Web3 CMO Stories

Redefining Gaming and Content Creation in Web3 with Casey Grooms, Co-Founder of SoulBound | S4 E35

• Joeri Billast • Season 4

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How does a financial analyst become a tech entrepreneur at the forefront of Web3 gaming?

Join us as Casey Grooms, co-founder of Soulbound, shares his incredible transformation from crunching numbers at Wells Fargo to revolutionizing the gaming industry. Discover how Casey’s early ventures into Web3 in 2017 with a music tech company set the stage for Soulbound's evolution.

Initially focused on tracking in-game achievements, Soulbound has now grown into a vibrant social gaming platform that offers a Twitch-like experience specifically for Web3 gamers. Casey’s journey and insights offer a captivating glimpse into the future of gaming and content creation.

Casey also reveals groundbreaking revenue models that are changing how gamers and micro-streamers monetize their passion in the Web3 space. Imagine transitioning from traditional gaming models to earn-to-play systems where your engagement translates to real rewards!

Soulbound's bounty boards, user-generated content, and community-building features provide multiple income streams. Exciting innovations like integrated live streaming and prediction markets promise even more opportunities for creators to boost their earnings. Plus, get a sneak peek into Soulbound's upcoming Telegram app designed to gamify streaming and betting. Don’t miss out on this chance to learn how Web3 is redefining what it means to be a gamer and a content creator.

This episode was recorded through a Podcastle call on August 1, 2024. Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/redefining-gaming-and-content-creation-in-web3-with-casey-grooms-co-founder-of-soulbound/

Casey:

Am I going to pick my nose in the next 30 seconds or not? Am I going to drink this monster or Red Bull energy drink, or am I going to win or lose this match?

Joeri:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I am your podcast host, and today I'm excited to be joined by Casey. Hello Casey, how are you?

Casey:

Hi everyone, it's good to be here. Thank you, Joeri, for having me.

Joeri:

Happy to have you on the show, Casey Guys, if you don't know, Casey Casey Grooms is a co-founder of Soulbound. It's an innovative social gaming platform. With a career that began as a financial analyst at Wells Fargo, Casey has co-founded several successful ventures, including Bonavu and PocketMath, which became the world's largest self-serve mobile advertising platform. He continues to innovate in the tech world with investments in startups like Uninstallio and Courier, a generative AI digital twin startup. So welcome, Casey. You really had a fascinating journey from financial analysis to founding multiple startups in different fields. So what drew you to the world of Web3 and what excites you the most about this space?

Casey:

Sure. So, yeah, it's been an interesting road and I first started dabbling in Web3 around 2017, when the first kind of like wave took off with Ethereum, and around that time I was building a music company, a music tech company, that was founded on the premise of trying to help artists reach more of their audience and fans and support them in various capacities. As I was building this app, it turned into kind of like a social network for artists and their fans in which each artist can instantly create their own token and turn it live and essentially, the fans can buy into the token. Especially if you discover music and artists early, you get into that artist's token fairly early and obviously can benefit from if there's more demand of that artist in the coming years.

Casey:

And I found it with a woman who was the COO and essentially legal counsel for Parkwood Entertainment, which is Beyonce's entertainment company, and she helped Beyonce for about six plus years on basically managing her empire and helping Beyonce just earn more money and capitalize on Beyonce's IP.

Casey:

But she grew disgruntled with a lot of the big artists taking all the money and wanted to figure out a way where I ended up positioning it as decentralizing the landscape where artists can now come to the record table, or come to the table to the record artists and other record labels and sign a deal that's not franchising to the artists themselves.

Casey:

And if you had more backing or more money in the bank or a pool of funds that maybe you raised from your fans and then you came to the table to sign a deal, you would probably get a better opportunity than otherwise. And so we built this and we launched this during South by Southwest in 2018, just around the time when the 2018 crash was happening and everything was imploding, and we decided to just take it off the table. We didn't ICO at that point and go our separate ways and building and tinkering up with different things. So that's my journey into the crypto space, aside from just making, dabbling in different investments and buying dgen coins back in the 2017, 2018 days.

