#40: Alex Salnikov, Co-Founder & CSO @ Rarible | From a napkin MVP in 2019 to one of the leading community-centric NFT marketplaces & protocols

Alex has been building Rarible since 2019, when most people haven't even heard about NFTs. What were the industry's early days? Why slick design helped them to acquire the first users? How did issuing a token change how they operate (and why they weren't ready for that)? How do they plan to compete in a market dominated by OpenSea, Blur & LooksRare? Relax and listen to our in-depth conversation. *** If you want to buy tickets for the EpicWeb3 conference in Lisbon, check out: https://www.epicweb3.com/ and use the WEB3TALKS promo code to get a 15% discount. *** Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks Follow Alex & Mac: https://twitter.com/insider0x https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski *** 0:40 EpicWeb3 promo code 1:48 What's Rarible and what role they plan in the NFT space 2:46 How trading experiences & building exchange products inspired Alex to start Rarible with his Co-Founders in 2019 7:47 What were the early days of Rarible & how being specific helped them to design the first MVP - NFT form 10:42 How having a slick website & curating the best content helped them to acquire their first users back when NFTs were much less popular 14:00 Why from November 2019 to Summer 2020, growing Rarible was a smooth sailing 16:10 How NFT & DeFi summer resulted in 30X volume growth in 3 months 17:50 How issuing a $RARI token opened the company to a community and why they were not ready to operate that way 20:14 How they reorganized their community-centric operations in 3 iterations to focus and work more efficiently 23:34 How they plan to compete in an NFT market dominated by OpenSea, LooksRare & Blur 28:47 How Rarible acquires NFT marketplace users 29:47 Why Rarible is a strong promoter of creators' royalties 33:42 What metrics do they follow in trading & protocol businesses 34:55 How communities provide liquidity to their own NFT marketplaces 36:33 What are Alex’s favorite NFT collections 38:24 Why the web3 UX might be a feature, not a bug 41:57 Why having to learn something new can be fun! 42:52 Why would Alex build social apps if he wasn’t buildwasn'trible 46:33 Why Alex would fix coordination 47:20 Where to learn more about Rarible 48:05 Guests ideas from Alex