The Future of Artists and creative funding with Omi Iyamu | Co- Founder ACE

If you're a musician, wouldn’t it be cool to categorize your fans? To know these are the fans that are willing and able to pay for my music, these ones only come to concerts, the other group only likes my pictures etc.

If you’re a content creator and you have shot the best video that everyone wants to watch, imagine if there was a platform where you could encrypt that video, then sell a token key with a specific password to access the content.

Well, blockchain technology can solve all these issues and help take the creative industry, an industry which provides employment to more young people than any other one, into the future. And, one Omi Iyamu has built a platform that does exactly this. Like most entrepreneurs, Omi’s journey is one of passion, resilience, consistency, and belief in making dreams a reality. He started out working with big tech firms such as Google and Microsoft where he rose the ranks to become one of the most sought-after software engineers and project managers in Silicon Valley before jumping into the startup life full time. As a man who is not afraid to take big leaps of faith, he had previously founded two startups, one while still a student. 

A believer in failing several times before you succeed, Omi is convinced that he’s finally found a breakthrough, a one-of-a-kind Web3 Social funding platform that brings together the worlds of Social Networking and Crypto and designed for Artists and Creators of all kind in the Sports and Entertainment Industry allowing them to monetize their fanbase in a more transparent and equitable way. Artist Crowdfunding Exchange (ACE). 

Kindly introduce yourself to the TAP Fam!

My name is Omi Iyamu. I am the co-founder of Artist Crowdfund Exchange (ACE), and I lead all of the products and tech at ACE. I’ve been working in tech for about 15 years now in the bay area, in California.  started off as a software engineer then sort of rose up the ranks and branched off. I grew up at Microsoft, but I spent the bulk of my career at Google leading different projects and teams. From the payment’s org to Google Brain, which is the Artificial Intelligent (AI) research org, which alludes to my core background, which is in AI and Machine Learning (ML), specifically, computer or pattern recognition, algorithms, and stuff. 

IS ACE your first entry into the Startup space?

I’ve founded two other companies in the past. A booking system, which was leveraged by a life insurance company, and then a drone company –was really a computer vision company, but then it morphed into a drone company. We were doing some super cool stuff back in 20 2014. We built an autonomous drone recognition system –super cool stuff. It didn't pan out, we rose through during the time when everybody had a drone company, and then we also crashed when that time crashed, when all the regulations came in and started limiting the use of drones and the size and how they can fly and where they can fly and permissions and all of that and so we sort of died in that large death of companies. 

That's sort of my history and with ACE now I’m in another very cutting-edge space, which is blockchain and non-fungible token (NFT’s) . We sort of married that with a social network designed for creatives, artists, athletes and folks in the sports and entertainment industry.

What led you to ACE?

About two years ago, I was approached by one of my co-founders, Darren at another co-founder’s birthday, and he had this great idea, this great blockchain idea to support talents, especially musical folks. He said he had this idea for a crowdfunding company for musicians that would help support them in their career growth. That was the initial pitch of the idea. And so, being a tech guy, I had to go and do the sniff test or what you’d call tech due diligence. After this, I saw the opportunity and it was for more than just musicians –for the entire sports and entertainment space. This is where we began. 

To test the validity of this idea, we did a campaign here in Nairobi called quarantine cash court where we were trying to test how strong fans of different early-stage artists were, and if they would be willing to invest in the success of these early-stage talents. At first with just being present to support them, then taking other small actions such as social media likes, follows and then eventually going the extra mile of spending money and this was very successful. 

From there, we learnt a lot, initially, we had originally designed the platform to be more of a financial application, but it became clear we needed a social element to become the base of the platform, so something such as a Facebook or like an Instagram embedded with deep financial aspects in a very understandable and unthreatening way. So, users don't need to understand anything about blockchain, or finances, or crypto or whatnot. All they're doing is supporting the talents and all the actual tech stuff fades into the background. So that's what we've done with ACE. A platform where fans can support their favorite artists, creatives, entertainers throughout their journey and projects in a very social and nonthreatening way. 

What is an NFT

An NFT is a non-fungible token. An entity that provides unique signatory and ownership. Think of it as a piece of paper that has your name and your signature, and everybody’s different. So that piece of paper cannot be divided, you can't split it in two, you can't exchange it for another piece of paper. It's singular, it's one of one.

And in simple terms, and in relation to NFTs, what is blockchain?

NFT in of itself is the signature, the entity that says okay, you are the owner of this.  But the blockchain is what keeps the record. The blockchain is your record keeper, it’s the public ledger, some can have private blockchains but it's just a record book, saying, this NFT with this specific unique ID is owned by this person. And when you sell it, there's going to be a new record, that this NFT was transferred from this person to this person. So, this person is now the new owner of it.

