Currency of Creation

 

VaynerNFT President Avery Akkineni describes her journey to becoming a leading voice in the NFT space, and shares her view on what consumers and brands need to know about NFTs and blockchain technologies.

 

Episode Notes

You’ve probably heard about NFTs. You may have even googled, “What is an NFT?” and learned a thing or two about the emerging marketplace commodity known as the Non-Fungible Token. But if you want to really lift the veil on NFTs, including how and when they can and should be used as part of a successful, customer-centric growth strategy, you’re in the right place.

Avery Akkineni is the President of VaynerNFT, and she understands the value and potential of NFTs better than most. In her talk with Jesse, she describes her journey to becoming a leading voice in the space. She reflects on the night-and-day experience of going from Google, the world’s biggest data aggregator, to the decentralized world of crypto and blockchain technology. She describes what makes a successful NFT strategy—for artists, musicians, celebrities, and brands. And she shares her learnings from working with VaynerMedia’s clients around the world and standing up its presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Whether you’re a customer-centric growth marketer who wants to stay on the cutting edge, an NFT-curious consumer, or anywhere in between, our talk with Avery will get you up to speed quickly on the builders’ new currency of creation.

(3:33) Avery describes the start of her crypto journey and lessons learned from early stints at Target and Google

(6:44) Why there’s a push among creators to “cut out the middleman”

(10:37) NFT lightning round: Avery gives you the basics

(18:55) Advice for brands on developing successful NFT strategies

(26:00) How to personally become NFT-proficient

(29:08) Lessons learned from building abroad in Singapore and elsewhere

Guest Bio

Avery Akkineni serves as the president of VaynerNFT. She leads the company’s mission to build long-term strategic NFT projects for the world’s leading intellectual property owners, serving brands, celebrities, athletes and associations. 

Avery previously led VaynerMedia’s expansion into APAC, growing a team from 0 to 150+, opening offices in Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Sydney. Prior to joining Vayner, she spent six years working at Google, in both Silicon Valley and New York City.

Helpful Links 

+ Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Avery Akkineni: NFTs are so inherently global and, yes, US is a dominant market now but when I look 10 years in the future, that might not be the case. We're only one little part of this big wide world and the more we can learn and immerse ourselves in different cultures and tradition, the more we can create something that's inclusive. And that's an amazing way for us to create a global community.

[00:00:29] Jesse Purewal: From Qualtrics Studios, this is Breakthrough Builders. A series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts and ideas, fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands and experiences. I'm Jesse Purewal, head of brand at Qualtrics, builder, coach, storyteller and your host. We've been hearing from many of you about your interest in the innovations of blockchain, cryptocurrencies and NFTs or non-fungible tokens. From the rise of digital art, to the phenomenon of celebrities like Naomi Osaka and Jay-Z dropping their own NFTs, to the IPO of Coinbase earlier this year, there's undoubtedly so much momentum in the space. But it seems, not yet a lot of coherence. That's why I wanted to talk to Avery Akkineni, the president of VaynerNFT. VaynerNFT is the arm of internet entrepreneur, Gary Vaynerchuk's organization, that's developing NFT strategies and programs for clients. Avery and her team partner with artists, organizations, brands and creators, to influence and inspire their audiences in cool, compelling and cutting-edge ways.

Avery is an incredible builder. Before leading VaynerNFT, she led the broader Vayner Media's expansion into Asia-Pacific, growing a team from one to 150 and developing the business in Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo and Sydney. Prior to that, she led ad teams at Google, in both Silicon Valley and New York. And prior to that, well, I'll have her share the path she chose as a digital native whose fascination with crypto and NFTs led to not just experimenting in the space but becoming a breakthrough builder within it. I now give you, Avery Akkineni. So, you were in Singapore growing a business from zero to... way less than zero, within Vayner and then, you got this opportunity. How was it, A, that you decided to take it on? And, B, how was it that the opportunity was centered in Miami?

