Superfly, Velvet Sea Ventures (VSV) and Tom Brady’s Autograph. io are officially unveiling their latest partnership: SuperNFTs. The project’s debut event will be SUPERF3ST, a community-built and Web3-powered music festival taking place in 2023.
On Friday (July 15), 3,000 NFTs (dubbed SUPERPASS NFTs) will be minted and distributed to fans, who will in exchange receive the opportunity to help plan the upcoming festival as a SUPERF3ST Founder. SUPERPASS NFT owners will be a part of key decision-making moments from choosing a lineup to merchandise to location and more.
Ahead of the minting, SuperNFT completed a $7 million Series A investment round with participation from JDS Sports, Art Blocks founder Erick Calderon (Snowfro), Pixel Vault, Inc. founder Sean Gearin (GFunk), marketing executive Nick Tran, LinksDAO founder Mike Dudas and his 6th Man Ventures and Roger Ehrenberg’s Eberg Capital.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” admits Superfly co-founder Rick Farman of pitching funders. “What we are trying to do has never been done before. To be honest, I was shocked that both the community and the first investors we spoke to understood SUPERF3ST and jumped on board. I was surprised that, very quickly, our investment round was significantly oversubscribed. Our investors are providing much more than money. They believe in Web3 and the power of community and are working closely with us to help open doors and reimagine the future.”
Farman also notes Superfly’s long and successful history working with VSV (which led the investment round along with Autographi.io), saying the venture capital company “has been at the forefront of the Web3 space with its investments into SuperRare, Autograph, Pixel Vault and more.” As such, SVS co-founder and managing partner, Mike Lazerow, is familiar with one particular challenge when it comes to funding such projects: the economic model.
“We have made it clear that we are optimizing for stakeholder value,” he says. “And the most crucial stakeholder in our world is the community member. We plan to be transparent with SUPERF3ST financials and invest heavily to ensure the event’s success. I have been a part of public companies, and building a public company is very different than building a private company. SuperNFT represents a new type of company — one that [has] built-in public accountability, not only to shareholders but to community members who are building with us.”
Adds Farman: “We are using the new NFT technologies to do something fundamentally human — to create and collaborate as a global community. That’s exciting as I come out of my third decade as an experience creator. Superfly invented the modern festival. SUPERF3ST is our way of reinventing it.”
The SUPERPASS was designed by multi-disciplinary artist Donte Neal, and is his first-ever NFT. The art, which depicts a zoomed-out crowd shot in front of a festival stage was aimed to capture “the universal symbol that represents excitement, community and festival culture: hands in the air,” says Superfly creative director Caroline Kerr says. “It was important to us to begin with one universal founder’s pass and at the same time represent all types of festival goers within the crowd of hands.”
She adds that in the future, holders will be able to earn traits to individualize their passes as well as boost their levels of participation. “We’ve built in a creative canvas that encourages our ethos of the more that you put in, the more you’ll get out,” says Kerr, calling the SUPERPASS “an ever evolving vessel for collaboration.”
As Farman says: “When you go to a typical festival, you go with a friend or group and you meet new people along the way. Some of those people become great friends. Many don’t. But that all starts when the festival begins. SUPERF3ST flips the order. Instead of representing the beginning of many relationships, the festival is the culmination of many months of working together to create the festival … I don’t remember what happened at my favorite festivals, I remember how I felt. If we do our job right, the 3,000 founders will throw an event that makes people feel great.”
