Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Faizy Ahmed. Faizy Ahmed is a co-founder of Astra Nova.
This is Saudi Arabia’s first web3 action RPG which aims to bridge the gap between traditional gaming and web3, particularly focusing on the Middle East and North African region. So Faizy has been around for a while. He’s a market leader in web3 gaming.
He has run several very successful go-to-market strategies and campaigns. He’s also the limited partner at Sensei Capital. He has had loads of success with traditional businesses as well as the business that he’s running right now in web3.
He is also the council member at Forbes web3 and a member of the Blockchain Game Alliance. He has done quite a bit. He’s raised a lot of money.
He has generated a lot of revenue in the gaming space. So this was a very, very interesting conversation. A little different than the rest of the conversations that we usually have because this was through and through about gaming and gameplay in web3 and how to really scale a gaming startup.
I can’t wait for you guys to hear this. Let’s deep dive right in. Hi Faizy.
Thank you so much for making the time to speak to me today. How are you doing? I’m doing great. Thanks for having me here, Tarusha.
It’s the pleasure is all mine. I’m really glad that you could make the time even though there are so many events that are happening in this space currently. For our listeners, can you tell us a little about your journey so far in crypto? You started as a miner back in 2015.
Can you walk us through how you transitioned from mining to founding Astranova and becoming one of the key figures in the web3 gaming space? So crypto was always a fascination for me ever since its early times. When I was back in high school, from that time, I was hearing all about Bitcoin, how it could potentially change how currency is being utilized and how it can move across borders and stuff. Now, of course, at that time, Bitcoin was at a very, very early stage.
And even for me, it was more of a curiosity. But the ideas were still stuck onto my head. And later when during my university days, when Bitcoin mining and other cryptocurrencies mining trend was there, that’s around the time when I kind of started taking more of as a hobby towards the sector and getting to learn about it more, setting up the necessary hardware, setting up my own mini mining farms, I would say.
And then once that actually started getting some nice yields, I started scaling it even more. Now, as this was progressing, I’m also an entrepreneur in education, trading and F&B ventures based in Middle East as well as Asia. So that kind of always continued side by side.
And at one point, it kind of like got more into trading in crypto, because when that was getting more into the thing, seeing the nice gains, and more as an investor into various projects like Matic, BNB, and later got into the entrepreneurial spirit actually took over where me and my partner who was also quite early in crypto around 2017, where he was also interested to start a venture, seeing an opportunity in the market to build quality game out there, which has that feature of true ownership, and also the incentive layer which Web3 games are providing. So that’s how this transition actually started from a hobby to an obsession to finally a venture of our own. Wow, that’s nice.
That’s that’s good. I think, you know, I always say that people get into crypto. And, you know, once they do, I think there is no looking back because you keep going further and further in if you’re building in the space, and there is so much happening.
It’s an exciting space to be in. And very dynamic that, you know, you want to keep pushing yourself and move in the direction where you’re able to perhaps build something that that kind of encompasses your vision. Absolutely.
So you, can you tell us a little about Astronova? And you know, about the platform itself, like, you know, you mentioned how you kind of conceived it, but what is the real mission behind it? Right, so I’m a businessman within it with the passion for crypto and blockchain. I see this as the next technology. Now, of course, that hobby transformed more into a passion.
And that’s when we, we really think that with our project, Astronova, which being the first action RPG from Saudi, the target demographic on the MENA and C demographics, we can actually be a very unique product in the market, because there are plenty of games, which is at the time when we started building, which was in 2020, there were very, very few projects, and most of them had very less substance, as in, you know, they didn’t actually want to actually develop a product, but more just grab the liquidity, which was there in the market, and then, you know, move on to the next project. However, in our case, we wanted to actually go down in history as, as pioneers in web3 gaming. Now, both of us, me and even my partner, we both are not game founders, or even game veterans, per se.
I mean, we do have, we like gaming, he loves gaming even more than me. But the thing is, what we are really good at from our past businesses is, we’re really good at bringing really talented team together for a vision. And that’s actually what we did in the first one and a half years, where we kind of like, went through the entire R&D process of actually finding out these teammates was a really hectic job to actually find game folks and game veterans to come on board.
Because at that point of time, we’re talking about early 2021, where still crypto wasn’t, you know, very much having the regulatory support and stuff. So at that point, it was really difficult for us to convince. However, we did sell our vision, and we were able to onboard a lot of senior executives from prominent game studios like Technicolor, Ubisoft, Rockstar, guys who worked on AAA games to actually come on board as teammates.
And our team kind of grew from there. And so it started off from that point. And then it evolved.