[00:02:24] Avery Akkineni: I am very fortunate that I've worked for Gary Vaynerchuk for four years and Gary's an incredible boss and person and coming from a world, previously, that was much more corporate, it's a whole different ballgame. And the reason why I had the opportunity to go to Singapore was because I talked to Gary and was really interested in moving to Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, as a growth driver for our business. And about a year ago, Gary first started getting really interested in NFTs and last Christmas we were discussing what his first project could look like. And the idea for VaynerNFT was born shortly thereafter. And, Miami made a lot of sense because there's a huge crypto community within Miami. So, it's worked out really, really well and it's been fantastic to get to know the NFT community and the crypto community who's based out of Miami.

[00:03:07] Jesse Purewal: What was the journey to and interest in or a passion for crypto that you went on in your career? I mean, I have to imagine, you start at Target and go into Google, on the ad side, that you're not thinking, oh, this is going to culminate in some, kind of, crypto challenge that I take on in South Florida one day. What were the things that were going on throughout your career that turned out to have been maybe, lily pads over the river, that you took to where you currently are standing in this role?

[00:03:33] Avery Akkineni: What a beautiful way to put it, Jesse, lily pads over the river, I love that. My crypto journey started in 2013, actually. I was also living in San Francisco, I know you're based in SF. And I had quite a few friends who were early adopters in this space, friends who worked at Coinbase, friends who worked at a couple of the other crypto funds and they started telling me, hey, look into this thing called Bitcoin. And my initial observations of Bitcoin was, it was super speculative. And I read Satoshi's manifesto 10 times, it's one of those things that you don't necessarily get the first time. And I just started reading up a lot on where this desire for decentralization was coming from in the crypto community. And I thought it was really interesting and I invested a little bit, nothing majorly significant early on.

And then, over the years I, sort of, followed what was happening in the world of crypto. In my journey in the NFT space really happened about a year ago, when I started to look much more into digital asset ownership, which is often the transactions occur through cryptocurrency. It's, kind of, a prerequisite. So, people who are into crypto often will dabble a little bit in NFTs but the community of crypto buyers is much, much larger than the community of NFT buyers today. So, I think I followed that natural progression of interest in crypto, little bit of personal investment, followed the space and saw the ebbs and flows and then jumped into NFTs. And professionally, that's an awesome question because I don't think when I first started my job in Target's management program, I even had any idea what cryptocurrency was. That was more the 10 years ago now.

It was a very different world but I think those management training programs that oftentimes new grads will participate in, they're great because you learn a little bit about a lot of different things, everything from supply chain, to loss prevention, to how you allocate products across a region and also how you handle inventory planning, it's a huge name of the game at big box retailers. So, that was all amazing learning experiences and I felt, in 2012, when I joined Google, much the same way that I do about NFTs now, where I saw a tremendous opportunity and I saw that Google was going to change the world and the way that people accessed information. I was inspired as a user and from an advertising perspective, I looked at what Google Search was and I thought, this is the best ad platform ever invented.

After many years at Google, I left to join Vayner because I, once again, had this feeling that something huge was coming, that I wanted to learn about, which was social media. And I think what all of these lily pads have in common is that, I've been extremely fortunate to work with incredible leadership, to have a breadth of different experiences that also empowers me to understand where that next lily pad is going to be popping up. And I'm fortunate to have been able to position myself well as the world evolves and as more and more lily pads continue to sprout up in the future.

[00:06:17] Jesse Purewal: So, if I shift from lily pads, maybe into diametrically opposed forces of some sort, what lessons have you learned from being on a side whereby rights, the accumulation of advertising dollars would position a company like Google more in a centralized model, that now you can take, in terms of lessons learned in a technology enterprise, where you're in many ways trying to do the opposite, which is decentralize the heck out of the operation.

[00:06:43] Avery Akkineni: I think what Google did extremely well and continues to do extremely well is aggregate the world's information and make it useful. They aggregate and that's their business, is bringing together different pieces of information. Anything on the worldwide web, as we used to call it, and make it accessible for users. And then they've built an advertising business that, sort of, goes on top of this. But at the core, Google is aggregating content that other publishers or users have created, YouTube's a great example of that as well. The vast majority of YouTube content is stuff like this, that people post and then they monetize via Google and YouTube, serving up ads on top of that. All that power resting with just a few parties, whether it's Google or it's Facebook, created a desire to democratize that a little bit more. It's no secret that ad dollars are highly concentrated with the duopoly, which is Google and Facebook, because they've done an incredible job of commercializing content that other people actually create.

