How Women Can Get Involved in the NFT Space

11 min readDec 16, 2021

The latest episode — “Freedom with NFTs — Episode 15 — How Women Can Get Involved in the NFT Space with Avery Akkineni” with so many things to learn. Don’t miss Lauren Turton’s interview with Ms. Avery Akkineni, President of VAYNERNFT. Check it out! bit.ly/Freedomwithnftsblogep15

Summary

In this episode of Freedom with NFT’s Avery Akkinenishares with us:

Avery’s Background
The responsibilities of being a president of VaynerNFT
Creating VaynerNFT
Goals for VaynerNFT 2022
Advice to women who are entering the NFT space
Favorite Veefriend
Most excited about for the Future of NFT

About Avery Akkineni :

Avery Akkineni is the President of VaynerNFT, who partners with the world’s top intellectual property owners to develop market-leading NFT projects. She is the previous Head of VaynerMedia APAC, Managing Director and Vice President, Global Media Operations.

Story

As Avery Akkineni said “Be part of the change!” So are you READY TO BE APART OF THE NEW ERA? If YES, then don’t forget to take notes! Here it goes:

[00:00:00] Lauren Turton: We’re back with freedom with NFTs. I’m your host Lauren Turton. And I’m very excited about who we have on today’s episode. Our guest is the president of VaynerNFT. Avery Akkineni, Avery how are you doing today?

[00:00:15] Avery Akkineni: I am to great so often to chat with you Lauren, it was a pleasure to meet you IRL last week, and I’m still feeling the excitement and the vibe from our basil. So I’m doing great.

[00:00:24] Lauren Turton: Thank you. It was an honor to meet you in person as well. And let’s just jump right into things. I’m curious to know who you are. Share with us whose avery?

[00:00:33] Avery Akkineni: Yeah. I’m Avery. I am originally from Nashville, Tennessee, so Southern girl at heart, and I’ve spent the last 20 years bouncing around other places, San Diego, the bay area, New York, Singapore, and now in Miami.

Today, my passion is really around like NFTs and bringing web 3 through each of the world. But I also love music, art, sports, kind of culture and entertainment. And I couldn’t be more excited about where everything is kind of heading. As we get into the holidays and into 2022.

[00:01:01] Lauren Turton: Thank you. And you’re the president of VaynerNFT. So share with us. What do you actually do as the president of VaynerNFT?

[00:01:09] Avery Akkineni: So Basically everything and launching a small business. So VaynerNFT is actually part of VaynerX. VaynerX’s is Gary Vaynerchuks holding company, and there are many different companies sort of in there, from our speaking arm to our publishing arm, to our design agency.

And I’ve spent. It’s a few years working at VaynerMedia, which is the largest part of VaynerX, really a marketing firm dedicated to helping modern brands tell their stories and communicate with consumers, whether that’s on e-commerce or on paid advertising or on emails or on influencers, really end to end helping brands tell there stories.

And you know, we created VaynerNFT. It’s something that Gary’s been interested in for quite some time. About a year ago, we started to get really serious about doing our homework on NFTs and listening and learning and building relationships with the community launch Veefriends in may. That went really, really well.

And now has its own whole dedicated team led by Andy Krainak. And in July, we felt we were ready to launch VaynerNFT and really take our offering to leading intellectual property owners. So associations, celebrities, brands who are curious the world of web three and we’re fortunate enough to have them want to work with VaynerNFT as their guide. So what I do on a daily basis is hire amazing people. I think that’s half of my job is finding people who are really knowledgeable about this space and want to help bring it to the world. So hiring and building the right teams across tech, creative, strategy, project management then also partner with their IP owning partners.

So helping them with, what is their strategy? How are we going to do this? What is the idea? What’s the concept? And then actually bringing it to life from an NFT perspective, oftentimes that starts off with initial strategy and kind of education. And then that moves into full on execution. For a number different projects you might’ve heard of you know, The Mic Drop with Pepsi, David Drebin, US Open, Bojangles.

So many things that we’ve done over the past couple of weeks that have just been awesome that really American Eagle really helping these folks tell their stories with projects that they’re launching as a way to connect to their community. And then anything else that needs to happen is part of like what we do and what I do on a daily basis at Vayner.

