The WLD Show
Mike Wen: Building Gallery to help NFT Collectors display their NFTs | Will, Lee, & Andrew Learn Web3: #40
Episode Summary
Mike Wen is the founder and CEO of Gallery.so. Hundreds of the largest NFT collectors use Gallery to curate, describe, and display their NFTs. We chat with Mike about his favorite NFT’s, building Gallery.so, finding investors like FlamingoDAO, onboarding influential NFT collectors like Kevin Rose, and the differences between running a Web3 and Web2 company.
Episode Notes
Mike Wen is the founder and CEO of Gallery. Hundreds of the largest NFT collectors use Gallery to curate and display their NFTs. Mike’s first NFT was a piece by Beeple, and when it netted him 100x profit, he became obsessed with collecting more NFT’s. When he couldn’t find a good way to curate & display his collection, he taught himself to code and created Gallery. Investors took notice and Gallery has now raised $2.69M from Collab+Currency, Coinbase Ventures, Dapper Labs and angel investments from 20+ collectors in the NFT space. Today, Mike is focused on making Gallery the go to place for curating, managing, and displaying NFT's.
In this episode we discuss:
- What NFT's are: https://ethereum.org/en/nft/
- What Gallery is:
- A space for NFT collectors to display their collections.
- A set of tools for collectors to manage and curate their NFT's.
- A place to add meaning and context to NFT's
- How Gallery protects wallet holders from their NFT's being shown without authorization.
- Mike’s first NFT: Beeple
- Some of Mike’s favorite galleries:
- How Mike evaluates NFT's and collections
- Securing an investment from Flamingo DAO - - through an interview with a set of black screens.
- How Gallery got the top NFT collectors as users such as FlamingoDAO, DCInvestor, and Kevin Rose
- How to get Gallery membership via OpenSea
- The difference in mind set when building a Web3 company vs. a Web2 company
- How Gallery is growing and the roles it’s hiring for: Gallery's Careers
- If Mike was to do this over again, whether he would’ve done anything differently
- How NFT's will create the texture of who you are online and what you love
- How NFT's will represent more and more items such as tickets, music, and experiences:
- Books, movies, music
- Collecting your experiences! For example utilizing PoAp’s, which are badges that represent you were somewhere - https://app.poap.xyz
- Games - Assets and skills
- Using https://www.artblocks.io as a vending machine to generate your own art
- What Gallery is focused on next
- Taking your gallery anywhere and using it as a jumping off point into any 3D world
Learn More About Gallery
Gallery Angel Investors Include:
@santiagoroel, @Cooopahtroopa, @gabusch, @DeezeFi, @gregisenberg, @pplpleasr1, @_jamiis, @whatdotcd, @andy8052, @dandelion_eth, @seth, @thattallguy
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