Why I Invested: Mack Maine on investing in emoji and NFT startup Yat

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Near­ly every­one loves emo­jis for express­ing them­selves via text and instant mes­sag­ing apps. And more recent­ly, some techies are look­ing to mon­e­tize them.

Yat, cofound­ed by entre­pre­neur Naveen Jain, is the com­pa­ny behind a new type of online iden­ti­ty called “yats,” a unique com­bi­na­tion of emo­jis that act as a cus­tom emo­ji iden­ti­ty, domain, user­name, NFT, and col­lectible, all in one. Yats are tout­ed to give users the abil­i­ty to own their online iden­ti­ties inde­pen­dent­ly from com­pa­nies like Meta and Google. A one- to five-char­ac­ter design costs any­where from $4 to hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars. The short­er and more mem­o­rable the com­bi­na­tion, the high­er the price, typically. 

Near­ly 160,000 yats have been sold for a com­bined $20 mil­lion since last Feb­ru­ary when the com­pa­ny launched. The high­est price paid for a yat was $425,000 for the sin­gle-char­ac­ter key emoji.

Sim­i­lar to the NFT wave ear­li­er this year, Yat is attract­ing a num­ber of celebri­ty investors and pro­mot­ers. Among them is rap­per and song­writer Mack Maine, who recent­ly shared more with For­tune about his deci­sion to invest in the company.

  • Start­up: Yat
  • Loca­tion: Nashville
  • Year found­ed: 2021
  • Val­u­a­tion: Declined to disclose
  • Invest­ment lev­el: Declined to disclose
  • Num­ber of employ­ees: 80
  • Oth­er major investors: Blockchain Cap­i­tal, Collab+Currency, G‑Eazy, Hack VC, Lil Wayne, Slow Ven­tures, The Roots

Why he invested, in his own words

I got involved with Yat short­ly after the launch in ear­ly 2021. I thought the con­cept was dope, and imme­di­ate­ly locked down Yats for me, Lil Wayne, and Young Mon­ey. Every­one uses emo­jis to com­mu­ni­cate, and this is a great way to use emo­jis to com­mu­ni­cate who we are.

Over the years, we’ve estab­lished the brands of Young Mon­ey, Lil Wayne and Mack Maine. Yat is a great way of extend­ing and rein­forc­ing brand iden­ti­ties online where peo­ple can asso­ciate with our brands visu­al­ly. Emo­jis help tell sto­ries and there is no oth­er way to com­mu­ni­cate so much with just a few characters. 

Own­er­ship is impor­tant for us, and we now own these emo­ji iden­ti­ties for­ev­er. That means a lot. Giv­ing the pow­er to all cre­ators to have a self-expres­sive way to own and con­trol their iden­ti­ties sold me on invest­ing. On top of that, Yat is build­ing incred­i­ble new tools for web3 cre­ators and collectors.

This is an install­ment of Why I Invest­ed, a series fea­tur­ing famous investors from all dif­fer­ent back­grounds and indus­tries, reveal­ing what inspired them to invest their own mon­ey in a new business.

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