The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Opensea Founder, Devin Finzer on Scaling GMV from $150M to $3BN in 18 Months, How Brands and Celebrities Will Harness NFTs To Change Their Business, The Impact of NFTs on Gaming & What is in Devin's Metamask Wallet?!

Jan 14, 2022

Devin Finzer, Founder and CEO of OpenSea, shares insights from creating the world's largest NFT marketplace. He discusses how OpenSea skyrocketed from $150M to $3BN in GMV, highlighting critical moments that defined its success. Devin delves into the future of NFTs, predicting how brands and celebrities will leverage them to transform their businesses. He also tackles the intersection of NFTs and gaming, the challenges in market fluctuations, and personal reflections on time management and mentorship in the fast-evolving digital landscape.

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ANECDOTE

OpenSea's Origin

Devin Finzer's interest in crypto led him to Y Combinator with a decentralized bandwidth marketplace idea.
Inspired by CryptoKitties, they pivoted to OpenSea, the NFT marketplace.

INSIGHT

NFTs Explained

NFTs grant ownership of digital assets similar to physical items, enabling actions like selling or gifting.
Unlike in-game items, NFTs offer broader property rights and transferability.

INSIGHT

NFT Properties

NFTs' key features include immutability, liquidity, and global transferability.
These properties are fundamental building blocks for novel applications.

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Devin Finzer is the Founder & CEO @ Opensea, the world's first and largest NFT marketplace allowing you to discover, collect, and sell extraordinary NFTs. To date, Devin has raised over $423M for the company with their last $300M round valuing Opensea at $13.3BN. Before changing the world of NFTs, Devin co-founded ClaimDog which was acquired by Credit Karma and before founding ClaimDog, Devin was an engineer at Pinterest. Do want to say, I always love Semil Shah's startup of the year, for 2021 it was Opensea, check out his piece here.

In Today’s Episode with Devin Finzer You Will Learn:

1.) How Devin made his way into the world of NFTs and came to found the first and largest NFT marketplace in the form of Opensea?

2.) The Scaling Story:

What were the first early signs that Opensea was working when they were in YC? What core metrics did they look at to determine success?
Given NFTs not being "hot" at the time, how was the fundraising process for Opensea coming out of YC? What were the early investors most excited about?
What was the inflection point when Opensea and NFTs really started to take off? What most surprised Devin about the way in which the inflection point happened?
When scaling from $150M to $4BN in GMV, what are the first things to break in a company?
How does Devin maintain company morale with such volatile crypto and NFT markets?

3.) The Next Decade of NFTs:

How does Devin predict large brands and companies will utilise NFTs for their businesses?
In what ways does Devin think creators and celebrities will use NFTs moving forward to create more efficient business models?
How does Devin respond to the statement, "NFTs do more to harm than help income inequality?"
What are Devin's biggest concerns moving forward when analysing the NFT market?
How does Devin see the future for the development and experimentation of NFTs?

4.) The Future of NFT & Gaming:

How does Devin see NFTs impacting the world of gaming most?
How does Devin think about interacting with these gaming communities that are external to the centralised Opensea marketplace?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Devin Finzer

Devin’s Favourite Book: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow