Briefly
- Longtime Disney player Bob Iger has joined producer NFT Genies.
- Los Angeles-based Genies has raised $100 million and has clients that include major record labels.
Bob Iger, former CEO of The Walt Disney Company, announced on Twitter today that he is on the board of directors of Genies, a digital avatar platform built on the Flow blockchain, a protocol for collecting NFTs and large-scale crypto games.
Iger served as CEO of Disney from 2005 to 2020. At Genies, Eiger will serve as a consultant.
“Excited to join @genies’ board of directors to help @akashrnigam and company empower people to build ‘web3 mobile apps’: avatar ecosystems,” Aiger tweeted.
Since launching in December 2016, Los Angeles-based Genies has raised $100 million in funding, including a $65 million funding round in 2021 led by the Miami Group. That same year, Genies signed partnerships with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group to become the official avatar and NFT provider for music label artists.
co-founder and CEO of Genies, Akash Nigam describes Genies avatars as a combination of various NFTs worn by a digital avatar that users can buy, sell, and trade with other collectors.
In an interview with Decrypt, Nigam explained that after meeting with Iger, he offered the mogul the opportunity to get under the hood of Genies to play with all the platform’s technologies and understand what a service is.
“I am learning a lot and look forward to helping [Genies] bring their vision to life,” Iger wrote, showing off his new digital avatar.
According to Nigam, the idea for genies came about after he came across an avatar online and felt that such images could reflect a person’s feelings, emotions, and thoughts in a way that other forms of online communication are not possible.
“Our goal was to bring avatars to the masses,” Nigam says. “We believe that avatars will be the next form of communication.”
https://decrypt.co/95085/former-walt-disney-ceo-bob-iger-backs-metaverse-startup
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