This post will recap the AMA with Lisa Sun, Mogul’s Founder and President, that took place on the Miami Crypto Group Telegram channel on August 12, 2021.
Question 1. Can you please introduce yourself and tell us about your company
Answer: I’m the President and Founder of Mogul. I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire career and have built many relationships doing so specifically in China and Canada.
Movies and blockchain are my passions. I’ve been investing in indie scripts since 2015 and around the same time, I got into blockchain and went down the rabbit hole. I believed, very early on, that Ethereum and Cardano were (are) generational opportunities to be a part of.
Bridging my passions for investing in film and for the future of blockchain technology, Mogul was born.
And here’s Mogul: DeFi and NFTs for movies! 🎬
Question 2. Can you briefly describe Mogul Productions to the new members of Crypto Industry?
Answer: Yes of course! And a message to new crypto members: join us!! Mogul is such a fun community and we’re seeing movies + blockchain become a reality right before our eyes where fans can now be a part of Netflix original calibre movies from all over the world. From their computer. Isn’t that just mind blowing? Using blockchain we can break the barrier down and that curtain that typically hides what goes on in Hollywood and does not allow for fans to see behind that curtain.
Mogul is a DeFi and NFT platform for movies
It’s an incredibly large addressable market so we focus our efforts in 2 areas:
1. Using blockchain-based products to help finance movies. Right now, this is our showcase voting that is currently live. In the future, we are building the framework so that you all can contribute to movies beyond just voting 🙂
2. Driving product-market-fit for our NFT marketplace, where we want to be the de facto place where entertainment meets NFTs. We’re excited to launch the first version of this product in mid September and with an adjusted token model where STARS holders will be perpetually rewarded in the success/sales in the marketplace for true community ownership
Question 3. What are your main features that distinguish your project from other projects and what competitive advantages do you have? Please Explain it in simple words for our community?
Answer: The beauty of open source technologies and the ethos that blockchain communities have, is that businesses in our industry rarely have a competitive advantage around specific IP. I love that personally. We operate in an industry where the key variables to success are your team, your process, and your brand. For our NFT marketplace, of course it’s going to be amazing technology, but the reality in crypto, is that you can fork another NFT marketplace open source code and launch it under your own brand. But will you have the ability to execute?
For Mogul, I truly believe that’s where our competitive advantages are. We have one of the best development teams I’ve ever seen in crypto – 100% dedicated and aligned with the success of Mogul. We have leadership and advisory who have won a litany of awards in film and finance. And we have community managers and marketers that are so passionate about the project.
We’re a really close team and we work hard together on a mission.
Question 4. Could you please explain a little bit about the Access Passes, and what rewards are tied to them?
Answer: Yes! I love this question, but let me take a little tangent first.
I love NFTs. They’re liquid intellectual property and digital ownership. There’s a huge trend with PFP NFTs right now spearheaded by Crypto Punks and BAYC – which are both AMAZING communities. I own PFP NFTs myself and I understand the thesis that there is viral marketing attached to people using them, people form intimate attachments with their online identity, and people don’t want to sell them when they become part of their identity online.
Now, there are so many meme NFT avatar projects that have come up, and don’t get me wrong, I love a good meme. But the other day I was down a rabbit hole researching NFTs and came across Fast Food Punks. Basically crypto punks with a Mcdonalds hat on their head. I almost bought one!
But I sat back and thought, “what value does this really have?” Well, the value is in the meme. The community. The culture. Which is amazing, but when does the music stop?
I have conversations for biz dev every day related to NFT drops that we can do. Let’s say, for example. Mogul is doing a drop with Ja Rule. Just an example 😉
When we speak with their team, we’re very clear that: you can’t just create a picture into an NFT that looks cool and expect crypto audiences (or general audiences for that matter) to buy it! There needs to be intangible benefits attached that bring your fan experience closer to the NFT issuer. For example, Floyd’s NFT drop came with boxing lessons.
In marketing, a great mentor to me would call this the “Lagniappe” when it comes to marketing a product or a business. It’s the “what else do I get with this purchase?” that makes something more valuable to consumers and the community.
SOOOO now to Access Passes:
Access Passes give people intangible benefits from our movies that we’re making. And there are passes with more and less rarities that get different benefits. So far, access pass holders have gotten / will get:
– Rewards from our partnerships (BANANA token reward)
– Free Rob Prior NFT (marvel artist) collectible
And there will be much more 🙂
But the point here with this rant is that Access Passes are UTILITY-based NFTs that people can purchase to have a more intimate experience with Mogul and our movies
Question 5. Mogul Productions is making Partnerships with many StartUps. Can you explain how they have been helpful in the growth of the platform?
Answer: Blockchain is about community. We work with other partners to collectively grow our communities and businesses. We have partners we onboard from blockchain and film. In blockchain, this has been AMMs, yield aggregators, cross-chain swap platforms, layers 2s, etc to give more utility to STARS across the ecosystem.
In film, our partnerships are mostly to get more content for our platform (movies and NFTs) and with best in-class companies that we’l be working with to produce films.
We’re very much collaborative in our growth and we have a great partnership program internally that outlines the co-marketing efforts we want to do when creating a new partner and I think we do a good job collectively as a company doing due diligence on our partners.
My fav partner is ApeSwap. If you check out the co-marketing we did with them, that’s what we strive to do with each partnership to grow
Question 6.How many members are there in your team? Do you have plans to expand your team? What kind of talent are you looking to hire?
Answer: We are expanding. Yes! Always looking to hire amazing people all over the world. We have a meritocracy type atmosphere – great work gets rewarded. We’re proud that we’ve promoted 2 of our internal employees in the last month because of their amazing work. Mogul is a distributed team (mostly in Canada) where team members are all over the world and we’re able to attract top talent because we give people flexibility and the ability to take the reins on their role and create success for themselves, of course with all the support needed.
