Darran Garnham - Bad Egg: Channeling Web3 Success Into A Media, Entertainment & Toy Empire

Full transcript: Darran Garnham on London Real

3:45 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Darran Garnham, the business leader, entertainment strategist, and investor. You have over 20 years of leadership experience in the global entertainment and toy industry, working with iconic brands like Pokémon, Toy Story, and Jurassic Park. You are the founder and CEO of Toy Keto, a creative studio with a mission to put toys into the heart of games.

4:10 In the last two years, Toy Keto boasts over 4 billion game downloads and 1 billion toys manufactured. You started the company during lockdown in 2020 from your living room and it is now an eight-figure business. Your latest project, Bad Eggs, is a collection of 1,500 blockchain-based story-driven digital characters that will be featured in animated TV series, comic books, video games, and music. Ultimately, you believe that brands must move at the speed of culture in order to survive and succeed.

4:42 Darran, welcome to London Real. Thank you for having me. I want to start by saying that Bad Eggs is one of our portfolio companies here at London Real Ventures, the world’s first media-powered investment firm, where our mission is to transform the world by investing in cutting-edge Web3 and AI companies while giving our partners marketing exposure across the London Real media platforms and academies. We heighten awareness, create customers, and build communities by leveraging our global audience and extensive network.

5:08 Darran, we are super excited to be part of this journey with you. So, let’s jump in. What is Bad Eggs? What is Toy Keto? Okay, I’m going to start by saying thank you for having me.

5:20 Yourself and the London Real team have been fantastic. So, thank you for all the support. Thank you. Bad Eggs. So, we actually started the Bad Egg journey two years ago whilst the project in the NFT launched in June this year.

5:35 Actually, the story, the background, the investment from our side into the brand has been two years deep. So, we didn’t – a lot of the NFTs that come out, I felt would – and listen, I’m a collector, so I’ve got five digital wallets full of NFTs. I love supporting creators. I love supporting new brands. You never know what their journey is going to be, so I want to be on it as early as possible.

6:00 And that’s the same in some of the gaming partnerships we’ve got. But I wanted to launch something not as many projects launched where they launch and then there’s a bit of a war chest. And then it’s, well, what do we do now? Shit. We’ve got this stuff. Now what do we do?

6:18 So, I was very mindful with Bad Eggs to build the brand, the story, and the depth that could be transferred across – I mean, transmedia is a word that I love, but it’s absolutely true. So, it would be character and story that could be across print, across gaming, across animation, across live action, across trading cards. So, all of these things – listen, I’m a big kid – so, all of those things that I collected as a kid or collected and resold to collect something else.

6:55 And effectively, that’s what NFTs are in many ways. They are – at so many of the conferences I’ve been to, the people collecting them collect something else. Like, they collect – I collect hats, but they collect trading cards or they collect – if you’re at the upper echelon, some of them collect cars. But there’s always another collection. Just naturally, human instinct is to collect things, in some way, shape, or form.

7:21 Anyone watching this will have something that they have more than three of. And they’ve started a collection. They might not even know it. It might be the same mugs in the kitchen. But they have started a collection.

7:31 It’s my suit, I just realised, for me. It is. Some people collect kids. So, yeah, so that’s where Bad Eggs started. We minted in, effectively, what was a – I don’t know – not a great market.

7:49 Effectively, we’d done the work two years ago to mint the eggs. And we created 10,000, because obviously, at that time, the collections were quadruple nine, quadruple sixes, quadruple fives. There was a rhyme and reason, or not, to the collection size. But we looked at where the market was. We honed that collection down.

8:12 The team really deeply picked the 1500. And then we launched on OpenSea and sold out within an hour, I think it was. And they were punchy. It wasn’t that we launched for – I mean, they were $350. So, it wasn’t like it was a small buy-in, either.

8:38 So, listen, I’m proud of what we’d achieved, but that wasn’t even day one. It’s so funny, because normally that would be like, right, it’s day one. But actually, that was like day 700. But that was just the first time that we’d actually told people it existed. Right.

8:53 But you’ve been working on building the IP and the storylines and the characters for two years. 100%. Wow. And it shows, because it feels like a very mature, well-thought-out brand. It’s interesting.

9:05 It’s almost like you feel there’s a story behind it, even if you don’t articulate it right away. Yeah. That’s what it feels like. Yeah. And eggs are fun.

9:14 I mean, if you look at Kinder Surprise, I mean, there’s a reason that kids gravitate to Kinder Surprise. A lot of the NFTs that you purchase are spinning eggs, or there’s a reveal. You crack an egg. You yolk, does it not? I mean, we’re even having a lot of fun.

9:30 We’ve not told the community this, so. But we’re having a lot of fun of one of the things that potentially we’ve got in the future of the eggs is air dropping an incubator. So do you want to incubate and crack your egg and see what’s inside? Right. So there’s a lovely narrative that can go along so that the formed egg is only the start of the journey.

9:52 And then we’ve had great fun with the traits and the skateboards. But you know, Brian, the funny thing is, no matter how smart we think we are putting that backstory together, the audience and the community have picked up on things that we didn’t lean into as heavily, which we are now leaning into because the community themselves, we have a little pigeon in some of the NFTs and a rat and the community have gone wild over these two little cats. So we’ve dialed up their character in some of the story that’s coming.

10:30 And as the animation progresses, you’ll see them appearing as their own characters, which is going to be very interesting. Wow. That’s fascinating. Now, tell me this whole concept you have of kind of starting with Web 3 and then taking that into all these other traditional forms of media, because it almost seems weirdly backwards. Or like you said, back in 21, 22, it felt like people would start with NFTs and that was it.

10:59 Here’s our NFT collection. Goodbye. Yeah. We hope to do something with it, but not many things flushed out of the back of it. Whereas you have this, you have a deep background in all these things, but you have a whole plan for this transmedia launch.

11:12 I’m obsessed with being at the start or something. And even if it fails or even if it comes to nothing, having been part of the journey, someone once said to me, and they nailed it. They said, you enjoy the journey almost more than the exit. And that come from my own. I love renovating properties.

11:39 But once I renovate it, I like the journey of that. And getting in early as well. There’s also, if you look at me, I’ve had it myself, which is I put myself quite out there in this Web 3 space. I believe in it. I believe it’s the future.

11:56 Honestly, I’m such a believer that the biggest brands of tomorrow are going to come from this space, because the audience is growing daily, where the audience is reducing in other forms of entertainment. The youth of today, I gave a speech at my kid’s school a few weeks ago, kind of what does that do? And I was trying to work out which way to hone. I’m sure we’ll come onto it. But we did the product for Among Us for the video game.

12:27 Now, that’s a game that everyone in that hall would have played. And that was my easy route into the conversation to these sort of 14 to 17 year old. So just coming in, GCSEs, A-levels. Actually, I went into Web 3. And I said, right, who’s heard of the blockchain?

12:43 Who’s heard of NFTs? Who’s heard of 90% of the hands? Really? And I’m looking around that room going, I said, this is the future. 90?

12:53 Yeah. Wow. Honestly, incredible. 90 probably owned crypto or had an NFT or knew about it. They just knew about it.

12:59 Yeah. OK. They were native. So when this is coming up as the rest of the world, as we know, sort of certain countries are further ahead than others at the moment. But as the penny drops for those that are following, I mean, the generation, I’m going to say behind me, some sort of 47, but the generation may be behind that one.

13:23 It’s just going to be part and parcel. So we want to create the entertainment today that feels very natural to where they’re finding it. But at the same time, I’m very respectful of the fact that we do need to bring adopters in from other forms of entertainment as well. But the reason I say that I kind of put my head up there is that I’ve been very vocal, whether it’s on LinkedIn or on my socials, talking about my passion for this space. And there’s a lot of the more traditional people in the entertainment space that are like, well, it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

14:00 What are you doing? I mean, many of them said that when I worked at Moshi Monsters a decade ago. And I had to explain then what the digital power of that online game meant versus the eyeballs of a traditional TV platform. So it’s getting the narrative, well, I’ve realised it’s getting the narrative right. So if you look at our Discord at the moment, there’s more people in our Discord than if you’re bringing a movie out, you’ll do test screenings to maybe 300 people.

14:40 I mean, we’re approaching 3,000 in Discord after, what, six weeks, seven weeks. So I’ve already got 10x a test audience that I can talk to every day. I don’t have to get them in a screening room for them to tell me that I’m doing things right or wrong, or have you seen this? So we’ve got people in front of us. And I’ll tell you, the communication is positive.

15:06 I’m loving it. Listen, I’m loving the journey. We like to say show, don’t say. So we’re definitely showing, not saying something’s coming. So when we announce stuff, it’s done, it’s signed.