And how does blockchain work?

In the blockchain world, there are different assets. The two largest classes of assets are currencies, crypto currency, which if it needs to be a currency, it needs to be fungible. And then there are tokens. There are different kinds of tokens. There are fungible tokens, for instance, the Shiba Inu coin is a fungible token. One Shiba coin is the same as the other, and operates like a traditional currency. Then, there are non-fungible tokens which means that one is not the same as that. So you might ask, why even make such a token? The purpose of it is that there are applications that lend themselves well to having a unique thing that cannot be exchanged and that is fundamentally different. The obvious one is artwork. If I paint something, and you paint the exact same thing. They're fundamentally still different, no matter what anybody says. There are artists today that can paint the exact same MonaLisa, or even better versions. But are they the same as the original one? Absolutely not. It’s these types of applications that non fungible tokens lend themselves well to.

Therefore, why blockchain has had a good push in the arts, and the photography world for example. And we're using it in a different way in the sports and entertainment world. 

What other ways can artists and creatives in general benefit from this technology?

The obvious thing is that visual artists and folks that create unique pieces of work such as writers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, dancers, choreographers etc. now can keep track of the sale of their work. They can assign ownership of that work to people through an NFT. It’s the people who own the NFT, the creatives themselves who have access to this particular blockchain so creators now have control of their work. That's one side of the coin. 

The other side is that artists can now offer a stake in their artistry or other things as fungible tokens. Imagine there is a Jay Z coin, so when their fans buy the Jay Z coins, they feel like they own a piece of Jay Z, and Jay Z can architect that in a way, whereby they get specific benefits, either in the digital world or in the real world. So, there is that aspect of it. They can then use these tokens for a variety of things. Filmmakers can use it as a vehicle for crowdfunding for example. Let’s say I'm trying to produce a movie, and I need to source funds from many people. If my film's budget is 10 million, I’ll create 10 million tokens that my fans/people/investors can buy, and they get something in return. Anybody that buys the token, that information is stored in the blockchain ledger.

Brilliant, so, this is now where ACE is helping artists develop? 

Yes. We are providing different investment vehicles that the talents can use to leverage their fan base. So, talents that have dedicated fans, we’ve designed our entire app, to be able to allow them to use the different token classes that we introduce to monetize their fanbase and at the same time allowing their fan base to receive a return on investment (ROI). 

In practice, how does that work?

Let's say Jay Z comes on, it doesn't have to be Jay Z it can literally be anyone, it can be the guy that does gigs at the local bar and has a dedicated fan base. They come on and go through a verification process where we make sure they’re who they say they are, that they have some artistry going on and a fanbase. Once this is done, a limited supply of access tokens is minted for them. So, assuming that person is Jay Z, an unlimited supply of Jay Z tokens is issued, let’s say a million Jay Z tokens are minted, Jay Z can then turn around and sell them to his fans. His fans on ACE can buy as many as they want, and he sets the initial price. He can say my tokens are going for five bucks a token and his fans can buy as many as they want.

Once they're all owned by fans, the only way a fan can own another JAY Z token is to buy it off the market of somebody that's willing to sell, now, this willing seller will set their bid price. Let’s say I bought mine at five bucks, I can say I want to sell it at 10 bucks now, and somebody else is willing to buy, they buy at 10 bucks. I've made a profit and they get what they were looking for, because they were willing to buy for 10 bucks. So, it's an open market marketplace for trading tokens, or trading access tokens. Now, you might ask why I would even buy an access token in the first place. Assuming Jay Z, when they come on, they set what the benefit of each tier is, they must decide this tier gets this, this tier that etc. For example, they can say okay, my top tier fans get free VIP access to all my shows.

As well, those top tier fans, if you set the price at five bucks, you can also say they need 1000 tokens to be in that tier. So, they’ll need to have spent 5000 bucks to be in that tier, minimum. We’ve baked these features into the actual app itself, we can even restrict artists posts to certain tiers. So, if Jay Z is in the studio and he's working on a new album, and he wants to give his top tier fans a sneak peek, he can do that and it's only the top tier fans who will see that on ACE. 

So that's the value of owning the token, and you as a fan, you also still get an additional value when you sell the token. So, assuming I'm no longer a Jay Z fan, and I want to sell, I can sell and turn a profit. That's how our access tokens work. 

I see a lot of benefits for fans, what are other benefits for creatives?

