NFT Entrepreneur is planned as a regularly released newsletter about the business of NFTs with resources relevant to entrepreneurs and startups. The initial issues will clarify the long-term focus. However, each newsletter will focus on a topic of interest to founders and investors in the NFT space.
My business writing has often been about startups and draws, in part, on my own small business efforts as a web publisher. I began creating information resources and blogging on the web in 2001. This eventually built to a small suite of sites, many of them focused on music and the music industry, from which I earned a modest living from 2005 until their sale in 2010.
Writing About Music Tech Startups and Funding
In 2011 I began writing about the music industry on a daily basis for Hypebot.com for almost 4 years. During that time I interviewed over 100 founders and CEOs of music tech startups who often gave me product demos themselves. It was an incredible opportunity to learn directly from founders about the struggles they faced building startups in an emerging space.
Sadly, most of those startups are no longer with us though some went on to great success as independent companies or through successful exits. I am proud to say that numerous founders expressed appreciation of the fact that I actually understood what they were trying to do and presented that clearly in my articles which was a rare attribute in music tech coverage at the time.
While with Hypebot, I also began to write about the development of crowdfunding, from rewards-based approaches such as those found on Kickstarter to the emergence of equity crowdfunding. This focus was part of my ongoing interest in the topic of how to fund a startup and helped me understand community-based alternatives to VC funding. Of course, equity crowdfunding did not exclude VCs but it did open early opportunities for community involvement.
Finding My Way Into Crypto Land
In the years after Hypebot, I wrote for a number of companies and began blogging about dance in a return to my roots as a performing artist. However, the next few years seemed a bit unfocused and I began to consider the possibility that it was time to give up my attempts at seeding a startup with a one-man publishing operation focused on topics I loved.
Then 2017 hit and cryptocurrency ICOs were a huge topic of which I was somewhat aware. However, in 2018, I discovered that ICOs had created a seemingly endless source of funding for startups that did not require giving up equity. As someone who knew many founders that had seen their equity whittled away as additional funding rounds became necessary for survival, this discovery sparked my interest.
By the end of that year I became a Crypto Twitter addict and in 2019 began to dig more deeply into NFTs. As I dropped into the complicated array of rabbit holes that make up the world of crypto, I eventually discovered cryptoart and was fully hooked. I began making digital art and, eventually, minting NFTs so that I could join in this world as a full participant.
Launching CryptoArtNet: A Directory of Cryptoartists
In May of 2020, I launched CryptoArtNet featuring a directory of cryptoartists. This project gave me a role in the community and escalated my introduction to a growing circle of cryptoartists, NFT developers, business people and investors. At CryptoArtNet I share cryptoart news, new NFT Art and information resources such as Crypto Art Marketplaces and Platforms.
Along the way I’ve done a bit of writing about cryptoart and related blockchain topics. After a brief experiment with a cryptoart news blog, I’ve realized that combining my knowledge of startups and crowdfunding with my growing love of all things NFT is likely to be the most satisfying path forward.
And so NFT Entrepreneur is launching and I’m eager to find out if the email newsletter space has a place for me. You can subscribe to NFT Entrepreneur via Revue (link coming soon) or check back here for archival entries. If new resources are added to this site, they will be announced in the newsletter.
You can also connect via NFT Entrepreneur’s Twitter account or LinkedIn page.
See you soon!