Ft. Daniel Alegre CEO Yuga Labs

Hey, good morning. It's great to have your energy for work, holy heck. I don't know how you do it, but man, I'm ready for the day.

Well, Daniel is a huge Rush fan. You know, I actually spent my formative years in Canada, in Toronto. By chance, I happened to be wearing my Rush 'Fly by Night' t-shirt. And I was playing Drake at the beginning, the mayor of Toronto. So there you go. Actually, I think the GDP of Canada is what... he is. I'm from Montreal too, so I feel that, trust me. Look, who I am is someone who's been in media and music space most of my life. Actually, my family is in the radio business in Mexico, so I've lived and grown up in music and media. And I've also been very fortunate to be at the intersection of media and digital. In the early days of the internet, I was involved in bringing AOL to Europe, believe it or not. Then I was working on Napster and getting Napster into the digital space. Then I was at Google for 16 years, and then I ran Activision Blizzard as COO for a few years as well. It was all about how you can connect media with digital platforms and bring fun and epic entertainment to the world. That's what brought me here to Yuga Labs.

Mexican? It was awesome. Look, I wish I had a radio voice like you do. I wish my voice was deep like this. I could do all sorts of things with mics these days.

Really do? Okay, that's good. Listen, that's a great compliment. Thank you very much. We work pretty hard out here at Rogue Radio, so that means a lot. But we're here to talk about you today, Daniel. So listen, the news was pretty big when we saw that you became Yuga Labs' new CEO. Of course, especially coming into a project where people love the founders, as a whole thing. So big shout out to the founders of Yuga Labs. When you came on the show, remember that with Ovie and Mando, we dug in a little bit into your past. I found it interesting that you were at Activision Blizzard's like COO and president, if I'm not mistaken, for a few years. But before that, you served at Google for 16 years as President of Global Retail, Shopping, and Payments. But also, by the way, totally reading your LinkedIn, President of Global and Strategic Partnerships. For me, I just found that interesting. So I kind of wanted to dig in first before we get into all things Yuga. Don't worry, all the Apes and the Kodas and everybody out there, we have a ton of questions about Yuga's current ecosystem and the future lined up. But I kind of want to dig into your past and let people know, because I think it's cool that we have a CEO of your caliber in our space and also at the helm of a company that's still just a startup, two years old, doing something and some change. So can I ask, like, what were your previous roles like, you know, Google and then going to Activision? Maybe you can give some more light on what you were in charge of over there, because I find that really interesting.

Yeah, sure. Let me give you the story as to how I made it to Google. So I was at BMG Music, which owns RCA Records, Arista Records, so all the way from Elvis Presley, Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston, a tremendous repertoire of music. At the time, this was in 2002, 2003, as I mentioned, we tried to get Napster as a peer-to-peer file sharing business up and running. So I was spearheading the business development of everything e-commerce relating to BMG. We tried to get Napster to be a legitimate site, and unfortunately, the record labels sued it into oblivion. They weren't ready for it. Obviously, this predates iTunes, predates Apple. There was this small internet company in the Bay Area that I said, 'If there's a company that understands what people really care about in music based on the searches, it's this company called Google.' So I actually sent a cold call letter to the very amazing founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and said, 'Let's create a music service together, you know, with BMG and our repertoire and your data of what people really care about in music. That is a match made in heaven.' So I made this impassioned pitch. They called me, and I was all ready to just do this joint venture between the two companies. I like partnerships, I like bringing one plus one equals three. And they said, 'Look, that's fascinating, but we're still a small company.' They were like 500 employees at the time. And they said, 'We just want someone to help us actually build our business internationally. Come join us.' I refer to that as my most successful unsuccessful pitch I ever did, because I went in pitching a music joint venture and they said, 'Come help us build an international business.' I joined Google in late 2003, beginning 2004. As I said, still a relatively large company, actually not that much larger than Yuga Labs is now. I opened up the Latin American business for the company, opened up Asia Pacific, actually moved to China to open up Google in China, lived in Singapore, Tokyo, loved APAC, really built out the business out there in Asia Pacific. Then I moved back here to the United States to run all the global partnerships for Google and also the shopping, retail, and payments side of the business. I had a number of different careers during my time there, but the one common thread was I was really involved in building huge distribution platforms, whether it was search distribution, Chrome and getting Chrome as a browser. I was intimately involved in Android and getting Android up and running. What I started noticing at the tail end of the 2010s, like 2018, 2019, is that gaming was clearly becoming the next social network. It was no longer that you play against a game, it's actually you and your team and your buddies play against other people. Gaming was truly going to be the next social platform after Facebook and Instagram. I looked around and said, 'Who are the companies who are best positioned for it?' One of them obviously was Activision Blizzard with Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, and Candy Crush. So I left Google and joined Activision. Could never have guessed that COVID was going to happen. Maybe if I had done my Google searches properly, I would have predicted it. But COVID only accelerated gaming as a social platform. When I was running Activision Blizzard, I actually started thinking about Web3 and how Web3 can solve a lot of the impediments to really making gaming a true social platform. That's how I met the founders of Yuga Labs, and the rest is history.