The very first thing, obviously, on the initial sale, if you minus the cost of maintaining the platform etc. an artist will keep about 80%. So, he can keep 80% of that. Furthermore, every single time their token exchanges hands between fans, he also gets a 5% cut off each trade. All these and they don't have to do anything. It just happens automatically, because it's baked into the blockchain and into the smart contract that manages their token.

And to touch on that Smart contract, he can also bake more things into that as well. Assuming he is signed, and he has a manager, and he has a label, and each takes a share of the token, they can write that into the contract and all those folks don't need to do anything to receive their shares when a transaction is made. They have a wallet attached to them that collects their fees automatically. Assuming a manager takes 10%, every time a token is sold 10% of that sale goes to the manager’s wallet. That's just how blockchain works. That's our access token. 

So, artists can now financially categorize their fanbase?

The implications are so wild, because for the very first time, the talent has a brand-new way to financially categorize their fan base. They know that, okay, these fans are my big spenders because they bought 1000 tokens for me. These fans, you know, they only have a token, or they haven't even bought a token, they're the craziest fans, but they don’t invest in the work. He/she can categorize them, and that's so powerful because you can do so much just because of that. You can host a private event for only your top tier fans etc. I think the beautiful thing for the fans is that they are invested in the talent, right? They feel like, okay, I put in money, and I can get a return. You know.

With this sort of trading or exchanging high valuable assets, do you see regulators jumping into this space?

The regulation piece is obviously a big piece in this entire space. It really is but there is only one issue with it, which is whether to treat tokens as a security or not. And regardless of where this conversation goes, what that means is that you're just going to have more rules to follow. 

I've been in spaces that end up getting heavily regulated in the past. Thus, I know how to navigate that and what we've done from the beginning is that we designed everything to work in regulation. So, our platform is already regulation proof. The only other piece which we are already actively doing is getting the relevant licensing ahead of time, so that whichever way the pendulum swings in that space, we are covered. But with respect to the actual architecture itself, it works and already follows the right regulation. Things like making sure that you're always getting the best price and doing the bid ask. Essentially, we work like a stock market. We modeled the technology in the backend of transactions to mimic the stock market. 

How does one join ACE?

You just create an account. You download the app, Ace store fan, and create an account. That's it. That's literally it. But for a talent, you must go through a verification process. So, after you create an account, you go through a verification flow as an artist, because it's the verification flow that allows you to mint a personalized token. But as a fan you don’t need to do that. You can go on and then add your card, fund your account, and buy. You don't need a blockchain account, all that is done for you. 

How have the mainstream folks in the music and film taken to this? Do they see platforms like yours as a threat? 

Mainstream folks see us as folks disrupting their industries, but we are bringing them along. It's not a zero-sum game. There is space for all players in this. Remember I mentioned that because we use smart contracts to manage everything, the industry folks can literally just move over because in the end, it's all about controlling the money for them. They can literally move their artist ACE and write back everything into the smart contract. If Universal today can come on and bring on the entire roster of artists and their fans, we can offer them a smart contract. In fact, it's actually much easier because they don't have to do any accounting, it just works, and they can see all the accounting transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. So, we are bringing them along too. There is a space for them too. They can create a business account, not yet, but soon they will be able to literally create a business account and attach folks to it.

What are you most hopeful for the next five to ten years?

What I would hope to happen in the next five to ten years is really a change in the mindset on three fronts. On the fans front, fans become a lot more comfortable investing in their talent because they believe in them and or they're already seen a return on investment on that front. 

The second thing is on the artist’s front. In the next five to ten years, artists can do two things; one, be able to truly categorize their fans. Say these are my true fans. These are, you know, folks that are just passing by and are able to do that, and be able to grow, to have a more linear growth curve, because right now, it's not linear at all. If I start playing the piano, or if I'm a singer, and I want to grow my career, it's not linear growth. It’s almost very flat. Because I'm funding everything myself, I'm growing my fan base myself, I'm trying to do things myself, until I get to a step function that I really mastered a path, or I’ve blown up. And typically, it’s at that step function when I get signed, or if I’m a sports guy, this is when I've joined a team and whatnot. What I want to see is that it's not a step function, it's more of an actual linear growth. So, as you're growing, because you are directly monetizing your fan base, you're taking the funds from that, to grow your craft, you get even more funds, and you continue to grow. It becomes an actual linear growth, and it evens the playing field across the industry.

The third thing that I would like to see is the industry trying to change and leverage blockchain to do the things that they need to actually do. So, filmmakers and producers, leveraging blockchain to fund their next projects, record labels going the M&A route of acquiring folks onto their label etc. So those are the three changes that I would love to see. Will they happen? I certainly hope so, but ACE will be doing everything to help at least provide the tools that are necessary to make those a reality in the future.