15:25 Doing some of those contracts from an LFT project, working with some of these big institutions. It’s been a conversation to say, well, look, this is the journey we’re going to go on. But the penny’s dropping. And I think between, I’d say there’s probably 10 projects out there. I mean, I saw the Doodles guys last week did an unbelievable launch referral at the Toronto Film Festival.

15:54 And there’s other people, but the support system, we’re supporting each other to kind of raise the industry up. I was in LA last week at some of the big lots. And there’s not a lot of newness coming out of those lots at the moment. No, no. They’re sticking with the tried and true.

16:16 They’re focused on quarterly earnings. And it’s a lot of the same big tent pool IP, right? Yeah. And listen, I don’t criticize because I’ve worked for Universal Studios for a while. And Fast and Furious, I mean, maybe up to nine now.

16:33 We’ll still bring in a billion plus at the box office. So the numbers are still there. But I’m also aware that, I mean, I’ve got three kids. What’s my five-year-old’s transformers? Should he have transformers because his brother had it and his older brother had it?

16:54 Or should he have something that he really feels true ownership of because it’s new to him or new to my goddaughters? So we’re a big believer in, we call it creating remarkable brands, but trying to bring really true, truly new things to market. And I’d say outside Humpty Dumpty, I don’t know another egg that has made the big screen. So that’s our goal. And what is the immediate plan with bad eggs?

17:25 So you dropped these NFTs in June. You were out in LA. I think you also won a Gary Vee’s events. And you were taking this bus along with my brand new basketball, which I appreciate. And my boys are going to love that’s here.

17:41 But how are you introducing it to the world? And then what’s coming next? Because on your Twitter feed, I can watch some of these short videos. I’m starting to learn about it. Also, can you tell me a little bit about bad eggs as far as what they’re all about?

17:53 Yeah, of course. I mean, the premise has always been bad eggs doing good. So yeah, the basketball event that we did in Santa Monica just before VCon, which again, I mean, fair play to Gary. That’s three big conferences in a row to finish in LA. And I know he’s going to do something again next year.

18:13 But I mean, a big investment from V friends and Gary’s team, incredible. So we kind of hijacked it slightly in that we were so bad eggs, we can have a bit of we can be a bit cheeky with some of the things we do. So we parked a basketball bus or an old school bus outside the venue. And you could come and shoot hoops, win a basketball. So we bought positivity, but it was a charity that we used.

18:44 They’re called Hoop Bus, an amazing charity around Los Angeles and various other states in America, where they bring this bus to deprived areas, to schools that may be there, basketball courts are run down or just they bring joy to the public. And honestly, they’re amazing. So we had them for a day. We went to Santa Monica. We went then to Venice, then we drove it into the city.

19:10 I mean, it was a buzz. The best piece and it was almost we’ve got it on camera, but it was almost like we’d set it up, but we hadn’t. There was a group of school kids came out from a sort of special needs or they had various disabilities. And they all came out and they tried to shoot a hoop and we gave them balls. And that was almost the epitome of what we’re trying to achieve here.

19:37 So I’ll talk about the growth and what we’ve got coming, but everything we do, a percentage will go back into doing good. And the aim will be that our community can tell us what we need, what needs help. And that could be a basketball court, that could be a skateboard park, that could be a school classroom. But what I want to get to is a point where whether it’s every quarter or it’s a regular piece where we can actually physically give back, show the community that we’ve done that, and then just have a little tag, bad ex, have done that.

20:19 Okay. Nice. So the AMS, we launched the NFT in June. We followed that up now with vinyl toys, we’re shortly going to announce a major, major global trading card partner. Yesterday we announced Sony as our record label.

20:40 Music’s a big piece of the brand. So we’ve got one of the Sony. AMS will be distributing our music. Okay. As I said, I was in Los Angeles.

20:53 We’ve got a writer on board now for the series. Because I do want, it’s an interesting one because I do want to bring traditional animation to the brand. Because I see, God, I watch animation. Again, I am a kid. But I can see my kids are watching animation.

21:15 They’re watching in the Loud House or Captain Underpants or whatever it might be. I want them to be watching bad ex. And I want them to grow up and feel part of the journey that we’re bringing. And also a lot of the holders, again, little penny drop moments that happen when I’m in the Discord. And five weeks ago, one of the, there’s just, I mean, maybe 50 of us just having a chat.

21:43 And one of the guys said, I’ve got to go now, I’ve got to get my kids from soccer practice. I’m like, oh my God, we literally, these people have children. Honestly, it’s a real moment of clarity, which should have been there immediately. It’s actually, our audience is here. It’s not just the holders.

22:04 We’ve got the spirograph of fans. And now we’ve got pictures being sent in of their kids in our bad egg t-shirts. And so, yeah, for me, it’s always the pillars of a brand. So our NFT is a pillar. Our first pillar.

22:24 Publishing will be a pillar. Animation will be a pillar. Gaming will be a pillar. Collecting will be a pillar. And then from those pillars, you can then start to build your house.

22:35 And then that’s when you can go out and start to do other partnership deals. Or, yeah, we’ve been talking to different sports manufacturers. But you have to have those foundations, solid foundations in order to start to lay more bricks on top. And that’s what I’ve done my whole career, whatever brand I’ve worked on. So it’s no different.

22:59 I guess the difference being, there is only 1,500 of the NFTs out there. So if you hold one, you joined on day one. You joined our journey. And it makes me very proud. So we’ll always find ways to look after those holders.

23:15 And you’ll start off with a series maybe featuring five or ten main character eggs that have certain personalities. And then the rest might get pulled in over time. Yeah, absolutely right. Yeah, so we’ve started. The writer that we’ve just agreed terms with last week is a serial successful writer of family shows, be it on Nickelodeon or Disney or on Netflix.

23:41 So we’ll announce him in the next week or so. But yeah, so we’ll start with a story based. It’s five characters. Exactly what you’ve just said, actually. It’s five characters that live in a mansion.

23:56 They go on adventures together. There’s always a positive outcome. The bad eggs that ultimately do something good. That ultimately do something good. Right.

24:07 And bring positivity. They try to do something good. And then they kind of sometimes mess up and sometimes go back to their bad ways. But they’re ultimately trying to do something good. 100%.

24:15 Just like the rest of us, basically. And do you know what it is? In my head, again, it’s going to show my age. But in my head, it’s the Save by the Bell moment. OK.

24:21 So at the end of every episode of Save by the Bell, you’ve been taught something positive. Is this the old show from America? The old show, yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I watch that.

24:31 Yeah. So there’s ultimately a lesson at the end. There’s ultimately a lesson. It’s kind of didactic and it’s got moral to it and it’s teaching something. Exactly.

24:40 That’s super important. And these bad eggs are from Bad Egg Co. It’s like Sunnyvale. They’re in New York City. It’s got kind of a street vibe to it.

24:48 So I saw them skateboarding and I guess the music’s got a little bit of that street vibe too. Tell me about that choice. Is that kind of keep it young and keep it fresh? Is it also more fun to kind of play around with that counterculture vibe? Yeah, I think it’s also quite dangerous because that skate culture is brutal if you get it wrong.

25:10 So again, actually, we talked about the quality of product before we started. So we did, we opened an online shop. And actually it wasn’t, it’s quite interesting because that wasn’t for us to hit revenue numbers. But it was because the community were asking. So it’s like, okay, well, we want to do something but now I want to do it right.

25:34 So we went to a skateboard shop in Camden here in London. And I went in and I said, right, okay, look, we’ve got this project with it we’ve launched. We now want an online shop. And so they’re making the merchandise. They’re shipping globally.

25:51 But it’s good product and it’s in their shop in Camden. So it’s quality, heavy, I always say, I want it to be something that I’d wear. So yeah, it’s good stuff. Okay. And any other like street elements in here where there’d be like dance and…

26:11 Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, I mean, we started with, we’ve got skateboards and the basketball. I want to bring hacky sacks back.

26:20 Yeah. So I want to get some bad egg hacky sacks in there. Nice. I used to hacky sack. There was a great game.

26:27 I’m not going to be able to remember it again when I was growing up and it was California, California sports or something. But the front cover, when you went into the game, you could hacky sack, you could skateboard, you could surf. Okay. I’ve got a one of one bad eggs surfboard being made for me. Okay.

26:47 All right. So they’re going to surf as well. So they’re going to surf. They’re going to break dance maybe? Yeah.

26:52 Yeah, yeah. We’ve got Sean, actually Sean who’s in the other room. If you’re in Oxford Street this week, you’ll see bad eggs causing some mischief in Oxford Street this week. We’ve made a full costume and we’re bringing that to the streets just to cause a bit of mischief. Okay.

