Austin Erkl is the founder of Bangsta Bears. He was kind enough to give the first of many (I hope) Creators' Interviews for NFT Calendar. We kick off with the new segment, brought to help our beloved NFT enthusiasts with the promotion of their NFTs and give a feel of personalities, standing behind these marvelous projects.
Chris from NFT Calendar: Austin hello. Tell us a bit about yourself if you don't mind.
Austin: I recently graduated college with a degree in Business Administration. I have been a serial online entrepreneur for close to ten years now. It all started when I was in high school and was not content living paycheck to paycheck on minimum wage. I felt tied down and not free, as all the money I would earn went to bills. To overcome this feeling, I would try to figure out any and all other ways to make money with my free time. This was a time when Youtube was not very popular. Back then, I had to read many articles with a lot of trial and error to find what actually made you money and what wasn't worth your time. I've tried many different things from flipping items on eBay / Amazon, creating a blog, affiliate marketing, e-commerce and plenty of others (every type of hustle I've done, is detailed in the discord). Nowadays, you can find videos on many different ways to make money on Youtube and people will show you step-by-step how to do it with proof. Which leads me to why you are here, NFTs.
It all started last year with NBA Topshot, then other digital card sites, nifty gateway and whenever I got introduced to Opensea, it was crazy. Once you make that first big flip, it's the type of money people dream of making. What feels even better though, is when you find a community of people and fall in love with them / that NFT it's based around.
Chris from NFT Calendar: The Bangsta Bears do look mean! Who is on the team? How does each member contribute to the huge project of 7500 NFTs?
Austin: I've already introduced myself, but for the rest of the team: Tyler is our developer who has worked on / counseled on over 10 NFT projects to date and has worked on many other crypto projects before NFTs became mainstream. I've been in the crypto space for close to 5 years now and have picked a decent understanding of the blockchain, but working with him, holy heck man, I never knew the extent to what goes "behind the scenes of the blockchain". Then Edrian from Valiant Graphics (his company) has done work for ESPN, Etsy, Passive Owl & more! He has also done small graphic projects for me in the past on Facebook ads for my e-commerce site and has always done a fantastic job. Reconnecting with him, little did I know he's been doing NFT art for the past two years! We also have a few moderators that we've hired from within. Also will be looking to bring others to the team that we believe can bring value. I like hiring from within because it is people that are most passionate about the project that will put the same effort forth as you.
Chris from NFT Calendar: What is the idea behind Bangsta Bears? How does the NFT make money?
Austin: The idea behind Bangsta Bears is that we wanted to create something different. Enough of the cute and cuddly animals, these bears are about BUSINESS. I have not seen too many "mafia" or "gangster" like collections, which is a shame because I always love those types of movie characters (The Godfather, Scarface, etc.). How does this NFT make money is a very touchy subject because of the legal side of things. In a world where there are no laws, I would give holders passive income. This could be by creating our own cryptocurrency, investing into crypto miners and dispersing the gains to holders monthly, investing in buying NFTs, list it as a security and then fractionalzing them to holders. This is one of many ways we'd do it, if laws we're not a problem. Unfortunately they are, so we are figuring different ways to get around this, in a legal manner. One way we thought of is creating a token that can be redeemed (burned) for certain rewards, pertaining to a rewards program we set up, that can in return "make" you money, just not in the direct type of way (if that makes sense, just a loophole to make things legal).
I personally make Stock, Crypto and NFT "calls" (giving suggestions on what to buy for good gains) and will hire someone else with a good track record to do the same, so we steadily have different investment ideas flowing. The easiest way though is just by holding and believing in the team's vision though. This takes major "diamond" hands, but if you really believe in something, it would be foolish to sell. Just ask former Punk, BAYC, CC holders.
Chris: How is the fee structure organized for the sale of each Bangsta Bear NFT? How do investors contribute to community work?
Austin: The first 3000 Bangsta Bears we're free to mint for the Whitelisted people aka the early supporters. The other 4400 are available to the public at 0.03 ETH each. Why we made 40% of the mint free: The community of the project is everything and I mean everything. You can have an A list team, but without a solid community, it's NGMI. We wanted to reward the people who were there from the start, loyalty over royalty. Also, with a free mint, it may entice people that never have been into NFTs to get into it. Having a .08 mint ($400) + gas ($100) is a VERY high barrier to entry for people who are on the fence about NFTs, it’s a big deterrence especially when you have most people calling NFTs a scam (idiots, but hey, to each their own)
Why make the rest of mint .03 eth? I feel like .03 eth honestly should be the standard in the NFT project space. It's not too much, but just enough to take the project to the next level. A decent amount of money for marketing, influencers, giveaways, collaborations, etc. Not going to go into too much details, as I want to keep the big plans under wraps. Just know that you will most definitely want to keep AT LEAST 1 Bangsta Bear as holders will be rewarded.
