In this episode, we are talking about Gary Vaynerchuk’s VeeFriends NFT collections. How Gary has become a powerhouse in the world of NFTs, shows you how he has utilised VeeFriends to build a community and how he is using them to create valuable tokens for people VeeFriend Owners.

AS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
VeeFriends – https://veefriends.com/
VayernX – https://vaynerx.com/
Vayner Media – https://vaynermedia.com/
Vayner Sports – https://vaynersports.com/
Vayner 3 – https://vayner3.com/

Accountable Ant – https://veefriends.com/collectibles/accountable-ant
Decisive Duck – https://veefriends.com/collectibles/decisive-duck
Tolerant Tortoise – https://veefriends.com/collectibles/tolerant-tortoise
Basketball Butterfly – https://veefriends.com/collectibles/basketball-butterfly
Brunch Bear – https://veefriends.com/collectibles/brunch-bear

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Gary Vaynerchuk – https://twitter.com/garyvee

FOR RESEARCH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4se4_ZqkcKw&t=307s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEOYinDTeqE&t=147s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZywA4r3UfZ8
https://veefriends.com/book-games
https://veefriends.com/library/A
https://series2.veefriends.com/

We hope you enjoyed the show and that it inspired some ideas as we bring our most important episode.

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IMPORTANT NOTICE
This podcast is for entertainment and education purposes only. We do not give any investment or financial advice and we strongly recommend you always DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.

Episode Transcription

Cheryl00:03

Welcome to women of the Metaverse. I am Cheryl

Angela00:08

Hello. I am Angela Harkness. We have been, and are still on a journey to discover the Metaverse, Web 3.0 NFTs and anything that we are required to know to join this digital universe. 

Cheryl00:21

We will help you to unlock how this is going to impact your brand. Your business and even your personal life,

Angela00:31

Join us as we take the mystery out of this new digital universe.

Welcome to Women of the Metaverse. In this episode, we are talking about Gary Vaynerchuk’s NFT collection VeeFriends. If you are a small business, you should have heard of him. If you have not, then we would recommend you go and look him up. He has millions of pieces of content published by him and about him. We are gonna talk about how Gary has used his NFT collection to build an even bigger community.

Cheryl01:09

Yeah. He’s a massive powerhouse. Isn’t he?

Angela01:12

Yeah. I mean, how long have we heard about him? 

Cheryl01:18

15 years. Is it 20 years? Maybe it has maybe, maybe I, he used to tweet with him when he had Wine Library. 

Angela01:29

Yeah. He used to respond to you.

He did. He did. Yeah. So he’s really, he’s really grown his business. The reason why we’re talking about him and we would suggest you go have a look at him is because he just knows brands. Doesn’t he, he just understands brands. Yeah. He was doing social media way before anybody else.

Right? Absolutely.

Cheryl01:51

And he is a bit of a Marmite character.

Angela01:54

Yes, that’s so true. 

Cheryl01:58

I’ve always been a fan.

Angela02:00

Yeah. And it’s a good thing that he’s a bit more Marmite because you can be objective with him. Some of the things you agree with, he says some of the things you don’t. I think the thing is he walks his walk.

He works really hard and he talks so much about social media and putting out content and he puts out content. So the out content.

Cheryl02:21

He’s also the first person to admit when he is wrong.

Angela02:24

Yes. So all we are saying is definitely go and check him out because there’s a lot to learn from him.

He knows his stuff. Definitely. He understands brands and he’s gotten into this NFT world now and he definitely understands that. So go and check him out.

Cheryl02:41

He just growing businesses left, right and centre.  Vayner Media, Vayner Sport, Vayner X

Angela02:46

Now VaynerX. Check him out anyway.

Cheryl02:54

So Gary became aware of cryptocurrency in 2014 when he did hours and hours of research. In fact, there are many really interesting videos of Gary talking about how he became interested in it and how he decided what he was going to initially invest in. He purchased his first Crypt Punk NFT in January 2021 

Since then he has purchased countless NFTs. Some of which have been profitable and some of them not so much. He was an early investor in the World of Women, Board Ape Yacht Clubs and Doodles. But the main purpose of this episode is as the title suggests, we are going to talk about Gary’s NFT collection VeeFriends.

He created VeeFriends because he’s passionate about community. He already has a large following, but through NFTs and smart contracts, he has seen a way to create a united and powerful community. That will be even bigger. The initial. Or series one was released on May 11th, 2021 with 10,255 VeeFriend tokens as part of this job.

1,242 of the collection was held back for his own collection. They were known as Gary originally owned. G.O.O.

Angela04:34

GOOs

Cheryl04:38

But over time, Gary gave them to his community members. This first collection was made up of 268 characters that were drawn by Gary. Go check them out. Gary is no artist. 