27:09 But again, there’ll be a good element to it. You know what I find interesting about you, Darran, is that you are a hundred and a ten percent confident that this is going to work. You know, you’re not saying we hope this works or we’re going to try this or you’re like this is happening and we’re going to do all these things and it seems like you already have seen where this is going. And I don’t know if that comes from your 20 years of experience and you know when you have something special or because you’re always successful in what you’re doing, but I don’t feel that or see that a lot.

27:43 Right. A lot of times when founders tell me this, they’re like, well, we’re going to try the TV series and we’re going to try the swag and we’re going to see how the token launch goes. You know, I don’t know. That’s just the thing I’m picking up from you. Yeah, thanks.

27:59 I mean, it pulls from experience. I mean, I’ve been in this business 24 years now, I guess. So I’ve got good friends in good businesses in good places that we’ve worked with for a long time and believe in sort of the visions that we set. Okay. I mean, we launched just before Bad Eggs, our first project, I guess, out of the Toykido studio was Pinata Smashlings.

28:28 Which we, again, I wanted to do something different. So we went Roblox first. Okay. But we have a full 5211 animated series in development, which is a $12 million animation budget for that brand. Wow.

28:45 And we have toys and publishing. We did a Chuck E. Cheese. So we had 300,000 trading cards we gave out at Chuck E. Cheese across North America.

28:56 Wow. And that, again, that was an IP that didn’t exist two and a half years ago. So, I mean, maybe I’ve got a real strong belief that people are ready for new things. Okay. And if it’s new and you’re honest and it’s all coming from a good place and you’re, I don’t know if you can swear on here, but if you’re not bullshit and you are showing and also making yourself available, I think there’s a lot of brands at launch that will hide behind layers of execs if things start to go wrong.

29:38 But I like putting my head up. And if it gets chopped off, then it gets chopped off. But I’d rather be available for people. In fairness, Gary, when I met Gary three years ago, I mean, he gave me his cell phone number, which I kind of thought was wild because, I mean, trying to get access to him, lots of people were saying it was difficult to get hold of him. And then he’s very accessible.

30:06 So, that was sort of a good learning from me coming out of Universal Studios where it was very layered and corporate to try and get anything done. Tell me about your relationship with Gary Vaynerchuk, maybe even tell people who he is that might not know. He also invested in Torquito and you were part of building out his Gary Vee friends ecosystem a couple years ago, which was a massive hit at the time. I think you put this project on hold maybe to help him and also good to remind us that you’ve been working on this for two years.

30:39 But what’s that relationship like? He was on our show, I think eight years ago he came in and obviously he’s huge. He’s just huge in the space of social. He’s known worldwide for bringing a lot of intelligence to how people use social. He’s built a huge brand where he advises corporations by also connecting with individual fans.

31:02 He’s a unique guy. He’s fascinating. He obviously has VaynerMedia, VaynerSports, VaynerX. Vee friends is where we met him. I was fishing with one of the kids from One Direction who was a mutual friend, so I was fishing with Liam.

31:24 Liam Payne showed me a sketch that he’d done called Lonely Bug. I just said, let’s send that to me. I’ll 3D rig it for you because we can do that because if we’re taking a sketch to make toys, we 3D rig stuff for production. I said, look, I’ll 3D rig it just in case you ever want to make it into anything. We 3D rigged it and then they called me and he’d met Gary and they were doing an NFT of Lonely Bug.

31:51 I mean, we’re going back over three years, I guess. And then Gary asked who had done that work. And that’s how I came in. And I was collecting. I bought a Vee friend.

32:04 And Vee friend, he dropped like, was it 600 or something? Or maybe it was less. He had been doing all these sketches over the years and he decided to turn each one into an NFT and then the NFT will get you access to the VeeCon event. Yeah, that’s right. And this is what I remember.

32:20 And they started going for some ridiculous prices. Yeah, I mean, I bought in. And again, I do Ethan dollars in my head because you never know what it’s going to be. But I guess at the time, I probably spent $20,000 on a Vee friend. But I’d also bought a world of women, a boss, boss beauties, a cool cat.

32:41 I mean, I was in, as I said. I mean, I was, my wife was pulling her hair out. I get an edge. Shit. But I justified it.

32:51 I said, I’m paying for an education, which my kids now use that fairly regularly if they’re buying things. I’m paying for an education, Dad. New sneakers. So yes, we met Gary. Actually, originally I pitched because we were, I pitched to represent V friends.

33:15 And so we actually created some characters that with his original sketches, there was a fly and there was a whale. So the size difference of the characters was if you look, again, if you look at our eggs, they’re very standardized and there is a rationale for standardization when it comes to my brain on day one goes manufacturing a product. So we standardized, I think, five characters of his sketches. And he said, that’s great. Could you do all 281?

33:50 Okay, so we did all 281. And then he said, actually, I wonder what they look like from the back because it was obviously flat art. So then we did 281 from the back and then the side and then the top. And then we missed our own drop because suddenly I think at one, I mean, it ran into thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of art that we did. But it got us close.

34:12 Gary then supported us as a business. And it’s been great. I mean, Vayner have been fantastic in terms of as a business. I mean, they do a lot of the media for big sports companies, for big brands, particularly in North America. So we osmosisly get access to some unbelievable companies, which already my brain thinks, okay, where can we put the eggs on to?

34:38 Okay, so you’re great connections into these companies. Yeah. Because of that. And he’s incredible. I mean, he’s been the dream investor of coming into us in terms of support accessibility.

34:52 So it was worth putting on bad eggs on hold for two years for that partnership. You know, it’s so funny. Yes, 100% because I go people first. Okay. Financially, it was a different time in the space a couple of years ago.

35:08 Yeah, you also had to get through the winter anyways. Well, that’s true. Yeah. Would you rather have had the winter happen and then launch eggs? I’m a big everything for a reason.

35:21 Okay. Yeah, I hear you. And even like we have, it’s one of my things when I’m talking to the community, because obviously, as we both know, you have to be very careful of how you’re advising or not advising people in the space. And my only advice to people, because some of the holders were criticizing people that have sold or like you can see this sort of room like this murmuring. Yeah.

35:46 Look, you never criticize anyone that has to sell something because you don’t know what’s happening in their life at that time. There might be a necessity. But if you do sell, never look back. Because if that does, then 20X, don’t beat yourself up because you had to do it for a reason on that day. And I’ve gone through some of that in our own household.

36:08 So I’ve had to teach myself not to look back because otherwise, it will chew you up. So now you’re launching in what looks like a bull market here in crypto and blockchain. It looks like we’re moving forward. It’s interesting you mentioned the NFT space and OpenSea that maybe it’s at its lows. I had Yatsu of Animoca Brands sitting there two months ago and he said, Brian, if you look at the volumes of NFTs that are up on this year overall, and a lot of people are shocked to hear that because NFT seems like a bad acronym these days that no one wants to hear about.

36:42 But I think like you said, total volume is up. And if you look at it, NFT was always the worst name for that product, right? Because most people associate NFT just like they used to associate the word crypto with something kind of bad. Okay, crypto is a bunch of people trying to make money on something going up. And NFT was something that people maybe tried to make money on something going up when in fact, an NFT is an unfungible token that could be your identity.

37:08 It could be a collectible. It is. It’s all of these things in the future. You can call it by something else, but it’s not necessarily one of 10,000 of one of Boy George’s things he sold in 22 on the back of everybody going crazy, you know? That’s only one example.

37:24 And yet a lot of times it gets associated with that. I always joke my seven-year-old son owns more digital assets than anyone I know, you know? And he’s comfortable with it because on Roblox he’s got everything there. And my dad, who’s 79, one of the smartest guys I ever met, doesn’t own any and doesn’t want to own any. And on Roblox, it’s locked.

37:42 Right, it’s locked there. It’s locked. Right, he can’t. And on Fortnite as well, it’s locked. Yeah, yeah.

37:47 Where, obviously, you can liquidate. Right, that’s the beauty of Web3. Yeah, I’ll pull down, but there’s still a… Yeah, same with Robux as well. Like, he loved Robux.

38:00 All he wanted for his seven-year birthday is Robux. Nothing else. Didn’t want to buy. Didn’t want to then. Just Robux.

38:07 And I think when he starts to understand that you can turn cash into Robux, but Robux, you can’t turn into cash. And you can say with the Yoke token, which we’ll talk about, I think his eyes will start to light up. Matter of fact, when he understood… So, they’ve been doing chores, and they have piggy banks, and I’ve been putting pounds in the piggy banks, and they ignore them, because those don’t mean anything to them. The day he found out that he could take that 20 pounds and turn it into Robux, he was like, oh my gosh, this is something that’s got value, because it helps me in my gaming world.

38:41 And so, I think when he realizes in Web3 that you can go the other way, and I think maybe he’ll have a moment like that. You know, it’s funny. My, again, got a bad parenting 101 here, but it was my elder son’s birthday. He was 11 years ago, and he got 200 pounds, and he wanted to put it all into Robux. And I can still see his mum coming down, and I said, look, you have to hand me the money.

