- Bessemer Venture Partners has invested in the NFT marketplace OWND, which it found through its DAO.
- ONWD's founders, ages 18 and 21, met as high schoolers in Denmark. Now they've raised $750,000.
- Their marketplace curates NFTs from top brands in fashion and apparel such as Nike.
When Anker Bach Ryhl and Mads Lunau Liechti sought to raise money for their NFT marketplace, they didn't have a long list of Silicon Valley contacts to lean on. They were a whole continent away, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
But after dozens of social media reachouts, they got the attention of an investor who was part of a new decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, devoted to backing crypto and Web3 startups. Better yet, this DAO had the backing of one of Silicon Valley's blue-chip venture firms, Bessemer Venture Partners.
That's how OWND, the marketplace for non-fungible tokens that Bach Ryhl and Lunau Liechti founded, became the first startup deal sourced by Steel DAO, which Bessemer launched in March. OWND has raised $750,000 in pre-seed funding from Bessemer alongside Skyfall Ventures, based in Oslo, Norway, and byFounders, based in Copenhagen
OWND's cofounders, who each grew up about an hour away from Copenhagen, began coding as early teenagers. They met in high school and began building apps together, dreaming of launching a startup.
"I was fascinated by building a startup ever since seeing 'The Social Network,'" Bach Ryhl, 21, told Insider, referring to the 2010 film.
As crypto began capturing mainstream attention, he and Lunau Liechti, 18, turned their attention to the space. Bach Ryhl read all the crypto-related articles he could find on Medium and took a Web3 course on Udemy.
The two settled upon the idea of helping people to find and purchase NFTs. Lunau Liechti, in particular, had been following the efforts of brands such as Nike and LVMH to launch NFT versions of their physical products. As hype over collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club died down, he and Bach Ryhl still noticed chatter among their friends about wanting to buy digital fashion. (Several VCs also agree that the resurgence of NFTs is a trend to watch.)
Their company, OWND, which is set to launch in the spring, will operate a curated marketplace of fashion NFTs. Customers will be able to buy those NFTs without having to set up a crypto wallet in advance.
"We want to make it as easy to buy a Nike NFT as it is to buy a Nike sneaker online," Lunau Liechti said.
Given their young age, launching a startup was a gamble. Bach Ryhl had just graduated from high school — students in Denmark typically attend through age 19 and he had taken a gap year to live in Kansas City, Missouri, before entering — while Lunau Liechti is completing his final year. But the two found a cheap office in Copenhagen and started fundraising, mainly through cold emails and tweets.
Yet crypto VCs turned out to be surprisingly friendly, Bach Ryhl said. One connected him to Kipras Daujotas, an investor at the venture arm of the energy giant Saudi Aramco, who had recently joined the governance committee of Steel DAO.
Steel DAO was launching a scouting program dedicated to finding promising founders off the beaten path. As they sought out their first investment, Bach Ryhl and Lunau Liechti certainly fit the bill, and they're well placed to tap into both NFTs and Gen Z culture, Daujotas told Insider.
OWND will debut its marketplace in the midst of a deep crypto winter, but that doesn't faze its founders, they said.
"It would be a lie to say it's not tough at all, but building a startup is all we've ever dreamed of," Bach Ryhl told Insider. "We're almost more positive than we have ever been, now that all of the grifters have left the space."