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?!

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