Sure the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming startups, Built In has launched The Future 5 across 11 major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. You can check out last quarter’s NYC round-up here.
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These days talk of non-fungible token (NFT) startups are on the up and up and for good reason. Last year, $2.6 billion in venture capital was invested into NFT startups alone, and as the notoriety and demand for NFT investments grow, funding is expected to continue to pour in. 2021 was a pivotal year for NFT popularity, though the concept itself has been around since at least 2014.
A lot has changed in the last few years, starting with the fact that startup founders are creating physical properties to coincide with NFTs purchases. NYC-based Neon is one of the growing startups in the space to introduce physically obtainable NFT codes with its NFT vending machine.
When users purchase an NFT from the vending machine, it dispenses a box with a unique code inside it for the chosen NFT, which is redeemable on the Neon platform.
The machine is located in New York’s Financial District. Neon co-founder and CMO Jordan Birnholtz told Built In the decision to place the machine near Wall Street was “symbolically powerful and pragmatically ideal – a lot of cryptocurrency early adopters work in banking. We wanted to make this accessible for them.”
The vending machine is a metaphor for our vision, one in which buying digital art is as real and as easy as buying physical art.”
Accessibility is the name of the game to Neon and is one of its core principles. Most NFTs can only be purchased with cryptocurrency, meaning a user would have to set up a crypto wallet and keep track of the currency exchange between USD and the cryptocurrency of their choice. At Neon’s NFT vending machine, NFTs can be purchased with U.S. debit and credit cards, making the purchase and investment as simple as possible.
“Why should you have to pay in crypto to support digital art? We started Neon because we’re excited about how the creator economy has evolved in the last few years and because we think NFTs are going to play a huge role in supporting digital art and communities,” Birnholtz told Built In via email. “The vending machine is a metaphor for our vision, one in which buying digital art is as real and as easy as buying physical art.”
According to Birnholtz, consumer interest in Neon has increased since it launched its first vending machine in February. Neon’s NFT vending machine has already sold a few thousand NFTs and has seen tens of thousands of visitors, Birnholtz said.
Neon also raised a $3 million seed round. The raise helped the startup hire four additional employees, bringing its total employee headcount to 10. Birnholtz expects the company to bring on three to four additional engineers by the end of Q3.