Now we have a team of around 80 teammates spread across the globe. And one of the few couple of the few things which makes us very unique is we were one of the few projects in the entire crypto industry was backed by a royalty. So we have Prince Turki Faisal Al Saud, from Saudi, who was backing us as equity partner.
We have the Saudi government backing us. And so that took a lot of time to actually get to that stage to build attraction, build the team, prove our credibility that we’re here for the long term. And what we are envisioning is for a local Arabian IP, which will resonate with that demographic.
You can think of something similar to how Black Myth, Wukong was a success story in China. We’re trying to do something similar, but for Arabia. Okay.
And that’s quite a wonderful vision. And I love how you kind of, you guys have built slowly, but steadily. And, you know, you’ve created an ecosystem of your own.
But now, you know, to ask you, perhaps as an entrepreneur, for fellow entrepreneurs, perhaps, who are facing the same dilemma, right? When you start something off, there are two, three, obviously, very hard things, and they’re the right passage that you know, you have to be, you have to make yourself come across as credible. And he is just acquiring an acquisition of users. Because, again, it’s a difficult space, I think, in general, in web three to acquire users, it can be a challenge for most platforms that are there gaming or non gaming.
So what would be your advice, vis-a-vis these two problems to you know, fellow builders? I believe the question is one for credibility, and the second for user acquisition? Yes. So, credibility is something which takes time. That will come with, you know, how the project’s roadmap is first laid out.
Like, if you hear, if you if you were there during the game five summer during last, the last bull run, you can hear that that game had a roadmap like pretty much towards the listing time and the rest of the stuff didn’t quite make sense from a gaming perspective, as in, they probably didn’t want to do anything else apart from launching a token. So having a very well laid out roadmap, a good team who can stick with you through the thick and thin, which we were blessed with, and also credible backers, partners, and most of all would be to actually put out putting out the product, you know, I mean, if it’s even in our case, we have, it’s not possible to build a triple A game overnight, unlike most of the regions, how they It takes a lot of time. So these things, at the very least, we should be putting our products, which can at least give the users a taste of what is to come.
So what we did is we released gameplay tests on the market. So that can at least show them that yeah, this is something which you can look forward to at least this is how the game small version of the game is going forward. For user acquisitions, that’s another hurdle, because there’s so many bad actors in the space.
So many fake, false vendors, which will sell, you know, bogus services for absurd prices, which, unfortunately, a lot of startup founders offer, including myself, I would be lying if I say, you know, we went through everything we had a plan. No, we went through a lot of falls from many mistakes, vendors. But the positive thing is, by now we have actually had the right channels to experience the network within the industry to get what we want.
Now, a good way for getting on that path would be to have good, credible advisors who can navigate and help those startups avoid those beginner mistakes, because that’s the thing which will cost someone from quitting that three and going back home to a nine to five job. So having good advisors on board, and then looking for organic ways how the project can gain users will be the best way. That’s, this is a huge marketing topic.
Yeah, yeah, it is. That is true. But then, you know, you’ve kind of given good beginners advice for folks who are starting off, right? Like, you know, you should get the right set of advisors.
And to build credibility is not an overnight thing. You know, you have to go at it and keep showing consistent effort. And I think that kind of makes you credible in the industry, if you’re building and if you’re building something that that that the actual users will actually use.
So yeah, I think that is good advice to start with. One more, one more thing is, of course, to always take, you know, crypto is all about the trend and narrative. Yeah, unless you’re big enough to set the trend.
Now, that’s what we’re trying to be in the future. And that’s what we’re working towards. But if you’re not that big, then what you can do is follow the narratives and build according to that and leverage those opportunities when they come.
So if there is a DeFi trend, that’s around the time when a project should be focusing maximum efforts on marketing and to leverage that situation, whether it’s for partnerships, fundraising, listing, all of those things. Right. Just being aware, I think that helps, right? Being aware of what is going on in the space, having your finger on the pulse.
I think that always helps because, you know, you can sort of alter your narrative a little bit to align with what seems to be working at the moment. Obviously, that doesn’t mean that, you know, you completely change where you’re going. But if you can find ethos from that particular trend and make it resonate within your product, then it would have a better shot at succeeding because timing is everything.
100 percent. And to add on to that, to give an example. So we are, in our case, our ecosystem, we are building the action, the AAA action RPG.
That’s our main product. Now, as we’re building that main RPG game in design development, we have other ecosystem products like our loyalty platform, which was a questing platform. So that was during the social trend.
Now, then we have another product that we are planning to release soon, which is under the not coin accelerator, which is a telegram mini game. So this is right now the telegram trend going on. So if all these trends are leveraged properly, connecting to that actual main product, main vision, then it’s all good.