And I don't want to undercut what they've built but it's highly centralized. Whether we're talking about musicians who are looking at like, hey, how can I have a closer relationship with my fans? How can I benefit from royalties in a faster way? That decentralization that cryptocurrency and NFTs are really built around is inherent to that space. The push from creators who actually make this stuff is wanting to cut out that middleman and have a closer relationship and a more direct commercial relationship with their fans and their following. Because just like has happened in many generations of history, if there's an opportunity to cut out the middleman, that's something that's very attractive.

[00:08:14] Jesse Purewal: So, let me ask you about an analogy, if I could. Right now, it seems like the time we're in, in NFTs, might be akin to the development of maybe the music industry in the 70s, lots of innovation, lots of creativity, lots of experimentation, new business models, partnerships being explored. How do you think that we can ensure that NFTs will bring about the rallying cry if we're all going to make it, but do so for the many and not for the few, in the way that we're talking about here with this desire for decentralization?

[00:08:46] Avery Akkineni: So, right now it's ironic because there are a few major players as it relates to NFT space today, like OpenSea being one of the most popular secondary marketplaces. It's ironic because, OpenSea and Discord are everywhere, really core to every NFT project's success. Which is, kind of, against the ethos of decentralization, which is for the many. So, I think that concentration of for the few is something that there's innate desire to diversify. And it'll likely be, like you said, in music in the 70s, where some people really hit and it really works out for them and some people it doesn't. I think where it'll really hit is those who can bring value to their community using NFTs for something that you couldn't just do in normal life. A lot of the NFT projects that I see these days, celebrities are putting out a pair of signed shoes or something. You could just buy that with a credit card, there's no reason it has to be an NFT.

And I think that the folks who really embrace this technology to do something novel and new and different, that can only be empowered through NFTs, are the ones who are going to really succeed. So, when we're talking about musicians specifically, gated access to your album like, okay, that's something, but the musicians who lean into this by maybe giving their NFT holders exclusive access to them, first rights to concerts, things that go beyond and continue to build that over time, I think is where we're going to see there be innovation in the music space. And that then becomes something that's big enough to let you launch without a label. But if you're just selling your singles as NFTs, I don't think that's going to be enough of a push to really create that splash.

So, there's a gold rush happening within NFTs right now and every major celebrity thinks that there's a golden pod at the end of the rainbow and there can be but in order for that to happen, you have to truly do something innovative with NFTs, that continues to engage your community beyond what they can get from you on social media and they can get through your normal distribution channels.

[00:10:37] Jesse Purewal: So, I want to do what I normally do at the end, which is the lightning round, but I want to do the lightning round with you about some specific taxonomy and definitions, just to get everybody who's listening on the same page, if that's okay. So, just quick answer, first thought. Number one, what is Web3?

[00:10:54] Avery Akkineni: Web3 is the future of the internet.

[00:10:56] Jesse Purewal: Number two, what is an NFT? What is a non-fungible token?

[00:11:01] Avery Akkineni: In its simplest form, NFTs are unique digital asset ownership that you can prove. So, for the first time ever, I can own something digitally, that's provable on the blockchain, that anyone can see in perpetuity.

[00:11:13] Jesse Purewal: And what is the relationship, number three, between blockchain and NFTs?

[00:11:18] Avery Akkineni: Blockchain empowers NFTs, because NFTs are built on the blockchain and that transparency, that ledger, if you will, is what underpins every NFT and makes it so that you can see that Avery owns this NFT and Jesse owns that. And because the blockchain is decentralized by nature, that gives you the, sort of, proof of ownership, that becomes verifiable.

[00:11:38] Jesse Purewal: And number four, last quick one, what is an example, maybe one of your favorite examples, of an NFT that's out in the world today, that a creator has produced and that somebody has either famously bought or, at least, infamously bought?

