Andrew Pelekis, CEO – Claynosaurz

Our guest this week is Andrew Pelekis, CEO of Claynosaurz. Claynosaurz is more than an NFT project, it's a 3D production studio full of artists from Sony, Disney, Dreamworks, Ubisoft, Netflix, Warner Bros, Marvel, Industrial Light & Magic focusing on developing quality entertainment IP in Web3.

Andrew sits down with Brian Friel to discuss the entire Claynosaurz ecosystem, building entertainment IP in Web3, the importance of quality in NFT projects, and the future of Claynosaurz which includes collectibles, toys, and content.

Show Notes:

0:50 - Background / starting in Web3 and a little bit about your background                        

3:30 - How did Claynosaurz start?

5:47 - Web3 vs.Web2 entertainment                        

12:03 - Why Solana?

14:10 - Engaging with the community

18:34 - Learning how to build strong IP native to the internet

20:03 - Who will be spearheading the future NFTs?  

22:44 - Future projects for Claynosaurz

25:04 - A builder he admires in the Solana ecosystem

Full Transcript:

Brian Friel (00:05):

Hey everyone and welcome to The Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers, and designers who are pushing the Web3 space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer relations at Phantom, and I'm super excited to introduce our guest, Andrew Pelekis, the CEO at Claynosaurz. Claynosaurz is a 3D production studio, building original IP in Web3. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew Pelekis (00:27):

Hey, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Friel (00:29):

Really excited to talk to you today. I'm a huge fan of what you guys have built. I know that there's a lot of listeners that are obsessed with the dinosaur NFTs you guys have created, and they are a clear winner of the cutest NFTs on Solana right now. We have a lot to jump into, but before we get into everything related to Claynosaurz, I'd love to know a little bit about you. Tell us where you got started in Web3 and a little bit about your background.

Andrew Pelekis (00:50):

Sure. So my background is probably a little bit more different than anyone else on our team, which is all geared towards creative and creating the cute characters that you're so familiar with. I come from a background in front office investments, so that's hedge funds and private equity style investment. I've done that for a little over 10 years. Most recently, two partners and I raised $250 million under a private equity umbrella fund and invested that over four years twice, so did a little under $500 million of business. We left that job, or I left that job in 2021 to pursue my own endeavors. Part of that and part of what I was doing earlier that is Web3 geared was working on attaching inventory and collateralized assets using NFTs or tokenizing those types of assets. And I had been working on that loosely in Eastern Europe, but we did a lot of work and a lot of background work on Web3 and all the different aspects of smart contracts, blockchain, and applying those things to real assets.

(01:55):

And in that pursuit, recognized there's a ton of opportunity here, a ton of great use cases. And along that path, I was advising Claynosaurz from afar for about a year before they got to mint. And realized that once they minted, they needed some help on the stuff that I'm an expert in. And I thought there was a lot of opportunity in that, especially when you consider how early on we are in the life cycle, thinking on about what I was doing in my previous job, that is to say attaching real assets via tokens. I think we're going to get there, but there's a great opportunity in the low-hanging fruit that exists in digital assets where the use case is much more applicable for the time being, and therefore a ton of use cases in the entertainment sector in particular. So jumped onto Claynosaurz late 2022, literally hours after the mint I was talking to those guys, and then the very next week, jumping in headfirst.

Brian Friel (02:50):

Oh, that's awesome. It's a unique perspective too. I think you're the first NFT CEO I should say, who comes from a professional investment, more institutional side background. I actually, myself used to work at a [inaudible 00:03:02] before I joined Phantom, and I know that that world doesn't always mesh super well with the NFT world. So you bring a pretty unique perspective to how this whole industry is shaping. But going a little bit back in time, you said you joined the team November, 2022, right around the mint. How did the Clayno team originally start? What was the vision that they got set out to do and who did they build this team with? You guys have some incredible assets. I imagine that you guys have quite a wealth of experience to have put all that stuff together.

Andrew Pelekis (03:31):

Yeah, there's actually somewhere around a dozen founders because of the amount of work it takes to develop this 3D quality asset that we're developing. So it starts though with Nick and Dan, who are our two founders who began developing the IP with, I wouldn't say no objective in mind, but they didn't necessarily solve for distribution, right? This is a creative team who had a ton of great ideas and just said, "Hey, let's start developing them. Let's just start building IP. And people do that, they develop IP and they maybe curate and sell it to a big studio. And this is in a world in which there's no opportunity in NFTs or Web3, right? So that's a traditional path and it's quite long and laborious and a lot of late nights working with no real idea of how you're succeeding or if you're succeeding at all. And along that path, a few months later, NFTs started to blow up.

(04:22):

So this is early 2022, late 2021, the news starts picking up on NFTs. I mean, I think everyone listening will be familiar with that news cycle, and they picked up on that. Some close friends of theirs who were well acquainted with business development and marketing and Web3, basically approached them and said, "Hey, this is a great project. Why don't you test that product you're building in Web3? Why don't you curate this to be an NFT collection? And you can still build the IP beyond that once you've done that, but at least you can test early on in the life cycle. You can monetize the product before you normally would be able to and get all this active feedback."

(05:00):

And so in early 2022, I believe February, they brought on this business development team, expanded the creative team to get to this objective, which was a mint, and built from there. And eventually minted in November 2022.

Brian Friel (05:15):

That's awesome. I think a lot of people might not be familiar with that grind. The traditional, you're a creative team, you're coming from the works of Sony, Disney, Dreamworks, you want to set out on your own adventure and how do you actually take the creative ideas you have and get distribution, like you say, turn that into reality? Can you talk a little bit more about the approach that you guys are doing, building entertainment IP in Web3 and just how that differs from those traditional approaches, what those cycles are like and some of your guys' strategy in Web3 in particular?

Andrew Pelekis (05:46):

Yeah, for sure. So I think the main thing is sort of what I just touched on, which is that typically you would have to build a product to a minimum point at which you could sell it to someone. And in that environment, that minimum point with a team of, by example, our team of 12 to 14 people, if you include contractors, it's a little bit bigger, but it's a small team compared to a studio that might have hundreds or thousands of people, it takes a while to get there. And then if you've got success, if you've built something that's worthwhile to these studios, then they'll participate, right? They'll say, "Okay, well..." But that deal does not look very good because you haven't proven the product beyond this one meeting, and getting that meeting might be tough in the first place. So you sort of get taken to the bank, if you will.

(06:30):

In the environment that Web3 offers, you can test the product early on in the lifecycle. So by example, we had, like I said, a dozen or so people working on our product for about a year to get to this MVP that was in November 2022, and you're testing the product, right? Because that mint tells you, are people interested? What's the feedback like? Are we able to sell this product? So you have all this great testing environment. And then of course, as you know, crypto Twitter is very active in telling you what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong, and you get this great feedback loop. And so you get all of these things that are going on that typically would never arise at all in a traditional environment. And the only time at which it would arise would be long after you've given up the ability to creatively control your own product. You'd have given it up to a studio at some point and struck a deal and been put to the side.

Brian Friel (07:26):

Yeah, it almost seems like a total win-win because it's like you're getting these faster product development cycles. Like you said, you're getting in the hands of the users, you're figuring out really fast if this is worth investing in long term or not, but you're also getting more control of your own destiny. You don't have to grind for years and then take whatever deal comes your way. You're cutting out some of these middle men just going directly to these consumers. It's pret