NFTs are continuing to grow in popularity in 2021. Celebrities and famous brands are not only issuing them but they are starting to be sold on NFT marketplaces.
Enter Hello Fam!, the first winery that’s creating NFTs with rarity-traits that are backed by real physical wine cases of wine that have been produced. Wine can be bought, sold, and traded while the wine is sold somewhere else. Or the NFTs can be burned to claim the wine.
I recently had the chance to interview Adam Ashkan, co-founder of Hello Fam! He shared the story of his first entrepreneurial experience at the age of 16 and how his idea of connecting grapes and NFT was born.
A little about your background and what led you to the crypto space
I made my first crypto investment in 2013 and since then fell in love! I started writing about crypto as a journalist a few years after and then became a consultant to over 20 blockchain startups. Outside of crypto I also worked for Wine Spectator as their head of mobile and created two games, one video game and one card game (Nimble Strong: Bartender in Training and ICICLES). I met the Vinsent team years ago and fell in love with their mission of helping wineries sell directly to consumers and they invited me to become an advisor.
Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?
I started very early, building a large art community that grew to one million members when I was 16 years old. Since then I’ve gone back and forth between working for others and working for myself, depending on my cash situation and the idea!
Tell us about your co-founders
We have an amazing team! We’re co-founded by Vinsent, which distributes wine for 100+ wineries and owns its own vineyard. We worked together for years prior. We’re also co-founded by Tiffany Wong, who is a brilliant and incredibly fast art director who worked with me at Wine Spectator.
What Is Hello Fam! Winery? How does it work? And why NFT?
What we do is very simple — our grape character NFTs are backed by collectible wine that we’re producing and storing. So you can trade NFTs freely and then burn them if you ever want to redeem the wine. Even better, our NFTs have rarities attached!
So if you get a rare grape, you’ll get extra benefits, like having your NFT on the wine label! Oh and our NFT art will be really special. Because they’re designed by fine artist Ha Yael, you’re really buying collectible art on top of a collectible wine.
How was the idea for your company born?
Vinsent has been building its NFT infrastructure for years; we’re applying all their existing work to the trend of NFT art collections with rarity attached. Vinsent, Tiffany, and I keep adding innovative new ideas (like fractional ownership with Seedling NFTs) and people are amazed at how fast we can execute.
What type of wine or grapes are you going to sell?
As I mentioned, Vinsent sells wines for 100 wineries and owns its own vineyard. Why they’ve identified two fantastic grape harvests to bottle, it all depends on how many NFTs we sell. We’ll announce details once we’ve finalized sales, but it’ll be an award-caliber wine from a well-known winemaker. We want something very special for our first release. We can confirm though that it’ll be red wine!
Is there a place where people can sample your wine?
Our wine will never be available outside of our NFT launch! The only way to try it will be to buy the NFT and burn it. This makes us extremely limited and collectible. In fact, the NFT art itself will be collectible. So in a sense, we’re building a collectible on top of a collectible!
Where can people purchase Hello Fam! wine?
Our launch is on August 31st, so we recommend following us on Twitter or on our Discord to stay up to date. On the day of, you’ll visit our website hellofam! wine with your MetaMask wallet and be able to mint. It’ll be available for 7 days or until it sells out, whichever happens first. All unminted cases will be burnt.
Some NFTs sell out immediately, so that might happen with us too. After the initial sale, you can buy it on OpenSea and other NFT marketplaces.
What are the company’s plans for 2021 and into the next year?
Create a great NFT, great wine, and keep building the community. We want to launch collaborative wines with other NFT projects, tokenize other wineries, support artists, and donate a lot of money to charity along the way!
Hello Fam! is the first NFT winery for people to invest in. People tell us all the time that while they don’t understand NFTs in general, they love what we’re doing. They especially love that their best-case scenario is to grow with the NFT industry and their worst-case scenario is that they get delicious fine wine!