So it all depends on the founder or the owner, the project owner’s vision and how effectively and how creatively he can connect the dots so he can leverage those situations. So the telegram mini game will be a huge avenue because there’s millions of users. Projects like hamster not coin already proved that, you know, 20 to 40 million users are already there on those platforms.
So capturing, you know, a lot of those will definitely boost in um, kind of like speeding up how a project will go towards and user acquisition perspectives. Right. You know, that, that, that is, that is absolutely true.
I think, you know, just latching on to what seems to be working, that’ll help you acquire in user acquisition a little faster. So I completely agree with you there. Now, you know, you’ve mentioned, you specifically mentioned that you’re targeting MENA and C markets, right? So what is the significance of focusing on these particular regions? How do you see gaming and blockchain industries evolving in these two markets? So, um, gaming especially is booming in MENA.
So, um, because the government themselves as one of the few major entertainments within those regions, gaming is extremely booming there. And, uh, for, to give you like a study, um, regions like Saudi has, um, eight out of 10 citizens identifying themselves as gamers, which is a huge win towards, uh, for gaming projects and startups. And another aspect is there’s very limited startups or projects, which is focusing on these regions and they love localized projects, which is what we’re aiming to become.
So, um, the government support the users, which are very prone and not completely utilized and, you know, hate crypto. So there is a good balance there and there is a good opportunity waiting for, uh, games to be, uh, building in these regions. And I think in the coming years, you will see a huge boom because even Saudi with its vision 2030 and stuff is working heavily, investing in projects, supporting projects and growing that ecosystem.
Um, if you, um, there has been major announcements which supports this claim, like, uh, Neum, which is one of the biggest, uh, companies in the world has invested recently into Animoca, uh, last year towards Q3. And, uh, they are promoting the ecosystem of the region heavily. Similarly in, uh, the Abu Dhabi government had, uh, a few investments and some joint ventures with, I believe it’s with gate to build, uh, um, to build, um, um, uh, ventures to support gaming in the region.
I believe it’s called Falcon Ventures. Right. Yeah.
I think so too. Okay. So that, that is your, uh, reason for like focusing on gaming here and you feel like this is, this is evolving in the, yeah, it’s an expecting.
So what about the other markets? Do you, do you feel that the potential here is much more than, you know, perhaps in other markets globally? I would not say that it’s just that, um, see there’s so many competition and competitors in that particular region. Um, so that kind of, uh, that kind of overshadows the, you know, the effort you will have to make in. So imagine you’re in a room full of people and you are making an announcement.
And if that room is packed with and crowded with a lot of people, it has thousands of people, then it’s going to be a very, uh, lesser impact that project will make in that crowd, unless they spent massive resources to get at the same time, there’s lesser people, uh, in that room, it’s easier to make an impact. So that’s the kind of, um, analogy I would bring. Um, but there is definitely a potential in the best.
Uh, but it’s just that there’s so many projects already and they kind of already had the experience with web3 and some of them not so good. So you’re looking at, um, it’s a bit more difficult market to tap, but always the best has good buying potential and high value, uh, users for projects to focus on. It’s just that it’s a bit more easier in the Middle East and even countries like Southeast Asia, like Vietnam, Thailand, we are very pro crypto.
The, they adopt and they’re more accepting towards the web3 nature for, uh, if you’re looking from a web2 and web3 adoption standpoint, they’re more adaptive to this. The West kind of hates it, especially the gamers. They kind of hate crypto.
They think it’s a scam. That is, that is what, that is what I was about to ask. That’s going to be my next question, actually.
Like, how do you, um, even like you mentioned that they, everybody in the gaming space, uh, and the gamers, they kind of look at it, you know, with, with a lot of cynicism, uh, maybe because of past experience or whatever the perception is of this space in general. How do you aim to sort of bridge that gap between traditional gaming and web3? How do you, how will you, uh, engage these traditional gamers and ease them into this space? Uh, I would love to know about that. What’s your take then? Okay.
So a project, uh, honestly speaking from a project standpoint, a project, which is looking for fundraising, a project, which is looking for a token launch. This is a different strategy. This is mainly focusing on the web3 folks, uh, who’s already there.
And if you’re looking from a product standpoint, uh, purely to acquire users and post token launch, that’s a different strategy. Now, um, particularly how we do the adoption would be first to make the things very easy. So they don’t see all the blockchain and web3 elements.
It becomes a seamless experience. Uh, that’s what we’re striving towards, making them open up accounts, wallets in just a click of a button. If they want to, um, monetize on their NFTs, their assets, that’s also very streamlined.
