In this episode, we speak with Devin Finzer, co-founder and CEO of OpenSea. Before OpenSea, Devin worked at Pinterest and Google, and sold his previous company to Credit Karma.

OpenSea is the world’s largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFT's). Users can buy, sell, and discover exclusive digital assets like Gods Unchained Cards, ENS names, CryptoKitties, Decentraland plots and much more.

We discuss the evolution of OpenSea with Devin to understand how he and his team have succeeded in bringing together developers and users to create a thriving ecosystem centered around their marketplace for crypto collectibles.

Enjoy!

Show Notes

[0:32] Polyient sponsorship intro.
[1:12] Episode intro.
[2:01] Pitch for OpenSea.
[3:24] Devin’s background.
[4:51] What led Devin and his co-founder to start OpenSea.
[9:00] The thesis that drives OpenSea’s strategy.
[10:53] The tools OpenSea offers developers to open a storefront and how they assess which projects get whitelisted and make it onto OpenSea’s marketplace website.
[14:06] Explaining the ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards and how OpenSea views each standard from a strategic perspective.
[18:13] How OpenSea is thinking about target users and markets.
[21:13] What OpenSea has done to navigate the UX challenges inherent in crypto.
[25:45] How the OpenSea team leverages great developer documentation and smart contract capabilities to enable them to do business development with such a lean team.
[29:01] The biggest challenges and opportunities Devin sees for OpenSea to ensure it becomes a sustainable business.
[33:40] What Devin believes are the skills teams need to be a successful crypto startup.
[41:43] How is the world different five years from now with OpenSea in it?

Links

Devin’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dfinzer
OpenSea Twitter: https://twitter.com/opensea
OpenSea Website: https://opensea.io
OpenSea Blog: https://medium.com/opensea
OpenSea Discord: https://discord.gg/ga8EJbv