[00:03:11] Lauren Turton: I’m curious to know how many people are on your team at VaynerNFT?

[00:03:15] Avery Akkineni: We’re just about 40, so we’re still small, but mighty. And that spans across, creative, community managers, strategy, project management, and then the technical side of actually making sure it all works together. And of course, client servicing and client partnerships making sure we’ve got clients to help with to put the lights on.

[00:03:33] Lauren Turton: Amazing. And what’s been your most pleasant surprise about working at VaynerNFT?

[00:03:39] Avery Akkineni: My most pleasant surprise would be the people. I think it’s been incredible to bring in web three native folks, crypto native folks, and also crypto curious folks and put them together like onto a team and really have everyone’s strengths compliment one another’s. We’ve had a ton of folks who are really deep in the world of web three and moving from more sort of nine to five jobs and into this full-time people who are in healthcare, were educators, who were architects and this was their passion. And now them being able to do that full-time has been really cool and then merging that with people who have more of that traditional professional services background.

So people who understand how to make decks and how to pitch ideas to clients. And I think it’s really like 50 50 mix of like those types of people coming together to really do cool work in this space. So that’s been my best surprise is just how fun it is to build a team with this kind of a passion and how excited everybody is about this.

It’s really moving from a passion project to a full-time profession for a lot of the folks on the VaynerNFT side.

[00:04:33] Lauren Turton: Amazing. And as we wrap up 2021 and go into 2022, what’s one of your biggest goals with VaynerNFT?

[00:04:41] Avery Akkineni: Our biggest goals are really around bringing more people into the NFT space. It’s yes, launch successful projects that the crypto native community likes, but it’s also way more about bringing in new folks. So that’s one of our big objectives is help recruit new users to NFTs into crypto. I’m always thinking about ways we can make this more accessible, make it easier to on-ramp people, design programs that engage communities beyond just those who work of donative, that’s our big goal.

And then the second goal of that would be to really build the team out so that we’re fully functional. We’re the go-to shop for developing NFTs if you are an IP, and we’re a little bit different than some other sort of entity specialist agencies. VaynerNFT, actually, we don’t have our own technology and that’s on purpose.

The reason that we do that is so that we can really understand the marketplace and understand what’s out there from a technical offering perspective because every project deserves its own bespoke technical solution. And we don’t want to just have this one size fits all. So we’ve done projects with Shopify, with nifty gateway, with rarible, with OpenSea, with nameless, really across the board with NFT crowd of working with all these different partners, so we really understand what’s out there from a technical backend standpoint what we can bring to market. So I think that gives us this unique position in market because the other specialist folks in firms are often very focused on their own tack, exclusively. And in bringing that tech to millions and billions of users.

And what we’re focused on is just bringing more people into the ecosystem. However, that on-ramp looks like.

[00:06:07] Lauren Turton: Thank you. And I’m curious to know what are the top challenges in the onboarding process into the NFT space?

[00:06:15] Avery Akkineni: There are a lot and worth of very, very early days of what NFT technology will be. I think we’re at that like iPhone one phase of this tech and that means that while we see the potential, there are a lot of very real barriers for new folks coming in. First is sort of the crypto on-ramping it’s not the most simple process. So when people are looking to get onboarded, they have multiple steps to buy an NFT. You have to like one by crypto, you have to get into wallet.

Move into actually buying an NFT and then there’s a secondary marketplace. So there’s a lot of steps in there. Reducing that to like one step would be amazing in the longer term. So I think that the consumer journey is the biggest barrier at the moment. And the second part of it is that it’s just very new.

So people have not seen, that many simple use cases for NFTs. The third thing being the scarcity and the pricing is very overwhelming for a lot of new users. So what’s beautiful around some of the projects that we’ve worked on that have been free or low cost that actually enables more consumers who are crypto curious to get on board without needing to pay, you know, 1, 2, 3 eve to be a part of a community. You can get that for free. If you’re a fan of the brand and then that’s incredible.

[00:07:20] Lauren Turton: And for those in the audience who are already in the NFT space, what advice would you give them on how to overcome some of these challenges you just shared?

[00:07:31] Avery Akkineni: Number one advice would be education. So spending more time, educating your friends and family and bringing them on into this world spend a lot of time with my personal friends, sort of educating them on why NFTs are awesome and why crypto is the future.

