Witness'd Network Revenue (2021)

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Bobby DeMaria. He is building witnessd.com, help creators monetize using blockchain. Bobby, you're ready to take this off? [00:07] >> Absolutely. [00:08] Alright. Make this real for everyone that has, like, either NFT and blockchain. I don't know what either of them means. Make make it easy for us. [00:15] >> Yeah. So basically, NFT and blockchain, it's really just a way to be able to store digital assets using your computer online in a way that's immutable and can't be changed. So it makes them very unique. It's a difference between the Mona Lisa being a one of one versus a printout of the Mona Lisa. [00:32] Interesting. And when did you launch this idea? First line of code? [00:35] >> First line of code was last October. [00:38] Okay. So fairly recently. And what's like, how do make money off this? That's what I don't understand. How do folks like you that create make money? [00:43] >> Yeah, so, I mean, there's a number of ways. I do it through two different methods, both through recurring revenue. So my model is to charge people a monthly fee to be able to sell their art and music, not their social videos, their social videos are free, but you know, we can talk about that later. So there's a recurring revenue component and then the other piece is just to take a portion of all the transactions that go [01:06] >> through the social marketplace. [01:08] And last month, which one made you more money? [01:10] >> Well, I mean, we're just in open beta right now. So what made us more money last month was the recurring revenue, but that's not what I expect will be the case long term. [01:19] So what do you charge on average of the recurring fee? [01:22] >> So we actually have two different sides for the artists. We charge them $20 a month and they can upload unlimited numbers of art and music. And then, the other side of the coin is the businesses. So the people that are actually buying these, we're not just doing it for collectibles, we're doing it for business as well. So the point there is that businesses can come to our site, find authentic created videos, especially the social videos and [01:49] >> utilize them for their digital ad campaigns. [01:52] How many of those do you have right now using the platform? [01:55] >> Only a few people. Again, open beta for that. [01:57] How many? Like five? [01:59] >> Yeah, about five people. [02:01] Okay, five people. And how did you find them? Those are the hardest five to find, right? [02:05] >> Yeah, well, you know, the first few people I found were mostly just through the blockchain community that I use. A couple of those guys jumped on as artists and then the rest of it is just through social media. So, obviously I have a couple of social media accounts, with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. And so I have people starting to use the social side of that now. [02:29] So Robert, five times 20 a month is about $100 a month in revenue. You're just getting started, like how are you supporting yourself while you scale a startup? [02:37] >> Yeah, literally just getting started. So savings, I was consulting for a long time and now I'm just living off of savings now that I've gone at this full time. [02:46] Okay. Well, that's like a big jump. Everyone listening around there, people that don't have your courage yet, but they're saying I'm going to jump at some point. How much savings do I need in the bank? Right. In terms of my life expenses before jumping in and doing this, how did you think about that? [02:57] >> Well, you know, I figured just like anything else in life, you can overthink it if you want to. At some point in time, you have to just go ahead and do it. Now is really a prime time because NFT marketplace is just exploding. If If you see what's happened with OpenSea just recently, [03:14] >> it's just blowing up. So, you know, if I continue to consult, that's fine, but I wouldn't be able to spend as much time focusing on growing the business. [03:23] One way to get more leverage here is to keep your personal expenses super low so you have more personal life runway. Can I ask, like how low have you driven your all in monthly personal expenses? [03:31] >> I mean, you know, rent and food. That's basically it. [03:35] But how much is that? Like, where are you? What's it cost? [03:37] >> I mean, you know, it's higher than I'd like it to be, but, you know, it's, you know, probably $5,000 a month, give or take. [03:45] Okay. So are you in like a major city? [03:47] >> Yeah, I'm just outside of Philadelphia. [03:49] Okay. Okay. Got it. So, yeah, got it. So so you have plenty of runway there. Now have you bootstrapped this or did you raise some money? [03:55] >> Completely bootstrapped as of now, though with a business like this, I need to be