[00:11:53] Avery Akkineni: I'm going to use the example of VeeFriends because it's one that is near and dear to our hearts at Vayner. VeeFriends is Gary Vaynerchuk's first NFT program that has 555 tokens, has dropped in May of this year. And Gary was one of the first people of influence to drop a full program. Yes, we'd seen musicians and athletes do a drop but this was the first influencer-driven program that had this volume of pieces and this volume of complexity. And what's interesting about this is, it actually enables you to have access to a conference for three years in the future and that's going to be a conference that includes business talks, speakers and celebrities and concerts.

And everyone in Gary's network, he's going to actually bring together for a conference and that's only for VeeFriends, first drop token holders. And I think it's a really interesting program that really kick started a movement around utility backed NFTs. So, we launched it in May. Utility was, sort of, in the vocabulary but not every project was dropping, a lot of the projects were dropping where it was just, you were getting the art and you were getting to be part of the community. This was one of the first programs that really had active utility behind the tokens.

[00:13:02] Jesse Purewal: That's so cool. On the art side, we had a conversation a couple months ago on the podcast with Scott Belsky, the founder of Behance and now at Adobe and he was fresh off having purchased the Furry Lisa and hanging it in the room where we were in. And we're, sort of, going through this conversation where he was saying, people are a little bit derisive at first because they're like, well, it's not hanging there on your wall. And I'm like, I can get a digital screen and I can hang it on my wall, actually. It's like, every time there's an objection to, well, but... like, it's not real, it's not authentic, it didn't get painted. It's just like, there's a sensible response that he and others have to those objections, not in a defensive way but in a way that actually gets me, as a listener and a participant, in that conversation and I feel like others as well, to open up their perspective a little bit and just maybe think with fresh eyes about these topics.

[00:13:56] Avery Akkineni: I think you're bringing up something that's totally fair though, that most people today, they're kind of getting there, for understanding digital asset ownership. Anyone who games understands the value of buying a skin, right? You can buy a golden sword and play it in the game. At the end of the day, someone could take that golden sword and that was actually what inspired Vitalik to build Ethereum, was a moment when he was gaming and his sword got taken away and he was like, wait, the game owns the sword, we should create a way for us to own the sword. Which is quite an interesting, sort of, story and inspiration point and many builders may have heard of.

[00:14:29] Jesse Purewal: The game owns the sword, we should create a way for us to own the sword. Perhaps, you haven't articulated your pension for shaking up the status quo in exactly those terms. But what I love about Avery sharing the anecdote of how Vitalik Buterin was first inspired to create Ethereum, is its simplicity and relatability. We often think of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies as futuristic stores of value and mediums of exchange and that's fair, but they're not Star Wars. They're actually not unlike, say, UPPAbaby or Clif Bar or Uber, innovations that got off the ground when a small group of people, upset with the old way, decided to invent a new one and started what became a movement.

[00:15:13] Avery Akkineni: I think that the opportunity for folks like us and folks like you to educate on this topic and to help bring in more folks to understand the value of digital asset ownership is a tremendous opportunity and I'm super glad you're doing it. People get the concept of a value of certain digital things, like a skin or your Instagram blue check mark but it's not yet reached full mainstream adoption in terms of why there's value behind these digital assets.

[00:15:38] Jesse Purewal: Speaking of valuable digital assets, we've got another great episode of this podcast for you to check out. It's my conversation with the guy Avery and I were just chatting about, Scott Belsky. Scott's the chief product officer of Adobe's Creative Cloud and he's a two time author, the founder of the creative community Behance and an imaginative human being with a razor sharp mind. And because he's such an ardent believer in democratizing art and having rewards flow to artists everywhere, Scott's on the frontlines in these early days of NFTs, as a buyer, investor, advisor and just all around good thinker. Scott and I hit on NFTs and a bunch of other fun topics in Breakthrough Builders episode four season one. Link is in the show notes. Now, back to the rest of my conversation with Avery Akkineni. And are there companies or industries, let's say, that lend themselves more to digital asset ownership just by virtue of the sector they're in or the part to the economy they're in? As they try to engage with communities or drive growth. Or are we actually just all limited by our imaginations, at this point?