Like first they get to, ultimately it’s a game, right? It’s supposed to be entertaining. Now the game is entertaining and they love it so much. Then they will look like, okay, I want to be, I want, I’m spending, I’m spending, let’s say hundreds of hours in this game.
How can now there’s a button here, which says if there’s an NFT, there’s a token. If I played this quest, I’ll get this much token. Okay.
Since I’m already into this game, I love this game. I like playing this. Why not? It’s going to now incentivize me for the time I’m spending.
Um, that should be the angle, uh, which project should be looking at. Um, and if that is well played out, that will definitely ease the adoption, um, strategy. And, uh, over time this, the information about web three, the benefits, all these things can be done in a group feed method, slowly, steadily with education, um, but through the game.
So in game education about what these prospects mean, how they can get into it and slowly enticing them and getting them into the tech part without much of a barrier with, you know, asking them to write down their seed phrase and all those stuff. So it should be a slow method for them to first get immersed in the game itself and then look for the financial, uh, aspects, which makes us very, um, which is our biggest difference compared to traditional games. Yeah.
I think easing them into it is, is the, you know, is my takeaway from here. I think it’s important that, you know, you get, uh, don’t bombard these users with a lot of information, confusing them, perhaps overwhelming them because even though now gaming is a serious affair on some level, it is done to derive some sort of joy from it. And if you kind of bombard the users, uh, or these potential gamers with, with a lot of information that’s overwhelming them, it kind of takes away from the joy.
Right. Definitely. The, the game itself should be, you know, the entertaining part, and that should be the main focus of the project to focus on that element as an entertainment aspect, and then bringing in all the other stuff, which, uh, which can loop them into getting more into that tree, the benefits and stuff like that.
Right. I agree. So, um, you know, you, you guys have a triple-A level, uh, you know, graphics you do on your platform and you have an AI integration as well.
Can you tell us a little about how these elements are important in attracting gamers? And I would love to know about the AI element as well. So the AI aspect is mainly in two sides, one from the development standpoint and two from the user experience. So from the development standpoint, AI is amazing because it kind of, um, so the, the environments and the maps we were designing, this can be actually made in such a much faster, um, faster way, thanks to AI.
So there are several tools which helps in this, like NVIDIA Omniverse, uh, and similarly, there is, uh, uh, for animation and stuff, Motion AI and a few other tools, which kind of helps in the animation aspects, which usually these things take hours now, even for artists to produce game, uh, objects and assets. Now, thanks to this, the grooming task, grooming, like when you’re putting the hair on, uh, characters and stuff, this, which used to take countless hours, maybe months to produce high quality assets, this can be done really quick in a few days, matter of one day, two days. So the project can focus more on delivering, uh, the product and shipping them out faster to the, uh, to the users.
And from a user standpoint, the gameplay itself gets even better because, uh, there are several, uh, projects out there and, uh, good, good tools, which makes, um, certain elements, like for example, um, AI difficulty, like if you are going to, if you’re going to play a certain level, depending on the players, you know, previous, how he was playing, the level would automatically adjust. Similarly, they are AI agents, which can make the NPCs converge. So there’s a bit more immersive experience, uh, instead of just, um, random, um, programmed NPC conversations.
Now there’s more substance into it. So these are elements which will make the game more immersive and also more tailor made for that user experience. Um, one of the, one of the good projects out there, which is building, uh, which we are partnering is, um, uh, AI, uh, AI agent, which, uh, by the PG capital.
So those guys are also doing great stuff in the space. And, uh, I believe that in the coming months and years, it’s just going to get even better. So those integrations will speed up development and a better user experience for gamers.
Right. This is very, very interesting. As I said, you guys have created a very robust ecosystem here, but now I would like to talk a little about the digital collectibles, uh, and you know, how are they kind of being utilized, uh, in this ecosystem? Uh, does, does this change the, uh, experience of the player in terms of ownership and engagement? Like we know as builders that it does have an impact, but have you seen any on ground impact? Like, do you really believe that the players do care about this or begin to care about this in the process of utilizing that ecosystem? And how can these collectibles be utilized, uh, within the ecosystem of Astronova? Right.
Um, so they will care about it if the game is actually fun and it makes, uh, there’s any value for that. Now the game is horrible and stuff, then I’m pretty sure there’s not going to be any value and they don’t even care about it. So again, it comes back to a really entertaining experience.
