An interview with Yao Huang, the founder of The Hatchery, a tech-focused venture collaboration organization
Perspective is a rare commodity in the midst of a gold rush.
In this issue of Immerse, we’re considering the intersection of new forms of assets and avatars, and how they complicate already fraught questions of access to emerging digital worlds. At the center of these questions sit NFTs (non-fungible tokens) — unique blocks of code stored via Ethereum or other cryptocurrencies. (If you still don’t know what that means, you’re not alone.)
Minters of NFTs have already made a huge splash in the world of digital art collection — although more traditional artists have questions. NFTs have also been used to assign value to key moments in digital history: Take Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, which sold for an astronomical $2.9 million in 2020, but had lost 99% of its value by April. In fact, over the past year, the buzz about NFTs has soured, moving from FOMO to JOMO (the joy of missing out). Both cryptocurrency and NFTs have become juicy targets for scammers and hackers, and amidst this latest crypto winter, schadenfreude is rampant.
Given all of the frenzy, how should makers of nonfiction media be thinking about what this means for their work in the long term? How might documentary photographers, for example, sell their images on the blockchain? Is it possible to assign unique value to fractions of a film? Will this be just one more media innovation eye-rollingly dominated by tech dudes?
To get a better vantage point on these questions, I spoke with Yao Huang. A seasoned entrepreneur and investor, she’s seen boom-and-bust cycles come and go. She’s also an advocate of women in tech — I met her at one of the Wonder Woman dinners she’s been hosting for more than 15 years across the country. Here are outtakes from our discussion, edited for length and clarity.
Yao Huang
is the founder of The Hatchery, a tech-focused venture collaboration organizationJessica Clark: Could you please tell us a bit about your work?
Yao Huang: I’m the founder of the Hatchery. We’ve been around for 16 years, involved in each level of the Internet as it’s come about and have helped build out the New York tech scene. We invest in tech companies, partner with corporations and startups, build these teams and create innovative solutions, and drive new revenue streams into existing structures.
Right now I’m an advisor on technology that protects this new layer of blockchain crypto NFTs. Essentially, it’s new infrastructure for commerce and transactions that need security. The largest area of fraud and hacking is within crypto wallets right now.
We’re also involved in a hundred million dollar fund trying to open up access to capital for minorities and women in a way that I think is more fitting. I believe that venture is made for 2% of companies, maybe even less. It’s really not meant for everyone, it’s meant for scale — I call it the steroids of companies. Once you take that money, you’re expected to grow at a specific pace that often is unnatural for the possibility of a future by grabbing market share by scaling fast. And that’s fine, but that’s not right for all.
JC: When did you start seeing NFTs coming into the conversation and what really piqued your interest about them?
YH: Well, it’s been around for a number of years, and I work with some of the folks who were there in the early days. It’s only gotten into the mainstream in the last year. I first got into it through the music and art industries and how they’re using it through rights management, by creating a digital asset. I’m seeing more opportunities in the commercial space now in the supply chain in being able to track where products were made. I mean, there are so many uses to dive into, if you’re curious.
JC: I got interested in talking to you about this when we were at the Paradigm Gallery in Philly, and I heard you talking to the owner about the ability to fractionalize investment and put a value on different bits and pieces of audio. How might we be able to use these technologies in documentary?
YH: Yeah, it’s big in the art world — and pretty established now. And the organizations I work with are white-label platforms for Christie’s and Sotheby’s. It’s just a lot of technology to process this, to maintain provenance. Like, this is the certificate and proof that these are real, which works really well for the big artists.
What’s coming about now is for those with creative pieces where it might be more interactive, opening up a whole new realm of art for those who are immersed in these mediums. For those who are still using paintbrushes, it’s a little harder.
JC: When you say interactive, do you mean in the relationship between the customer and the artist?
YH: Yeah. Here’s something the paintbrush man won’t understand.
So [let’s say] I create 3D art that moves to a DJ’s music. And I partner with a big DJ at a big festival. The whole world sees it and now they want to buy my art.
Huh? You didn’t go to an art gallery. You don’t have an agent. You were pimped out by a DJ. That’s different because the visual moved with the DJ or you made something that worked really well if you’re on LSD. The art looked amazing; it was designed for drugs, right? So it’s a reflection of how creative you can be with your art in new ways, for today’s time.
JC: It’s also about making things that are able to be copied many times collectible in a new way. So when we think about reality versus creative art, there are moments that people might want to collect or own in a way that they couldn’t before. There’s potential not just fictional or, or made up things to become valuable, but things that exist in the world in the way documentarians have been capturing them.
YH: Well, movies and some sports shows are cutting up pieces to disperse. I don’t know about documentaries. Maybe a similar concept.
But I mean, you could do anything with NFTs. The issue is, are you doing it for commerce? Like, are you trying to make money from it? Because then you’ll need something that has some weight and value that people want. So, you know, usually it’s tied to big titles, big studios, big artists, something, you know, notable. That’s usually how it plays.
JC: The people that I tend to work with are makers. So they want to know, can I sell my art? Can I sell my product?
YH: Can they connect with investors? They can, it’s called marketing. It’s not just, “I make it and they will come.” You have to market. You have to have a network. You gotta push it through. You need people to persuade. You can pay someone to do it. You don’t have the money? Then maybe you want a partnership with a percentage. All of this takes work. It’s part of marketing for anything, from diapers or paintings.
JC: So I’m not going to tell my reader NFTs will solve all their problems.
YH: Stay at your job, do your work, make your money, get a mortgage, all the good things, you know?
JC: Could you talk a little bit about the Wonder Woman dinners you’ve been hosting and how you think women can get more into this tech space?
YH: The dinners started 16 years ago. It’s a collection of just amazing people, innovators, investors, just people doing interesting things, but with a “no asshole” role. Good vibes, good people, and helpful community supportiveness. There’s a lot of crypto/blockchain folks in our circles. And it’s there for groups of women who, when we started probably had less access to leveling up opportunities. And now probably more, but could still use it.
In the world of crypto right now, it feels like the early days of the internet. It’s very bro heavy, probably because a lot of the early folks were engineers and entrepreneurs, because it came out of tech and then went into banking.
It’s high testosterone. It’s like you go to these conferences and parties with women hired to be models there. It’s a little nuts.
There’s a lot of women in tech. They can get involved….it could just be that they’re not that interested in it because it looks risky. Women tend to be more risk-averse, more stable. But there are different places to play. They don’t have to play where the boys are playing. They can build the tech that runs this.
I keep going back to infrastructure; I think they should go play there. Control it all, right? You can be the bank, you know?
Things are changing all the time. There’ll be a new set of technology — this just happens. happens to be the one. The one before this was AI, machine learning. So just learn, find a spot you find interesting, and play.
For more news, discourse, and resources on immersive and emerging forms of nonfiction media, sign up for our monthly newsletter.
Immerse is an initiative of the MIT Open DocLab and Dot Connector Studio, and receives funding from Just Films | Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Gotham Film & Media Institute is our fiscal sponsor. Learn more here. We are committed to exploring and showcasing emerging nonfiction projects that push the boundaries of media and tackle issues of social justice — and rely on friends like you to sustain ourselves and grow. Join us by making a gift today.