Joeri:

Yeah, that's an interesting story and people can even even recognize the value for artists. so, casey, can you share the vision and the mission behind Soulbound and how it aims to revolutionize social gaming within the Web3 ecosystem?

Casey:

Yes. So we started Soulbound about two years ago on the premise of tracking your in-game achievements throughout what was then the metaverse was a big name and Web3 gaming generally speaking. So if you're familiar with steam and how steam works, with all your achievements and badges and aim, can set up this and you can auto attribute and track what you're doing. We want to take this concept for the eb3 world because steam was, and it still is, very against like crypto-based games or token or NFT-based games. I didn't want to alienate their users and audience and community. So we started with this premise of tracking your in-game achievements and quests and performing quests for that. It has since evolved over the last two years to the next evolution of that was a social gaming platform which took all your in-game quests and every time we partner with a game we can track your in-game events. Let's say you do a double backslip and a headshot and you get rewarded for that or an achievement for that. We track that, post it to your profile and it's there forever. We track that, post it to your profile and it's there forever. The next thing we wanted to do was that was boring in and of itself because there was no stickiness for the user to come back and engage in the platform. Users would bounce, or it was just more of a farming ecosystem that got set up, and so we added UGC elements into this, and so currently you can go to the platform and it'll show essentially like a time feed of everyone's game elements and what are they doing in a game right now. They post screenshots, they can upload gameplay clips and twitch videos into the platform and everyone can just like, comment and share what they're doing within gaming as a whole, but particularly mostly within Web3 gaming, and this started getting a lot more traction and we really ramped up users and game partnerships once this was released. Where things even more fun, I guess you could say, is the evolution of this into a live streaming platform, which is what we're building and launching, uh, end of august of this year, and this is essentially a twitch for Web3 gaming, or just twitch for Web3, as you would imagine, or potentially imagine, what twitch would look like if they were working with a web built twitch in a Web3 native environments, and this is something that we've been getting a lot of traction with.

Casey:

We currently have embedded twitch api and all the twitch streams into the platform where users can stream the game and then they get paid out immediately. And we work with different games. For example, we have done campaigns with shrapnel and parallel. We've just completed a new campaign with parallel, just a couple weeks ago, and we have done campaigns with shrapnel and parallel. We've just completed a new campaign with parallel just a couple weeks ago, and we have a current campaign live with nifty island where nifty island puts up what we call a bounty. So we have a bounty board and nifty island goes in, puts up in a pool of funds let's say, say, 5, 10, 20k of USDC, or if they have a token, they could put that same amount in the token and it starts to get distributed to any user who streams the game for a certain allotment of time.

Casey:

So, as long as the streamer is fulfilling the campaign requirement, which is sometimes it's just stream the game for one hour and you get paid $20, $30. Stream the game for two hours and invite a couple of friends to chat and engage into the game In your live stream. Those have boosted rewards. So we've just been building out tools to operationalize all of bounties and essentially stream and earn capabilities within the new Soulbound platform. The new Soulbound platform. We will then have our own Soulbound streaming ecosystem and infrastructure behind the scenes. So if you stream directly on Soulbound as a Soulbound streamer, you're going to earn more rewards and boosted features and various different things that you could do in the platform. That you cannot do if you're just a Twitch streamer or Kik streamer and we're just embedding your stream into the platform. So this is something that we're very excited about, and the evolution of where we got started with questing into social gaming and now into social gaming as a live streaming entertainment platform.

Joeri:

Yeah, so the role of streamers and content creators is really evolving in the Web3 gaming space, but what can ou companies do to support and harness this user-generated content in an effective way?

