Launchpool AMA Recap — NOWwhere
Launchpool x NOWwhere AMA Summary
Place: Launchpool Official Telegram Community
Date & Time: Friday June 17th, 12:00noon UTC
Guests: Drew Lightfoot, CEO & Matt Hinkley, President
Host: Mickie (Launchpool Team)
Launchpool was excited to host CEO Drew Lightfoot, & President Matt Hinkley of NOWwhere for an interactive Ask-Me-Anything session with the Launchpool Community. The session lasted approximately 1hr and consisted of questions from the Launchpool Team as well as questions from the Community.
Questions from the Launchpool Team
Mickie:
Hello and Welcome all LPOOLers,
As many in our Community already know, today we have an AMA session with CEO Drew Lightfoot and President Matt Hinkley of NOWwhere. NOWwhere.io is an intelligent NFT marketplace building on the FLOW blockchain, integrating the NOWwallet to match Creators to Collectors.
As always, the chat will be muted for roughly 30 mins whilst we ask the pre-prepared questions. After this, we will open up to questions from the Community for another 15 mins. We will also enable “Slow Mode” for all questions.
Welcome Drew and Matt!
Drew: Thanks Mickie! Good afternoon.
Matt: Good morning!
Mickie: Hope you two are having a great day. Please tell us a bit about yourself, your background and your involvement with the space.
Drew: Hello Launchpoolers. I’m Drew Lightfoot, CEO of NOWwhere.
My background is in film, TV, and animation. I’ve had the pleasure of leading creative teams around the world for over two decades. Having worked with major global studios and brands over the years, I discovered the incredible potential of NFTs for Artists to write their own future. We’ve devised some pretty cool functionality to connect Artists with relevant collectors and vice-versa.
Matt: Hello, I’m Matt Hinkley. I started my career in the FinTech and Alternative finance space 8 years ago. I’ve always been fascinated with the development of technology in the financial services industry.
For the last few years, I’ve focused on the crypto and blockchain space. I’m particularly interested in the onboarding phase to drive mass adoption of the technology.
Mickie: Great backgrounds guys. Could you tell us about the rest of the team?
Drew: of course…
Jim Shone, our CFO hails from the Private Equity and Corporate Finance world, most recently in the cannabis space. He keeps our business focus in check and has been invaluable in guiding us forward as we grow.
Kerron Lewis leads our in-house marketing team. He met us through the Launchpool community. Kerron comes from the digital marketing side; he has a tremendous passion for Art and has been collecting artwork for many years.
Shout out to…
Nia Sha, our Community manager. She’s got Discord on lockdown; she loves interacting with and growing alongside the community.
Sarah McIntosh is our in-house designer, bringing our concepts to life with incredible beauty.
We also have a few advisors helping us navigate equity raises and building.
✨ Special Announcement ✨
We’re currently running a Gleam Campaign with NOWwhere
To welcome NOWwhere to Launchpool, we’ve teamed up to give away 5 NOWkeys! 🤩
👉 Simply fill out the Gleam form shared below for a chance to win:
https://gleam.io/YmMaT/enter-the-nowwhere-x-launchpool-nowkey-giveaway❗️😎
📌 The secret code will be shared during the AMA so be sure you are paying attention… 👀
Mickie: All areas are greatly covered! What problem are you trying to solve? What is the overall vision for the project?
Drew: A few actually. NFTs continue to be a mess. How do you find relevant assets based on your tastes or interests? Unless you do copious amounts of research… it’s really a gamble.
We want to connect Creators with Explorers in an engaging way, making exploration fun and rewarding. We’ve designed a system to reward Explorers for their curiosity and interests. The more they interact with Artists and their art the more they’re rewarded. These rewards have real utility on the platform, they can be used to buy NFTs or trick out the Metaverse gallery of your dreams.
We’re gamifying learning about Artists and art. Unlike Web2, we aim to reward explorers for their data, their time, and their curiosity. The more they give, the more they get.
It’s pretty cool… and rather exciting to build.
Mickie: How are you differentiated from other similar projects?
Matt: Our gamification is unique. We’ve developed a closed-loop token economy that incentivizes Explorers to go deeper, to learn about the process, technique, creativity and motivation of Artists.
Curiosity is rewarded in NOWtokens, which in turn can be used to build, upgrade and improve virtual galleries — NOWspaces, as well as purchase NFTs. We’ve not seen anything like it out there.
Mickie: First in the space! Where are you at in your roadmap? Could you please talk us through the next steps?
Drew: NOWwhere.io is live with sales on FLOW, featuring frictionless transactions integrating MoonPay. Explorers can seamlessly buy NFTs with crypto or credit card.
We’ve launched NOWstudios — a decentralized studio for the creation of NFTs and a hub for connecting artists for collaboration.
We’re prototyping the NOWspaces and planning how they will expand and interconnect with a growing community of Artists and Explorers.
We’ve designed our gamification — you can learn more about it by reading our GitBook. Our next step is to start building this functionality out and it just so happens that now is a great time to be building.
Mickie: How was the project funded up to this point? How will the funds from the Key sale be used?
Matt: We’ve been mostly bootstrapped up until this point. We had a small amount of private investment but the company has mainly been self-funded up until this point.
We are looking to sell off the next batch of our initial Explorer keys, which will assist us to build out the platform and start a treasury for the learn-to-earn functionality.
Mickie: Are there any strategic partners (excluding Launchpool) that you can share?