That's exactly what happened. I remember being so impassioned, 'this is what we're gonna do with music.' They just went, 'Right, we're not thinking about music right now. We're literally just trying to build a business from scratch.' And I said, 'Look, how could I not join this company?' They have a great culture, a great mission, very similar actually to Yuga Labs. And I, of course, said yes. I see the similarities here. It's actually wild. I just saw that you literally joined Activision Blizzard at the beginning of the pandemic. It says April 2020. That's when we were all... I was just watching a show reminiscing on the pandemic, called The Morning Show actually. I was watching that and I was like, 'Damn, I remember those days.' It was so weird. I started two days into work from home. But actually, what I found there is, as I said, I knew that gaming was moving into a true kind of mass-scale social platform that transcends geographies, is global in nature, brings people together, which I thought was great for community building. But as I said, I could never have predicted that the acceleration of COVID would happen. Because you're sitting at home and you're not allowed to talk to or touch anybody or be in physical proximity with people. COVID was only going to accentuate what gaming had. I knew gaming was going to become that, but I'd say if it was going to happen in 10 years, it happened in a year and a half faster because of COVID.

They did. The company still does. This is why it is so important from the get-go to have a company culture that is healthy and has a really strong, positive vision for it. The two founders of Google before the company went public, in their perspectives, they said, 'Do no evil.' Despite what people say about large internet companies and how they track you and how they use your data, at the core, Google was about making the world's information universally accessible. That really transformed a lot of people's lives. It went from poor people in India who didn't have any access to education to making that information available on a simple handset device. It revolutionized how information gets disseminated and brings people together. Knowledge is great for people to have, whether you're rich or poor. I think the community that Yuga Labs is building and this ecosystem that we have has a number of very similar characteristics.

Right, right, right. Look, Web3 didn't hit my radar because of the valuations of the NFTs or any of the hype. I was actually looking at it from a very simplistic point of view. I saw two things happening in gaming. One is obviously influencers are incredibly important. If an influencer doesn't think your game is great and they don't speak about it, no matter how good your Super Bowl ad is, you're not going to sell a game. Influencers know games so much better than even some of the developers who make them. They want to participate in the economy of the game. They have so much skin in the game, both in terms of the time they spent, but also they're starting to build businesses as influencers. Just like Ryan Reynolds became an owner of Mint Mobile instead of just a spokesperson, influencers want to be involved in the ecosystem. Web3 solves for that. The other part is a very simple aspect: if I'm playing Call of Duty and I've got my entire posse there, and then I want to go to another game like World of Warcraft, I can't bring my posse over because my social identity is siloed in that Call of Duty experience. I have to go on Twitter or Discord and tell them to come play World of Warcraft. If you really have gaming as a social platform, you can't have these siloed approaches. Web3 solves for that, where you have your PFP and the interoperability nature of Web3 makes it so I can be Captain Pancho on Call of Duty and bring my entire group over to World of Warcraft. Both those components—the social nature of gaming and identity, and influencers participating in the economy—Web3 is a natural progression for gaming. Once you taste what Web3 can do, an influencer is not going back to Web2. Once a player realizes your identity can port across different games and you can participate in the economy and potentially get rewarded, it's very hard to go back to Web2.

