Afterparty, the NFT-focussed startup has effectively raised $4 million from angel investors to foster its NFT ticketing platform on Polygon Network, bringing the total sum raised so far to $7 million.

Over 25 angle investors, creators, and VCs took part in the round, including Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media, Spencer Rascoff (Zillow), Jason Calacanis (The Syndicate), David Friedberg (The Production Board), Nicole Farb (Headline), Andre Iguodala (NBA player, Catalyst Fund), Rudy Cline-Thomas (Mastry, Inc.), Reade Seiff (Sunset DAM) and Desiree Gruber (Full Picture). Blockchange Ventures, a leading early-stage crypto fund, in addition to Acrew Capital and TenOneTen Ventures, venture capital groups who co-led Afterparty’s seed raise, additionally took an interest.

“When we launched Afterparty, we knew we were creating a new model for NFTs based on lifetime ‘membership’ access and IRL experiences,” said David Fields, CEO of Afterparty. “What we didn’t know was just how much and how fast the idea of ‘Coachella meets Art Basel’ would resonate with our dynamic community of investors, artists, creators, and fans. Now, we are using that valuable support to create something that gives back to the entire music ecosystem.”

Having facilitated the first live music concert completely ticketed with NFTs back in March, Afterparty is an all-in-one event ticket coordinator. Additionally, it is preparing to launch a second NFT assortment, The Guardians, on the Polygon Network. Moreover, its NFT Ticketing marketplace is supposed to launch at some point in May.

As to Afterparty's transition to Polygon, CEO David Fields made sense of it for be a work to bring down the exchange charges. Likewise, this would assist them with separating from stages like TicketMaster and Stubhub, which have steep exchange charges.

While Utopians and Guardians NFTs award clients admittance to particular Afterparty-coordinated occasions, Fields imagines broadening Afterparty's extension past an all-in-one event host. As per him, the Afterparty will move to turn into a committed NFT ticketing platform from now on.

“We took the approach of launching our own events one, to prove out the model at a large scale and two, to really build deep relationships… but over time, we see ourselves building out more of a marketplace for experiences… concert ticketing being one,” said David Fields.

Afterparty plans to offer its holders advantages, for example, adaptable NFT custody, credit card payments for users without a crypto wallet, and so on. Fields said, “Without 99.9% of those creators’ fans having a crypto wallet. We’re sort of far from a world where NFTs can really be used to their full potential for creators, and we want to be part of the solution there.”

Joyashree Dey

CBW - External Analyst

INDIA