Investing in Bitski

Sriram Krishnan

Posted May 6, 2021

Why shouldn’t buying NFTs be as easy as buying a t-shirt or in-game items with my credit card? Why shouldn’t selling one as part of a brand be as easy as setting up a Shopify store?

NFTs represent one of the most exciting evolutions of the internet. Over the last several months, millions of consumers have been introduced to NFTs and the entirely new ownership structures they unlock for digital goods. NFTs represent a key building block of the metaverse. (If you are new to NFTs, check out our NFT Canon and explainer podcast All About NFTs.)

Though the ecosystem has come a long way in a very short time, it still takes a fair amount of work for brands to participate. The list of things for brands to figure out and build is long: building custom storefront experiences and payment mechanisms, helping customers set up various wallets and crypto transfers, handling the web traffic spikes that often follow popular NFT drops.

Enter Bitski. Bitski lets creators, brands, and platforms easily create, sell, and purchase NFTs — no crypto deep dive required. How do they do this? For starters, they’ve built:

  1. Storefronts on Bitski, so creators can create and sell NFTs directly to their audience
  2. A digital wallet designed for mass market adoption, making it easy to buy NFTs with just your credit card
  3. A developer platform for custom integrations and storefront experiences

Consider how a platform like Shopify has empowered any merchant, be it a small store or a large brand, to easily set up a commerce experience online. Bitski brings the same leverage to anyone wanting to sell NFTs online. Bitski also gives these brands and creators the option to sell their NFTs through their own existing channels. Already, Bitski manages over 10M requests per day to over 300 unique apps built on their infrastructure.

The founding team represents exactly what we look for. CEO Donnie Dinch and co-founder Julian Tescher are multi-time founders who have spent years deep in crypto. At a16z, we often talk about “earned secrets” that come from deep work in a space. Donnie and Julian have that in spades. Underpinning the seamless end-user experience is years of engineering work dedicated to building a secure and scalable infrastructure. From setting up their own servers to building out secure wallets using hardware security modules, Bitski has already solved some tough problems and their learnings uniquely position them to keep delivering on their bold vision. (Intrigued? They’re hiring engineers!)

I’m thrilled to announce that a16z is leading Bitski’s $19M Series A and that I will be joining their board. We have a number of investments focusing on NFTs and the metaverse — from Dapper Labs to OpenSea. It only stands to reason we invest in the infrastructure that makes NFTs accessible. If you’re interested in helping make the metaverse happen or solving hard technical problems, go check out Bitski!

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