And second, if that is done, um, you know, gone are the days when NFTs are the investment avenues and vehicles, as it was in the past, um, speculations of NFTs has greatly died down. So, uh, the NFT aspect is more on the personalization skins, customizations, and the ownership. If there is actual, um, use case within the game, if there is actual use case going forward, if that game is actually fun comparing with their peers and leaderboards.
So that’s where this thing actually works. A good example of this was, uh, there was a, there was a skin sale for Counter-Strike, which netted 1 million in sales. And that was, I mean, you know, the, the thing is it’s not the same how it was in the past where NFTs were sold for 1 ETH and stuff.
This is very minimally priced, more in number, and it’s more for the unique asset ownership. That’s what they’re trying to promote. And I think that’s what makes the three games the strongest.
And, uh, going forward, we will definitely, we will definitely be seeing more of this having, uh, more, uh, more value provided there’s more, more, um, developed and finalized finished products in the market. Right. Okay.
I, I think that kind of, uh, does give me a good idea about your digital collectibles and the blockchain integration aspect and why it’s justified. Now, you know, you’ve led some really successful marketing campaigns in web3 gaming, what would be perhaps the top few challenges that you have or unique kind of challenges that you face while marketing web3 gaming projects as compared to traditional gaming projects? And I want like to talk about challenges other than the fact that, you know, people look at it with a little bit of skepticism. What were the challenges and how did you sort of overcome them? So yeah, the skepticism is of course the biggest challenge.
But apart from that, web3 game has the added, so it’s a two sided sword. So there is the token element, or the NFT element. So if they’re not placed well, and the economy is not, the game economy is not prepared with that long term vision, then it’s more bound to fail.
So examples of that has been like Axie Infinity in the past. And how they were rewarding users, you know, it had a huge crash, because it wasn’t, it wasn’t much of a sustainable project. So sustainability is very important.
And since these, these NFTs and tokens have financial values attached to it, it needs to be dealt in such a way that there is how there is a sink, and how there is the tokens are being rewarded needs to be adjusted very, very carefully. It’s kind of like building a house. So if you’re then you have provisions to build it, you know, how many floors you want, depending on how strong the foundation is, that foundation is similar to how the game economy is in our in web3 games.
Okay, so I think that that kind of that, that would be a bit of a niche challenge that obviously that that only web3 game builders face. Now going back a little to the marketing success, and you know, we’ve talked a little about that before, but you your campaigns have achieved half a billion impressions. And you know, what channels and methods do you think have worked best for generating such a wide exposure for web3 games? Because again, I feel that truly, I feel that the tech stack in on which you’re building the product, be it across any niche, it hardly matters.
You know, ultimately, it’s about the user and how sticky they find your product. But because your campaigns have done so well, and you’ve given it, you know, they’ve gained so much exposure, and it gives exposure to web3 games, I think that there must be some insights there that can be perhaps gleaned off by other builders, and they can they can make, you know, perhaps incorporate certain of those ideas in their campaigns as well. Can you talk a little about that? Absolutely.
So regarding the the platforms, which the games are built on, now, this does matter, at least from a starting point, because depending on the chain you built, they will, you know, there’s different chains out there nowadays, even gaming focused ones, how much liquidity these chains have will impact how easily your campaigns will work, because these are your lowest hanging fruits, easiest to capture, easiest to onboard, because they’re already there in that particular chain. So that’s one axis. So if you’re on a very high liquid, high retail user, user based blockchain, then it makes it it becomes easier to promote the project.
Second depends on how well it’s positioned in terms of multiple things like how well the social socials are the Discord, the community channels, how effectively they’re able to, you know, resolve user issues, and at the same time, how they can reflect in instilling confidence in the users. And that comes with the team, the kind of partnerships which they can close. And that will build the foundation of that, like the basic and rest comes from marketing by various channels.
Now, I hate to say this, but KOL and influencer marketing does work. I agree, it does work. But yeah, even I hate to say it, but it is something that does give you like a boost.
Yeah, exactly. It does work, especially in gaming niche, because, you know, whenever you’re playing or any even traditional games, you like speed, you like certain speed, one of the YouTube content creators, you like speed, you like certain of the games he plays, you’ll actually check them out. Similarly, inventory gaming there, the content creators do play a big role in influencing which kind of games are, you know, more attractive.
So that does give exposure if timed well with campaigns. And if it’s with the right set of influencers and content creators, that will definitely do the work in getting that exposure. The rest of it goes to like how well the project is, SEO positioned, how they can do their ads marketing partnerships, cross collab, community challenges, where one, that’s, that’s one of the biggest things which is happening in TAN ecosystem, where different projects are doing cross collaborations, where they ask each other to promote each other’s, you know, telegram handle or Twitter, where they get a lot of followers eyes through that.
