A brand new US-based web3 startup referred to as Spotlight has raised $11 million in seed funding from a heavyweight checklist of music trade buyers.
Spotlight goals to let anybody mint non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with prior technical experience.
Amongst Spotlight’s new backers are WME, Methodology Music, Mark Gillespie (Three Six Zero) and Chris Zarou (Visionary Music).
Led by Haun Ventures, Spotlight’s different named buyers within the seed spherical embody 1kx, A.Capital, SciFi VC, Floodgate, Thirty 5 Ventures (“35V”), Offline Ventures, DAOJones, Mischief, Polygon Studios, Coinbase Ventures, Scott Belsky, Tarun Chitra, Robert Leshner, Lenny Rachitsky, Gokul Rajaram, and Linda Xie.
In a weblog put up saying its launch and seed spherical, Spotlight claims to be “the product of tons of of conversations with mainstream creators, music artists, and types, a lot of whom are excited by Web3 however stay at a distance for worry of technical complexity or fan frustration”.
The corporate claims additional that, launching a undertaking on its platform, “from deploying your {custom} good contract to posting token-gated content material or utility”, takes lower than 5 minutes and requires no technical information.
The Spotlight workforce’s expertise ranges from roles at Sq., Instagram, DoorDash, Dapper Labs and Amazon.
In Spotlight’s weblog put up, the corporate states: “We’ve designed Spotlight to make onboarding 100% inclusive for customers, with no crypto expertise required. This has required some preliminary tradeoffs, together with bank card cost for preliminary token gross sales.
“On the similar time, we’ve constructed a system that allows totally non-custodial, EVM-compatible wallets; creator provenance and extensibility on good contracts; and native interoperability for all the key NFT marketplaces.”
“Spotlight is designed from the bottom as much as be the best on-ramp for any fandom or subculture to significant web3 possession.”
Nathaniel Emodi, Spotlight
In a LinkedIn put up saying the platform launch and seed funding spherical, Spotlight Co-founder & CEO, and former DoorDash exec, Nathaniel Emodi, stated: “Since leaving DoorDash final 12 months, I’ve been working with an insanely gifted workforce on one thing new in web3.
“I’m stoked to announce that immediately we’re launching Spotlight (spotlight.xyz), an end-to-end toolkit so that you can deliver web3 neighborhood membership and rewards to your fanbase, no crypto expertise required.
Added Emodi: “Spotlight is designed from the bottom as much as be the best on-ramp for any fandom or subculture to significant web3 possession. We began Spotlight as a result of we consider digital possession, powered by blockchains, is the clearest approach to enhance how inventive industries work for each creators and followers.
“Spotlight is the product of [hundreds] of [conversations] with musicians, artists, creators, & cult manufacturers, most of whom are stoked by web3 however stay at a distance due to their very own technical hurdles, dev prices, or risking fan frustration.
“Past gas-free transactions, we now have instruments to create a phenomenal custom-designed house on your token-holders, with wealthy integrations that provide ongoing actual utility + gated entry.”
Elsewhere within the NFT area, LimeWire, a former file-sharing platform just lately relaunched as a digital collectibles market, and struck its first main label partnership with Common Music Group (UMG). The deal adopted the information that LimeWire raised USD $10.4 million in a personal sale of its LMWR token.
In the meantime, NFT market Serenade raised $4.2m final week, and introduced plans to increase into the US.
