"Boring Ape" founder interview: What makes BAYC successful?
原文标题：《 The Bored Ape Yacht Club reached a historical 100 ETH floor, a Q&A with the founders! 》
Original post by Farokh
Deep Chain Financial Tanker
On January 29, 2022, the price of "Boring Ape" BAYC floor exceeded 100 ETH, hitting a record high. Following this historic milestone, the Rug Radio podcast spoke with the founders of the NFT project, which is popular with the crypto community and many celebrities, to find out how they accomplished this amazing feat.
Q: How does it feel to be in the position where BAYC the Boring Ape has evolved into one of the most popular (if not the most popular) brands in NFT, all in just nine months?
A:We never thought we'd be where we are today, and even though the entire NFT series didn't officially launch until April 2021, it's been almost a year since we started researching and launching Bored Ape Yacht Club. At the same time, we're so busy that we often don't get a chance to stop and take a hard look at a lot of what's going on in the market. But every once in a while, we get a sense of how incredible the NFT project is and how surreal the journey is, like when we do Ape Fest and we look around and see how many people are coming from far away to New York City to meet with the community.
Q:The other day, on the Rolling Stone website, I read an article about the backstory of the Chinese female creators at BAYC(Reference:Bored Ape creator, 27-year-old Chinese Girl's NFT Journey),I heard that more than one person was involved in the creation of BAYC the Boring Ape. Who else was involved in the creation of the original Bored Ape NFT series?
A:We are fortunate enough to have assembled a talented team of freelance artists (including @AllseeingSeneca, @Migwashere_, @ThomasDagley, and two others who will remain anonymous) -- plus a friend who helps with the graphic design. It is because of the efforts of each of them that we have helped bring BAYC's vision of the Boring Ape into reality. We witnessed the formation of the boring Ape BAYC, one sketch after another, which eventually became more and more exciting.
Q: BAYC, the Boring Ape, has been a huge success over the past year. As a founder, what are some of the most important things you think are worth sharing with us?
A:Too many to count. I remember that crazy night on May 1st when our "Boring Ape" BAYC NFT collection sold out so quickly, it was amazing. In addition, we've raised nearly $1 million for animal charities through our BAKC NFT collection -- another highlight to watch when we had no idea how people would respond to these "surprise doggos." In addition, NBA star Stephen Curry joined BAYC on the very memorable day, the same day that "Mutant Ape" launched the airdrop.
Thanks to the community support, we are in a very fortunate position in the NFT space, so we awarded all BAYC and MAYC artists a $1 million prize last year, which is an amazing feeling. And of course Ape Fest, we've been through 2 years of Novel Coronavirus outbreaks and lockdowns, and it's great to see the community finally be able to come together and then watch Lil Baby perform together. You just need to be in it to feel a strong sense of community.
Q: I had a chance to meet Guy Oseary last year and he gave me a lot of good advice! What was it like working with him?
A:Guy Oseary, who joined BAYC as a partner last September, is best known as a manager for U2 and Madonna, but has also been one of the most prominent investors in technology for more than a decade. From our first phone call with him, we knew that his creative vision was in line with ours. He was an incredible mentor and friend, and we even had a nickname for him, "The Fifth Ape."
Q. You've had a lot of success, but you've also faced some conspiracy theories about the art and the founders. I noticed that in the subject line of your previous tweet, you mentioned that one of you was Jewish. I remember feeling sorry for that team member because he was accused of being anti-Semitic. How did you feel at that time?
A:I guess a lot of successful people have these problems. When you're successful, conspiracy theorists crawl out to discredit you? The Yuga team is very diverse, so the rumors about us are really strange. We, co-founder of cubans, jews, the people of Pakistan and Turkey, bullying is particularly serious for Gordon (Gordon), he is actually the ashkenazi jews, at the "ape" boring BYAC, creative director of the project, and the person who denigrate Gordon is basically nonsense, he says Gordon for anti-semitism, It sounds crazy, and it hurts.