[00:16:40] Avery Akkineni: I think there are a couple of categories that are working today. In the future, I certainly would say, it's going to broaden. But what I see really working well today is sports. I think because there's already a history of collecting physical sports cards and anyone who collects sports cards, why are you going to pay $10,000 for a piece of paper that you have to send to the PSA to get verified? So, that sports card behavior translates really well to NFTs. And I think we've seen companies like Sorare, Candy, do really well with capitalizing in that concept of sports memorabilia. And NBA Top Shot, would be remiss if I didn't mention them, they really capitalize in that trading of moments and creating community around collecting key NBA moments that have mattered to fans. So, sports are one, I think art's another. Art for art's sake is a thing that people collect and that they value. Digital artists are springing onto the scene and really finding a new medium to express their creativity.

NFTs enable them to launched really cool programs and have a much closer relationship with their supporters than, perhaps, they would've had in the past. And you have folks like Beeple, selling art for 69 million, which is tremendous. And it's the same way that people said when Jackson Pollock was splashing around paint like, this is an art. People said that about photography, people even said that about impressionist art with Monet. Art is constantly evolving and that is the nature of art. So, I think art has really found a place in the NFT world. The other thing I'll say works is gaming, really clear connection between gamers and folks who are into NFTs. I think gamers are much more likely to own crypto, they're much more likely to understand paying for a digital asset because they might have done that with their skins for many years anyway. And then collectables, folks who collect things, people collect random shit and they can also collect things in their digital wallet. And there's almost a gamification element to that.

[00:18:22] Jesse Purewal: Let me take you into connecting with audiences and building relationships. If I'm a food and beverage brand, if I'm Coca-Cola or I'm PepsiCo or if I'm a telco brand, right? What are some ways that I need to start to snap to thinking about, as I look at the opportunities that NFT and digital asset creation might afford me to go build community? Given the way that in many people's gaming lives, in the many people's art lives or their sports lives, they're starting of get used to that kind of a relationship with items.

[00:18:53] Avery Akkineni: That's a great question. And I think I would start with, who are the die hard fans of your brand? Who are the die hard Coca-Cola or Pepsi fans? Disclosure, Pepsi is a client of ours. But I think starting with the folks who really love your brand and creating more moments for them to engage with your brand is amazing. So, as a marketing leader, you might know, what are the key moments that are cult favorites? What are the things that people just go crazy for? Is it your limited edition soda flavors? Is it the iconic sponsorship that you have? Is it partnerships that you have with mainstream celebrities or athletes? What are the things that really make people love your brand so much? But starting with your existing community, who loves your product, that's your best focus group.

And maybe you can use your NFT to get feedback from them on which collaborations they'd like to see, that might be an opportunity for you to give them things. Many brands have these awesome swag and sponsorships and oftentimes, they actually struggle to give those things away and they have incredible amounts of IP that can be given to their community. I think that's a great place to start, is rewarding your die hard fans. And that, one, creates additional value for them and it creates a deeper relationship with them and you. And then, it also allows you to start at the nucleus it's build outwards, as you look longer-term to bring in more folks into your brand.

[00:20:09] Jesse Purewal: But it sounds just like, it would be wrong to say, I need to get on social and I need to put content on social. Or even going back further, we need to get on the web or we need to have an app. Just like, those would be the exact wrong way to think about it, it would be the wrong way to think about it, to say, we need a digital asset strategy or we need a crypto strategy, we need an NFT strategy. What should we go do? It's more like, what do we need to do to build audience? What do we need to do to build engagement relevance? And how does an NFT mechanism work into that?

[00:20:42] Avery Akkineni: Yeah. And I think a lot of senior decision makers and senior marketing executives are like, I need an NFT and we're like, okay, what are we looking to do? Let's start with the objective. Is it to [inaudible] existing fans? Is it that you have something amazing? What do you have planed that we could build something around, that only an NFT can provide? I will just jump in to say, on the crypto strategy part, I do think every brand needs a crypto strategy and it's not something that Coca-Cola or Pepsi can set up in two days. They need to think strategically with their treasury and their legal and their operations teams about that. But I think that, that is something that we're going to see much, much more of in the next 12 to 24 months, brands really thinking, whether or not they decide to go forward with it, having a deep understanding of what is happening here.