39:08 So, physically. So, he sat at our kitchen table, and he physically handed me 20 pounds, and I bought the… Because it’s obviously going… But we’re halfway through, and I said, look, why are we doing this? This is a lot of money.

39:19 It’s your money. So, it’s your gig. And he said, well, because it’ll make me… I’ll be able to buy, I think it was the Tron bike or the Bugatti in the game, and then I’ll be able to do a YouTube clip for my channel about that content. And do you know what, Brian?

39:37 I was like, oh God, he’s understanding content. And I was like, fantastic. Like, crack on. And he did. It got him past a thousand followers on YouTube.

39:47 I mean, he probably could have got it cheaper if he bought them. But it was a really interesting process of an 11-year-old understanding that journey of you spend here, but you’ll get it back here. Yeah. This is what I always tell parents is that… And I think Yat said this many years ago before I really understood Web3 Gaming.

40:10 He said, as a parent, sometimes we think the games our kids are playing are the same ones we played. Or we forgot what it’s like to play a game and we just say, put the game down, come to dinner, you’re wasting time, blah, blah. And Yat always said, let them finish the game. And I think for anybody out there who’s a parent, understand that this isn’t the game we grew up on. This is community.

40:29 This is creativity. They’re learning math. They’re learning capitalism. They’re looking at economics. Now you’re learning the bridge between play and media and brands.

40:39 Those lessons are priceless. They don’t teach that at MIT. They don’t teach that at Harvard Business School. They don’t, because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. And yet this kid’s learning it in real time.

40:49 Again, they’re trying to teach my kid math at school. I’m sure he’s in a little interest. But when he has to count up his roadblocks and figure out how much that is, he’s like… I’ve got a speech that I do, so we’re in touch on it, but I didn’t enjoy school and was asked to leave two schools before I found a teacher that kind of invested in me and then off we go. So I go back and I do a speech at school, and I do a speech where I talk about gaming and people that we’ve been in the ecosystem with the Sidemen here in London or talking to Jimmy, talking to Mr. Beast.

41:28 So I talk about that because obviously the kids immediately go, oh my God, this is the best job in the world. And then I go through the whole speech again and I say, put your hand up if you’re good at maths. And I’ll be a kid. I’m like, okay, well, I need you because all those toys that went from China to the US, I needed to know the price of oil. I need to know the shipping cost, the freight cost.

41:55 Who’s good at music? I said, okay, I needed you for the score, for the game. And so I go back over everything and then suddenly the teachers breathe a sigh of relief because they’re not like, God, this guy’s teaching them how to play games. But each of those disciplines in education, and maybe it’s because I just didn’t enjoy it myself, but I think if you can teach those educational disciplines in a more creative way sometimes, not always, but for those kids that need it, I think there’d be a more positive outcome.

42:29 Yeah, I think in most cases it would be because almost all these children are engaging in these platforms now and the teachers probably don’t, they probably know about it, but they can relate to those platforms and they probably can’t relate to that classical education. So that’s fascinating what your son was learning and what my sons are learning through this whole piece. And they’re creating games now, which again is kind of, or maybe you’re going to create games.

42:55 I asked my son Damon the other day, I said, you ever create a game? He said, no. His friend is creating one. I said, do you ever want to create one? He’s like, no, I don’t think so.

43:03 And I said, maybe you should. And he’s just starting to think about it. But when he’s not playing Roblox, he’s watching videos of other people playing Roblox. This is what they do. They do it together.

43:12 They’re on FaceTime with their friends while they’re doing it. Which I mean, it comes back to your question earlier of where do we want to say bad eggs? If you want to catch a certain audience, I mean, I think YouTube numbers just overtook every US network for kids’ viewership in North America. No surprise, I mean, no surprise. But the challenge, and this is maybe going a little bit too granular, but when you get down to talking to one of the major retailers about stocking products, they’ll ask, well, what network are you on?

43:55 And if you say, well, we’re on YouTube, I’ll be like, wow, it’s not Nickelodeon. And it’s like, no, it’s bigger. It’s where the kids are now. And so it’s just, to one of taking my background and bringing it into this space now, I feel in a very, very strong place to educate. So educating some of these decision makers, which will allow the brands to get out there into mass population and mass adoptership.

44:29 Because it’s translating the narrative into what they might understand. I’ll give you a good example. I mean, some of the people watching will remember Moshi Monsters. Yeah, tell people about Moshi Monsters. Because I used to do a show called Silicone Reel, not London Real, and we interviewed about 100 of the hottest tech startups right here because this literally is the old street roundabout, aka the silicone roundabout.

44:58 Because a lot of tech companies started here because it was cheap rent, cheap real estate. And a lot of fintech companies started here because it’s right next to the banking sector, so people know. And so we interviewed a ton of all the startups. I think we did 100 shows back in 2013, 2014. And so at the time, Moshi Monsters was massive.

45:17 We never got Michael on because he was a little busy for us. But we had a lot of people that had either worked at Moshi that had come on, and they were always talking about Moshi Monsters because it was the massive digital success story of London slash the UK. And you worked for them. You were early on. So I wonder if you could tell people what you learned.

45:38 That’s 10 years ago now, or more, 12 years ago. Yeah, do you know what? It’s 10 years ago. Yeah. Actually, Sean was asking because our office wasn’t far from here.

45:46 Originally, we were at the tea building. Right, which is right near here. Yeah, and then we moved around here. Yeah, Moshi, so again, spotting a trend. I emailed info at Mind Candy.

46:02 I’d seen rumblings of this thing. It had thousands of users. It was an online game for kids, an MMO. What does that stand for? God, that’s a good question.

46:16 Multi-player or something. Multi-player online. So you could log on and kind of play characters and interact with other characters. Yeah, so the big one at the time was Club Penguin, which Disney bought for $770 million. Okay, that was British-based.

46:34 They were US-based or Canadian-based, Lance. Okay. Great guy. We’re actually talking to him at the moment around Baddix. Okay, very cool.

46:45 Because I like the narrative of potentially having the original Penguin be involved. So Moshi was effectively number two to Club Penguin at the time. So they were in a little office in Battersea, and I went in, I met Michael, and I said, look, I think you could have the next Pokémon here or the next Hello Kitty. And unbeknownst to me, they were two of the buzz. They were on his…

47:14 I’d love to be there. Anyway, so I did two days a week consulting because I was doing other things. Eventually joined full-time as employee number six or seven. Wow. And I was there for five years, and we went from, I think, 170,000 turnover to 100 million a year.

47:40 My role there, which leads very nicely into what we’re discussing today, so my role there was to commercialize anything digital. So the game, we built the game up to at one point to have 80 million monthly users. So it was a huge… And just to see this thing building and building, we went from seven of us to 220 staff. Disney put in a huge offer to come and take us, which we rejected.

48:10 We had Accel and Index as our two VCs, which I think ultimately we’re looking for the first billion dollar exit from Silicon Roundabout. Right. So they said no, or are they advised no? I think there was a bit of advice to say no. But also you guys probably didn’t want to sell the baby.

48:28 I mean, we were rocking and rolling. But interesting learnings, we were a big fish in a small pond. So it was massive here. But when it was big here, big in Australia, but when we tried to break North America, the US is a different beast. So actually anything you see us do as a business now, we look US first and we come back in terms of establishing partnerships because most of the big decisions from media still come out of New York or LA.

49:08 Or we look at Japan, hence why Tokido is Tokido. Right, got it. But no, so we took Moshi through that journey. And listen, great learnings. So I’ve got a great graph I’ll send it to you.

49:20 We were the most successful IP in the UK market for two years running. Star Wars was number two. Here, okay. Here. Wow.

49:30 We launched in 26 countries around the world. What didn’t catch up was the transition from web to mobile was missed. And that’s what was happening right around that time. 100%. Angry Birds was coming out and all that.

49:48 Yeah. And you couldn’t make that transition. Which means you fell behind and lost. And without getting North America to adopt, it was just going to die. Yeah.

49:59 Okay. Yeah. And it ended up just slowly going quiet. Yeah, I mean, I left. I mean, I joined Universal Studios.

50:07 I think there were still maybe 100 people in the business. Still now? When I left. No, I mean, I don’t know where they are now. Okay.

50:16 When you had that 100 million turnover, I’m just curious, like, how much of that came from merchandise? And was a lot of that just paying for the game or licensing rights? I’m just going to get my head around it. Yeah, it’s a good question. I can tell you because I remember being in a board meeting when it became 50-50.

