competitors come through that give more and more back to the creator because it’s competitive and it’s open distribution and it’s a free market and there’s no gatekeepers. So this is where the future’s going. I think. And, and Web3 empowers all of [00:19:00] that because now you’ve got a lot more time spent digitally.

Andrew: You’ve got digital product and goods and services that, that really do exist and have value to them. And you’ve got a direct link where people can see the royalties versus, you know, an accounting that’s opaque and then you’re not sure where this money went and you’ve spent all this money. So it empowers, you know, it empowers distribution.

Andrew: But then when you cycle back, the creators themselves now have an outlet that they can trust, right? Mm-hmm. So this is the word we often use in, in crypto and blockchain, is trust that sector is broken from a trust perspective, like absolutely in shambles. Like to be very blunt with you, nobody, the business guys don’t, don’t trust the creative guys.

Andrew: You know, studios don’t trust one another and, Yada, yada, yada. So great creators with great product, they don’t share it, they don’t want to. And we’ve talked to creators. Again, I’m not gonna name people, but like, who have all of the ability to call the big studios and show stuff to them, and have they, they’ve got their own status as well.

Andrew: And then they talk to us and they’re like, no, we wanna do it with you guys. I’m like, oh, you didn’t wanna do it with, you know, big Studio Extra, or y [00:20:00] They’re like, no, no, no, no. I want, I like what you guys are doing. It’s new, it’s fresh. I can feel that we’re gonna work together and you’re gonna, it’s all transparent and you like, this trust doesn’t exist.

Andrew: And I think blockchain, you know, it solves for that for the creator as well, which unlocks all of this pent up sort of creative juice and frankly, value.

Luke: That’s awesome. Yeah, because I think, like you touched on a couple things there that I really wanna drive home for people because I, I feel like unless you’re in on the business side of a lot of this, the old world that a creator or a, a business is coming from with distribution was very one-sided, right?

Luke: Like, you would build this thing up and hope that it got the attention and then you’d end up getting locked into some crazy distribution deal where you end up. Getting stiffed and there’s always some bill you didn’t expect or whatever. And I think, you know, you bring up just like some really good points around that just indicate the level of disruption going on right now.

Luke: I think, you know, like audience size, right? think about broadcast television channels. They have like, you know, hundreds of thousands or maybe low millions of, [00:21:00] views on tv, and then you turn to like social and you’ve got millions per episode, that air and then tens of millions over time.

Luke: I don’t think there’s ever been the ability to put something in front of so many people directly. Yeah. Right. and I think that what’s super cool, what I’m hearing from you is just that. One, there’s this ability to transact and own and, the IP side, right?

Luke: but then also this ability to kind of get it out there in front of a lot of people like it, seems pretty empowering. this is like super strong for the creator side, right? Like, what are the benefits of somebody in the community that gets involved compared to like the old world where you’d maybe go buy a piece of merch or, yeah.

Luke: Or watch something there. Like how does the y end user benefit from this new this new paradigm?

Andrew: Yeah. I think there’s, I think there’s a ton of benefits and I think it’s not even something that we’ve seen yet, but it’s something that we’re building and, and, and we know is what is required for success, which is that because it’s so competitive as a consequence of wide open distribution.

Andrew: We can watch anything ever made at any point in time, right? So it’s not what’s on Saturday night at six o’clock. It’s anything I ever wanted to watch that’s ever been done. I can watch it right now, [00:22:00] so it’s super competitive. And then of course there’s YouTube and there’s more things coming up, right?

Andrew: So, our view is that in order to operate and succeed with new ip, even if it’s the best movie show character ever made in the history of time, you need people to see it. You need people to carry the torch. And these people are fans, right? And. we’re confident that the fan is so, so important to the success of the brand, especially in today’s environment, that that fan needs to be rewarded materially for their contribution to that brand.

Andrew: And I think this is where you talk about regulation and how do you do that. And I think, you know, to be very frank, it’s, giving these people legitimate backend or equity into that project because without them, that wouldn’t exist. Right. The early fans, if they’re not there, it’s like a, you know, the biggest tree in the world falls in the.

Andrew: The densest forest, no one hears it. didn’t even exist kind of thing. Right. So, that’s such a cliche example, but, you know. No, I,

Luke: I think, I think you, you are touching on it. I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re touching on an awesome point that I think is you entered space in 2017.

Luke: I mean, like, that’s when, you know, I was in the [00:23:00] 20 15, 20 16, that whole era was all about kind of like, how do we take extractive models? Guild and then bring virtuous ones in that can kind of benefit people. Yeah. And I think that like now we’re 20, 25, right? and the text kind of finally here and to see what you guys are doing is super cool because we’re able to kind of like not just do that in a crypto bubble.