So these are a couple of the ways and for early stage projects. I think, I think a good incubator and accelerator would also help in getting that credibility and also that initial push to get where they want. I totally agree.
I think it’ll, you know, getting into, especially if you’re early stage, getting into one of these accelerators can really help you in, you know, it’ll open a lot of doors for you. You might not know where to perhaps go and what are the kind of problems that you will face. But these guys have been there, done that, and they will kind of steer you in the right direction.
So a good accelerator, a good incubator, good advisors, they can really help you take your vision forward because there’s builders at times, you know, we become a little myopic and we want to just focus on what we are building. We fall in love with the idea. And I think it’s very important to have that external, you know, somebody who is external to our locus where we are just focused on the idea and who can perhaps give us a decent advice there.
So I completely agree to that as well. Would love to understand from you, you know, because you successfully did traditional businesses, including education and trading consultancies before entering the Web3 space. How was your experience in traditional, you know, how has your experience there helped you succeed in the fast evolving Web3 world now? Well, for starters, I was always in green.
I mean, all my businesses are positive from one month of inception. So I mean, so I did not have to raise capital or anything for my previous ventures. So for me, it was all about revenue, how effectively, how fast we can get to revenue.
And now for gaming, especially since it’s a product, it’s a bit more challenging, but that’s what we’re working towards on getting a revenue system in place even before our final game is actually launched. But yeah, definitely the experience on my education firm kind of gave the insights on like, you know, how we can educate the community better on certain things, how they will be able to, whether it is the platform itself, whether it is for, you know, a sale or NFTs or anything. My experience with my previous ventures kind of paved the way for how the user onboarding experience can be much better funneled.
And the trading experience is, of course, helpful when it comes to treasury management and finances. And I’m also a limited partner at a VC based out of UAE. So that also helps in getting a lot of connections and in terms of investments and also partnerships, which kind of made the road a bit more easier than just going blindly.
So a mixture of all that kind of helped in Aspernova along with all the wonderful advisors and team you have on now. Right. No, I completely agree with you there.
I think having that sorted the revenue model or how you’re going to monetize your business is very important. And somehow I think people are becoming more aware now. But over the years, I’ve seen that there are builders who are not really paying attention to that aspect, which is very disheartening, I feel.
One more major thing I forgot is the spend, how projects can utilize the spend, how they can. This is something which I would say 90 percent of Web3 founders fail, which is why despite raising so much money, they closed down, shut down the project. They abandoned it.
They think a misuse of, I mean, misuse is one aspect, but also improper finances, financial management. So even to this day, there are VCs who still ask us how we are able to operate on such a very low cash burn. And that’s basically the experience which we developed from our previous businesses.
So compared to people who spend hundreds of thousands on projects on a daily burn, not a daily, but a monthly burn on their team, we were able to limit that and at the same time, get quality talents to believe in our vision and stick together. So that’s one thing which if Web3 other founders are able to understand, just like other traditional businesses, I think it’s because of the inflow which they used to get. Now it’s a bit harder, but back since the last bull, it was very easy to get finances.
So people don’t actually know the value, how it should be used. Even other vendors and third parties, they charge enormous because even they’re used to getting enormous compensation. So it’s all a matter of thinking of it just as a regular startup, how you would do if you would not have any more funding, how you would manage your finances to have to extend that runway as much as possible so that your project can survive.
So surviving, that is one of the biggest wins that I would say we were able to manage, even despite a very bearish market, which we went through with extremely low support from the ecosystem partners and stuff. Not this year, not even last year, but in 2022 and stuff, when a lot of GameFire projects were dying through. So we still managed to push through, mainly because of our mindset.
Right. You were absolutely right. I think that again, that goes back to the same thing that I was trying to say, that it’s the fundamentals, right? It doesn’t matter whether you’re building a gaming platform in Web3 or you’re building something in Web3 or building in Web2 or in any other sector.
Ultimately, if you’re building a business, then you need to know how to monetize it. You need to do it in a scrupulous fashion, like scale it in this manner. You’re not spending beyond your means, so to say, and you’re being financially diligent about it.
Because if you’re going to be immature, and I don’t know if that is the right word, immature, but if you’re going to get ahead of yourself, thinking like there’s no tomorrow, then there is a price to pay there. And I think we’ve seen way too many projects that have gone in that direction, even though they were building sound things. But you cannot possibly rely on the idea that, okay, I will be able to raise more money, right? That is not sustainable.
Right. That’s kind of the essence of it. And there has been great projects which raised a lot of money in the last bull, which closed down after two years.
