Ever surprise how buyers craft their “rejection letters” to startup founders? Now you can discover out — through a non-fungible token.
Seattle entrepreneur Rebekah Bastian on Wednesday launched a NFT assortment that includes an assortment of letters submitted by startup founders who confronted rejection from buyers.
The names of the businesses and founders are hidden — and unlocked as soon as somebody purchases the NFT. Among the corporations have gone on to boost giant quantities of capital or had profitable exits. Others ended up shutting down.
“The first aim of the challenge is to offer transparency and solidarity concerning the painfully-common expertise of receiving a rejection letter from an investor you actually wished to work with,” mentioned Bastian.
The gathering is launched below the umbrella of “Authentech,” a time period coined by Bastian after she couldn’t discover a class to explain her Seattle startup OwnTrail, a platform the place folks share the journeys of their careers and private lives, offering one another help and connections.
The costs of every letter are set by the founders, various from .05-to-.5 ETH, or about $65 to $650. The proceeds will return to the founders. Bastian will not be creating wealth off the challenge, although she did submit a couple of of her personal rejection letters.
“Think about proudly owning on-chain proof of an investor that thought Uber, Bumble or Canva weren’t a great guess,” Bastian defined in an e mail. “The unlockable content material (title of founder and startup) are like a traditional NFT artwork reveal, and the worth can also be decided over time because the startup progresses.”
Bastian has had a private curiosity in NFTs, launching a couple of collections of her personal artwork and beginning an all-woman funding DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Group).
“As a tech chief and lifelong artist, the intersection of tech and artwork is absolutely attractive to me,” she mentioned. “And I really like the potential that NFTs should take away gatekeepers and redistribute wealth.”
Bastian, a former Zillow government, mentioned the challenge suits with the values of OwnTrail: transparency and solidarity. However the startup isn’t diving rather more into the NFT world, for now.
Based in 2020, OwnTrail just lately expanded to all genders and launched a paid membership tier. It has 4,500 accounts which have shared greater than 30,000 milestones.
“We’re working in the direction of an enormous imaginative and prescient, of a world the place all people has a path that they use to unlock alternatives throughout all elements of their lives,” mentioned Bastian, who co-founded OwnTrail with Kt McBratney.