Luke: But start to really put the numbers out there with what the potential that this can bring and then, you know, kind of build that flywheel to a broader mainstream, right? When you’ve got such interesting conditions around, regulatory clarity that weren’t there, that were really icing everybody out before, and then just as distribution opportunity.

Luke: It is wild, man. Like I think it’s super cool, how you’re laying it out.

Andrew: Absolutely. I think, you know what’s funny, you mentioned virtuosity and there’s a lot of. That in Web3, because of course it solves for this sort of other things that are opaque and financial plumbing that no one understands and, virtuosity is great.

Andrew: But sometimes virtuosity for the sake of virtuosity, it doesn’t really work in our sort of capitalistic state. Right. Totally. the great part about what we’re [00:24:00] doing is that it’s not just virtuosity for the sake of virtuosity. It actually, in our view, not in our, I mean, I’m, I’m not an economist, but I’m well studied in economist, but it, it actually solves a capital problem in entertainment where studios and big investors in, ip.

Andrew: So if you’re Disney or Netflix, you’re spending around $3 billion per year in content. Right? And, you know, directing that capital to non-original IP is the only way to do it. That’s why you see movies based on brands. You gotta direct it to original ip. And the irony is that the people who know best how to allocate it are the fans themselves, right?

Andrew: Like you don’t need to have a boardroom or people deciding on what original IP HA comes to life. You’re better off using a crowd approach because it’s everybody consumes entertainment and you don’t need a set of expertise to determine whether or not you like content. So in a sense, this is what, what we think is super powerful is that.

Andrew: If you’re able to sort of crowd source [00:25:00] fan interaction and couple that with real buy-in, and that could be capital formation, it could be just fan contributions, but you couple all of it with real equity and backend. In, in these, in these ips, not only do you get the resources you need to make the brand succeed, but that’s the ultimate flywheel because you’ve already got the fans mm-hmm.

Andrew: That wanted to see it get made. So this is. Incredibly empowering to an otherwise broken capital allocation system in the entertainment business, right?

Luke: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: and I think it’s virtuosity, but it actually empowers the, the capital allocation creates. Projects that are, you know, far, far better than would be otherwise made.

Andrew: And in fact, Hollywood’s not even making new original IP anymore, really.

Luke: Right, right. No, exactly. I mean, I think, I think whether it was like, music and in kind of the earliest days where you, you know, like you seeing that just get mega disrupted to like now you mentioned with, films and movies and, all of that.

Luke: Like, it’s interesting. It is an interesting time around this what would, what advice would you give [00:26:00] to kind of other creators that are, are trying to kind of like, break into this world, whether it’s like folks that already have an existing, you know, brand in the Web3 side that might be trying to get more mainstream or, or folks that are just starting out.

Andrew: Yeah, I think so. I think a lot of creators, especially in the 2D 3D space and, and, and the place that we operate in are very like down and out at the moment because studios aren’t making things so they’re not getting work. But there’s a double-edged sword to this, which is that, well, the consequence of that is because distribution production are wide open, which means there’s an opportunity set for you to go make things right, whatever that may be.

Andrew: And you might not be comfortable with Web3. You can do that on social media. Is it competitive? Yes. But you can start distributing things and, and you can do that in Web3. You can do that in, in social media. You can do that even in, in other ways too. And there’s other platforms like Kickstarter and Patreon that kind of already.

Andrew: Do this capital formation thing I’m describing, albeit without the, you know, the actual equity or, or backend that one would, should receive when making an investment. So there’s platforms where people could do it and I would encourage [00:27:00] them to explore that. Mm-hmm. I think there’s a lot of places, actually, I wish there was a cleaner solution, right.

Andrew: What we’re building, that’s actually what we’re building, right? Because this is a question we get all the time, not just from, you know, people who are looking at it from, you know, one way or another, but the creators themselves. And so because we’re doing, you know, we’re doing Claim of Source obviously is our, is our initial brand and now we’re doing nobody’s sausage.

Andrew: And we’ve got a couple of other projects behind that that we’re working on, but we’ve probably got hundreds, if not thousands of other ips behind that. And that, comes from really great individuals. It comes from studios big and small, and I mean really big and, and small. So everybody is like, well, how I would do, I wanna do this?

Andrew: So there’s a whole bunch of, of folks from the individual creative to the studios who need this solution. Right. Which is how we’re getting to like, this is a, you know, it’s Plano and then it’s a platform or a studio, and then it’s this entertainment tech platform, if you will. and so I think the here and now, you just gotta kind of go out there, share your stuff.

