How AfroDroids sold out a 12,000 NFT collection in just 11 minutes
Epic Web3 Weekly Newsletter
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This is the Epic Web3 Newsletter — a weekly dose of best practices & insights from the top industry experts to help you dive into Web3 and boost Web3 products.
🎉 We’re bumped to announce that the Web3 Growth Summit starts TODAY!
In just two hours we’ll meet top industry experts in the first track dedicated to DAO growth.
They’ll be discussing all the secrets of how to build & grow effective Web3 communities.
And you have a last chance to attend!
Look what and from whom you gonna learn:
🔥 Today’s speakers lineup (⏰ CEST)
1:30-2:00 How to launch 1000 DAOs in two weeks (Ekaterina Pranitskaya, Head of Product, SuperDAO)
2:00-2:30 Revenue models for social DAOs (Dennison Bertram, Founder, Tally)
2:30-3:00 How to build HR-tech startup in Web3 when everyone is firing (Anton Fateev, CEO, Humans)
3:00-3:30 How to build and grow open protocol based ecosystems (Nassar Hayat, Head of Growth, Radicle)
3:30-4:00 How to grow and leverage the community (Chandler De Kock, Growth strategist, UMA)
4:00-4:30 How to build your community via twitter (Bernardo Noronha e Faro, Co-founder, Vinci)
4:30-5:00 Streamline your DAO admin with money streaming (Michele D'Aliessi, Co-founder, Superfluid)
5:00-5:30 How to move fast without breaking things: DAO governance experimentation strategies (Samantha Marin, Communications, Aragon)
P.S. Hurry up to join the Web3 Growth Summit — we start in just two hours!
🧑💻 How to sell out a 12,000 NFT collection in just 11 minutes? Community Insights on using storytelling, partnership, and community to succeed at NFT projects.
When Owo Anietie minted his first NFT art back in February 2021, for a week after, he couldn’t afford his fare to and from work. He also contemplated quitting after none of his NFTs sold in that first month. Now, he’s one of the biggest voices for crypto art in Nigeria, selling out his 12k NFT collection, AfroDroids.
We asked Esther Eze, CEO of FacesOfWeb3 and ex operations manager at AfroDroids to share the secrets of such a success.
— Who are you?
Owo Anietie is a Nigerian 3D Afrofuturism artist whose work explores the developing intersection of the African diaspora culture with technology. He started as a traditional artist in Calabar where he mainly did paintings and sculptures. Out of fear of being boxed, he began to try out other art forms, later transitioning to motion design, animation, and digital illustration. In 2020, Owo found NFTs and pitched his tent onto this new technology that was finally going to see artists getting rewarded for their creativity.
— What’s your mission in the Web3 space?
Owo, who is on a mission to create everyday the next 50 years, began to mint some of his works. He once said his art is "inspired by the past, present, and future of his traditional Nigerian and African culture."
Owo’s storytelling and dedication to his craft led him to build a community of staunch supporters from Q Club to Frank, who has collected a lot of Owo's artworks.
In August, Owo and his team began thinking about a much larger NFT collection that — based on Owo's interest in storytelling — would do three major things:
Serve to onboard more Africans into the Web3 and NFT space.
Donate to charity.
Create a community bound by the love of technology and storytelling.
— How did you manage to succeed at selling out NFTs?
Every time Owo minted an artwork, he would go on Clubhouse and tell the story behind the piece. He often spoke in rooms of 500+ people from around the globe, mostly new collectors from Europe and Asia.
Owo announced his NFT collection launch in August, holding various Twitter spaces with top NFT collectors like Metamike, Q club, and Aaron Haber. By the end of that month, the Afrodroid Discord had more than 12,000 members who wanted to see the project succeed. Community members believed in this movement so much that they began donating to the charity before the launch date.
When the Afrodroid NFT collection launched in September 2021, the entire collection sold out in 11 minutes. To date, it remains one of the most successful NFT launches in Africa.
— What helped Afrodroids to sell out from 0 to 12,000 NFTs?
1️⃣ The power of storytelling: From the onset, the AfroDroids collection was powered by storytelling. First, Owo's mission to create daily for the next 50 years showed the strength of his talent and made collectors trust him. Also, the story of The AfroDroids, a team of humanoids who will make the world a better place, is fresh and intricate, with various themes that touch on human mortality, science, and technological singularity.
2️⃣ Community: It's important to carry people along in whatever you're building. The team told the story of the AfroDroids, making sure to show their ethos. When people joined the discord, the team was kind, eager to answer questions, and made everyone feel welcome and heard. They also fulfilled their promises of airdrops which made the community love and trust them more.
3️⃣ Charity: Charity hinges a project on something more than a creator’s selfish interests, differentiating it from the numerous joyless cash grabs that have plagued the NFT space since its inception. Part of the AfroDroids roadmap included finding and donating to a charity for underserved children in Nigeria. It was an impactful vision collectors could buy into, the opportunity to make the world a much better place to live in.
4️⃣ Partnerships: The AfroDroids team also looked to onboard new artists into Web3 and sought a partnership with one of the best producers in Africa: Donjazzy. Donjazzy, who is the CEO of Mavin Records, would help facilitate NFT education and the onboarding of African creators and artists into the Web3 space.
Those are the lessons one can learn from AfroDroids to succeed in NFT creation & marketing.
If you want to learn more about it, join the Web3 Growth Summit as we’re having a special track dedicated to NFTs.
Web3 is a fast-changing industry, that’s why we can’t leave you without up-to-date news. Here are the juiciest ones to share this week:
1/ Usain Bolt joins Web3 platform Step App to reward users in crypto for exercising. Run, Forest, run!
2/ $18M raised from Morpho Labs to develop decentralized lending. Morpho is described as an open-source DAO, allowing entities to borrow and lend cryptocurrencies.
3/ Minecraft says ‘no f-ing thanks’ to NFTs, announcing that they’ll never allow NFTs. Are you sure that’s a right decision for long-term business, guys?
4/ Reddit co-founder and Polygon join forces to invest in Web3 projects. They created a $200M initiative that will back projects at the intersection of social media and Web3.
That’s it for today! Hope you found this week’s dose insightful and see you at the summit 👋
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Talk soon,
The Epic Web3 team