able to grow. So I'm just now starting to finish up putting together my pitch deck and starting to reach out to investors. [04:03] How much do wanna raise? [04:05] >> I'm looking at raising $2,000,000. [04:07] And how like, building a company like this, how how do you actually raise 2,000,000? It's not like a traditional raise. Right? [04:13] >> Well, no. It's not a series a. I'm looking for more seed funding through convertible notes. [04:19] Okay. But my point is, so they are actually buying equity in a like Delaware, like corporation. Not like they're buying tokens on a blockchain and buying above part of the community. [04:28] >> No, it's more traditional. I'm not doing an ICO or anything like that. [04:31] I see what you're saying. Okay, got it. Now, are you building this yourself or you have a team? [04:35] >> I am. [04:36] One man show. I love that. So where did you get the idea from? Were you like a rock and roll star or something in your twenties? My [04:41] >> background was in film and television and then I got into tech, you know, over twenty years ago. And so this is kind of just the culmination of technology and TV. I worked in TV news for a number of years as well. So, you know, the concept of TV news, being able to access authentic videos was kind of the start And then obviously rolling in just what people are doing with user generated content now for their social, [05:05] >> for their ad campaigns, just gets layered on top of it. [05:09] Robert, are you do you have spouse? [05:12] >> I'm separated. [05:13] Separated. Okay. Got it. I was gonna ask like, you know, lot of people, like, they're on board of taking a big risk, but whoever they're with is not on board of taking a big risk without getting too personal, like, that wasn't the cause of the separation, was it? [05:24] >> No. No. No. Not at all. [05:25] It's been many [05:27] >> years separated at this point. [05:28] Okay, good. So you're like a free man. You can take a lot of risk here because you're responsible for just you. I mean, I have a child as well, but yeah. Okay. How old are they? [05:37] >> I have one daughter who's 12 years old. [05:40] Oh, okay. So you're you get to be dad for a couple more years before she's off to college. [05:43] >> Absolutely. And I'm trying to enjoy every moment of the bed I can. [05:46] That's amazing. Yeah, they say what they say, you only have eighteen summers and they forget you forever, you know. [05:50] >> True. Probably not. She's almost a teenage girl. She doesn't really care about that anymore. [05:55] Yeah, that's so funny. Okay, very cool. So building, building, building. So where do you want to get? What are your goals? End of the year? [06:01] >> I mean, of the year funded and getting this company into a massive growth mode. I mean, we're going to have to be able to hit the market in time. [06:08] Do you have a lot of expenses with the business? You talked about personal expenses. What about business expenses? [06:13] >> Not a lot of them right now. [06:14] Okay. Got it. [06:15] >> So a $100 a month in revenue, but you're not really spending on your sort of break even right now. Where are you gonna get your next 20 [06:21] >> Probably a little bit more than that because just all the services that I'm using, but it's not a big deal. [06:25] Yep, yep, yep. Where do you get your next 50 artists and musicians to sign up? [06:30] >> Oh, that's a great question. I mean, word-of-mouth, social media, my open beta, what I'm running now is a three if you sign up now between the end of between now and the end of August, you'll hear first three months free as an artist or musician. So getting them in there to get people to start to fill the market, filling the marketplace with the collectibles, because we're two sides of a coin, right? We're a social marketplace. So [06:51] >> there's a social side. And then there's also the marketplace side where the artists and musicians load up all their stuff for the NFTs. So to get that side filled, it's going to be, you know, it's just through running this promotion of free access for ninety days. And then on the other side of the coin for the social videos piece, it's just pushing it as hard as I can on social media. [07:11] I know the network side. So on your website, it says sign up for our social network and get paid to post and explore the world around you. What does that mean? [07:18] >> So it's a location based social network where when you post a video to the network, that video gets turned into an NFT and then gets promoted to the place that you check it into. So let's say you're at a restaurant and you have a great meal and you shoot a video about it. And when you're done loading the video, it'll ask you where you are to look at the location around you, tag the location you're at, [07:39] >> and then it'll actually automatically