50:33 I joined the Investment Club because we are in the biggest wealth transfer in history. The investment thesis here is we believe that early stage web 3 metaverse and AI investments represent the hottest opportunities on the planet. I’ve been financially burned in this space, lost a lot of money through lack of education and investing in the wrong people, both of them that were scams. But I still believe in blockchain and I still believe in the crypto space. Thanks to the Investment Club.

51:01 Now, five weeks in, I’ve invested 10 deals in the Investment Club. They do all the due diligence and research with the community by bringing the best deal float that we would never have access to. When you join, you just don’t become a member. You become a part of a big family. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.

51:17 You will never find a more genuine person like Brian. He is so transparent and passionate of bringing wealth to the masses through blockchain technology. Thank you, Brian. It’s a pleasure.

51:33 When the digital and the physical were the same. And as a business, it had been invested in as a tech startup. So there was a bit of a penny drop moment of, oh hang on, what is this business now? Because it’s 50-50. I’ll say one of my best learnings in the four and a bit years I was there, which again, come brilliantly into this space we’re doing now, was I was in Palo Alto at Apple because we were launching our next brand called World of Warriors at Minecandy at Moshi.

52:11 And it was a mobile game, brilliant game actually, almost too good, it was too complex. But my job was to sell this game, to go into Apple and Google and to get us a feature. And so I went into Apple and I said that we’d love a feature. We can offer things that maybe other games can’t at the moment because I’d already secured a toy deal. So I said, look, we can carry the App Store logo on all the merchandise to download now so we can actually feed back into this ecosystem.

52:45 And so we got the feature. And I remember sitting there in Palo Alto saying, oh, I get it. So we’ve got a show on Primetime TV. And I remember the guy from Apple going, what are you talking about? I said, no, you’ve got a feature.

52:59 I said, no, it’s the same. It’s just a different medium. So to get a feature on Apple, you’re App of the Day, which meant you were Primetime, you were, I don’t know what it is in the US, but in the UK it’s between 7 and 9 o’clock in the evening. Your show was Primetime. And I think if you now transfer that into Web 3, that’s what we’re doing with Bad Ex, is that we began the journey on OpenSea with a feature.

53:27 We were promoted. We got a good push from there. And now it’s about us now building around that to support that beginning. And so each piece of media, ultimately the first thing I look at is, well, how do you get it Primetime? So when we come on to talk about Yoke, it’s like, where do you get it Primetime?

53:50 What’s the exchange? What’s the ecosystem around it? What’s the support system around it? It needs to be Primetime. And that’s how I think about these things.

54:01 Another lesson that you learned from that journey. Fascinating. So let’s talk about Yoke. Now you’ve got the characters. You’ve got the NFTs.

54:10 You’ve got a lot of the transmedia coming up. Now it’s time to throw a token in the mix, which can also lead to all sorts of complications, right? And challenges, right? All sorts. From regulatory to customers, to then what happens to the price of it.

54:29 Like you said, Primetime, the utility of it. So talk to me about Yoke. Where do you want to start? Yeah, you tell me. Listen, we have researched this.

54:42 But again, we don’t dive straight in. We research, we buy. So I’ve bought. I’ve won. I’ve lost.

54:50 I’ve held. I’ve learned. Right. By the way, this is what Ape coin did. They did the apes first, and then they brought the coin later.

54:59 Whereas in the past, people thought it was coin first and NFTs afterwards. They were one of the first people to show you build community first. And then when they dropped that coin, I still remember when they did it, it was like the first day of the Ukraine war or something. And yet it went to like a ridiculous, you know, $5 billion market cap. And it proved, at that moment at least, the power of a community.

55:19 Because they just got airdropped the token and it had this massive value. Now that was two years ago. But I’m wondering if that was something you learned from probably a lot more since, I’m guessing. Yeah, 100%. And again, I think it’s widening the community.

55:35 So the token is there. Obviously, it’s a builder for us in terms of, if you look at the way traditional media, which we’ve got projects in animation, I mean, the way that you fund those animations are getting multiple people to put money into animation, you take it to market, et cetera, et cetera. So this is a way of, this is building a war chest for everything that we’re doing moving forward. And again, why I can be very passionate about doing this token is I know what we’ve already invested in the brand.

56:17 So this isn’t, again, this isn’t, what’s the best way of saying it? This isn’t a land grab, for want of a better phrase, but this is the building blocks. So it’s to help those building blocks to keep coming. I also like that it’s Yoke. It’s a great token name.

56:39 And I don’t have to have 350 bucks to get an NFT that only 1500 people can have. Now if I’m in your Discord and I love what you’re doing, I can get some Yoke. Correct. And this is another interesting question I’m going to hit you with. There’s also a meme coin craze going on right now.

56:55 And it’s really hard to find out lately the difference between a meme coin and a non-meme coin, in my opinion. I think it’s a real blurred line out there. You could call AI tokens nowadays meme coins because they have an AI trend and an AI name and people buy them because they’re AI. Yeah. And then we just invested in a meme coin that’s going to drop on the ton network and then the guys were like, well, it’s not really a meme coin.

57:18 We have $600,000 in revenue and we’re doing all this interactive stuff with our people. So this isn’t what you’d think a meme coin is. That’s literally just based on nothing. So I don’t know. These are the questions I’m asking these days.

57:31 I don’t think you can call something just meme even though your Yoke sounds like it’s going to have what we look at as meme characteristics because it’s got art and engagement. So I don’t know. How do you think about some of this? Yeah, well, we absolutely think of it and again, this whole space is full of phrases which I wish we could change. Yeah, like NFT.

57:53 Or a meme coin in this case. Oh, meme coin, yeah. Because it’s outdated terms. 100%. And it’s got a connotation to it.

58:00 So listen, it is a meme coin. But it’s a token for growth for you being in our community and the things that are coming. So then it’s not a meme coin. Yeah, exactly that. But it’s a very…

58:20 It’s got utility in your community, right? It’s going to, I’m guessing, plug into a lot of things that are going on. Or will it? Yeah, it’s a good question. TBC, I mean, not right now.

58:34 I think a lot of the… And again, just as a holder of some of these tokens and coins, I think, again, a lot promise. And a lot promise games are coming and this is coming and this is coming. It doesn’t really do anything. It’s a stop promising, right?

58:50 It’s a fraction of fraction. The holders of our NFT, some projects in the space have been able to give a royalty to the holders if their NFT is used publicly in some way. And there’s different platforms that have allowed it. I’ve been very honest from day one and said, look, we won’t do it at the moment because I can deconstruct what that looks like. So as an example, if we launch, which we will, we will launch bad egg toys probably early 26 and there’ll be collectible toys because, I mean, Moshi, we sold half a billion collectibles and I started at Pokemon.

59:38 So I know the value of that collectability, that virality, that swappable nature of toys. But if we said to you, Brian, as a holder of a bad egg, we’re going to give you a royalty on your egg that we’re going to sell. Now, your egg might be one in every 20,000 made. So I’ve diluted you by 20,000 and now you’re going to get a fraction of what the retail price might be or are you? Is it going to be a fraction of what the wholesale price was?

1:00:09 So suddenly now you’re diluted by 20,000 and you’re only getting paid a third of what the price was on shelf. So actually, by the time you distill it all down, I mean, it’s sense. And I’d rather do something more meaningful because our community is so small. It’s not like I’ve got 10,000 holders. I’ve got a manageable amount and actually some holders have placed it on 50 eggs.

1:00:36 I flew to Hong Kong because one of our holders had 50 plus eggs. I just wanted to meet them. And I wanted to say, why? And it was a brilliant dinner because he’d done his homework on me and it was a little bit scary in some way. I mean, he’d really done his homework.

1:00:56 But it was, yeah, it was a breath of fresh air. He said, look, your track record of Pokemon into Minions, working with Fox and Sony and Lego into Moshi. He’s not so far, so good. So if the trend continues, then I’m in this with you. And it was lovely.

1:01:20 It’s a really refreshing way that they were looking like he was looking at it. So you want to under promise over deliver? 100%. In everything you’re doing. 100%.

1:01:30 Super smart. Okay, so the NFTs right now, it’s the NFT. The token’s coming out. Come grab some if you want some. And then later, if there’s other things that happen with it, then great.

1:01:39 But we’re not talking about that upfront. No. And again, we see people don’t need that these days, right? People want to be a part of something fun and cool and interesting. Yeah.

1:01:49 And again, yours is slightly different than a normal meme coin because you have characters, story, transmedia, collectibles. There’s a lot more backing it up than just a couple of cool pictures on Instagram, which is what keeps a lot of meme coins afloat these days. Yeah. Absolutely. And again, it comes down to, I mean, we announced the Sony relationship yesterday.

1:02:11 That’s not a small company. Yeah. To have our IP and music kicking around the studio. Trading cards will be announced in a couple of weeks. The toy we’ve already shown, I’m trying to think what else.