Casey:

The users right now. So we're tracking their UGC, their user-generated content, in terms of giving them rewards for creating content within our game partners. The games themselves absolutely love UGC and the elements that it's bringing into their game because it's just bringing more engagement and deeper community. I guess you could say bond, where gamers are chatting with each other more, whether that's in Discord or Soulbound, and, of course, just having fun with creating different worlds or skins and then sharing that and showing it off, as Soulbound is helping you flex those moments right and show off those moments with each other. So the engagement levels have been really good and now games are just coming to us to asking how can they do this, but in a self-serve capacity, so they can obviously just start doing it themselves and managing it themselves, because right now we help handhold and manage it. But we're building more tools as fast as possible to help facilitate the games to start to create these opportunities themselves.

Joeri:

Casey, there's often talk about the gap between Web2 and Web3 gaming. What do you think the Web3 industry needs to do to attract traditional gamers and make this transition seeming less?

Casey:

I think not focusing on a token price and trying to sell teas, or it seems it's. Web3. Gaming has become similar to, in the Web3 ecosystem, more of very much a cash grab and the developers are more focused on token price versus maybe making a game fun and the experience fun for a traditional Web 2 gamer. So when games I guess when more AAA rated games start to come out within the Web 3 ecosystem and the mechanics are not focused so much on the token price and cashing out the, the investors and the, the founding team, it's and it becomes more about the experience of the game itself. What gameplay mechanics can you have fun with if you do include some kind of like token elements or NFT elements, even if the NFT elements are just your game assets and game skins or a battle pass, that's, your on-chain battle pass system. That's when I think the early younger generation of gamers who are currently playing Roblox and some of the fortnite users will start to take an interest in Web3 gaming. But I I don't.

Casey:

I think we've passed that potential with the older generation of gamers who are very much stuck in the mindset of when you grew up with. A game right there costs 50, 60, 70 dollars. You play the game for 10, 20, 30, 40 hours. You start to now start to buy additional game packs and battle pass for that game as it continuously updates with new skins and weapons and items to use. It's this type of game right? I think it's.

Casey:

If they're not coming to web 3 and they're gonna they're gonna stay with like within their web 2 ecosystem. We really only have the opportunity to attract the younger generation I'd say these are roughly 21 and under currently into the web 3 space by helping figure out also different earning mechanisms for playing the game, whereas everyone's gotten used to paying to play and free to play, where you need to buy upgradable assets and stuff. And if we could start to shift this towards how to get paid to play, but not so much worried about the token price, but my engagement and what my time is worth as a gamer, how do I enjoy the fruits of my labor and my energy and playing the game? Enjoy the fruits of my labor and my energy and playing the game.

Joeri:

Casey, one of your expertise areas is new revenue models for micro streamers. Could you elaborate on some of the innovative models that are emerging and how they can sustain and grow in the Web3 space?

Casey:

Yes, so previously mentioned were.

Casey:

What we've been innovating on right now is the bounty boards, and the bounty boards are a direct way for any gamer whether they're a streamer or not or want to become a streamer is to, as they're playing games, they're earning bounty, to stream and show off what they're doing in the game to their friends or audience.

Casey:

So this has been our first major effort to innovate the stream and earn, or what we're like coining the stream fly space. Second thing is, as a soulbound streamer specifically will be creating unique content for the Soulbound platform. Every minute that they stream on Soulbound will earn them a token amount from our upcoming token drop. So, as they're streaming, there'll just be essentially a ticker on the platform that shows how many tokens they're earning per minute as a stream. Secondly, they earn from accomplishing different quests in the platform and as artists a UGC type of artists they create stickers, emotes and wallpaper for Soulbound and they're able to sell any of these into our audience and community through our NFT marketplace that's very specifically set up just to service the Soulbound community for game stickers, skins, items, weapons, as well as like emotes. When you're streaming they have like different sticker emotes as and wallpaper for your upcoming profile.

Joeri:

Okay, you mentioned community already a few times, so community building is really crucial in the Web3 world. What are some of the strategies that you have found the most effective in building and nurturing vibrant communities around your projects?