Gary never let the lack of drawing skills stop him from producing his collection. And it just goes to show that you really don’t have to be perfect. They are based on human traits and characteristics. That he most admires, including the Accountable Aunt, the Decisive Dark, and the Tolerant Tortoise., 

Angela, what do you make of Gary’s artwork?

Angela05:14

It’s a doodle, it’s a doodle.

It is not brilliant, but I think it’s, it’s really great to see that because so many of the NFTs are really professionally created and people like Yam, KarKai from World of Women are artists.

Cheryl05:34

I think he was making his point, that it is about the smart contracts attached to them and a bit of a nod to his own credibility within the industry.

Angela05:48

Yeah, I mean, he has, hand draw them, which credit to him, but you don’t have to be a brilliant artist to do that. I think that’s one thing to take away from it. Definitely. go check them out because you’ll see what we’re talking about.

Cheryl06:04

If you see an eight-year-old’s drawing then you will know you are looking at a VeeFriend.

Angela06:06

As of this year, his series one drop has generated about 49,000 Eth, which is nearly 80 million pounds. Oh my God. All this money. Currently, on Open Sea, the lowest price is about 572 Eth, which is around £8,900. And one of the highest selling was recorded at about 1,555,000. Gary offers something really quite unique with his range of NFTs, different to what we’ve already seen with the other ones that we talked about, World of Women and Board Eight Yacht Club, and he offers different levels of membership.

So by owning an original VeeFriend NFT, you immediately become part of the VeeFriends community, which we have talked about community a lot. You get a three-year pass to VeeFriends. And if you go to the library on the VeeFriends website, you can see all the characters. 

There are many characters and each will have. How many tokens that are attached to that NFT. So the tokens are the important part. Like we’ve just talked about. So most of the NFTs, which are the common ones have about 40 tokens, but there are, then are another few that have a lot less. That maybe I have eight tokens or five tokens, and they’re all kind of broken down because the background is a different color or there’s, there’s some something unique to them that makes them rarer than the others.

So go and have a look because the website’s really detailed and really interesting. So there are 555 gift goat tokens where you actually receive physical gifts, but then there are 108 tokens. One-to-one access with Gary, and that could be playing basketball with him or going fishing or having a 90 minute brunch with Gary.

And then there are another set of tokens where you actually get minted by him. So there you can see now where the different range of tokens and what you can receive, how he’s done that a lot differently to other projects. And as we said, you do then get this three-year pass of Veecon, which is the annual conference.

So you get to talk about and listen about entrepreneurship, creativity, and the chance to network.

Cheryl08:37

Yeah. That’d be a phenomenal room to be in. Wouldn’t it?

Angela08:40

Yes, it would. It would. I mean, especially if he talks because he really is a prolific public speaker. Wouldn’t you be pissed, pissed off if he went and yeah, Gary wasn’t there 

In August, 2021, they announced Book Games, which ties in with Gary’s book 12 and a Half Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Business Success. So that’s quite a title and a half for a book just. Yeah, Gary announced. If you brought his books in multiples of 12, you would get one NFT BookGame token for every 12 you purchased.

So that’s the game. He’s brilliant like that. He’s so clever. Yeah. He’s smart about the way he does things because ever since he has been brought out books, I think he’s got about five or six books that he’s published now, but he’s always done it based on. Right. Instead of being paid, say he probably gets about a hundred grand now for a speaking gig, instead of paying me money, buy this many books and I’ll come and speak.

Yeah. So he’s kind of doing the same now with his, with his tokens. I can remember

Cheryl10:05

A good four or five years ago, Gary was sliding into my DMS and ask me and asking me and asking me to purchase 10 of his books as a favour. I would, I, I assumed it would spam, but it was genuinely him asking me to purchase as a loyal fan.

Angela10:23

I didn’t, yeah. It’s one way to get people to buy more books, but also it keeps them at the top of the New York Times best seller list. He probably knew that

Cheryl10:33

You just had to ask, you know, 50 people to buy 10 books to keep yeah. To keep it probably isn’t 50, but he personally would contact people.

Angela10:44

Yeah. Well, he was he’s quite like that though. Isn’t he’s,  loves the DM? He’s always telling people it’s DM. They drive me nuts, but he loves the DM. 

So in January, 2022 Book Games actually dropped, which they are referring to as a layer 2 NFT project. I think it’s important to remember that because there’s gonna be so many layers to this.

So 125,000 are burnable tokens, again, all drawn by Gary and they depict. 13 emotional characters that kind of make up the 12 and a half that he mentions in his book. And then on top of those, there are other special pieces of art. Again, I’m gonna link the, um, URL to the actual page on his website, because it’s really interesting to read how they work.

