Ice Bagz - CEO, Kanpai Pandas

Our guest this week is Kanpai Pandas CEO, Ice Bagz. Kanpai Pandas is an omnichain NFT project built on layer zero tech that just launched their latest collection on Solana. With collectibles spanning across 8 different networks, a media business, clothing line, events, and high-profile ambassadors in the contact sports industry, Kanpai Pandas is more than an NFT project, it’s a movement.

Show Notes:

00:52 - Kanpai Pandas / Origin story

04:22 - How does learning from building businesses translate into the Web3 space

06:45 - From Roblox to the Panda project

09:10 - UFC

10:53 - Streetwear and theNFT space.    

14:07 - Reaching a broader audience

15:49 -  Revenue, general growth, and the state of the NFT industry

17:47 - Why mint a Kanpai panda?

20:31 - Multichain

21:25 -  How does Solana fit / Solana specific projects.  

22:18 -  A builder he admires in the Web3 space

Full Transcript:

Brian Friel (00:00):

Hey everyone, and welcome to The Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers, and designers who are pushing the Web 3.0 space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer relations at Phantom, and I'm super excited to introduce our guests, Ice Bagz, the CEO of Kanpai Pandas. Ice Bagz, welcome to the show.

Ice Bagz (00:22):

Appreciate you, Brian. Glad to be here, man.

Brian Friel (00:25):

Yeah, we're glad to have you too. And if no one from Phantom or Solana has told you yet, officially welcome to Solana. We're super stoked to have you guys.

Ice Bagz (00:33):

Appreciate it.

Brian Friel (00:34):

Maybe we could start there. There's a lot of folks in Solana who are in the NFT space. There's an NFT ecosystem I'd say that's very much unique to Solana. You guys are coming from this from a lot of different angles. This is your eighth different chain. Can you tell us a little bit about Kanpai Pandas? What's the origin story there and what is Kanpai Pandas?

Ice Bagz (00:54):

Pandas in general is originally an Omnichain project built on layer zero tech. That's why we're now coming to Solana. Originally we had planned Solana as the eighth chain. It just took longer than expected with layer zero building the bridge out. Of course, everything with FTX and all that stuff happened a year ago and it kind of stalled out the processes and the way people were spending money. So we went back and forth quite a bit, like do we just go ahead and do the rest of it on Eth or do we hold off? Do we wait to get into the Solana ecosystem? And I made the decision, let's just wait, even though it's a long time, because this has been probably eight months coming, but I just wanted to get into another ecosystem. The cool thing about our project being Omnichain is we mint it on Optimism, and BSC, and Eth, and Arbitrum, and AVAX and all these other chains, and it helps you kind of bring those communities in too, right? Because people become so kind of stuck in one chain or one FT project or whatever it may be.

(01:47):

That's just not my belief in crypto, my belief in crypto is people should be trying and experimenting, and I think in a couple of years from now, hopefully you won't even know that you're moving from one chain to another chain. Hopefully it's a much more seamless process. That's kind of the goal here. So, we were one of the very first ones that really used that tech. I think Lil Pudgys ended up switching over and re-dropping an Omnichain contract as well. But I think more projects should be. I'm excited to come to the Solana ecosystem. Like you said, it's very different. It's very kind of tunnel vision and closed off compared to some of the other chains, for sure. But that's the way it is and that's why it interests me to get in there, because if you look at what they've done, they made DeGods, they made y00ts, they made some of these bigger projects, I would say even more so than the founders.

(02:31):

It was really the ecosystem and the hype and just kind of that grit of, "We are Solana," that built this stuff. And so I'm like, well, fuck it, why would I not want to be a part of that? You know what I mean? With my project. Very early on I was involved in helping with the honoraries, things like that. That was the meta back then. This is still in the bear market, April of '22. So it was still bear market, but I'd helped do this. The mint was pretty hyped up and then the contract broke, all kinds of shit happened. Shit hits the fan. I'd never spent any time in Discord before until that moment.

