The web3/NFT community was a beacon of good vibes and innovation when I (and many more) needed it most in 2020. While locked down, I was meeting new supremely creative people everyday and going to sleep feeling inspired and motivated, not downtrodden from covid isolation. Real friendships were forged with real people that I now care very deeply for, and always will. @heyhaigh, @orphan_crypto, @MartinBekerman, @MarkTheHabibi, @robmon2, @liquiddensity, @Raccoonnook, @logan_larkin, @cestmoisoleil, @Waxbones, @allthegweiup, @0xchromuh, @chelsea, @mrhammn, @HARDMETAVERSE, @evanodette, @dominosmusic, @indiaweston, @_GLOWA_, @jjackrobinsonn, @missingwatcher many others

In 2021 I joined a DAO where an idea for an NFT project came up - @WoodiesOfficial It’s where I met @calvinhoenes, my brother. Together with many pioneers (@chriswallace, @grelysian, @rpowazynski, @Jae838, @DesLucrece, @fecklessmage and others) we set out to built something incredibly thoughtful, inspiring and ever lasting.

When Woodies was green-lit I quit my 15 year career in enterprise SaaS to go all-in and capture the moment. It was a huge success (and will be again, more to come).

And shortly after, many of my new friends began reaching out for dev help. @MarkTheHabibi, @mendezmendezart, @shakkablood, @dominosmusic

Calvin and I worked 100 straight 18 hour days to help our people deploy their dreams with precision and quality, in an era with few tools and standards. We found ourselves really vibing with @OmbraRD (my brother), a dev we met working with @mendezmendezart. Now we were a tripod of scrappy full stack devs. Meanwhile, @nestarobins (my brother) was deep in VC land as an EIR for a shop founded by mutual mentors. He and I already knew each other very well, as he was running a partner product of the platform I worked for. He was pursuing a funding thesis for NFT marketplaces. In parallel, @KevinNuest (my brother) was down the road on an asset fractionalization platform. I met Kevin during his internship at the old company. Both were looking for technical co-founders. Hmm, I thought. Should we join forces? In January of ‘22, Props was born.

Even with our existing connections to VC, and in spite of producing $1m in revenue in our first 90 days and $2m in our first year, we were, and remain, unfunded. Bootstrapped entirely by the results of our efforts. This was a vibe. It put a chip on our shoulders. But, alas, it anchored us to a grueling mix of providing custom services for novelty projects from clients while also pursing scalable products and platforms which would provide the growth we sought and better outcomes for the space.

But those service projects gave us unique perspective of what the future might look like and what the remaining answers might be. How will web3 truly plug in to society? Where is the value? Why does it matter? Who cares and why? What’s needed to get there? And we learned some of those answers: at the enterprise with our partners at Fox, Mattel, and IMAX; at the network with our partners at @zora, @Optimism and @fuel_network; and at a new incubation state we internally dubbed “bottom-up brands” - organic community-based IP like our loves at @Deadfellaz, @creatureworld, @Habibis_NFT, @BossBeauties, @CryptoGeisha, @mysavagedogs, @RSTLSSxyz, @HPPRSWRLDWDE, @Waxbones, @paperbuddha, @talktimeband and many more.

…the bottom-up brands, ie those born from communities, armed with AI, are going to eat the world. The future is about shared creation, ownership and value - building ideas together with little to no red tape or bureaucracy, with confidence, speed, scale, quality and unstoppable resiliency. The collective > The individual

I hate to make excuses for this outcome, but I often wonder what Props would be today if NFTs and blockchain as a whole hadn’t been vilified and decimated into “scam” by bad actors. I’ve never seen a technology be politicized in the way our industry was/is. This slowly eroded our ability to continue blockchain services in mid-market through enterprise as non-degen professionals became more apprehensive about the risks attached to their brands if they engaged with our space. Meanwhile, we pride/d ourselves on being one of the few groups looking only to create value FOR others in the spirit of our long-term vision, not extract value FROM others.

The @props team is pushing forward and will not be deterred. We/they are the definition of the small team that the mega orgs are worried about disrupting their moats - 100 products in 3 years, $21m top-line, $200m in secondary sales across our partner projects. A unicorn team with real life web3 & AI implementations and products in the wild creating value. Bootstrapped. Before AI 100x’d us. Think about that. Reach out to them if you want to help the “bottom-up” tech nerds beat the top-down tech bros. They can quite literally build anything… like an autonomous driver for a driverless race car.

I have zero regrets. Only fond memories of new friends and a quite novel skillset of expertise in the two technologies that the entirety of humanity will rely upon soon. I told myself when I made the decision to go all-in to this world, that the only direction we could fail is up. And I’m happy to report that assumption was/is true. Everyone here is building valuable knowledge and expertise. Keep going. Being hungry for innovation will always serve you well, no matter what the next of your journey challenges you with.

So what’s next for me? I’m heading back to big software as a distinguished technical architect next week (no rest for the weary). I’ll be swapping my entrepreneur hat for my intrepreneur hat, the core difference being armed with additional resources to create change for orgs and brands, with a not-great trade-off of having to pause innovation with bottom-up brands (professionally). I’ll also transition to a silent partner in the Props & MeshMesh (Props’s AI studio) businesses. From there, I’ll be investing most all of my additional time back into my family and 3 young kids. These guys were the real investors in this space and for my personal dreams. I’m sure many of you have diverted much of your time away from your loved ones to build this space over the years. This is the one thing that matters. Money does not matter. Moments with your family and friends matter. Did I want to make a bajillion dollars? Yeah, honestly I did. But recently I asked myself the question, why? So I could afford a time machine to bring me back to this moment to tell myself to cherish my children instead? Like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar? You all are my family too, but I’m going to get this back in balance. You’ll still see me lurking here though, and I’ll never stop collecting art and assets that represent the future I want to live in. I may even get back to creating art myself.

But, I’m also going to continue building @WoodiesOfficial with @chriswallace. We’re building a Roblox universe, and our kids are our creative directors and beta testers. I’m really excited to pursue this, as I think it’s a way to inspire not only our kids to be builders themselves, but perhaps yours as well.

Finally, thank you. Thank you for this wild and fulfilling journey. Thank you for your trust. Thank you for your creativity and passion. Thank you for believing in us. Thank you for your continued efforts to change the world. 🫶 -Bitcoinski