Afterparty Is Minting The Future Of Community Through NFTs And Social Influencers

David Fields is CEO of Afterparty, coming there after a career at Disney followed by working at Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company. He leads Afterparty along with Dan Rahmel and Eytan Elbaz.

Afterparty is making noise in the NFT (nonfungible token) space. They are looking to move live event ticketing onto the blockchain as they concurrently build a community of Afterparty minted NFTs which allow access to events hosted by the company. The idea is that Afterparty is as much its own society as it is the gate for events such as parties or music festivals.

The next ticketing event for Afterparty is the drop of 10,000 NFTs which grant lifetime access to purchase a VIP entrance ticket for their festival in Los Angeles at the Banc of California stadium.

The company is working to develop Web 3 protocols which grant access to their universe of events which may include their Halloween weekend NFT art and music festival or gallery showings at the Afterparty house in the Hollywood Hills.

This “club” which grants access to high demand events is attracting high profile investors such as Paris Hilton, Jason Calacanis, Blochange Capital, Acrew Capital and 25 more who are among the recent investors all of whom took part in Afterparty’s recent $4 million fundraise bringing their total capital raised so far to $7 million.

The company is scaling up to produce a music festival at Banc of California’s Stadium in Los Angeles for which admission will be sold in the form of NFTs from their “Guardian” collection. Afterparty will cap the number of NFTS to be minted at 10,000, each of which grants a lifetime right to purchase VIP access to the festival and lifetime festival membership.

Afterparty’s management team has several goals with their NFT ticketing. They would like to remove the incentive for speculators to trade tickets on secondary markets without compensation for those who created the event. By using NFT based tickets, the smart contract controls and pays a portion of each incremental sale to the organizer and/or artist. In addition, by baking into the product the right to purchase tickets to the same event at each next iteration, they have built themselves a distribution platform among know patrons. The special sauce is the specifically defined access which each NFT holder controls in accordance with the terms on the NFT held, allowing anything from first right of refusal to purchase a ticket to a subsequent event, to the right of entry into some of the hottest parties and special events in the greater Los Angeles area.

Field sees NFTs as a superfan technology which will eventually be as common as websites. The festival they launched in Las Vegas was successful, now to be followed by the Los Angeles festival. These festivals along with the smaller intimate events which Afterparty holds periodically knit together and reinforce the value of joining the community in the same way you would join a social club, although here your membership comes through purchase of an NFT which grants access.

To facilitate conversion of the non-digital natives to Web 3 protocols, the team has incorporated the ability to purchase NFTs with nothing more than a credit card and Afterparty will custody the NFT. The NFTs will be tradeable, making them more like an asset than a souvenir.

David and I had a great conversation. Here, below is the discussion in both video and audio podcast format:

Afterparty’s true innovation is the way in which they have built a community of influencers who are leveraging their following to invite them into their community. The insight to use the reach of influencers in this fashion may in fact become the differentiator for Afterparty. As each new entrant into the ticketing space learns just how difficult it is to compete with the giant established ticketing companies, many of who are already publicly traded, they pivot and build out the niche which best serves them. The cost to take ticketing rights away from the established players is beyond the reach of almost any new entrant. As a result, the game becomes one of push rather than pull. If the NFT on offer provides enough differentiation or access to make the consumer base really, really want it, they will sell. Absent those accelerators, the public at large is rather indifferent to the mechanism of how they gain entry to an event. There only true hot button is getting past the gate check with the least possible frustration.

Afterparty’s success with their minting parties and the buzz they are gathering for the events which they host demonstrate a path by which a new brand can gain traction. Adding influencers with the weight of Sia, Nile Rodgers, Heidi Klum, Josh Duhamel and Echosmith further incites demand. The way in which Afterparty continues down this path will likely enhance their chances of building a lock solid community which can be counted upon to turn up again and again, instead of simply selling NFTs to flippers and traders. David Fields believes in his project, and I believe in him. It will be interesting to watch this next year play out in the great NFT sales thunder dome.