And in certain countries, actually, cryptocurrency is a legal tender, for example, but I would certainly encourage brands to start thinking about the operational implications as well. Because it's not like you can just turn around and launch an NFT tomorrow, because this isn't a tweet that we could delete in three months, if we don't like it anymore, this is something that's going to be on the blockchain and forever and can confer ownership. And also, there are commercial benefits as well for creator royalties and perpetuity. So, there's some of those things to think through, as a parallel path to, what's the creative ideation? What's the connection and community building exercise, they were really looking to do.

[00:21:58] Jesse Purewal: And what do you believe, if you look out, say, five years and you reason back from there, what do you think will turn out to be the dominant model by which brands and their teams create community engagement using NFT kinds of assets? Will it be akin to the traditional agency models that we've seen for decades, around advertising collaborations? Will it be more with scrappy internal teams that stand up and then maybe spin out? How will this play out, do you believe, knowing the future is still yet to be written on this one?

[00:22:31] Avery Akkineni: I believe that the right move will be for top brands, really top brands, have their owned experiences and have it more like you're participating in their fan club, if you will, in their community, the same way loyalty and CRM has existed for a long time, I view this as the next iteration of that. I think that will be the dominant model for brands. There might the elements of commercialization and auctions and certain elements there but I think it'll mostly be used as a loyalty mechanism and it can, sort of, develop over time. And if you look at many of the early days of successful projects, they continue to build in interesting little peaks, whether it's airdrops or access or things like that, brands have so much of that to give and giving it to their existing community, I think it's really smart.

I think the numbers are going to go way up, 10,000 is nowhere near enough for a major Fortune 100 brand like, we're going to need billion, right? So, I don't know if we're going to be a billion in five years but the numbers will need to dramatically go up. I think the price of these entities will also go down a little bit because your average person, one Eth, that's a lot of money, that's almost $5, 000 today.

[00:23:35] Jesse Purewal: One Eth, that is to say, the current price of Ethereum. Ethereum's current market cap is about half a trillion dollars. That means that, if you added up every single bit of Ethereum in the world, the value, in this moment, November, 2021, would be about half a trillion dollars. Bitcoin's market cap is about $1 trillion. Just as a point of reference here, only five companies in world history, Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Amazon and Alphabet, have ever been valued at or above $1 trillion. And this is a moment when crypto.com is about to secure a 20 year naming rights deal for the historic venue in downtown LA, hereto for named Staples Center. It is safe to say that crypto is now synonymous with economic and cultural relevance.

[00:24:23] Avery Akkineni: To answer your question on the dominant for, sort of, services of these NFTs, I really think this is an in-house play. And I think because the brands will be the creators, the community will want to hear from the brands, they don't want to hear from an agency who's the intermediary, they want to hear from the creator of a project of what's happening, what's planned, what's on the roadmap. And I think we'll see brands build out internal teams the same way they built out internal teams on social, because that's really core DNA type of thing. I think that services providers, like what we do at VaynerNFT, will be consultants, both to guide on strategically, maybe more of the architect and the mason. And that example of say, hey, this is how it should look and these are the things you need. But I think in five years, this has been much more mainstream and with in-house because it's going to be so core and important to brands.

[00:25:11] Jesse Purewal: Turning to the individual for a moment, what do you think will turn out to be the top skillsets that people should cultivate, if they're interested in having a mark on this space? Let's say, somebody right now, who's in college or maybe high school going to college, they're going to think in the next couple years about their career, there won't be these templates for a decade's worth of NFT innovation that they can figure out how to, kind of, tweak and improve. It's like, they need to be going to talks, they need to be potentially reading books, they need to be studying examples, they need to be, kind of, going deep, even in code bases, to learn how some of this stuff works. How would counsel people to spend their time, if what they want to do is develop the kinds of literacy they need to and also, just the type of acumen that will turn out to be helpful, given everything that's happening in NFTs?

[00:25:58] Avery Akkineni: Yeah. So, what I think it's really interesting, even folks on my team are really young and I'll tell you a little anecdote about this kid who, he's 20 old and he ran into Vayner and was like, I'm so interested. And he told me this story about how he flipped his way from literally a paperclip to crypto punk.

