How Witness'd Network Reached About 5 Beta Users with a Solo Founder Building an NFT Creator Platform (Interview with Bobby DeMaria)

Introduction and What Witness'd Network Does

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, 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?

Bobby DeMaria

00:07>> Absolutely.

Nathan Latka

00:08Alright. 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.

Explaining NFTs and Blockchain in Plain Terms

Bobby DeMaria

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.

When the First Line of Code Was Written

Nathan Latka

00:32Interesting. And when did you launch this idea? First line of code?

Bobby DeMaria

00:35>> First line of code was last October.

Nathan Latka

00:38Okay. 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?

How the Business Makes Money

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

01:08And last month, which one made you more money?

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

01:19So what do you charge on average of the recurring fee?

Pricing: $20 per Month for Artists

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Current Customer Count and How They Were Found

Nathan Latka

01:52How many of those do you have right now using the platform?

Bobby DeMaria

01:55>> Only a few people. Again, open beta for that.

Nathan Latka

01:57How many? Like five?

Bobby DeMaria

01:59>> Yeah, about five people.

Nathan Latka

02:01Okay, five people. And how did you find them? Those are the hardest five to find, right?

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

02:29So 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?

Supporting Himself While Scaling: Living Off Savings

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

02:46Okay. 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?

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

03:23One 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?

Bobby DeMaria

03:31>> I mean, you know, rent and food. That's basically it.

Nathan Latka

03:35But how much is that? Like, where are you? What's it cost?

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

03:45Okay. So are you in like a major city?

Bobby DeMaria

03:47>> Yeah, I'm just outside of Philadelphia.

Nathan Latka

03:49Okay. 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?

Bootstrapped and Planning a $2M Seed Raise

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

04:03How much do wanna raise?

Bobby DeMaria

04:05>> I'm looking at raising $2,000,000.

Nathan Latka

04:07And how like, building a company like this, how how do you actually raise 2,000,000? It's not like a traditional raise. Right?

Bobby DeMaria

04:13>> Well, no. It's not a series a. I'm looking for more seed funding through convertible notes.

Nathan Latka

04:19Okay. 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.

Bobby DeMaria

04:28>> No, it's more traditional. I'm not doing an ICO or anything like that.

Nathan Latka

04:31I see what you're saying. Okay, got it. Now, are you building this yourself or you have a team?

One-Man Show: Building the Product Solo

Bobby DeMaria

04:35>> I am.

Nathan Latka

04:36One 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

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

05:09Robert, are you do you have spouse?

Bobby DeMaria

05:12>> I'm separated.

Nathan Latka

05:13Separated. 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?

Bobby DeMaria

05:24>> No. No. No. Not at all.

Nathan Latka

05:25It's been many

Bobby DeMaria

05:27>> years separated at this point.

Nathan Latka

05:28Okay, 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?

Bobby DeMaria

05:37>> I have one daughter who's 12 years old.

Nathan Latka

05:40Oh, okay. So you're you get to be dad for a couple more years before she's off to college.

Bobby DeMaria

05:43>> Absolutely. And I'm trying to enjoy every moment of the bed I can.

Nathan Latka

05:46That's amazing. Yeah, they say what they say, you only have eighteen summers and they forget you forever, you know.

Bobby DeMaria

05:50>> True. Probably not. She's almost a teenage girl. She doesn't really care about that anymore.

Goal for End of Year: Get Funded

Nathan Latka

05:55Yeah, 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?

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

06:08Do you have a lot of expenses with the business? You talked about personal expenses. What about business expenses?

Bobby DeMaria

06:13>> Not a lot of them right now.

Nathan Latka

06:14Okay. Got it.

Bobby DeMaria

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.

How to Get the Next 50 Artists to Sign Up

Nathan Latka

06:25Yep, yep, yep. Where do you get your next 50 artists and musicians to sign up?

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

07:11I 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?

The Location-Based Social Network Explained

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

08:21Yeah. 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.

Bobby DeMaria

08:36>> We actually have done that, actually. So when you do post

Nathan Latka

08:38Oh, 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.

Bobby DeMaria

08:43>> Yeah. That's what I mean.

Nathan Latka

08:44I 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

08:53millions of users on it. That's the hard part by the way. Like how do you do that? That's the hard part.

Bobby DeMaria

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?

Nathan Latka

09:05Yeah. Mean, I'll give you attention. My podcast is big, but not that big. So you'll hopefully get a couple of new users.

Bobby DeMaria

09:09>> Yeah. I watch a podcast all the time when I'm on my daily walks. So don't worry about that.

Nathan Latka

09:13It'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.

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Famous Five: Books, CEOs, Tools, and Advice

Nathan Latka

09:26Yeah. 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.

Bobby DeMaria

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.

Nathan Latka

09:40Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Bobby DeMaria

09:42>> I mean, know that it's cliche and everybody says it, but Elon Musk is the man.

Nathan Latka

09:47Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building a business?

Bobby DeMaria

09:50>> Believe it or not, Bubble.

09:52>> Bubble. Hey, big round recently, $100,000,000 raised. We'll see what happens next.

Nathan Latka

09:55Yeah. Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Bobby DeMaria

09:58>> I try and get six to eight.

Nathan Latka

10:02Okay, fair. And you mentioned not married, one kiddo. And how old are you?

Bobby DeMaria

10:06>> I'm 46.

10:08>> 46. Last question.

Nathan Latka

10:09What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Bobby DeMaria

10:12>> Don't be afraid. Your kind self and just go for it.

Nathan Latka

10:15There 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

10:35the 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.

Bobby DeMaria

10:44>> No problem. Thanks, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

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