Welcome to gossip about gossip powered by Hedera Hashgraph in each episode, we'll cut through the hype of blockchain promises and explore real world examples of organizations creating the next generation of decentralized applications, which will bring trust back to the internet for us all. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of gossip about gossip. My name is Zenobia God's talk and I am the SVP of communications here at Hedera Hashgraph. Today, I am pleased to be joined by ankur Mathur, who is the chief experience officer at rebble. Hi Anker, how are you? Hey, good morning. I'm very well. Thank you. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you. Ankur, tell us a little bit. What is rebel? Yeah so rebel is really a live unscripted to a storytelling platform that we're using to help transform the lives of athletes and other folks and allowed them to be able to tell their stories about who they really are. All right, so so the aim is to connect these athletes and other stars with, I would assume, a global fan base. So, yeah, so athletes really are able to use this platform to really find a safe place. And so the way the platform works is it's a ticketed event. And so we're able to control who comes onto the platform. And so it's not like social media where these athletes are often subject to some level of abuse and are so reluctant really to share who they are, what they believe in. And, you know, in some cases, some very, very personal things. So what we're trying to do is really do almost a live version of Oprah, if you will, where we have a moderator, and they're able to make it easy for the athlete to be able to tell that kind of narrative. And for fans to be able to really learn who that person is. And through our research, we've, you know, found out that actually fans struggle to really understand who that human being is behind the actual kind of professional athletes, and that's what they're really craving. And that's what we aspire to bring to them through rebel. Yeah, and I think we've seen, you know, social media can be very much one way the engagement is difficult. The anonymity makes people perhaps behave in ways that they wouldn't. In real life. So I know we're seeing a number of these platforms for engagement with stars of all kinds. What makes Reevell different? Yeah, great questions. So maybe a couple of things I would just kind of call out. So one is that the fans are involved, you know, throughout the process. And so when you buy a ticket, you're able to submit questions in advance. And so those get used by the moderator to shape the actual narrative that may come up during the experience. Your fans can ask life questions not only through the chat, but they may get pulled up on stage to ask the athlete the question kind of live. Obviously, it's live and kind of unscripted. And so our ambition there is really almost to have the athlete come out of the TV as you would normally perhaps see them and have them sit next to you in the sofa, on the sofa and you just having a conversation, right? And so we've really tried to espouse what we've probably all learned through the pandemic, right? What are the key ingredients of virtual intimacy? Which I think now we can appreciate is possible through a screen, and someone doesn't necessarily have to be sitting next to you. So that's certainly different. We've been very thoughtful about how we design those kind of episodes for there to be a story arc and for us to really get to what we described as a moment, right, where, you know, athletes or many moments, necessarily in the episode, but we're athletes can be vulnerable and really share those untold stories with their fans and for fans to be able to really understand who those athletes are. So those are maybe some of the things, you know, clearly the tickets that we are issuing are based on their hashgraph, and so they'll be NFTs and fans will be able to share them. There won't be tradable right away, but they'll certainly come with some smart contract kind of capabilities. And so you can imagine if you buy a series of tickets for a given athlete, then there may be other advantages that come after that, which will all be enabled by their smart contract capabilities. Very exciting, so you've talked a little bit about what the pieces of the platform that are going to use today. How did you first discover Hedera and decide this is what we need to incorporate as part of our platform? You know, that's a great question. So the thought is we actually had some wonderful working relationships with some of the leadership at Hedera. And so as we were thinking about how to quite frankly, future proof. What we were building and think about how to do that efficiently. You know, haddara, it wasn't, you know, a lot of back and forth because Hedera actually came out on top, not only in terms of how efficient it is, the technical differences between the Hashgraph and a blockchain as well. As you know, Lodeiro was obviously very gracious in allowing us to have a grant last year. And so really backing, you know, the rebel platform and the idea. And so we found it a really symbiotic relationship to have us working together on something for, you know, at the time it was a Powerpoint, right? It was an idea. And so it was as much as the faith that I think Lodeiro put in rebel rebel is now putting in the and building on that kind of platform. So might be the quickest answer to that question. Very exciting. And so in terms of your evolution, where are you between from Powerpoint, I assume you're further along in your progress. Now We are thankfully. And so we've actually been running betas on the platform since probably about Christmas, and those have been open to a little bit more kind of family and friends in the last month. We've opened that up actually to some athletes. And so we've been doing marketing events for the last month. Then here going into May is when we'll really turn on the kind of commercial capabilities as well. And so then for those tickets now, people will actually wind up paying through a slightly unique mechanism, which we're testing out. Very exciting and, you know, for the community as well as for the little ones in my house who are avid sports fans, can you share with us some of the athletes that you're working with? Yeah, look, actually some of them, I would point you towards the kind of website with some to load up on a lot of athletes. We're actually going after perhaps three groups. So those athletes individually and focusing a little bit more on maybe underrepresented athletes. And so folks who don't get as much media attention, but obviously have, you know, incredible fat and followings and that was a theory is with many things in the startup world, right? You know, four or five months ago, but it's proving out to be incredibly correct. If we've got time, I'll tell you a story about that only from last week. And then the other kind of two dimensions is actually working with a number