1:02:27 But to your point, I’m going to say it’s a meme coin with substance rather than a meme coin with utility. So it has substance behind it. The investment club gives us a chance to think about what wealth really is and having the resources to have the freedom to live the life that you want. It was a whole new world for me to hear about cryptocurrency and alternative to the traditional banking system that we have. In just one month that I’ve been part of the investment club, I have listened to so many visionaries with new ideas in the world of music, in the world of finance, in the world of artificial intelligence.

1:03:11 When I have questions, there’s members of the club willing to support and help and want to see one another go experience and knowledge. So joining the investment club can bring you the opportunity for peace of mind, wealth, resources, community, and a more joyful time. And if they know Darran, then there’s probably some cool things coming in the future. Some Easter eggs, right? And talk to me about the token launch.

1:03:46 Is that a tricky thing to do? Is it hard to get that prime time slot? And is this coming up in the next few months or like what’s going on? Yeah, I mean, we penciled it in for this month. What network as well?

1:04:00 It’s a good question. We’re looking at Ethereum.

1:04:07 I’ll be honest with you, I’ve loved that. Again, maybe it’s just my personality, but the process of talking to the exchanges, to talking to the networks, to… I mean, this is… It’s absolutely great. They’re not too dissimilar conversations to other areas of business.

1:04:30 What I will say is there’s a lot of interest. I can be quite humble about that, but there’s a lot of interest. Why is there interest? Your background, the fact there’s a merchandising play, the fact that you guys really understand transmedia and you’re not just throwing a word around? I think so, yeah.

1:04:53 Listen, we’ve obviously… We’ve been in this space now for three and a bit years. So anyone that went to the first NFT NYC and went to the cool cats, cool topia in Fifth Avenue, all of the product in there was us. And we did it all. We’ve been in and amongst V friends.

1:05:14 We’ve been talking to Luca about some stuff at Pudgy. So we’re in these ecosystems because we were there before we were there, if that makes any sense. So we were in the space but helping other people’s projects. So actually, when we come in, there’s been a lot of support for us to do well because we’ve helped other people do well and monetize. I mean, launching…

1:05:41 We launched V friends in every Macy’s in America. I mean, it was the first NFT project to go mass marketing in North America. It was in Macy’s. Was there clothing with it? No, it’s toys.

1:05:55 We did toys. We did three toy collections. Wow. Now, again, my aspirations are huge. With Among Us, we sold 300 million products in 104 countries.

1:06:16 So we’ve got the network. So I mean, I was looking at last week, everyone was in Korea. Yeah. So I mean, my brain immediately is, okay, bad eggs in Korea at that event next year will hold a launch event in 7-Eleven or Toys R Us in Korea. Because my brain immediately goes, right, who’s my partner in that market?

1:06:38 Going into Singapore. Okay, I know who we do it there with. So actually, we can follow the crypto world around the world, but do meaningful things which will be fun to attend, which will give a slight point of difference. I’ll give you, I mean, I’m not doing my own industry disservice, but there’s two big events in the licensing world. There’s brand licensing here in London and then there’s licensing expo in Las Vegas now.

1:07:14 And I listened to a roundtable the other day with the guys from Claire Soros and the guys from Doodles. And one of them said, we’ll know when we’ve made it from this space, Web3, when we all have the big booths in Vegas. Actually, part of me doesn’t want a booth in Vegas. I want to be the event away from the event that’s just cooler. I want to be the thing that people go to.

1:07:42 So we’re looking at maybe doing something here in London. Where we bring the Bad Egg ecosystem and as well as the Toykido ecosystem together in some way and host, bring yourself down to interview. I mean, people can find this stuff online, but Toykido, we’ve just signed up a partnership with Ed Sheeran to help him with a brand building exercise. And so we’ve got, I think we could all, I don’t want to do South by Southwest because that’s coming to London anyway, but maybe we do an offshoot during that event.

1:08:17 But I truly, I think we can really help other founders coming into this space because I’m absolutely happy to share our story. And there are some scars to go along with it. And we haven’t got everything right. And we launched later than we wanted to. We probably launched the right amount.

1:08:41 Could we have done something slightly different? Maybe. We went one platform. So there’s lots of learnings that we’ve come across along the way. But the token, we’re absolutely locked and loaded.

1:08:53 We’ve done our research. Okay, that’s exciting. So soon that’s coming out. I think that there’s so many different Web3 IPs that have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to your background. They’re just Web3 people.

1:09:09 And they’re great in digital. They’re great in blockchain. They’re great in understanding these things. But I don’t even think they know how to make a t-shirt, let alone a series, let alone the music, let alone really bring it all together. I think they would just try to bolt it on here and there.

1:09:23 And I think we’ve seen a few attempts at that. And that’s why I agree. I think your expertise in the Web3 area is priceless. Priceless. And you’re doing it, and you’ve been doing it for a few years too.

1:09:34 So like you have the kind of chops to get everyone’s attention. Questions if you have the bandwidth to help everybody. But I feel like they’d be knocking on your door because there is some really cool IP in Web3. We know there’s some highly engaged audiences in Web3. And we know you can also make a large amount of money from a very small audience in Web3.

1:09:55 And we know that from the games. So there’s a AAA game in Web3 called Shrapnel. And I had Mark Long, the CEO here, who comes from like an HBO background. And he said, Brian, he said, we don’t need a million people playing my game to make this thing profitable. He’s like 100,000, maybe even 10,000.

1:10:12 Because the average spend could be something ridiculous here. We just have to make something really good that the community loves. Yeah, 100%. And that’s the same. I mean, I remember years ago being in Helsinki with Supercell, with Ilka, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale.

1:10:31 I mean, Behemoth Games. They were in the old Nokia building in Helsinki. And they had this board in reception. And it was lots of lights. I mean, it was like fireworks.

1:10:43 It was amazing. And as I was there, the day, and what it was, it was a clock going across the world. And every firework was a spend in their game. It was unbelievable. On the map.

1:10:54 On the map. Wow. Millions and millions of dollars a day. And they told me a story where they invited their top 10 spenders in their game to Helsinki, to a private dinner as a thank you. And these guys are gamers.

1:11:09 As you walked into Supercell’s office, you had to take your shoes off. And you all had your shoes racked up. The second time I went, I made sure I had good socks. 10 bankers turned up. Really?

1:11:22 Which is no disrespect to bankers. But obviously, the developers of the game, their fan in their eyes was a gamer. Was maybe a sneaker hoodie wearing gamer. But of course, these guys are spending 100 grand a year in your game. These guys are whales.

1:11:43 Right. So yeah, I agree with that comment. You don’t need too many whales around your project as long as you’re serving quality. Yeah. Because those whales will quickly swim away if you’re not.

1:11:56 Yeah. And then they have ownership too, which is the Web3 aspect, which is a beautiful thing. Yeah. They’re literally part of it. They own part of it.

1:12:04 And they’re engaged in the future of the project. I mean, at VCon a couple of weeks ago, I mean, we were three and a bit weeks after launch. And there were bad egg t-shirts at VCon. That’s cool. And I was like, OK, if we’d launched, what other media space?

1:12:26 Because for me, Web3 is media. What other media space could we have been three weeks in and merchandise in the wild? Very few. Because it takes a lot longer than that to build a fan base. Right.

1:12:41 So yeah. You just said Web3 is media. Like, how do you look at Web3? What is Web3 to you? How do you explain it to people?

1:12:51 Web3 is another channel to reach a community and fans. It’s a paramount. It’s a Sky Sports. It’s a space where if you’re in Web3, well, I’m a Tottenham supporter. I’ve lost half your audience.

1:13:20 So I’m a fan of the premiership. So I’m one of how many million people? So if you’re a fan of bad eggs, you’re a fan of Web3. So suddenly you’re in this community which is growing. But it’s growing from such…

1:13:36 Honestly, I can’t tell you how positive it is. From such a positive people wanting the projects to succeed. And helping them succeed. And almost like being your champions out there. Again, at VCon, people are coming over saying, oh, I’ve told my neighbours about bad eggs and now they’re buying a bat.

1:14:02 I mean, it’s fantastic. But it’s almost that sports culture. It is a fan base. It’s why people go and see Taylor Swift. I really believe that.

1:14:16 I believe it’s a new medium of media. Well, Marshall McLuhan, right? The medium is the message. And this is a new medium. And this new medium is the message.

1:14:26 I think it’s ownership. I think it’s digital property ownership, as Yat would say. And I think it’s owning a protocol. I always used to say there’s so much love in blockchain space. I felt it because we came into this space heavily three and a half years ago.

1:14:41 And it’s just like there’s a lot of love. You go to these conferences and people are passionate and people want to teach you and they want to build and they want people to be successful. I think it’s ultimately because A, it’s an instrument of freedom. Everyone gets to own. Everyone gets to partake in the future.