So the first thing is education and the second thing is be part of the change. So Lauren, you do a great job with hosting this podcast and being involved in things like crypto disco and other sort of community gathering. I think being a part of the community and welcoming and more folks is also responsibility for everyone who’s in the crypto community today, because the way that we’re all going to make it is by bringing in more people into this space and we have this incentive to do so. And also including more folks in this group.

[00:08:10] Lauren Turton: Thank you. And what advice do you give for women who are entering the NFT space?

[00:08:16] Avery Akkineni: I would welcome them and say, there’s a lot of work that we have to do. As a collective group of women in crypto. We know that far fewer women invest generally than men and far fewer women invest in crypto than men.

So again, it comes down to bringing in more people. Being part of the right communities and then welcoming in new joiners. I think those three things are really important for women, especially as they’re looking into this crypto community is one, be part of it. Two share that you’re part of it. There are so many women who are not doxed, right?

And they participate in crypto, Twitter and discords, and actually it’s like, the gods, a woman kind of thing. Satoshi is a woman. We don’t know because there’s such a layer of like anonymity that often accompanies sort of these different engagements that are happening without showing your face.

So if you are a woman who’s killing it in crypto, don’t be afraid to let people know. And then if you’re a woman who’s new to crypto jumping into space, set your profile picture and joining the awesome community of female focused creators and collectors are part of this world already.

[00:09:12] Lauren Turton: Thank you for that. Such amazing advice for women who are just now entering the space. One of the freedom with NFTs audience members wants to know what your favorite Veeriend?

[00:09:23] Avery Akkineni: My favorite be friends is gotta be the resourceful Robin. I think resourceful Robin needs to get more love. Being resourceful in life and in crypto is really helpful. That’s one that actually has one of Gary’s signatures on it.

And if you’ve ever paid close attention to the friend’s project, they’ll note, there are certain Easter eggs embedded in certain drawings, whether it’s the very lucky black cat that looks like New Jersey or sort of having their signature on it. I think those are some of attributes that I look at is special Veefriends.

And I love resourceful Robin. I think that was one that was also done in color and red which is pretty cool.

[00:09:56] Lauren Turton: Thank you. And what are you most excited about for the future of NFTs?

[00:10:02] Avery Akkineni: I’m most excited about the potential for NFTs to unlock utility. That really goes beyond ownership of the digital art. We’re starting to see this a lot more often with project, that not only is your NFT a piece of beautiful digital art, but it unlocks something special. So we just released a NFT project with Robert Mondavi winery that you’ve got a piece of generative art that can actually be redeemed for one of these incredible bottles of magnums of wine that’s in a special porcelain Magnum.

So that’s something that we’re really excited about, you know, with Veefriends, you get access to the conference for three years. And you know, you’ll start to see this from a lot of the products that we’re putting out where there’s this incredible utility that’s designed for the long-term versus just only for the short term.

[00:10:43] Lauren Turton: Thank you for that. And as we wrap this interview up, are there any final words you’d like to share with the freedom with NFTs audience?

[00:10:50] Avery Akkineni: At freedom with NFT’s audience, thank you for tuning in and thank you for taking your time. I know everybody’s busy and there’s a million podcasts, but who wouldn’t want to listen to Lauren?

My parting words would be follow what the Vayner guys are up to. We are @VaynerNFT, where at Gary Vee, we’re at 1:37 PM. Just to hear what we’re working on, we’re really trying to build this community and welcome more folks. So we welcome you to join us. We welcome you to share our content with your networks and thanks so much for taking the time to listen.

[00:11:15] Lauren Turton: And one final question for you, Avery. What’s your Twitter handle?

[00:11:20] Avery Akkineni: Oh, my Twitter handle is @Avery_Akkineni. @Avery_Akkineniis my Twitter handle and my Linkedin, my Instagram, my everything. I just keep it simple.

[00:11:33] Lauren Turton: Thank you so much, Avery for being on this episode of freedom with NFT’s.

My objective when starting this podcast was to educate the masses on NFT. So if you’re listening right now, I need your help. Can you please share this episode with your audience. So you can take action on what Avery shared with us today about educating others, so that they can get onboarded into the NFT space.

That’s all for this episode, I’m your host Lauren Turton, and as always get informed and get involved.