Exactly. Just because they can’t afford, just because they misused how they were supposed to utilize their funding. So there goes it.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that is, those are simple fundamentals.
I think that that should always be kept in mind. I would like to zoom out a little bit, but before that, I’d like to know in terms of Astronova, what is the next big milestone that you guys are looking forward to? And then maybe I can push in a few more questions about the macro industry as a whole, and then we can wrap it up because I know that we are short on time. Absolutely.
So for us, we, as I said before, we have the upcoming Telegram minigame, which we are planning to launch in October, which is part of the NotCoin Accelerator program. And we also have our survival game, which will be launched towards the end of October. This would be on base.
So we would be migrating a few of our platforms to base. And we are planning to expand on that chain, particularly because we think that there’s a lot of synergies between our teams. And at the same time, on the way how they support game five projects, we see a huge opportunity.
And towards November, that time and stuff, we are planning to do our listing if the market and things all looks good, because token launch is always objective to market launch. Fighting against the market is not something we have seen working out from majority projects. And we do have some AAA executives who would be joining us as well.
So our plan is something you can say similar to how this Wukong has developed their project, as in they took a lot of time to build an MVP that MVPs would be utilized for their full game funding. So right now, these gameplay tests are kind of demo versions to showcase what we are doing to our community. And sometime towards the middle of next year, or towards the end Q3, we’re looking to launch your MVP.
And that will be a 15 hour kind of 15 hour gameplay kind of one with our top tier executives, making those direction. And that is what we will be utilizing for, to showcase to our equity investors and stuff to go forward. So there will be a token launch.
And as the as the project keeps on developing, acquiring more users, in terms of community users, we would be developing a more premium product in next year. And that product will be something which we will showcase to our major game investors. And we developed the project in the next two, three years.
So it’s a slow process. Quickly, games are not built overnight. And we are trying to, you know, trying to accomplish something which many have failed.
And it’s a time taking process. But with web three, what’s different is we’re able to get continuous feedback from our community as we develop our main game, so that you’re not developing this final game, and no one’s there out to play this. Right, you already have folks are excited about it, and who would listen to it as soon as it launches.
Absolutely. I hope so. Yeah, no, I’m sure that they will having an engaged community and an excited user base are very important.
Now that takes me to the question where, you know, you you have raised a lot of money in the past. And you know, you are also, I think, a limited partner at Sensei Capital, what advice would you have for startups in the web three space looking to raise capital and scale their projects, especially in this market where, you know, like we talked about, capital is, it was perhaps easier in the last, you know, bull run. And right now, it is still there is good capital for good projects.
But then, you know, it’s perhaps not as easy. So what would be your advice there? For honest builders and founders, I would say, if it isn’t the gaming thing, it’s all about narratives. So right now, there is the telegram narrative.
And then I think, in the next, you know, when the market changes in October, November, I’m hoping for the game fight trend to come back. These are good opportunities for raising. So basically, most of the web three VCs, particularly how they are, is they don’t have liquidity to invest during like, bearish months, and they won’t invest, they’re very slow, it will just do their due diligence and stuff.
But you utilize this time to actually develop products, get traction users, and improve your social metrics, all these things, when the market turns around. That’s in October, November, those kind of timings when the market is predicted with all these bullish news, like CZBs, the presidential elections, things like that, which will influence a lot, which is all bullish stuff. And even October is always a good month.
So if those opportunities are leveraged properly by improving those social metrics and products and user acquisition, founders will be able to showcase those during those market conditions to VCs, do maximum outreach, or if that project is not getting enough traction, do maximum outreach to VCs during that particular time. And they might be able to secure liquidity during that time. Whenever there’s a narrative, that should be the time when projects should be trying to capitalize on that.
So if it’s AI, have AI aspects, if it is gamefy, you know, make sure your game is fun, and things like that, which will definitely influence their decisions in making an investment. Right. I think that is, again, very sound advice, because, you know, as long as you’re able to capture the narrative, and you have certain traction to show for, and you know, you’re building sincerely, and that kind of comes through, there is no reason why you wouldn’t be able to get the requisite capital to scale your product or your platform.
Because they will have liquidity at that point, and they would be on the lookout for projects. Now, ideally, I would always say, you know, don’t reach out to VCs, because the moment you reach out to VCs, the ball is in their game and their court. And the, you know, the deal might not be as good as you think it would be.
I mean, they might ask for lower valuations and stuff. However, if you’re able to do all the things I mentioned earlier, and they’re able to, they reach out to you, that’s when you kind of know like, yeah, yeah, this shit is working. And keep doing, you know, scale those budgets on that, the marketing budget on those particular elements.