1:14:56 And whether that’s a subconscious piece, Darran, or conscious. But if I know I’m uploading videos to YouTube and they’ll give me a gold button, I got one on the wall after a million. And it’s great. Don’t get me wrong. It was greater 10 years ago.

1:15:09 But it’s great. But ultimately, it’s still Google profits that get reported every quarter and it’s not mine. And sometimes I just get a bit of a funny relationship. Like I feel, I don’t know, like I’m not part of it. Whereas with Web3, I feel like I am part of it.

1:15:26 And again, when the token goes up, I win. When the ecosystem gets bigger, I win. And we all win. And when we support each other, we all win. And I think that just brings different emotions to it.

1:15:37 100%. And the momentum in the space is so refreshing in comparison to other areas where we do business, frankly. If you look at the media landscape of, I mean, Paramount is being bought by Skydance and will Comcast then buy Cartoon Network. Like the media scan. But what that has done is bred fear at the moment in that space because nobody’s willing to take a risk.

1:16:14 Because ultimately, if there’s a merger, everyone’s job’s going to be up. So you don’t want to be the guy that signed the duffer or took the chance. So no one’s taking any chances in that space. We’re in Web3 and we’re all growing it together. And we’re all in this boat paddling.

1:16:31 Yes, we’re all taking chances every day. So we’re all taking chances. But we’re doing it from such a positive footing. I mean, this week, I’ve spoken to two other projects in the space. Just giving them advice.

1:16:48 Where I can tell you, when I was at Universal, I certainly wouldn’t have taken Disney’s call if they asked me, how did that go? Why did you do that? I mean, that wouldn’t, obviously, for a number of reasons, that wouldn’t happen. But the community, I said to somebody the other day, if you look at our Discord, if we blended the top 100 projects in the space and we blended their Discord’s together, that community will be more powerful than any network out there at the moment.

1:17:21 For IP, I’m talking. Right. And it’s coming. It is coming because you can see that cross-pollination and that belief. And I’m a big believer that we can sort of rise the boat together.

1:17:37 Yeah, it is coming. I want to get your thoughts on advice. I heard you comment once that a lot of IP aren’t prepared. They’re not prepared to make it big. And when I introduced you, I called you an entertainment strategist.

1:17:52 And I think you made a comment. I think it was about Squid Game, where you said, look, they had this blockbuster movie and they weren’t ready to follow it up with anything else. And I think Mr. Beast followed it up with a video about it, right? That’s probably the only follow-up.

1:18:06 I think they did a second one. But can you talk about that philosophy you have of maybe being prepared or having maybe a transmedia strategy or what they might have done right or wrong or maybe what they could have done. Maybe other brands can learn from this. Yeah, I guess there’s, I mean, there’s maybe three things. One, be prepared.

1:18:31 So we’ve come in. I’ll sort of put this all around bad eggs for context. We were prepared. So pre-launch, we were prepared for success. It’s better to be prepared than not.

1:18:44 Had we not sold out on that day, would we have stopped? No, because we already had the foundations coming. But it gave us extra value and solidified what we were doing. Take a risk is my second one. So the squid game quote, I mean, I could use it with a lot of IP.

1:19:09 Actually, I’ll go back to it. I’ve worked on Toy Story for, worked closely with Pixar for a few years. I mean, I came in to Toy Story 3 and 4, so I didn’t do one or two. But the great story of Toy Story 1, the big toy companies turned it down because it was the first animated series out of Pixar. And listen, in hindsight, Pixar at the time, Ed Caramel, John Lasseter, Steve Jobs.

1:19:38 I know shit. I mean, you’re going to back them. But no one wanted to take the risk because it’s the first movie. The guy that did take the risk won because he took the risk. So I will dive in and take a risk.

1:19:54 As I say to my wife, it’s paid education. And I said last week, don’t keep everything. So make sure you share it out as well because there’s no point living in an ivory tower because you’ve not won in that way. And every project that we’ve done since I’ve started, Toy Keto, we’ve given back. So we’ve done stuff with the Teenage Cancer Trust and we’ve done stuff with the Mind Charity, which is very close to my heart, Mental Health.

1:20:29 And now with Bad Eggs, we’re doing more public-facing activities. So it’s really just, God, just be decent. Good karma, good everything. Good karma. When you said giving back, I thought you meant like, allow other people to make money with your IP as well as partners.

1:20:49 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, so if you look at the clothing company that we’re working with, which is running our Bad Eggs store, we’ve really looked after them in terms of, because it’s easier to print, it’s going to sound so weird, it’s easier to print 10,000 shirts than it is to print five. It’s wild, but it just is. In terms of that, economies of scale and how you get there. So we’ve rewarded these guys for printing, it’s almost print-on-demand, and it takes away from their day-to-day business.

1:21:28 We’ve made sure that it’s made sense for them. Okay, so prepare for success, take a risk, and then give back. Yeah, look after those around you. Okay, that’s good advice. You said a big moment for you was walking through the gates of Pixar.

1:21:43 When did that happen, and what was that like? What did you learn there? When did that happen? So maybe seven or eight years ago. Yeah, seven or eight years ago.

1:21:57 I mean, you were walking into the greatest creative, however many, acres on the planet. I mean, it really was mind-blowing, and again, it was the way that they looked after their staff. The number of buildings I’ve been into, particularly from the tech startup scene, that it’s free food everywhere, and it’s free coffee, and it’s table tennis. I’ve always said to our CFO, we’re never buying a table tennis table. Good, or a slide?

1:22:30 Or a slide. Marshy had a slide. We had a slide. See, I knew it. That was the beginning of the end.

1:22:37 I mean, the only good thing about that slide was we had some WWE wrestlers come to the office one day, and they almost took it off the wall, because what size are they? But no, they just put in a swimming pool at Pixar, because they realized that the animators could get carpool tunnel syndrome from, obviously, constantly, and they’d read out that swimming helped, and so there was a swimming pool for the staff. Obviously, it kept the staff healthy, but it was still sort of slightly above and beyond.

1:23:13 Just walking through those halls, everybody’s desk was individually decorated. I was in there once when Brave, I mean, actually, on one of your walls here, there’s a picture of you in a kilt. I was in there when Brave was being shot, and everyone was walking around in kilts, but that’s why I was going to say that they lived what they were doing. So it wasn’t a job. No one there had a job.

1:23:40 They were living what they were doing, and that’s really what I’m doing as well. So you learned that from Pixar as well, and that infects your company culture as well. 100%. And also show things that the industry, and again, the industry is, when I’m talking industry, I’m talking animation, gaming, toys, that there’s a real thing where the industry shows at the end. So they’ll show you a finished thing where, actually, my team won’t send me a lot of stuff because they say I’m an over-sharer, but I would rather show and get feedback from the fans as we go because I think it makes it a better product.

1:24:22 And again, at Pixar, we used to go in before, I mean, I saw The Incredibles 2 in sketch form on a screen. And it’s amazing how your brain forgets that you’re watching a sketch after a while, but it was for them to get feedback on what could we take out of that movie to then make toys. And there was a real push and pull of bringing us in early to the journey. I’m going to get back to my word, journey. And so you learned that as well.

1:24:50 Yeah. And you’ve gotten so many lessons out of these. Now I can see why you’re so unique in the way you look at these things. It’s like some Forrest Gump movie. Each one of these things is like a lesson that builds the whole thing.

1:25:06 Talk to me about the way you think and maybe decompress. I know you were, I think, an early investor in calm and I think you were on the board. I know you like long walks with your dog. I didn’t tell you, but London Real was created on the back of me taking a meditation class in 2010. Right.

1:25:30 I took a six-week Transcendental Meditation class, paid too much for it. But because I did, I completed it and went through all the weirdness of it. And two months later, I quit my job in the city as a banker and started London Real. Wow. And so I’m a huge fan of anybody that can find a way to separate themselves from maybe the day to day.

1:25:56 Tell me about that with your journey. Yeah.

1:26:04 Listen, I love what I do, so stepping away is hard. We go down to Cornwall as a family. If I’m in the water, I can’t be on a device, so I’m forced into water quite a lot. Good. Yeah, I do take my dog for a walk most days, although if you ask her at the moment, she’ll disagree with you as we ramp into yoke.

1:26:28 Mental health is hugely important. I was a seed investor in Calm. I was one of the 10 seed investors, so we each put $25,000 in. Wow. Obviously, that business then went to a $2 billion market cap.

1:26:46 It’s amazing for us, and that helped lay foundations of what we’re doing now. When I started Twikido, I didn’t take a salary for 16 months to build it and get the right people involved. Mental health is hugely important. My own dad suffered, and unfortunately, this is therapy, but he took his own life. Sorry.