It's the former. Yes, we did hire Mike Sievers, who was a CTO at Epic. He understands the gaming space really well. And Spencer Tucker, who was at Scopely, is our Chief Gaming Officer. Obviously I come from Activision Blizzard. But that's not to say Yuga is becoming a gaming company. I actually don't want Yuga to be a gaming company. At the core, we're building culture on the blockchain. That's our mission. That means bringing communities together through our great storytelling, the evolution of Bored Ape, Mutant Ape, Kennel Club, and now CryptoPunks and Meebits. To bring those communities together, we're bringing unique experiences. Those experiences can be in terms of digital art, games, and there's a great affinity between our NFT holder base and games and game interaction. So we're going to be bringing new experiences that bring the community together and expand it, but it's not that we are at the core a gaming company. If you look at what we're doing with Otherside, we are investing very heavily. Mike Sievers as a CTO understands building tech platforms really well. Otherside is a way for our community to engage with new and innovative experiences, but more than anything, to engage with the community. People ask me what has surprised you about being at Yuga, what things you didn't expect. A few things have come out that I'm kind of surprised I didn't realize. Number one, the fact that our community is transforming how you build a brand. Think about how long it took for Mickey Mouse to become a multi-billion dollar brand. It took decades, and it was all built by Disney themselves. Think about Bored Ape and how quickly it became a multi-billion dollar brand. It only did so because the community helped build it. I look at the community as investors in this global brand that we're building together. That concept of social and community brand building is completely transformative and innovative. For someone who's been in the media space, you control your IP and preserve it tightly because that's the value. Web3 and what we're building at Yuga is turning IP and brand building on its head, saying our whole community is helping build it. Just like you are investors in Bored Ape, you have a vested interest in it being successful. I have no interest in Minnie Mouse being successful, but imagine if Patrick was part owner of Disney. Just like you're all part owners of the brand of Bored Ape, it's transformative. The other part is the Made by Apes. Not only are you an owner helping evolve this brand, but there are close to 900 new businesses that have been created on top of these brands, whether it's water, beer, coconuts, or clothing. That evolution of Bored Ape as a true economic generator is fascinating, and I'm so excited about helping the community build it out.

That's a great question. Look, we're looking at this from a long-term perspective. We know that markets fluctuate up and down, just like people questioned whether the internet had legs back in '99 or whether mobile had legs in 2008. The experiences are such that there's crystal clear value here. As a holder, what we're focused on is how do we continue to build great experiences. As a holder, you get access to those experiences. Look at an example like Dookey Dash, the game we launched back in February of this year. That gave a holder a number of different options. One, you could participate in an exclusive game only available to token holders, and you get a token by being a holder. You can participate in the game and get rewards by playing. That's the reward mechanism of Web3. The other aspect is you could say, 'I'm not interested in gaming, I want to trade my token,' so you can trade your token. These ongoing experiences that we're building, which will be amplified with the evolution of Otherside, give the holders intrinsic value in what we're building. That's why when people ask if we needed cash, we could do a mint tomorrow and generate a very positive return, but we don't look at it that way. We look at it in terms of the ongoing experience and community additive value that we can bring from a mint or new experiences. If you continue to build on that and evolve, the value creation is there. I get that NFT prices are up and down, and some came in when it was 200 and some when it was higher. But the fact that the value of our NFTs are still very significant, and very few of our holders are actually selling their NFTs—the float is in the single digits percentage—it really goes to show that people fundamentally care and believe in the brand we're building. This is a community-based approach. To your question on the differentiation between a venture capital investor and a Bored Ape holder, they're all intertwined. If we continue to do right by the community, build great experiences, and bring brand partnerships along, that generates economic value and increases the valuation of Yuga, which is beneficial for venture capital investors. But at the core, it comes down to doing what's right by the community and bringing ongoing, exceptional experiences. With that, all good will come from it.