But also again, there are new characters, different characters, and they have different backgrounds and they have frames and they all mean different things. So, and they lay not gonna go over well, yeah, they lay it out really well. They do lay out really well. Yeah. Because there’s such a lot that’s going on.

So there are benefits to having these book games and a game where he’s been really clever is the series one led to book games, which then leads to and something else which leads to something else. So he’s kind of really thought about the path going through. So some of the things that you can do, for example, with.

Book games are you get other assets? Um, so you. Burn the burn, the tokens they’re burnable tokens. So what you actually do is give up the token to get the asset. So for example, some of the things that you can get are you might get another NFT. If you give up your token. And one of those NFTs. Could be a board ape yacht club NFT.

It could be a world of women NFT. Some of the other things you get are his, some of his actual trading cards. So you could get a very rare sports card. So actually there’s a. Oh, do I don’t I burn this token and get something from it because am I burning something very valuable or am it what I’m getting back more valuable?

Right.

Cheryl13:13

So I was gonna ask you what are burnable tokens, Angela, but you’ve kind of explained

Angela13:19

Yeah. But again, there’s a lot more to it, what it does allow you to do and what it doesn’t allow you to do. So for certain things, so many levels, aren’t there so many levels, so many levels? And I was, I was telling Cheryl when I was researching the over the last few days, I was actually getting a bit anxious because I couldn’t understand it. I was like, oh my God, I not understanding this. It’s not going in, but it’s because there are so many characters and there’s so many layers and there are so many options. There’s so many, but you, yeah, you just get a little bit confused by it.

And then all of a sudden it sort of starts to click into place. I think he’s got this in his head, this massive jigsaw that he’s, that he knows how it all looks at the end, whereas we are. Looking at each piece. Um, so yes, so there’s a lot actually to these board games, but again, the website gives you a lot of information, about how you can exchange them, how you get your assets, how you actually use the book token.

So there is, there is a lot more to them. Then again, two months after he announced the launch of book games, he then announced the launch of mini drops, which again is another. Series of NFTs, but a much smaller collection, but you could only have those if you had if you own a certain type of series one NFT.

So, so much to

Cheryl14:47

so much, so much. I mean, I. So it’s also important to mention that the NFT intellectual property is owned by the friends and not by the purchased purchaser as it were. And unlike ward eight yacht club and World of Women. And I do wonder why he’s, um, decided to keep the, uh, intellectual property rights.

Angela15:13

Yeah, that’s an interesting one. Isn’t it? Because we’ve had this conversation where we talked. You’re almost relying on the asset then being valuable, the NFT being valuable. Whereas with board ape yacht club. Yeah, it’s good to have a valuable NFT, but you can still take that IP and create something from it.

So you can create other brands from your board date, yacht club, or from your world of women. We could do that with ours. Create something from it. So even potentially, if we were smart, even if world of women went down in value, we could still create a lot of value from what we from the brand we created, but from ours.

So it’s, it’s kind of an interesting one to

Cheryl15:57

see. Yeah. To see what Gary’s gotta his sleeve for that. I, I watched a video yesterday and he in true Gary style said, I’m gonna be God, I’m gonna be God damn Disney. Yeah.

Angela16:14

He always, he is always a big thinker, always. So I think he really knows in his head what he wants to achieve with this, but he’s, he’s keeping it quite close to his chest in what he’s bringing out, but he’s been quite prolific already with what he’s dropped so far.

Definitely.

Cheryl16:32

Yeah. Okay. So now we all know about Gary’s V friends, NFT collection. We need to talk about the next drop or series two. As he calls it in this drop. There are 251 characters, 236 from series one, and there are 15 new characters. So in total, on this drop, there are 55,555 NFTs. And again, go to the website and check it

Angela17:04

out.

Yeah. Again, with this one, I think there’s rules to it. Yes. On there in terms of what you have purchased before, whether you then can buy a series two. Yep. So it’s all very much gamification in this. Absolutely. There’s a lot of layers to the game in this world, a level

Cheryl17:28

that you can’t purchase this particular one because you haven’t got series one and then you have to have a mini.

And then you have to have something else. I mean, yeah. To be honest with you, it was quite a, a mind blowing project to research. Wasn’t it? Cause there’s just so yeah, it was.

Angela17:45

So many, it took me. Yeah. It took me hours to find out what a book game was because I kept saying right, well, where’s the game, what’s the actual game.

But the actual game was how many different things you can do with that NFT. So you can burn it. You can get another asset for it. You can. You can mint for another NFT, you could sell the NFT. So that’s the game that surrounded it. Cuz I was like, well, can you, can you play something with your character? I couldn’t find the answer until a little tiny piece in an article went.

This is what it means. I thought thank God. Goodness, man. So yeah.

