Back in June, startup Fair.xyz made headlines after a Snoop Dogg look-alike was spotted in the crowds at NFT.NYC conference.
It wasn’t actually Snoop Dogg. It was Doop Snogg, an impersonator hired by Fair.xyz as a stunt to shed light on the rampant fraud and deception within the NFT industry.
“We used Doop Snogg as a fun way of highlighting our goal of removing imposters, bots, and fraud away from the NFT space,” the London-based startup told Insider in June.
Fair.xyz hopes to build an end-to-end, code-free Web3 platform to help creators and collectors mint NFTs as an entry point into the industry. A core focus of the startup is preventing “gas wars” that hike up transaction costs, as well as keeping bots at bay with its “smart contract” and “proprietary smart queueing technology,” according to the startup.
Last week, Fair.xyz announced its first round of financing: a $4.55 million Seed Round with participation from Eden Block NFX, First Minute Capital, and OpenSea.
Its founders, a team of three engineers, left their jobs at Instagram, Meta, and Goldman Sachs to build Fair.xyz in January. By March, the startup had begun the process of seeking financing and drafted up a pitch deck to send to investors, cofounder Isaac Bentata told Insider.
But the timing for Fair.xyz wasn’t ideal — they launched headfirst into a cooling NFT market.
While NFT sales hit their peak in 2021, by mid-April, weekly NFT sales plunged 53%, according to data from NonFungible.com. That decline continued into the summer.
Fair.xyz’s founders didn’t shy away from this topic when they were raising money.
“We were very upfront that we think that the main reason people buy NFTs right now is to try and make money,” cofounder Isaac Kamlish said. “It’s going to actually take a lot of work to move that use-case away from financial speculation to actual utility.”
To further complicate the market, a broader economic downturn had also cast a shadow over the tech industry.
“People don’t like pitches that are all dandy,” Bentata said. “The reality is that there will be problems. It’s just better if you have a bit of foresight and are able to predict them, so you can deal with them accordingly when they come up.”
With the economic factors at play, Fair.xyz had to adjust their fundraising expectations. Meanwhile, VCs and investors were encouraging the founders to think small and strategic.
“We had no idea how much we wanted to get,” Kamlish said regarding the dollar sign Fair.xyz had its eyes set on.
“It’s easy to be greedy now and go for the headlines,” Kamlish added. “But the big issue you have is, there’s a downturn as we’ve seen now in the past few months, raising another round is super hard.”
Their $4.5 million round is enough to build out the company and its product without unrealistic expectations and pressure, Kamlish said.
Read the 13-page pitch deck Fair.xyz used to land their recent seed round:
“We started with a high level summary,” Kamlish said.
Here’s what the slide says:
Fair.xyz brings a new launch experience for both NFT collectors and creators; gas war-free, accessible and fair.
When pitching Fair.xyz, the three founders noticed that investors were spending time on this slide.
“People invest more on the team at seed level,” Kamlish said.
Here are the founders and their background:
The team then dives into two problem statements.
“It’s always important to lead with the why,” Kamlish said. “Why we’re doing this, what’s the goal, what’s the problem, and how we’re actually solving them.”
Here’s what the slide says:
For collectors, the primary sale market for NFTs is highly fragmented
The team tried to keep these slides simple and sparse of “overly complicated” jargon, Bentata said.
Here’s what the slide says:
For creators, the barriers to create a NFT collection are increasingly tough
“Then we led that into why we think it’s important to do what we’re doing now,” Kamlish said. “The space is growing so fast, but the infrastructure is lagging behind this crazy demand.”
Here’s what the slide says:
At Fair.xyz, we have built a seamless minting experience for collectors…
Meanwhile, for creators, Fair.xyz lays out how it will solve those problems in the previous slides.
Here’s what the slide says:
…while empowering creators with the ability to launch an NFT collection of any size. Code-free.
Fast: Launch your collection seamlessly, in minutes
Easy to launch: No technical knowledge needed
Free exposure: Gain exposure to 1000s of Fair.xyz collectors
Cheap to deploy: Our technology means you can launch for 10x cheaper
Full ownership: You have full ownership of the project, contract & data
Here’s what the slide says:
The NFT landscape is growing fast in market size.
Fair.xyz includes a custom timeline chart, pointing to where adoption is today.
Here’s what the slide says:
Infrastructure is lagging behind demand. We are on the brink of mainstream adoption. Now is the time to act.
We believe in 2022, we will enter the early majority on the product adoption curve.
The infrastructure for the primary sale experience for both creators and collectors has fallen behind.
The time for Fair.xyz is now.
“Our minting experience uses state of the art blockchain and cybersecurity technology to make NFT launches truly fair,” the slide reads.
Here’s what the slide says:
Typical primary sale queue: Hackers, front-runners and technically competent prioritised
vs.
Fair.xyz primary sale queue: A completely fair and random prioritisation. Allowing real fans a chance at minting their favourite projects.
Fair.xyz’s business model is “simple.”
Here’s what the slides says:
Fair.xyz provides all the infrastructure you need to launch your collection. So you can just focus on the art.
In return we take 6% of primary sale revenue
That’s it.
No need to hire devs (market rate of 20-25% + upfront fees).
More equity for you.
“We didn’t want to pigeon ourselves into an NFT company,” said Kamlish.
Instead, they want to be the “Amazon of Web3,” Kamlish added.
Here’s what the slide says:
NFTs are just our starting point. We aim to empower creators to launch all Web3 products.
Fair.xyz’s contact information has been redacted.
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