Andrew: If you’re doing it like, you know, [00:28:00] the best example of success here is Gael. Like it’s nobody’s sausage. Just go and go and go and don’t miss a trend and work your butt off every single day. That doesn’t guarantee success. It’s super, super competitive. I think it’s also meritocratic, which is probably what we want, but

Luke: mm-hmm.

Andrew: But don’t stop doing that. And then but we’re, we’re also coming up with a platform that I think will be more useful in allocating resources to IP that works. So you don’t have to continue smashing the button on the same ip. You might very quickly find out people don’t like it. And we’re coupling that with what we’re calling sort of a fan intelligence system, which is, you know, in a world of AI where everyone can kind of produce, you know, and prompt and make their own shows and movies and things like that, you know, community still wants to come together and talk about and watch the same things together.

Andrew: You know, you wanna watch a show and then talk about with your colleagues, your friends, and so on and so forth, and you wanna be a fan of something together. We think fandom is almost like, A new form of religion where this is where people want to come together and, and be a community, right? And so, that fan intelligence system is one that drives off [00:29:00] of the data that we’ve been aggregating for years.

Andrew: It’s something we’ve had in mind for years and is empowered further by that kind of platform where not only do you find out quickly what does or doesn’t work and where we should allocate resources to build new original ip, but also where to start with to begin with. Like what are people aching for that maybe we’re not thinking of.

Andrew: Based on all of this intelligence, because anyone can make anything with a prompt. Well, it’s not a question of what do we make? Well, I mean, sorry. It’s a question of what do we make that people wanna see, not how do we make it right? So this is sort of what we’re building, so it’s a very long answer.

Andrew: I just, I landed. No, no, it’s helpful. It,

Luke: it just, well, I, think it, it is interesting ‘cause it kind of like, you know, it, it, these are disruptive errors that we’re in, right? and a lot of the tooling has yet to fully catch up with the capabilities. Right? but you did touch on something there that I would be.

Luke: I, I would kick myself for later if I didn’t ask you about right? the recently you’ve seen like SOAR two, in these other AI creation kind of, you know, gen platforms coming out. Like, where’s your hat at? With [00:30:00] regard to ai, video generation and things like that.

Luke: Being somebody in your shoes where you’ve got like real IP and you’ve got people really making things and you’ve got these tools now that can do really amazing. I mean, this is just the leaps and bounds that have happened in the past year or two on this front. You know, you’re not really seeing as many three armed things kind of being generated here.

Luke: You’re seeing actual stuff that looks pretty real, where’s your head at with this? Are you seeing this as Helpful, harmful, all the above. where’s your mind at with this AI step

Andrew: tooling? So I think, you know, we’re in an InBetween phase right now where it kind of feels like it might be harmful, but I think it definitely becomes helpful and I think what people are most sort of, I don’t wanna say scared of, but you know, not necessarily a fan of is, oh, we’re gonna just have this sort of AI swap or AI generated stuff.

Andrew: I think for a couple of reasons that won’t be the case. One for the very one I just said, which people don’t. They want to see something by the human hand. Like if I’m being told a story, I wanna know that, you know, Luke told me the story, not that it was generated by some ai. There’s something personable and the same way you [00:31:00] want, like a handmade, et cetera, whatever it is, like a handmade bag versus There’s something human about it that we all relate to as humans. So I think stories need to be told by humans nonetheless. it might take four or 500 people to do a full 3D production today. Where tomorrow it might be 20 or 30 people, right? Mm-hmm. Because you’ve got the production tooling that is ai and you don’t need to have all that many people anymore.

Andrew: I think that that is, you know, incredibly empowering to tell more stories and to, get more things out there for cheaper cost. And, you know, it, it is sort of empowering these, great talents to, to do more and to do it quicker and to experiment more. And it’s kind of, it lets you tell even better stories, I think, but you still need that human touch.

Andrew: So. And I think, you know, I think from a production perspective on our team, you know, we early on kind of made that decision where it’s like AI is gonna get here. Like we don’t want to build out a huge production team. We just wanna hire like the best of the best in each department. And so we’ve got people who’ve won awards and, you know, everything in [00:32:00] those industry awards to the Oscar, Emmys and stuff like this.

Andrew: So they’ve been on award-winning teams and they’ve worked on Game of Thrones and they’ve worked on Minions and they’ve worked on Harry Potter. And so we’ve got a really, really strong, strong, strong team. But. We’re just improving the tools. So, you know, the paintbrush that they use now is just stronger and stronger.

Andrew: And that’s kind of where, where we see a company going and that’s how we built the company. And I would also say when we started getting the first kind of inflow of, of people building production tooling for 3D or even 2D animation that was sort of, you know, early 20, I guess it was 2023 when we started to get some inflow and we said back then we’re like, oh wow, this is crazy.