Cheryl18:22

Well look, if you’re still with us, we applaud you. Yes yes . So the min price on the CS, sorry, series. Was north 0.3358, which is about 460 pounds. I dunno about you, but this feels like a very reasonable price and you can still pick one up for about 517 pounds.

And after doing my research, I’m not gonna lie. I want it to run over, to see and pick one. But this homo right homo, but this podcast is costing me enough money as it is. so enough about me but in this drop Gary’s original hand, drawn characters are digitally Des designed and taken to the next level by creating 3d characters, new backgrounds, and a new collection of pose.

It’s important to mention though, that series two tokens do not give you access to V con, but does come with a box of V friends complete and collect trading cards. When you mint. The NFT. Well, that’s been and gone now. So, um,

Angela19:36

yeah, when I read, he loves his cards though.

Cheryl19:38

Doesn’t it? He love his cards, but when I read this, I went straight over to eBay and found the cards there for sale for around 150 pounds.

Gary has fought of everything.

Angela19:49

Yeah.

Cheryl19:50

I mean, uh, and most of them are being sold from America as well. I’d love to, you know, to see if there’s any floating around in the UK.

Angela20:01

Yeah. I dunno you date again. You don’t really see, we talk about the UK market. You don’t see it as much as the. When Americans talk about it.

So it’d be interesting to see if there are videos out there of people cuz you see loads of people on TikTok or Instagram opening, their VFR cars, don’t you? I was like, what have they thought about? I haven’t seen any, have you not? Or I’ve seen a load. Yeah. Oh.

Cheryl20:24

So Gary talks about the long game and in the future he has big plans for his community, but with no roadmap for people to look.

customers have to rely solely on Gary’s reputation when investing in B friends.

Angela20:40

Yeah. This is interesting because he, the initial collection. Was always gonna be successful because of his own personal brand. He’s got such a worship at the church of following doesn’t. He he’s following is massive. And even people like you and I, where we can, we like some of the things he says and we, we don’t necessarily agree with all of it.

We still have huge respect for him, but. Whilst his personal brand would’ve helped him be successful with this. He still is so genius. He has such unique ideas that he, he takes his stuff to the next level’s all. He’s also got

Cheryl21:17

the balls to do it as well. Yes. You know, I think even when he released his first NFTs and giving out his personal, personal time, uh, he knew that he was gonna fulfill, he had to fulfill.

The promise the, in the, in the smart contracts. Um, but you do. Yeah, you definitely do need to have some balls to get behind, behind it all and just go, right. I’m gonna do this.

Angela21:43

Yeah, especially with the art, because the art isn’t great. He can open himself up to such a massive amount of criticism, but like you said, at the beginning, there’s an element of him improving.

You don’t have to be brilliant art. You don’t have to have great artists and. You know, there’s a lot, you can learn from what he did in this podcast. He obviously has the money to back himself and be able to generate as much as he has, but that element to creating an NFT and even just having a tiny token behind it is something any small business could do.

If you have a book, you can create an NFT for that book and offer that token. You could offer your time in coaching. There’s all sorts of little things that you can do. So. We really recommend you have a look at this because you can learn a huge amount. Yeah. You don’t have to do it on the scale that he has done it.

Even

Cheryl22:38

if you check out Gary’s videos on the advice that he gives other small business owners on how they can get into NFTs, he just gives out fantastic advice.

Angela22:51

Yeah, he’s much. He’s very much of a futurist, his ideas. He’s very forward thinking with his ideas. I think he got NFD. Once he did the research, he understood that the back end to what an NFT can offer.

So I think he really sees big things for these in the future. Definitely. And even well worth,

Cheryl23:11

even though he hasn’t got a roadmap, which is one of the things that if you ever do a. Researching to NFTs and in for investment purposes, the advice always given is check out the roadmap, check out the discord.

Yeah. And Gary hasn’t got one. So he it’s, it’s done based on trust.

Angela23:34

Isn’t it? Yeah, it is. It’s based on his reputation and what he’s talking. So, yeah, he D he’s done things differently, but I think he moves the, he moves the bar. Doesn’t he hire definitely around what you can achieve. Definitely. So

Cheryl23:50

we hope you’ve enjoyed this very detailed episode about the friends.

And if you have invested in this project, we would love to know which NFT you purchased. So join us next week for more metaphors insights. We’ll see you.

Angela24:06

Bye for

Cheryl24:07

now. Bye.

Angela24:11

Thank you for listening to this episode of women of the Metaverse.

Cheryl24:16

You can find all information links and people we talked about in the show notes on our website. If you have

Angela24:22

enjoyed this podcast. Please come and subscribe.

Cheryl24:26

Join us again in the next episode, as we continue this exciting Metaverse journey.