Brian Friel (03:01):

It's eyeopening.

Ice Bagz (03:02):

And yeah, I didn't know if I ever wanted to get back in, because it was just "Rug, rug, rug." And I'm like, "What the fuck is everybody talking about?" So, eventually I ended up taking over the project very early on, hadn't minted out, took us seven months to mint out. I'd say we're probably the only project that actually stuck around and built, A, during the bear and then, B, during a seven-month mint. Most founders would've just hit the fucking road by then. I don't think anybody can argue that fact. So I pulled about 600 K out of my own pocket to build the business, to get something going, to prove myself, prove the project. So we did that, worked endlessly for seven months, finally minted out the seventh chain at that time, and we've been building ever since. So that's kind of the origin story to it. But yeah, it's one of those things that I'm glad I did it now, but there was a long period of time where I was like, what the hell am I doing?

Brian Friel (03:49):

Yeah, no, I totally understand that. I think there's a lot of interesting things there that we can go into. I mean, you guys are doing things your own way in a very unique way. I mean the Omnichain thing on its own. But one thing I want to hit on is what you talked about where you didn't actually found the project yourself. You came in through the honorary process, you saw an opportunity here and you basically took a project that you saw its potential and took it to the next level. Just briefly, I want to learn a little bit more too about your background. So you're an entrepreneur, you've built businesses yourself. How do those learnings translate to the Web 3.0 space?

Ice Bagz (04:23):

So it's massive and we actually had a space about it this morning and I had my whole team up talking. And we're seeing this seismic shift right now from hype and marketing and all this other stuff to what are they actually building and what are they actually doing and do they have actual goals and business plans and people in place that can execute? And I think that we're going to continue to see that. So I'm a lifelong entrepreneur. 20 years old, moved to Mexico, worked in the manufacturing business for five years. Came back, did sales for a couple of years, and then decided to start my own business. I was very good at sales. I could talk and I was very good at it. I made good money, but I hated it. I hated getting up and going and doing it every day. So my wife was pregnant at the time, we didn't have much money.

(05:07):

I'm like, "Babe, I've got an idea for a business here it is." Literally that night we sat down and drew it up on a napkin. She made the logo and everything, and I literally quit the next day and went and started knocking on doors and that's how I started my business. So my first year, I think I made $32,000. My second year I made like $55,000 and many years later I built it into a multiple eight figure business, and I've launched other stuff since then. Really got bored of managing big companies, 50, a hundred employees. It got exhausting to me and I wasn't having fun anymore. So I put people in those places to handle those businesses. I started in crypto full-time in early '18, so I've been around for longer than most of the people in the space. Got into that. I was trading coins and advising on projects and things like that.

(05:49):

And then in '21, I guess is when I started getting into the NFT space and didn't really understand it at all. The funny thing is the thing that made it click with me was my son constantly fucking swiping our credit card on Roblox, and I'm like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Show me," right? And he's like buying Roblox and he's getting these skins and he's changing his skins into every game he goes into and I'm like, all right, this is starting to click a little bit here. And if you look at what we've built, we took a lot of the Roblox mechanics with the trait swapping and the point system and things like that because it's proven and it works.

Brian Friel (06:24):

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about that too. So you guys have everything that you're doing in the digital world, the trait swapping everything there, and then you have all this other stuff that you guys are doing, I'd say in the real world too, your activations there. Maybe let's hone in on the digital to start. So you saw your son swiping on Roblox. How did that influence where you took this Panda project?

Ice Bagz (06:44):

For sure. So kind of where we started was in real life experiences, networking, highly important, that type of stuff. We have a suite at Allegiance Stadium in Vegas for 15 years. So we have all the football games, all the concerts, everything that goes on the shows, et cetera, there. We do UFC events, we throw Pandamonium, which is a huge festival, day long and night long festival. So it started off with that and then I was like, all right, we've really got to branch out and build this project out a little more and be able to capture an audience that's much wider than people that