[00:26:18] Jesse Purewal: A crypto punk, yeah. I had to look it up too. It is one of 10,000, 24 by 24 pixel, 8bit style, unique avatars in the form of an NFT, that sits on the Ethereum blockchain. And it's one of the NFTs that's changing the way people think about what art even is. You can get one for the low, low price of around 67.67 Eth or just about $225,000.

[00:26:47] Avery Akkineni: This kid is born outside of the US, an immigrant, really smart, awesome kid but what really impressed me was his ability to understand the market and get his way to a crypto punk, which very, very few, even super seasoned business professionals could. And I was like, this kid can hustle, it's an amazing story. And you have to be really tuned in to market fluctuations to be able to make that happen. And the reason I share that is because I think that NFTs and this world of decentralization provides such a democratic level playing field for anyone to succeed. All you need is a phone, you don't even need a computer in order to participate in this, to create. And the same way that social media's democratized the ability to create things like podcasts, which we used to have to be in a studio and the producer had to be there in person. That just required a lot of time and effort.

I think it becomes so much easier and more digital but these younger folks, they're so digital native already, it's not weird for them to buy anything with their credit card. The same way maybe even a few years ago for you Jesse or for me, you wouldn't have bought a car or a mattress online, now it's super normal. I think these kids are coming into, exactly how you said it, they might not even be thinking about it as a digital asset versus a physical asset. They see the value in that a little bit more already because they're so digitally native and they are very clued into using the vast array of tools to learn, things like your podcast, things like YouTube, things like Clubhouse and Twitter. Real-time information and the speed that technology innovation is happening is unparalleled, we've never had such fast tech development.

And I think that we'll see folks lean into just learning and absorbing what you can get through content creation that exists on the end internet. I think we'll see a lot of these kinds of stars out of nowhere, the same way we did with social media, for folks who just really get it and can leave it.

[00:28:32] Jesse Purewal: Let me shift gears a little bit and ask you about the decision that you made to go to Singapore and grow a business there, even though you had been in New York and San Francisco, here in the States, for some time. What are the unlocks that you had to go through, either socially, mentally, psychologically, whatever, to be able to make a move like that? And how would you counsel people who even potentially have that opportunity to handicap, whether spending serious time in a different market with a different audiences, just doing different things, is the right thing for them?

[00:29:07] Avery Akkineni: Well, I'll start off by saying, I think I had no idea what I was getting in for. I was like, oh, Singapore, I've been there before for conferences and business meetings, it's not that different. No, no, no, doing business full-time in Singapore was very, very different from American business dealings. I think when I was there, it was a very unique experience because I was jumping in very much by myself, we didn't have a business, we didn't have anyone there on the ground, so I was very much building from zero mode. It gave us the ability to write our own stories, Vayner Media APAC. And I was very intentional around the team that I brought in, of hiring people who had built agencies before in Asia-Pacific. My creative director was from Malaysia. My head of finance was from the Philippines. Head of client service was from India and it created this team who really understood the regional market and that allowed us to be a complete differentiator.

When I, sort of, assessed what was there in the marketplace, there were a lot of super local shops and there were a lot of super British driven shops but we created a whole new team and, for me, it was such a learning, one, culturally adjusting like, it is a very different world. Going from being within the, sort of, majority to the tiny minority of expats within Singapore, opened my eyes to so many things I had no idea about. And in some ways, that was challenging, just acclimating and the speed at which I needed to do that. But I think it was a tremendous accelerant for my career and also for my learning. Travel is one of those things that just totally disarms prejudice and bias and ignorance because you just are surrounded by all these different people. Singapore is quite a melting pot of different folks, it's a regional hub from a business perspective and it's also a place where there's three, sort of, distinct ethnic groups who all have their own traditions.

So, they do a lot of celebrating of that. And I just learned so so much. And I think what I would recommend to people who are considering being abroad as part of their career journey is, if you have the opportunity, I would say, do it. You will learn so much and you'll grow as a person, because you'll meet new people who have a totally different background than you. I would also say, be very open-minded. I think oftentimes, as Americans, especially even when I worked at Google and I would go on business trips there, we definitely thought our method was the way that we were going to be helping to scale to them. And then being there, I realized that, that's not always the right way to go about it and there's certainly alternative approaches that are more local up, versus global down. And, of course, there's many ways to consider which strategy makes the most sense for any individual business. But it was just an incredible opportunity for me, I learned so much and I would do it again in heartbeat and feel super thankful that Gary gave me such an opportunity.