On art: It's also important to take a step back. We have a very broad and varied NFT series of boring Apes, which also references pop culture directly. Everything from Magnum PI's Hawaiian shirts to Togas and other historic outfits to the rainbow susers favored by gay groups was mixed with profane references to punk rock and '90s hip-hop. If you isolate these things, maybe just look at one or two combinations, but overall, everyone can turn our NFT series into almost any narrative you want.
We want to create a "collection of apes" where anyone can find themselves, and it is this approach and range of expression that makes BAYC unique.
Q: Why do founders choose to remain anonymous? Do you intend to remain anonymous forever?
A:In the crypto space, a lot of founders have chosen anonymity or pseudonyms for a long time, and there are very real reasons why people want to protect their privacy in this space, but for us, it's more about trust. When we entered the field, one of the first things we knew to do was to set up a Delaware LLC, because it allowed us to remain anonymous and at the same time show that we were serious and committed to doing something serious in the NFT space. In fact, our employees and partners know who we are, the community has known us through our digital identity over the past nine months, and we are more than willing to be judged on our actions and accomplishments. In our opinion, BAYC is the NFT project that should really be focused on, not us.
Q: We obviously know that BAYC has four male co-founders. At the same time, we often hear that women are under-represented in the NFT field. Are there women on your team consistently? The reason I'm asking this question is that you actually have two women on your leadership team.
A:In fact, we have more women than men -- and women in every role in the company. On the management side, Nicole (aka @VStrangeyuga) currently serves as co-CEO of the company and @SodaOps currently serves as COO. Nicole is now a partner at Yuga and has been involved in much of the behind-the-scenes work on the Boring Ape project since day one. As the company expands, it's perfectly suited for Nicole to take on the role of co-CEO full time, and we're excited to have @SodaOps as our COO, who is one of the key players in keeping the wheels turning.
Q: A lot of people are surprised to find that Yuga has more employees. Can you tell me who you brought into the Boring Apes? What is your work routine like? Like when you send "GM" to Slack every morning.
A:We are in a period of high growth (36 people in total), and some of them are the best people we can find in this area. In addition to Nicole and @Sodaops, another Yuga partner, @Pezyuga, currently serves as our Chief Content Officer (CCO) full-time. Currently, our team consists of social media managers, community managers, producers, illustrators and artists, graphic designers, copywriters, engineers and IT people.
This morning, we all log into Slack and have a meeting, where everyone compares their daily performance and lets the team know when they're starting work, and sometimes we play Wordle together. To let you in on a little secret, one of our engineers has created a clone of Wordle (which he won't share publicly) in which he can try it countless times without having any effect on his actual game score.
Q: How many boring apes did the founders of BAYC own?
A:The four of us founders own six bored Apes, and frankly, we don't like the idea of creators holding hundreds or even thousands of bored Apes in BAYC collections. In fact, we wanted people to use the boring Ape as their own digital identity and then visit our community. So it makes sense that each founder actually only has one or two boring apes, rather than owning a bunch. In addition, as an entity, Yuga Labs currently has 7 "Boring apes" and 10 "mutant apes", the entity has never sold any boring apes or Mutant apes except the cast NFT from the primary market.
Q: What are the areas of interest to you in the crypto /NFT industry right now?
A:We're bullish on an interoperable meta-universe. In many ways, the meta-universe already exists, as people have begun to use NFT as their cross-platform digital identities. However, the metasverse has more room for growth and needs to be further developed and popularized.
Q: What can you tell us about the next Ape Fest?
A:Last year, what we achieved was incredible, especially considering we only had two months to prepare for the tournament. After the first Ape Fest, we immediately started preparing for the next Ape Fest, and this time we will go all out. We think it's going to be an incredible experience, and we can't wait to share more.
Q: I have to ask - when will the coin be issued?
A:Ha ha ha! You know, we can't answer that question.
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