1:27:10 No, that’s okay. I’m uncomfortable talking about it, because even today in society, that piece of society is slightly broken in the way that we help those people or the tools that are available, and that’s really why I went into Calm. I sat with Alex and Michael, the founders, and they said, look, we’ve got this vision. We were living with my wife’s parents at the time. We just sold a house.

1:27:38 We were looking, what would our next move be, thinking about getting children. I had to go home and say there was 25 grand light on what we were able to do, but she understood why I needed to do it, because if that went on to help one person, then that was sort of me giving back slightly. And again, Laura’s very good. Listen, my wife’s great. She can see me sometimes, and she’ll be like, you need to just get out and just walk and just, I wish I ran more.

1:28:12 But yeah, just take our dog and come back, almost come back in an hour in a different place. Look, it’s so counterintuitive for maybe people like you and me who want to create things now and want to lead projects and do more, and we want to work all the time because we love it. It’s so counterintuitive to think, if you take 30 minutes off or an hour off, that you’ll be a better leader, that you’ll understand your vision better, you’ll be more connected to your heart, you won’t miss things that later might become so obvious, like what was I thinking?

1:28:47 Whereas if you take that time, and what I always say is like the longest 18 inches in the world between your head and your heart, and try to connect those a little bit, you’ll make, in my opinion, just fluid decisions because you’re congruent in that manner. And yet when I don’t take the time to be mindful, I find that these go different ways. And then the brain thinks it’s right, and then later I look back and I’m like, how did I ever go that far off? It’s like a constant check-in.

1:29:17 I’m very disciplined. Someone once sent me an article on Flow, and I’m very disciplined. If I’m sat there and it’s just not happening, then I walk away. Because you know you’re not in Flow. Yeah, I’ll come back to it, and it’s okay.

1:29:31 And I say that to the team as well. If you happen to force it, just walk away for a while because you’ll come back and suddenly it’s like, okay, I’m there now. Is that for creativity, really? Yeah. You can do other things in that mode if you have to grind through, but not creativity, right?

1:29:50 I’m also very lucky. I love the mornings. And that’s working very well for us as a business because again, as we know, a lot of the Web 3 spaces is popping in Asia. And that’s great because I’m up. So I’m sort of up at four.

1:30:09 And then I drop my kids swimming at 5.30. But by seven, I feel like I’ve stolen time on the world. So I love that time of the morning. Nice. And I feel that’s when I’m at my best.

1:30:27 That’s sort of three hours first thing before the world wakes up properly. Well, let’s talk about regions while you mention that because it’s really important. I went to token 2049 last year in Singapore in the middle of what I was told was a crypto bear market winter. And I got there and it was 10,000 sold out. And they never got the memo.

1:30:50 And I saw the craziest conference I think I’d ever been into. And I was like, wow, what’s going on here? And they were all super bullish on the space, really engaged, super positive. I’m going back there in a week. And apparently it’s 20,000, which I think will make it one of the biggest conferences ever in Web 3.

1:31:10 And so Asia is leading this charge, whereas North America is not. And it’s probably the first major technological innovation in 200 years. The US hasn’t led. Now, some people might agree with me on that or not. But I just want to make that comment.

1:31:25 So the Americans hear that because they’ve dropped the ball from a regulatory standpoint. And so now Asia seems to be leading the world. Tell me about, first of all, do you agree? And second of all, does that change the way you develop products? You actually see the customers as well.

1:31:40 So what do we see there? I absolutely agree that Asia is leading the way. Again, if I look at just the 50 phone calls and inbound interest we’ve had on Yoke and what’s coming, 70%, 80% have been from Asia. Wow. So yeah, it’s definitely leading.

1:32:04 Listen, our mothership, Toykido, is called Toykido because we’re obsessed with Asia and Japan. And again, I started with Pokemon. So I’ve always found that there’s sort of trend leaders in other areas, particularly actually in toys and kids’ media. I think there haven’t been a V-Con. I mean, how many did Gary have there, maybe 6,000 or 7,000 people?

1:32:36 It was refreshing. It was refreshing from a U.S. standpoint the spread of where those people came from. So it wasn’t as we normally see the coastal adoption come in. It was a real spread across North America.

1:32:52 But that’s individuals. So obviously regulatory, everything has to catch up. We’ll see what happens with the election. I watched some of the debate last night. I hid my dog.

1:33:07 So we’ll see what happens. But I do, again, listen, as we’re in this space, obviously we’re bullish and we believe. It’s funny, someone said the cat’s out of the bag and you can’t put it back in again because the cat’s claws will be holding on to the sides. The momentum is just too strong. Yeah, it’s now unstoppable.

1:33:35 It is. It really is. Now, you could say you couldn’t have said that two years ago. But now it’s unstoppable. It would be nice if the Yanks got their act together.

1:33:44 It would help out a lot. But we’re going to go there either way. And we will be fine. We’ll be okay without them. So we’ll see.

1:33:54 They’ll come around, I think. But yeah, it is unstoppable at this point. That’s what it feels like. 100%. How can people learn more about bad egg, learn more about the launch, learn more about the series and everything coming out?

1:34:12 What’s the best way and for future projects from Toykido? Yeah, I mean, socials. So we’re obviously heavily on X and Insta. Sean, who’s on the other side, does an unbelievable job managing our socials. Discord’s open.

1:34:29 I mean, there’s a holders section. But come in. It’s great. It’s positive. Come and ask questions.

1:34:35 I’m in there maybe more than I should be. But I love being in amongst everybody and hearing what people are doing and telling them the sort of airdrops that are coming to them. And I love sharing that positive news. So yeah, definitely socials. I’m happy for my email to go up after this on any of the socials as well.

1:34:56 I’m completely. Maybe sometimes too much of an open book. But I always believe there’s never a bad meeting. There’d always be something to come from it, even if it’s that I’m going to point them in the right direction. And is Bad Eggs going to be a focus for the next six months or a year, or will you also start bringing in new pieces of IP along the way?

1:35:22 Yeah, it’s a brilliant question. 100% new pieces of IP. Bad Eggs is absolutely the focus. The time right now, we bought this IP into the market in the perfect time for a gap. If you look at, and again, people that will watch this, that have boys and girls, they’ll know that Squishmallows has ruled the world and continues to.

1:35:53 My friend Judd and Laura from Jazzwares, who are part of Berkshire Hathaway, have done an amazing job with that brand, really nailed it. But from a boy perspective or agenda neutral, because our holders are, there is no barriers to coming into a Bad Egg. So I think we’re hitting it at just the right time for gaps in the traditional media space. And we see that from the inbound, obviously the inbound interest, 20 years of doing this, my gut tells me that we’re bringing something quite special.

1:36:36 Yeah, you definitely are. And it was interesting. I’m having flashbacks to the conversation we had inside our investment club after you pitched. And we have quite a few investments in games and a bunch with Animoca and these kinds of things. And so the team was coming back and saying, but that’s not what these guys are.

1:36:56 These guys understand merchandising. These guys have all this experience. These guys understand transmedia. We got a tour of your office and saw your collectibles. Not hoarding, collectibles.

1:37:07 Collectibles, yeah. Right on the edge. And so I don’t know. And again, for us, it’s a collective decision. It’s not my decision.

1:37:14 And so just the feedback was, everyone really believed that you were the guy that we wanted to be a part of this journey with. Thank you. And then that came across very quickly. And it’s interesting. I’m always amazed because they’re not all web3 experts.

1:37:31 They’re definitely not all kids’ media experts. And they’re definitely not toys or transmedia experts. But they get vibes and feelings from people. And that came across. And that’s why we’re all in with you guys.

1:37:44 And we’re really excited for this journey. And it’s a very unique part of our portfolio. And I can’t wait to introduce you to so many people in this web3 space because we all want web3 to win. And I know you can add so much value to so many other people in this space. So just looking forward to this.

1:38:05 Can’t wait. Can’t wait for my boys to play with the basketball and to get their bad egg hats. Yes. Your merch is off the charts. Thank you.

1:38:12 So that’s amazing. Looking forward to the token launch. We’ll follow you on Twitter. Is it at Tokido on Twitter? Yeah.

1:38:19 So at Tokido on Twitter, the links there will be going to Discord. Yeah. There’ll be links in there. Or just follow me, Darran Darnam. And everything will be underneath there.

1:38:28 Boom. And then there’ll be information about the token launch and all the good stuff going forward. Absolutely. Well, you’re a very calm guy who’s sitting on the edge of a token launch. Thank you.

1:38:38 But you’ve been there and done that. Not your first rodeo at this point. Yeah, it’s fine. So thanks, Darran. Really appreciate the conversation.

1:38:43 I’m excited to be a part of this. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. Thank you.