So that will give them the most results. And of course, having a few other elements, like, for example, launchpad, good launchpad lineups, good centralized exchange listing confirmations or deals in place, this will also influence the decisions for them. And whenever it’s a VC, if especially if it’s a bigger ones, if you’re able to get in to those top tier ones, they don’t invest alone.
So you don’t have to worry about, you know, going for 10 of those, if you get one of one top tier, they will come with as a group as a syndicate. So pretty much, you might close the round with just one top tier one on your cap table. That is absolutely true.
Because, you know, everybody, they kind of this, even though we’d like to think otherwise, but investing and, you know, angel investing, or even VCs, they kind of follow the queue of others and wrong as it might sound, but that is the truth. Like if somebody does come to me with a deal, and they say that, okay, they are also investing in it, then I look at it very differently, rather than somebody approaching me, a particular, you know, investment. So I completely concur with you there been there done that I think that’s the right way to go that you know, you build when the markets have taken a downturn, and you really prove your metal, show some traction, curtail your expenses, if you’re running out of money, and just build.
And once you do have that credibility, the traction, the VCs are going to come to you. So that’s very, very good advice. There are two questions now that I that I do want to like touch upon, and you can maybe answer them briefly.
But I would love to understand your role in the blockchain game alliance. And how you know, what what does it do the particular this particular alliance? What is its mission? If you can tell us a little briefly about that? How does it shape the industry? I think it’d be great. The BGA, which is which is mainly helmed by Seb from sandbox is a group of individuals as well as project founders and projects working towards, you know, empowering the blockchain gaming industry.
So it helps in various aspects in terms of partnerships, in terms of, you know, ideas, news. So it’s, you can think of it like as a an area where like minded founders can exchange ideas, plans or things which worked out. And it’s a it’s a good avenue for projects to actually, especially project founders to be part of.
And these events will definitely open up doors more on the gaming concentrated, whether it’s investments and partnerships and even other vendors, so which can improve your product. So I would my advice to gaming founders would be to join similar or the same kind of groups to leverage your connections to get quality partners. If you want to be part of them, and if you want to make use of those connections, it doesn’t actually the ROI is pretty good if you utilize it well, from a BD standpoint.
Absolutely. I think that is totally true. You know, you end up making a lot of valuable connections in alliances like this when you’re part of it.
And I think it’s just good for morale as well, like if they’re offline meetups, and you know, you come to know of these people, then you know, you kind of meeting them and having conversations with people who perhaps align with your view of what you’re building, that that can give you a lot of impetus, I think, on the down days. Right? Absolutely. And it’s good to circulate, you know, many project milestones, they have a newsletter with a lot of game folks, game centric, which includes creators and many such kind.
So it puts you on the radar, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, you’re talking to the right people, obviously, you’ll be on the radar. And then, you know, it turns out, I think it becomes like a bit of a ripple effect.
And that that that is it’s overall a good thing. I think there’s nothing to nothing bad that can come out of it. Okay, so I will now come to my last question, because I mentioned three times already, I’m feeling a little bad that you know, we are running over time.
And I’m really grateful that you know, you’ve stayed on but this particular question I ask everybody who comes on the show, and you you’ve made quite a leap yourself and you are still you know, operating web two businesses and web three businesses. If you had to give some advice to folks who are perhaps looking to jump into the web three space, what would be your advice to them for them to start living on blockchain? Do your own research. Always.
If you’re going for memes, be careful. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of scams out there. And there’s nothing always, always invest what you can effort to lose.
And if you’re looking for a career in web three, then start off with start off with, you know, knowing more about the industry by researching the niche, the projects, the kind of news which is out there. And then slowly approaching the various projects which are which are hiring for those roles. So start from some something small, it doesn’t have to be the most mainstream project out there.
But I think that can be a head start on that journey. And Twitter is the best source for news. And I’m always a Binance guy when it comes to exchanges.
Yeah, I think that’s good advice. I think it’s very good micro advice to give anybody who wants to start off in crypto that do your own research, get your hands dirty. Start small, but you know, just let it pique your curiosity because this is like a rabbit hole.
Once you go down, awesome. Thank you so much for making the time to speak to me today. Once again, I’m very, very grateful that you could make the time I feel astronomers is a tremendous ecosystem that you guys have created.
And it’s commendable what you’re doing in the gaming space. Any last thoughts before we wrap this up? First of all, thanks for having me. And so if you guys are in the gaming industry, feel free to check us out and look forward to our updates by following us on Twitter and joining our discord to stay updated.
Thank you. Awesome. We will shortly link that up in the description.
Thank you so much once again.