Look, I'll go backwards. Why I picked Yuga Labs? I actually believe in the vision. The founders are immensely focused on unity and community. I remember sitting down with Wylie Gordon and Garga in LA at dinner. Gordon basically gave me the answer I cared about. We talked about the community, and he said, 'We fundamentally care about every single one of our holders, and we want to do what's right for them.' It wasn't a shortcut, it wasn't how do we make money. It's just how do we build the best community in Web3. That's what this company is all about. In terms of my transition, I joined Google when it was a small company, I left when it was much larger, I think 180,000. I went from like 400-500 when I joined to 280,000. Activision was a 12,000 person company. Yuga Labs is in the low hundreds. At the core, it's just being surrounded by great people, being action-oriented, doing what's right, knowing that when we are faced with a difficult question, you're surrounded by people who fundamentally care about our mission. It doesn't matter whether you're 100 or 100,000 people. At the core, you're doing something that impacts people everywhere around the world. I love the idea of building culture on the blockchain. It's an awesome part to be. Actually, it's a privilege to be the CEO of this company and have people like you who care about what we're doing.

Yeah, look, I made no doubt that I was very disappointed with what OpenSea did. In order for Web3 to really flourish, we need great content and great experiences to be built. We fundamentally care about creator royalties. It's a way to fund some of the fantastic things that people are doing, whether it's creators within Yuga or within the ecosystem. That's why I posted what I did. We want to help build this ecosystem because the experiences are what matter, and people need to get rewarded for the tremendous work they do and the risks they take in creating the content and experiences. I think this will be an evolution of where things are, but it's imperative for us as a company with the reach we do and the number of holders we do to stand up for something we fundamentally believe in. You've been hearing me say building culture on the blockchain. That is our mission. Whether it's us doing it or helping others, and that could be on the Otherside platform or the interoperability of platforms, we care about that and want to nurture it, particularly in the inception of Web3 because we're really not even halfway through the first inning of this evolution. In terms of your point, there are a number of experiences we can create that are not necessarily mint related. In gaming, we move into in-app purchases that happen within gaming, or transaction fees that may happen if we do shopping enablement, or partnerships with the likes of Gucci and others. There are a number of different ways for monetization in this space, and it's all in its very early stages. But as I said, without the community, Yuga Labs is nothing. We're absolutely focused on the experiences that matter for the community.

If I told you the answer, I'd have to kill you.

Look, we're obviously part of this ecosystem, and we'll figure out a solution and what's right. This is an important question. Mendo, I appreciate you asking it. It goes to the core of the economy of Web3, and we'll support it.

No pressure. The way you introduced it, all these things are going well, just don't screw it up. Look, I think it's relatively straightforward. As a company in a startup space, the hardest thing you can do is to say no. The easiest thing is to say yes to everything. It doesn't matter whether you're a 15-person company or an 180,000-person company. If you're not careful, you end up doing a lot of really good things poorly. You don't want that. You really need to stay absolutely focused on the things that really matter, particularly a company our size. We don't want to stretch ourselves too thin and not live up to the expectations and caliber of Yuga Labs. It really comes down to this: we have tremendous communities built around the brands—CryptoPunks, Meebits, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape, and Kennel Club. We treat those as the true brands and communities that they are. That's why we're staffing each and every one of those properly, having the events that matter. We actually have the second year anniversary of the Mutant Apes this Saturday in Miami, which I'm going to, and I'm very excited about it. Then how does that all port into Otherside and the Otherside experience? Otherside is obviously a big bet for us as a company. If you look at the experiences of how our community connects, they meet in person in whichever city they are, they may go to ApeFest, which we're doing in Hong Kong this year, they go on Twitter, they go on Discord. I see Otherside as a way for our community to connect and be together without having to go through all these multiple different platforms to unify and come together. If you want to meet online, you're going to have it on Otherside. That's the place where everyone will be able to get together, have great experiences, have other partners in the ecosystem build these great experiences. Then obviously when we have ApeFest or community events in real life, we'll meet in person as well. It's all about keeping the community together.