of agencies who are finding this is a great value proposition for their client because in many cases, they don't find those opportunities for sponsorship and other things. And then the third one is with player associations. And so we've been very blessed to have some wonderful introductions to many of the large kind of player associations. And soon we'll be able to announce I'll be a little cryptic if you'll indulge me. But you know, we are working exclusively with America's pastime and their Players Association. Very exciting. Well, and you know, it seems like a lot of the younger athletes as they're coming out of college, they are quite savvy in terms of understanding how much, how important it is for them to engage with their fan base so that they have that relationship outside of just what their team or their other brand builds, and they can really differentiate themselves that way. We certainly do have time if you want to share. You mentioned an anecdote from last week. Yeah, no. Look, it's a fun journey being on the startup journey. But last week we had an incredible week. We we actually sold out our I would call it really our second externally marketed event. It went kind of viral. So the athlete in question, we wound up creating a little video. They wound up posting it online. It got literally it was like 14% of his total followers wound up engaging with that video. We had set a ticket limit and we blew past that two x, basically. So those like now a waiting list of people who were waiting to see this, this athlete, and it got picked up by the media. And so we were like a little bit beside ourselves that evening watching the tickets kind of come in because, you know, this is all theory until it really kind of happens. And so that was an exciting kind of moment and it kind of proved out, you know, a number of things that this athlete, you know, is not hugely well-known. It's not, you know, a staff or a LeBron or anything. He has a relatively modest, localized social media following, and they're his fans are hungry to get to know him. In this case, say goodbye because they didn't get a chance at the end of the season when the pandemic happened. And there was an incredible reaction after the experience as well. Just in terms of what we were seeing on social media, let alone during the experience the amount of love, genuine love that was coming out of the screen when I was watching the audience and, you know, fathers with their children, you know, explaining how they ran, you know, a given play that this athlete that kind of set up and watching the athlete kind of react with the kids to say, well, actually, it wasn't meant to be like that, and this is how we treat them. And so on. And everybody was enjoying that moment, which is, you know, for us, for dating myself, as found, is really exciting to be able to see that vision kind of come to life in a very, very visceral manner. Yeah and I'm sure I mean, those are the things that make athletes our heroes write those stories. You think about the behind the scenes and the sideline mix that everybody loves to have access to or the ESPN human interest stories. All of those things, I think, create just so much of a richer experience. So it sounds like the fan, you know, fan feedback so far has been good. It has been quite incredible. I would say so now. I think what's on say for us is how can we continue to kind of replicate it actually make it easier, not only for athletes to kind of engage and get that same kind of reaction, but really build that machine so that we can continue to replicate that type of success. Yeah and so for, you know, for application developers both in your space as well as others who are building on hadary, you know, any lessons learned so far, any things that you would love to. Words of wisdom to impart? Yeah, you know, I don't know if I've got a Lodeiro specific kind of words of wisdom or lessons, but you know, one of the proverbial things, which is, I'm sorry, just still true is really being able to test out kind of product market fit. In our case, it's technically a two sided marketplace. So we have to figure out like, hey, does this work for athletes in general? And then does this work for the fans as well? We have to do that in two separate stages, if you will, but being able to do that, you know, as early as possible and even if it's anecdotal, right? So we're just having those conversations with athletes or agencies or teams or whoever and saying, hey, here's what we're thinking about when you go speak to 15 20 of them, you're going to find a pretty good idea and then the same on the FAN side. So that would be one thing. I still don't see a lot of startups doing enough of, and a lot of people are pretty keen to get into the code. And, you know, platforms like Hedera are making that a whole lot easier. So in some respects, there's some wisdom in let's just try it. But I would encourage folks to think about that a lot. And then, I mean, I think that's a great point, right? There's so much you can test things on the market now quickly and with very targeted audiences. So I think that's great advice. Yeah and then probably look the other one, which is a little bit more specific for us. Just yeah, we didn't expect this necessarily. So it's certainly a lesson learned is, you know, we've done the fan research actually first, because we thought, let's start with the consumer in mind, what are they looking for? And as I was alluding to, the punch line was really understanding the human being behind the professional athlete when we went and talked to the athletes finding out that they actually want to share, you know, who they were and their stories and help define the real kind of narrative. And so, you know, Dean and I are like, wait, hold on. You guys are saying the same thing. You want the same thing. Oh my god, like, you know? And so that was a really kind of fun moment in this journey for us. We didn't necessarily expect that, you know, that both parties would want to do the same thing. So could we create that kind of common space so. So that was certainly a happy lesson learned, if I may remember. Yeah, that's incredible. Well, Anker, thank you for joining us today. If folks want to learn more about rebel, where should we point them? Yeah, no, of course. So rebel movements is the website, and then we're on Instagram on rebel movements and same on Twitter as well. So those would be the two places of some highlight reels that people can see about what's happened. And then the events will get loaded up onto the website. So I'd encourage everybody to have a look and see if there's people that you want to get to know better. Awesome well, I'm going to check it out. I'm going to tell my little ones to check it out, and I would encourage everyone listening here, share, share that feedback and anchor. We hope you'll come back and join us again at some point. And keep us posted on your progress. I look forward to that. Thank you so much. Thank you.