create a video GIF and send it to the, to that place, to that location, to that restaurant in this example, and say, Hey, we've got this social video that you can use to in your digital ad campaigns come to our site. They come to the site, they can look at all of the content that's been curated by their location and purchase it for their digital use. It's a way for them to [07:58] >> be able to kind of get digital access rights using a smart contract instead of, you know, trying to go through social media, find something that was posted at their location, reach out to the person, ask permission to use it, save that to protect themselves later. Then, you know, that's just becomes a very cumbersome process, which we try to make a lot more simple, both for those businesses that are trying to advertise as well as for news [08:20] >> organizations. [08:21] Yeah. But if someone's going to hit the market, it's about finding the right mouse trap. Like everyone says someone should just build Facebook on blockchain. And every time you post or post viable content, you like get token reward, but like no one's built a special mouse trap yet to really get scaled doing this. I'm I'm waiting for somebody to do it. We'll see. [08:36] >> We actually have done that, actually. So when you do post [08:38] Oh, no. Come on, Robert. You don't get I mean, you have, but you don't have No. We're not no. We're definitely not. Don't get me wrong. [08:43] >> Yeah. That's what I mean. [08:44] I don't I don't mean the tech I I don't mean the technology. I think a lot of people have the technology to do this. What I'm talking about is no one has brought this to the mass market yet in a way where you're getting hundreds of [08:53] millions of users on it. That's the hard part by the way. Like how do you do that? That's the hard part. [08:59] >> Yeah. Well, you mean, hopefully you find somebody that, you know, shoots something that's amazing and gets a lot of attention, right? [09:05] Yeah. Mean, I'll give you attention. My podcast is big, but not that big. So you'll hopefully get a couple of new users. [09:09] >> Yeah. I watch a podcast all the time when I'm on my daily walks. So don't worry about that. [09:13] It's How do you man, you must you must just start walking faster as you're listening to a podcast every day. You get anxious. [09:20] >> Yeah. No. No. I don't really get anxious. It's just it's good to, you know, good to listen to other founders. Absolutely. [09:26] Yeah. That's cool, man. Well, I think you I think you crushed it today, man. I I appreciate you come on. Let's wrap up with a famous five. Number one, favorite book. [09:32] >> Well, it's not a business book, but it's probably my favorite one that I've read more recently, which is The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F. [09:39] >> Yep. [09:40] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [09:42] >> I mean, know that it's cliche and everybody says it, but Elon Musk is the man. [09:47] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building a business? [09:50] >> Believe it or not, Bubble. [09:52] >> Bubble. Hey, big round recently, $100,000,000 raised. We'll see what happens next. [09:55] Yeah. Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night? [09:58] >> I try and get six to eight. [10:02] Okay, fair. And you mentioned not married, one kiddo. And how old are you? [10:06] >> I'm 46. [10:08] >> 46. Last question. [10:09] What's something you wish you knew when you were 20? [10:12] >> Don't be afraid. Your kind self and just go for it. [10:15] There you have it, guys. He started off as a consultant and said, you know what? I'm gonna go all in. He's got got his living expenses down to 5 k per month. He's now now building witnessd.com. Got his first five customers paying $20 a month, $100 a month in revenue. But again, just getting started. Looking at raising $2,000,000 to keep growing this network where artists can post and sell and make money via their NFTs. And he charges [10:35] the artist a small fee to do so. We'll see what happens next as he scales. He thinks the bigger revenue stream will be taking the percentage of sales over time. Robert, thanks for taking us to the top. [10:44] >> No problem. Thanks, Nathan. [10:47] One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on three hungry buyers. They try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday one [11:12] p. M. Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at two p. M. Central to make sure you don't miss any of that. Make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's [11:33] an acquisition, a big fundraise, big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people [11:55] are saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter [12:15] those people. We got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.