In 2018, only a few people knew what an NFT was and the term Web3 was far from being a buzzword. However, Nicolas Julia was convinced that it would be the next revolution in the tech space so he co-founded Sorare, global fantasy football game (or soccer game, for our American audience) that you play with NFTs.
Sorare became a unicorn in less than four years, reaching a $4.3 billion valuation. It is the French startup that has reached the unicorn status the fastest. How did Nicolas know that NFTs would become the new hype? How did he convince famous business angels such as Antoine Griezmann or Gerard Piqué to join the project early on? How did he get Serena Williams on board? And, what are the next steps for Sorare? Tune in to this week’s podcast to hear Nicolas’ answers to all of these questions and more.
This episode is hosted by Roxanne Varza, STATION F’s Director, and Clarisse Hagège, co-founder and CEO of Dfns (Founders Program, Future 40 in 2021). Dfns provides crypto custody as a service, enabling developers to deploy bank-grade custody infrastructure and turn their apps into safe zones for crypto. The company recently announced a 13,5M$ raise.
Topics
00:10 — Introduction with Roxanne Varza (STATION F) and Clarisse Hagège (Dfns)
03:30 — How Nicolas Julia got into NFTs ahead of the hype in 2018
06:44 — How Sorare avoided the scalability problems that NFT platforms encounter on Ethereum
09:07 — What Sorare is and how does it work
12:22 — How Nicolas convinced their very first partner, the Belgian League, to join Sorare (the story includes an intern)
15:28 — Sorare’s fundraising strategy (730M$ in total amount raised)
17:05 — What’s next after soccer for Sorare? Sorare recently announced Serena Williams as a board member
20:06 — How Nicolas convinced so many investors and notable business angels like Antoine Griezmann to join the project
23:19 — The possible evolutions of Sorare within the metaverse
26:58 — Nicolas’ career path
28:06 — Nicolas’ biggest learnings from his entrepreneurial experiences
37:04 — Nicolas on regulations in the crypto space
This episode is supported by TikTok, hosted by Roxanne Varza, produced by Cindy Yang, and edited by Grégoire Duhourcau. Art is by Gaëtan Lefebvre.
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