The402

Helps creators monetize their superfans through livestreams and NFTs

• YCombinator page
• https://www.tunes.wtf/

Founders

• Ravi Bakhai
  • Exp: 8 years
  • Education:
    • University of Chicago B.A., Major: economics (2019)
    • School: Pine Crest (2015)
  • Prev job: Hypeshot - Co-founder (2021 -> present)
• Narahari Bharadwaj
  • Exp: 7 years
  • Education:
    • Yale University Bachelor: Computer Science & Economics (2019)
    • Conestoga High School (2015)
  • Prev job: Hypeshot - Co-founder & CTO (2021 -> present)

Features

1. High platform take rates => Monetization is directly between fan & creator with no protocol fees
2. No pricing power for creators => Creators can choose how much to charge per stream
3. Slow / opaque payouts => Instant payouts that can be verified on-chain
4. No way to capture the upside off of virality => The ability to dynamically price your content based on demand
5. No ownership over your fan graph => Access to the wallet addresses of each person who consumes your content

Alternatives

• Beem launch: 2020 web3 video live streaming & distribution interface
  • 1k+ live events organized on the platform and 15k+ users registered with $0 spent in marketing
  • earn money from fees
• ChainFlix launch: 2018 ChainFlix is a revolutionary blockchain-based P2P video streaming platform that allows viewers, content creators, and enhancers to monetize their time, contents, and efforts.
• Audius music launch: 2018 Audius is the first truly decentralized, community-owned and artist-controlled music-sharing protocol.It is a SoundCloud-like dAPP and an open protocol that helps artists with blockchain based attribution, distribution, and monetization for their content. Audius cuts out the middleman, connecting artists directly with their fans.

Log

We’re the only protocol that enables each piece of cryptomedia to have its own built-in micro-economy and fan graph.

• https://www.hypeshot.io/ Backed only by Gaingels

Mail #todo

Hi Ravi –

My name is Mikhail. I am a senior Computer Science & Engineering student. This fall, I had an opportunity to research your product the402 as part of a term project in my Entrepreneurship class. My assignment is to search for competitors of your NFT streaming solution. I found two similar projects and will appreciate your opinion on them.

The first alternative is the Beem platform. This project launched in 2020. According to their information, 1k+ live events were organized on the platform and 15k+ users registered. They seem to offer almost the same functionality with access to streams via token gating (Ethereum, Polygon and BSC) but lack the fan graph feature.

There is also a Glass protocol aimed at monetizing video content by creators. It was founded in 2021 and has already raised $5M. The project team collaborates with such known platforms as Mirror and Zora. And it offers NFT liquidity as well with PRISM. The main difference is that they do not support live-streaming.

Can you explain why users would choose the402 over mentioned alternatives? Am I right, that the killer-feature is the fan graph? But as far as I am familiar with crypto-world, the NFT holders are visible by-design. Am I missing something?

Best, Mikhail Shishatskiy, CS-Phystech