Andrew: Like in five, 10 years. You know, this thing’s gonna do all the movies for us, right? Mm-hmm. Albeit with the caveat that I just described, and it’s actually going way faster than I think we anticipated, because even like earlier this year you know, we, I met with a company where you prompt it and it actually just pushed out an entire, like show, like an episode.

Andrew: Like, and it was good. I mean, yeah, it was, it was as good as it could, it was way ahead of what I would’ve expected at this point in time. And [00:33:00] like you mentioned Sora and, and these things coming up. You know, us having the ear to the ground and trying to figure out what pace this is gonna grow up, it’s, it’s accelerating way faster than we ever thought it would.

Andrew: So I think the five, 10 year time horizon is really the, this could be a tomorrow to next year time horizon. That is, that is quite you know, right ahead of us, which is great, I think is disruptive. I it is disruptive. It’s disruptive because for the people who do this for a living, if you’re on a team of 500 people, that suddenly only needs less than 10% of that.

Andrew: Where do these people go for a job? Right? I think that is the, it’s a double-edged sword where it’s like, okay, well you can also use these tools to build your own stuff, and you’ve got open distribution, but it’s now, it’s hyper competitive. it’s an unfortunate circumstance from that like, kind of like labor disruption perspective, but you know, this is, this is the circumstance that we’re living in and I think it’s gonna happen in many industries and it touches ours deeply.

Andrew: Of course.

Luke: No, I think it’s a really good rounded, response. Like, I mean, ‘cause you know, people tend to kind of like bucket it as in, a, you know, binary dilemma, right? where it’s like either a group greatest thing or the worst thing. And I think, you know, yeah, [00:34:00] it, it could be several things, right?

Luke: Like, I’m super grateful. for you taking the time to have this conversation today. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you want our audience to know about?

Andrew: That’s a good question.

Andrew: maybe one of the things is, you know, often when I’m on podcasts or spaces or these kinds of things, people wanna know like what we’re doing and what’s coming up, down the pipeline. Yeah, I can do that very quickly, which is, you know, we got OSAs, which is working on a mobile game that’s coming out in a few months in a soft launch format, and then it’s gonna come out in 2026 in its full format.

Andrew: We’re doing that with Gameloft. We’re doing a TV show as well. That TV show is gonna is with a big studio partner, and that’s coming out probably end of 26, end of 27. In our same sort of social media, how do you make things successful? we’re doing that YouTube first, we’re also talking to distributors, whether that’s a OSO, you know, different kinds of TV channels as well, but it’s a new approach to distribution or, you know, that’s what we’re doing with that show.

Andrew: And then on the nobody sausage side, it’s, you know, there’s, there’s so many things to work on and we’re translating it back into Web3 in both departments, trying to build these frictionless [00:35:00] experiences for. People in gaming to be, you know, on Web3 but not even realize it. And people who are on social media to sort of enter a Web3 arena without even realizing.

Andrew: ‘cause Web3 is just infrastructure, right? It’s infrastructure on which you could build great experiences. So in, on both sides we’re doing that. And then beyond that, this is the, the studio that we’re working on this platform we’re working on, which is in a nutshell, imagine like Netflix meets Robinhood, where you can sort of pick and enjoy the things you wanna see and say, oh.

Andrew: I’ll invest in that and I wanna see it get made and I also get to, to win if this thing wins. And that sort of capital formation tool where. It’s gotta be stupid simple, but it’s also gotta achieve the end that we’re looking for. So those are all the things on the pipeline. Then I can get into the micro ‘cause there’s a million other things, but no, that’s

Luke: fantastic.

Luke: Yeah, I think it’s super awesome preview and where can people follow you on online?

Andrew: Yeah, so I think I’m predominantly on on X, which my handle is Andrew. So p cool. That’s, you know, a node to our, our brand OSAs, and then. You know, to follow the brands themselves.

Andrew: there’s at [00:36:00] OSAs and at Nobody Sausage and the websites to, to boot. So if you just put that into a search online, you’ll uh, you’ll find those pretty easily. And then all the social media is there as well. So, awesome. I would encourage everybody to check things out. And then the studio too will be announcing fairly shortly.

Luke: Fantastic, Andrew. Well, thanks again for, for taking the time. You got a lot going on. I mean, also would love to have you back on two in the future. Welcome to kind of check in on how things are going and progressing and with all this stuff moving so fast. But yeah, really appreciate it and I think our, our audience is gonna like this one too, man.

Luke: So thanks so much for taking the time to come out today.

Andrew: Cool. Thanks for having me, Luke. We’d love to come back.

Luke: Alright,

Luke: Thanks for listening to The Brave Technologist Podcast. To never miss an episode, make sure you hit 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.

Luke: Brave also shields you from the ads trackers and other creepy stuff following you across the web.