Investors can contribute to community work by voting on how to use the community funds. This is what is going to bring new people in and drive the price up (more on this in next question). Also by posting about Bangsta Bears and telling others about it, as not a lot of people know about this drop, but once they do, I'm sure they will love it :)
Chris from NFT Calendar: What features are in the pipeline for increasing the value of Bangsta Bears for investors? Do you also plan to bring in a gaming platform?
Austin: We are a community based project, so things that will increase value, will all be voted by the community. That being said, the main thing we want to do is find the best way to integrate Bangsta Bears into the metaverse. First thing first is buying land in a place like Sandbox, Decentraland or Cryptovoxels. Then also creating a 3D VR integrated version of a Bangsta Bears, so you can take it with you to worlds that allow you to upload your own avatar. We will also love to create a free to mint project (for Bangsta Bear holders) on SOL sometime next year, which will bring even more eyes to Bangsta Bears, since it is the original and SOL NFT people usually don't care for ETH NFTs that much, whole other type of community.
We also want to get partnerships with artists on board, to have their NFTs airdropped to our holders and our holders only, to make it exclusive. Other few ideas, but mainly just want to find the best metaverse utility possible, as that will be the next big step for the values on NFTs to increase. As always though, the community votes on everything, these are just what I personally think would be most beneficial.
Chris from NFT Calendar: Direct marketing would bring in great visibility to Bangsta Bears. What are the key channels you are looking at?
Austin: To bring in direct consumers you first have to market to the masses, which we have. This includes Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Instagram, Quora Ads, Google Ads, SEO for all our posts, we've done a lot of different channels / marketing tactics. By doing so we have found a few that are better than others and proceed to take those to the next level. Once the Bangsta Bears name is out there, then we can key on direct marketing, as people will know what we bring to the table. This would include partnerships, exclusive giveaways and whitelist opportunities with only certain channels / projects, directly building relationships with influencers / celebrities that are actually interested in our project (instead of paying them to shill, which is what most do), things of this nature!
Chris from NFT Calendar: Free 1 on 1 call with the founder! That sounds like too much work! How do you plan to handle all your Bangsta Bear owners for a whole month?
Austin: To be honest, I do not see many people using this. The people that do though, I believe it is a great value for them and even for me as well. Like I said earlier, a project is only as strong as it's community. Gaining a personal connection with people will have them have much more faith in you and the project. If I could have 1 on 1 calls with Elon Musk and I got to know him / the future plans of Tesla more AND he gave me a lot of free knowledge, I'd be much more inclined to believe in his vision and not sell. Even if most holders did use this utility, I would just start hiring more people as you can teach people how to manage and keep a community engaged, but what you can't do is take my brain and put it elsewhere. The 1 on 1s are important as you can learn a lot from the right person with the right questions in a small allocated time. Heck, Grant Cardone charges $40k for a one hour session. Obviously some people are willing to pay that much as I believe it was $10k last year. That must mean people really grasp a crap ton of information in that time!
Chris from NFT Calendar: You are straightforward and transparent. Agreed that most roadmaps are never followed. However, your potential investors would love to know what is your plan of action in the near future?
Austin: I believe most of our future actions / ideas have been mapped out in this interview. Like I said in our "roadmap", don't want to make promises we can't keep. This is an ever-changing space, just another reason why roadmaps don't make sense. Hence why the token is a might, hence why we might evolve the project in different ways, but not 100% committing to it for now. For all we know, the new Coinbase NFT marketplace could change the whole game and turn opensea into closedsea and everyone rushes to switch their project over to other platforms. Then, maybe the Coinbase market allows you to easily file a collection as a security and make it easy to give dividends to holders.
The list goes on and on and on, this is like the internet in the early 2000s, there is so much room for growth & innovation. The NFT space is just getting started. We're building a community of ever adapting hustlers here. By putting each other onto new things, educating each other, conversing, etc. I truly believe we can take this community and this project very very far down the road. We're going to keep building, keep hiring, doing all we can to take this project places. If you love the art, awesome I love it too. If you love the community, awesome that’s what we’re aiming for. If you believe in the team and the project, then strap in and get ready for a long ride because we're going places baby!!!