One of our employees right now wanted to work remotely to travel a little bit. Because they do such great work and we have amazing trust with our employees, we were able to support this. Mogul is a great place to work. Crypto is a global industry and top talent is hard to come by, so when we find good resources, we support them 100%!
Our development team has 10 people on it, our marketing team 6, our film team 5 full time, and then we have our support team and other contractors we work with + advisors that round out our team of about 30 people across the world 🙂
Right now if you’re a marketer, biz dev expert, or crypto analyst with an interest in NFTs we want you to get in touch through our applications on our website. They’ll be shared through social soon too
Question 7. Can you please tell us more about your current project and how will it benefit your token holders
Answer: Yes of course. I’ll talk about our current initiatives:
1. Showcase: this is where STARS holders can vote on which movie they want us to finance. When people vote, they are staking STARS and earning rewards just like farming
2. NFT marketplace: more info to be announced on this, but there will be an aspect of the marketplace where fees on transfers are shared with STARS holders/stakers.
We want to create more in-app utility every month for our token
Question 8 from twitter @V8Quang: What is your roadmap for 2021? What are notable milestones we should look forward to in 2021?
Answer: Well there are only 4 months left in 2021 and I can say that our roadmap for development will consist of launching our NFT marketplace mid-Sept and adding continued features there and continuing work on our smart wallet and layer 2 integrations for the product.
In terms of the biz dev roadmap, expect major NFT drops with top entertainment talent on a biweekly basis. The people we are looking at partnering with must commit to aggressive co-marketing campaigns with Mogul and engaging with our community and each drop is prioritized to grow Mogul and our ecosystem – not capitalizing on the hype just for the sake of dropping an NFT. We want people who love crypto, love Mogul, and want to offer genuine experiences that align with our mission.
Also in this arena, expect more partnerships to grow the STARS ecosystem and accessibility
In terms of the film roadmap, next week we will be announcing the winner of our showcase and the first ever movie that we will greenlight through blockchain. That movie will likely be a completed product by the end of 2021, which is SO fast and timely. The winning movie will be doing continued marketing and promotion with our community to provide much more intimate experiences than what we’ve been able to provide thus far
Question 9 from twitter @AlbertJaison2: The utility of the token is one of the factors that evaluates the credibility and potential of the project. So what is the use and role of the $STARS token in the ecosystem? How can users earn more $STARS through the incentive program? Can you share its tokenomics?
Answer: Of course, i need to run shortly so I’ll share this link: https://www.mogulproductions.com/stars
STARS are our in-app currency used for staking, farming, rewards, and power the Mogul platform and everything we do 🙂
We’ve had a 15% increase in holders in the last week and are super excited for the future there
Question 10 from twitter @Phuongkcl: Collaboration and partnerships are one of the cornerstones to making DeFi more widespread. Can you share some of the partnerships you have formed with existing blockchain foundations recently?
Answer: Of course. Recent partnerships are seen on our blog and are with:
ApeSwap: BSC dex that I believe has one of the strongest marketing teams in crypto
AnySwap: bridge for STARS from ETH to BSC
And we have more to come 🙂
Big one will be announced next Friday too
Full list of announcements here: https://www.mogulproductions.com/blog
Question 11 from twitter @Kozhi50222584: The gap between traditional movie makers and NFT crypto movie makers is still huge. How does MOGUL bridge this to attract more traditional makers to try out new blockchain aspects with NFT?
Answer: We have our biz dev team having conversations daily. If you look at our current showcase, these are not “NFT crypto movie makers”. These are award winning filmmakers that create several Hollywood grade movies per year that make it to Netflix, Amazon, theatres, etc. They are experienced and some of the best out there, and we have more A List talent that will be announced shortly. Our brand, thus far, has only ever been associated with movies that we believe are commercially viable in the existing Hollywood system so that you’ll be able to watch them on your fav streamers
Question 11 from twitter NAGS7777: Is MOGUL Productions hack proof and audited from a third party? Is the system designed to stop attacks from Quantum computers?
Answer: Last week we made a splash in the entertainment industry adding Mike Cosentino (former Bell Media) to our film team. We received a call from a former President of Bell Media after that announcement was featured in the top entertainment magazine in Canada where he told us how impressed he was with the moves Mogul was making to make us a big player in traditional entertainment
Classic question. All our audits are here: https://www.mogulproductions.com/security-audits
We work with 2 of the top auditors in blockchain to make sure code we ship is secured by best in class
Question 12 from Telegram @Frankq5: How do you plan to get more partnerships or could you plz tell us what partnerships are going to join with this project?
Answer: There are 2 keys to partnerships:
1. Relationships
2. Ongoing communication and execution
We have an amazing team with great relationships in Hollywood and an advisory group that has a solid track record of opening up conversations with many different groups.
Then, we have internal resources (and are growing our capabilities) to follow through with these partnerships. For example, we can get in touch with top talent who want to do NFTs, and then we have the resources internally to follow through and create great marketing and co-branding activities and do an amazing drop. We’ve shown this with the Rob Prior partnership.
So the strategy, which has been very successful thus far, is to leverage relationships of our highly connected leadership team and show them that Mogul means business in our execution
Question 13 from Telegram @jbarcel: We see the streaming services growing worldwide , how do you see this impacting the film industry and how mogul will be positioned regarding the streaming ?
Answer: Mogul is a financier of film. So we work with the streamers to get our movies on there. We’re streamer agnostic. We see the growth. And each of our movies will consider streamers as a revenue source when distributing the films