Casey:

We've been finding to collaborate with games and our game partnerships to merge our communities into one, and so every night we host daily and weekly tournaments and game nights with both communities together where we all live stream the game, play the game together and, whether it's a tournament based game night or just a general fun to play game night, that's been something that's been working really well to activate the communities and create engagement and show how the platform works and operates and get the community used to submitting their UGC.

Casey:

After so, all these gamers, they're creating UGC unknowingly and we're now helping them. Hey, this is when you're playing with us and these game nights. This is how you take a clip of the video or take a clip of the gameplay that you just did and submit it on Soulbound so you can start earning essentially token allocations and NFTs or game assets from both Soulbound and the game. That were all of our game partners. So the community engagement has been very crucial to helping our early audience learn how the platform works and how to get set up as a streamer and potentially start a new career as a streamer. But they're all doing it just through starting to attend a lot of our game nights.

Joeri:

I know you're working on lots of amazing new things, so maybe what are the fun new possibilities in live streaming today? Yeah, I'm curious to hear what is coming up.

Casey:

Sure, we've been tinkering around a lot with what would Web3 look like as a native streaming setup and or what would a streaming setup look like as native Web3 infrastructure. Play and prediction markets have become very fun and useful in the world just to help figure out what the odds are of something are going to happen, and we've now started to implement this within the live streaming space, where users can, and streamers can, set up polls on an active stream that they're watching. These could be very fun. Random things to something like am I going to pick my nose in the next 30 seconds or not? Am I going to drink this monster or Red Bull energy drink? Or am I going to win or lose this match, or am I going to die within the next three minutes?

Casey:

And essentially, all of these little pulls as a betting mechanism is what we believe is going to start to drive a little more revenue to the content creator, and we've been specifically building a setup for this and we're going to launch all of this simultaneously when we launch the new platform end of August with the Telegram app itself.

Casey:

So any stream and from Soulbound will be embedded in this Telegram app and we're looking to really ramp up users, where we're going to give away a bunch of credits to anyone who comes on board. This new Telegram app and the whole Telegram app is just specifically based on watching streams and betting on the potential outcomes of any of these random questions that come up within a stream from any of our streamers or users and game partners. So we're really looking forward to this and seeing how this can move the needle for just gamifying the streaming ecosystem as well as content creators earning money, because they obviously earn a percentage of all of these bets that are going to happen within the stream itself. So we're just trying to figure out various ways to drive more revenue and profits to the content creator for their time and efforts and figuring out a fun way to do that at scale.

Joeri:

I think AC people that are listening. They are really curious to know more about everything that you're building, about your project, about Soulbound. So if people would like to learn more, where would you like me to send them?

Casey:

Go to soulboundgg and you can interact with the platform there. Our Twitter is soulbound, underscore g, and there's a link to our Discord and website there as well. That can get you integrated into our community, learn more about the platform, the games that we have listed, as well as our upcoming token launch. You can DM me on Twitter essentially Starfucker, but S-T-A-R, b-x-k-r that's my Telegram and Twitter name, and Casey at soulboundgg will be my email if they want to get in touch.

Joeri:

Okay, perfect, thank you, casey. Thank you so much for being my guest on the show. It was a pleasure.

Casey:

Yes, pleasure, Joeri. Thank you for having me being my guest on the show.

Joeri:

It was a pleasure, yes, pleasure, Joeri. Tha Oknk you for having me. Guys, an amazing episode. There were some hiccups during the recording. I don't know if you noticed it, but I'm really happy that I had Casey on the show. If you think that this episode is really useful for people around you, be sure to share this episode with them. If you're not yet subscribed to our show, this is a really good moment to do this. If you haven't given me a review yet, please do that. It really helps me to reach a bigger audience and, yes, I hope to see you back next time. Take care.

Casey:

All right, Bye. Thank you everyone.

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