[00:31:47] Jesse Purewal: Yeah. One of my great fears about the way that we will recalibrate around work and the workplace, following everything that's happened over the last couple of years, is that sense of place will get zero attention. In the long-term, people will organize around their families and where they want to live, which I think is wonderful. But there's this casualty of, well, now I don't have to travel, I won't. And therefore, I won't be exposed to X, Y, Z, kinds of things that I might have been exposed to. But what I love about what you have done is, you've seemingly been very intentional and intentionally proactive about, let me base myself in different places. Let me do West Coast, East Coast, let me now be in Florida, despite the fact that you don't have to travel for what you're doing. Ostensibly, there's some reflection going on within you that's saying, actually, the more I expose myself to dynamism and vibrance and different cultures and opinions and feelings, it's probably going to impact me in some interesting ways.

[00:32:46] Avery Akkineni: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. For me, it's an honor and a privilege to be able to see different parts of the world and also to learn different things. Even when we're thinking about NFTs, right? NFTs are so inherently global and, yes, US is a dominant market now but when I look 10 years in the future, that might not be the case. We're only one little part of this big wide world and the more we can learn and immerse ourselves in different cultures and traditions, the more we can create something that's inclusive. And I think that's, hopefully, going to play out in some of our NFT programs in the future as well. A little anecdote is that, even for VeeFriends, 40% of the holders are actually international, outside of the US.

And that's an amazing way for us to create a global community, which actually has never been possible. When you're dropping a book, the way you drop a book is, per country there's specific shipping and terms and the ability to be able to drop a program that's inherently global is actually an incredible advantage of doing something as an NFT. And I think brands, like yours as well, that are inherently global, will benefit from that as well, because it's a cross border, kind of, community that we haven't been able to create before. Yes, social does it a little bit but this is much more of a, kind of, bought in level.

[00:33:55] Jesse Purewal: And my final question is, what would be your best advice for aspiring builders?

[00:34:00] Avery Akkineni: My best advice would be, start building. I think a lot of times people get very caught up in having a perfect strategy and having a perfect plan and having all the pieces in place before they start building. But just brick by brick, is what's always worked best for me. I think a lot of people are scared to take that first step or scared to take that second step or maybe scared to take that 100th step because they don't know the right way to go. But if you just keep moving, I think that's the secret behind a lot of the builders who've succeeded. It's they just kept going, that perseverance and that ability to just keep trying. Not every brick is going to be in the right place, you might have to reorganize some of them. You might have to unbuild a little bit at times but if you just keep building and you just keep moving, that is my best advice of the way to actually make something incredible happen.

[00:34:42] Jesse Purewal: I love it. Well, Avery Akkineni, thank you so much for your time and energy today, I think we're all better for it. I wish you well amidst all of your travels and everything you have going. Be well.

[00:34:53] Avery Akkineni: Thank you very much for having me Jesse and thanks everyone for tuning in, I really appreciate it.

[00:34:57] Jesse Purewal: Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and a review and tell a friend about the show. Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtrics Studios original, hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal. An awesome team of people puts this show together, including our show writer, Todd Bagnull, the folks from Studio Pod Media in San Francisco and Vayner Talent in New York. From Studio Pod Media, our executive producer is Katie Sunku Wood, producer is Sterling Shore, editing and music is by Ryan Crowther and our show coordinator is Kela Sowell. From Vayner Talent, publicity and promotion support come from Samantha Heapps, Hanna Park, Lindsay Blum and Ivanna Lin. The show's designers are Baron Santiago and Vansuka Chindavijak. Our website’s by Gregory Hedon and photography by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, Ben Hawken, John Johnson and Kylan Lundeen.

Season 5Jesse Purewalavery akkineni, crypto, brand experience, nft, marketing, customer-centric growth, gary vaynerchuk, non fungible tokens, bitcoin, intellectual property