Drew: Our development partner Troon has been with us since the beginning.
We are about to go live with BloctoBay for secondary sales. We have MoonPay live for fiat and crypto payments and ARweave for perma-storage.
Mickie: That’s great! What made you choose Launchpool as your launchpad partner?
Drew: We were inspired by the Launchpool community and continue to appreciate the network of folk Launchpool have connected us to.
Mickie: Couldn’t agree more. Can you explain the details of the upcoming NOWkey sale offer to the Launchpool Community? Are there any limitations or is the Allocation Mining Event open to everyone? Please list any countries that are excluded from the allocation event due to regulatory reasons.
Matt: The NOWkey sale is open to most countries; apart from North America and any other countries restricted by the Launchpool platform. We are selling two types of NOWkey in this round.
An Orange (Hot key) and Blue (Warm key) — These NOWkeys are part of our first Explorer package of 5000 keys, so they come with the largest token rewards built into the keys, but also with additional perks and benefits specifically for the Launchpool community.
Mickie: What happens after the sale? Can you talk us through the longer-term vision for the NOWkey and what are the uses within its own ecosystem? Could you talk us through the tokenomics: total supply, initial circulating supply, initial market cap, initial vesting, total vesting period etc.
Here is the Secret Code: NOWEXPLORE
Drew: After the sale, all keys can be minted directly from the NOWwhere.io platform. Once we have the final snapshot of Blocto wallet addresses — wallets that have signed up to NOWwhere after the sale (mint date TBD) — they will be able to mint the type of key purchased.
The earlier the NOWkey, the longer the NOWtokens are received as a reward for holding the key. Approximately 100 NOWtokens per week are released for each of the initial keys for nearly 5 years. The batches of 5000 keys that follow will have a lesser amount of tokens released.
We have devised the key and token structure this way to limit the supply of tokens only for Explorers currently ‘learning and earning’. The Explorer key release accounts for 50% of the token supply.
30% of the total token supply goes to the Treasury of the learn-to-earn feature and the final 20% is built into the Artist side of the game — which includes uploading NFTs, uploading educational content as well as selling NFTs to receive token rewards.
Mickie: Everything’s planned out well. What are the use cases for the NOWkeys? Do you have any mechanisms planned to support the DeFi component (staking, burning, earning, spending, etc?)
Drew: We think so, Matt can answer this one.
Matt: The NOWkey is the tool to access all of the features above.
Explorers will have the ability to earn rewards, purchase Artwork with rewards, win Artwork and create their own NOWspace gallery to display their Artwork.
They will receive additional prizes depending on the Artwork they collect and the bespoke nature of their gallery. All of this is only achievable by holding a NOWkey.
Mickie: Where can we join your Community?
Matt: Here is our Linktree for it all
Mickie: Thank you again for sharing these updates with our Community. I will now open up the Community to questions from the floor. Please be reminded that we have “Slow Mode” enabled and will only be answering questions related to NOWwhere.
The Floor is Now Open❗
Questions from the Launchpool Community
Question: Sorry if this has been asked already, but what stage of development is nowhere currently on right now?
Drew Lightfoot: The NOWwhere.io marketplace is built and live, with new iterations and updates coming. Gamification is in the works.
Question: I observe that NOWwhere project is more on NFT, does the team have a unique strategy where people will attract more to your NFT since your project has a lot of competitors nowadays?
Matt: Our gamification will set us apart from competitors. We haven’t seen anything like it in the industry from an Artist standpoint and rewards for Explorers standpoint.
Question: Does NOWwhere project have its own individual NFT staking also?
Matt: Not necessarily staking but something similar that requires you to hold a key to earn rewards.
Question: Who are your other business partners in this industry hope we may know it?
Matt: We are working with ARweave, BloctoBay, Moonpay and speaking to others.
Question: Looks like these bearish trends will be here for a while any plans on launching regardless of market sentiment and if yes what are the sets plans to encourage holders
Matt: Yeah, we will launch when the learn-to-earn is complete. Our gameplay is a closed loop so the price of the token is backed by the treasury, not speculation. This means we are actually ‘bear market resistant’ (kind of).
Question: Are you open to a new partnership also of soever?
Matt: We’re always open to new partnerships.
Mickie: If the Community has any more questions or if it’s unanswered, please hop over to the NOWwhere Community to have it answered there:
Thank you LPOOLers! And thank you also to you guys Drew and Matt for your time in sharing all the info and we can’t wait for what’s ahead.
Drew: Thank you Launchpool! Looking forward to building together.
Matt: Thanks, everyone! Always a pleasure!!
Mickie: Thanks, to everyone that participated!
This will be the end of our AMA.
About NOWwhere
NOWwhere is an NFT marketplace designed for Artists, Explorers and those simply browsing and buying premium NFTs or learning about art. NOWwhere leverages the data provided by Explorers to connect Artists to Fans most interested in buying their Art through a proprietary recommendation engine. NFT collectors are recommended Art that is most relevant to them, Artists connect to their most likely buyers, and Explorers earn tokens that can be used to purchase and upgrade metaverse galleries or purchase NFTs. This creates a full-cycle, community-built NFT ecosystem for Artists and Collectors.
About Launchpool
Launchpool leverages communities, knowledge, expertise, contacts and capital to provide crypto projects with the best possible start to life, maximising their chances for success in this fast moving & dynamic space.