I can't wait. Look, one of the first things I did when I joined is I said, 'Where are our holders?' Obviously we have a lot of holders here in the United States, but they're everywhere around the world and incredibly passionate. When I went to one of my first community events in Austin, I had two people dressed in traditional Japanese outfits. They came to me and said, 'I would really love for you to come to Japan. The community is so passionate in Japan. Come meet us.' Actually, they gave me this. I keep it close to me. For me as a CEO, it's an imperative to make sure that I'm connecting and my team is connecting with everyone around the world. Asia Pacific is important. I did get to meet the community in Japan about three weeks ago. We're going to be in Korea, Singapore, and then obviously Hong Kong for ApeFest. I'm really looking forward to that.

We're not ignoring Europe. Stay tuned. Something's coming up.

Great question. We had a sneak peek for some of our holders in the United States in LA, showing them the evolution of what we're doing on Otherside. We're going to periodically be showing that, just to get community feedback in real time as we build it out. We just closed on an acquisition of Roar Studios. A phenomenal team, great technical capabilities. They understand music and the intersection of music and Web3. Eric Reed, the founder of Roar, is now leading Otherside. I'm so excited to have him as a leader for Otherside development. It's coming, but I'm going to disappoint you. I'm not going to give you a specific date. All hands are on deck building this. As I said, this is a big bet for us as a company.

First of all, the Gucci Koda pendant, I love that one. It's so awesome. I was lucky enough to get the prototype of it. I should have it back here next to my desk. The level of quality and artistry of what they did is fantastic. I'm very appreciative. Gucci, there's a reason why they're the brand they are. They care about the details, the same way we care about the details of what we build. It's a great partnership we have. As we build out these experiences with Koda and everything we do, it's all wrapped into an ongoing evolution. The way we work and the mission is all about the long term. It's these evolutions of the storyline of Otherside and Kodas, and how they'll be able to interact and interplay and have special features to them as the experiences evolve. That's what it's all about.

Right. Look, CryptoPunks, to your point, it is such an iconic brand. The community is so passionate and so art related. I've never seen anything like it. They hold it true and near to their heart. That's the way we're going to continue to evolve it. The Centre Pompidou that you mentioned and the partnerships we do with museums around the world, because this is true art and artistry to the level of being in the best museums everywhere around the world. We are in the middle of launching and creating a book that the community is helping us with about the story and history of CryptoPunks. We're going to continue to support the community on it. It's so iconic, so valuable from an artistry aspect, that we just want to continue to elevate it and support the community. Before we acquired them, they were kind of kept off to the side, not really focused on. We actually brought in a senior leader from Google, Natalie Stone, who is leading CryptoPunks. She has some really fantastic ideas and great vision for CryptoPunks. You're going to hear more about Natalie and what she is doing. She's been with us for a few months, but I've now elevated her to really be at the forefront of what we're going to do with CryptoPunks. She's passionate about it. When you get to meet her, you'll see she's fantastic. Meebits, to your point, lends itself to collaborations really, really well because it is so quirky and funky. I like the Lego idea. I jotted it down as an idea we should think about. What I like about Meebits is it has really broad appeal. There's a lot that we can do and a lot that we have planned for Meebits. Again, stay tuned. I think the Meebits community is not going to be disappointed. Come the next few months, you'll see what we're up to. We're not abandoning Meebits in any way. If anything, we're doubling down because it's such a great and quirky brand that lends itself to so many different creative ideas. We've got some of our most creative minds working on Meebits.

Well, how could I not say meeting you in real life in Korea in a couple of weeks? I mean, seriously, that's going to be the highlight of the decade or the century. I said the things that surprised me about being CEO of this company. The one thing that has been the most rewarding aspect is actually meeting community members and having them come up to me and not only say, 'Love the work you guys are doing,' but also give suggestions. Some of the best ideas, which is why we brought Jeff Nichols, as you mentioned, is because the community is so passionate about what we do. They're not consumers, they're community members. They're partners in what we're trying to build. When I meet people, I got a tremendous amount of support from what we tweeted as a company last week on secondary royalties. We're all in this together. The fact that the community is supportive and provides really good feedback, and we're all building this brand together, or these brands together, that warms my heart. That's what gets me up in the morning. It's exciting. I also just want to thank you all for the time here and for co-sponsoring this event we're going to have in Korea. It's going to be awesome.

Awesome. Thank you, everybody. Look forward to seeing you in the ether or in real life.