Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#9 - Business study: Sorare & SorareInfo
129 Plays8 months ago
All the remarkable details from Sorare and SorareInfo
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone, Boris here. I'm happy to be back on the Numera Amesh podcast for an episode dedicated to Sora. It will be an episode where I will be alone presenting the game, presenting the strategy of the company, presenting
00:00:18
Speaker
my community that is called solar rainfall pretty interesting one different perspectives from a manager perspective from a community and content creator and as a business communication etc so we will study the business we will study a bit the tokenomics we will study a bit the prize pools we will study the tech we will study the community i will present the game first so first of all thank you everyone for listening don't hesitate to give a review to this podcast on spotify
00:00:47
Speaker
or an Apple podcast and we have reached a lot of listen. We got good feedbacks. So thank you so much for listening and let's get started.
Sora's Foundation and Initial Challenges
00:00:56
Speaker
So Sorer is a French company that was formed in 2018, if I'm not mistaken, or 2019, but I think it was 2018.
00:01:06
Speaker
and it was founded in Paris so five years ago in January 2019 2018 sorry in January or in October it's a company that is selling cards so server is making money by selling soccer cards this soccer card is the representation of a real footballer a real
00:01:30
Speaker
Sport man in their real life and they are different scarcity So initially the fun fact is that so rare when they started not a lot of people wanted to invest and then as the game grew Investors started to look after this game and it became the biggest fundraising in Europe in 2021 I guess it was in 2021 that they raised and
00:01:56
Speaker
680 million, a pretty big amount of money. It was in September 2021. Pretty big growth. A lot of cash was burned. I was burned, I guess. But just to say that the idea is super good, even if the idea was super good, people didn't want to hear about solar, people didn't want to invest, the cards were cheap.
Access and Card Scarcity Strategy
00:02:20
Speaker
And this is a topic that we will come back in a moment.
00:02:23
Speaker
so the company was founded the one interesting thing about server is that initially they didn't let everyone enter and they made a list and little by little they were making managers entering the game so i was in the went in the went in list for quite some time i don't remember exactly
00:02:44
Speaker
but I guess for a few weeks or few months and a day I received an email you are accepted and you can test the game and I think that this is a good practice because in some cases you want everyone to go and test your app or your game or your products your websites or whatever but there are still some cases where you prefer to have only a limited amount of people to try first to get feedbacks etc so it's the first move that it's
00:03:09
Speaker
An interesting one, telos also I guess to reduce the cost because you have less maintenance cost, you have less bugs that are described, you have less people that try to register, you have less feature requests and it can be a good start to begin with a smaller amount of people. If you know already what you want to do, I guess
00:03:34
Speaker
that if you don't know exactly, maybe it's better to get the maximum amount of feedback. So this is the first move that was pretty interesting. And the concept was pretty simple. So with Ethereum, so the cryptocurrency, it was possible to buy cards in a specific time. So when I joined in 2020, it was only possible to buy cards
00:03:56
Speaker
two hours in the evening so it was something from seven to nine or i don't remember exactly but there were not auctions of cards every minutes or every 10 minutes it was only during a window of two hours if i remember correctly and this is another move that i find interesting is that when i start to project and when people start to project usually we try to do everything at the same time and it's linked with the waiting list also is
00:04:21
Speaker
It's okay, we don't have, I guess, it's like this, I don't know if Sohrer has done it on purpose or not, but I guess. Okay, we don't have a big amount of leagues because at this point they were only the Belgium league and I think only the Belgium league. So we will only do with the clubs that we have, with the leagues that we have and the cars that we have and we will do only two hours and people will buy drinks these two hours and it will be already enough to start with.
00:04:47
Speaker
and i think it's a really smart move also to consider what is possible and to be humble and say okay we can do that let's do that we know we can do better but let's to say step by step even if we want the 20 bigger leagues in the world let's start with one the one that accept to speak to us let's start to release cards let's start to play etc
00:05:09
Speaker
So this is my first
Engagement through Real-life Events
00:05:11
Speaker
steps. So I arrive on the game, I register, I see that it's football cards, NFTs, I see that I can buy them in Ethereum, and then I start looking into the game. So they were at this time 3 X-Carcities. So the rare, the super rare and the unique cards.
00:05:27
Speaker
and what differentiates each other is that the rare cards can be minted 100 cards by season, the super rare cards 10 cards per season of a player can be minted and uni cards are the name suggest is possible to mint only one person
00:05:47
Speaker
So the higher the scarcity, the higher the prices and it makes sense. So when I joined, there was already the Olympic Leonese, so the club of Leons in France, there were some clubs in Russia, there were some clubs in Belgium and I guess that was all. So I decided to try and buy some cards. I was translating the website for Sarah in Russia. That was not my best translation, but it was a decent one for a
00:06:11
Speaker
young graduate student, I enjoyed doing that, getting in touch with the community, starting to see how the game was working and buying my first card. So the first cards that I bought it was just to test out the game, I found the concept really super super smart because
00:06:28
Speaker
So the goal is to win cards or to win Ethereum, depending on the real performances of a player. So the maximum score of each player can be 100. So if five players score 100, you have a total score of 500. And I had never the 500 score, but it's a goal of each manager. And basically, if I have 500 as a score, it's the maximum score. And if I have zero, it means that my players didn't play.
00:06:55
Speaker
What is really interesting is to tie the real performances to a game. It already existed, but not with NFTs. And I directly saw the potential. I said, okay, this is serious things with people all over the world that play football. It would be possible to do head to head against friends. It would be possible to play with friends in private leagues. It would be possible to do some challenges. It would be possible to win some rewards. It would be possible to
00:07:19
Speaker
win some merchandising, some experiences, some rewards, some cash. So I directly understood that if Sauer succeeded to sign the major leagues such as the Premier League, that is the case in some time now, the Liga, the French league, the Italian league, the Bundesliga, it would be
Community Building and Communication Expansion
00:07:38
Speaker
massive. But at that time, it was not the case.
00:07:40
Speaker
So I said, OK, let's try the game. Let's play the game. And as the cards were taking value, as a lot of people remember, the early adopters was buying cards during the evening. So seven to nine p.m. French time. And in the night I could list my cards and it was directly by by managers or.
00:08:00
Speaker
South American managers that are in different time zones. So it was a good time. The cards were taking value. More people were joining. The waiting list was getting bigger and bigger. The community started to grow on Discord and Twitter. And another fact that is interesting about Toria is that they decided to communicate on all the social network, but only in English. And since that day, they haven't
00:08:25
Speaker
started any other language and have communicated mainly in English. Of course, sometimes people from different languages create content. The CO that is French is also getting interviewed in French. I guess other people are creating content in other languages, but I found it really interesting that the website, really early, it has been a priority to translate it in all languages possible.
00:08:55
Speaker
but the announcement were only in English and are still in English so this is an interesting fact because as you know to launch different countries to launch different Twitters to launch different Facebooks etc it takes a lot a lot a lot of time and I guess that was not the priority for sure
00:09:15
Speaker
It was to sign clubs, to get more affiliate, to get more licensed partners, to get more coverage, to get more sports. So after they launched the baseball, the basketball.
00:09:26
Speaker
to get the legal work done, also to have a wallet, a crypto wallet that is easier to use, to be able to buy crypto directly from Sorer, to be able to withdraw Ethereum, to be able to trade Ethereum for fiat money, so euro, dollars or pound. The prodigy was not to get different Twitter for the different merchants and maybe at some point it will come. So I found this detail pretty interesting.
00:09:54
Speaker
So yeah, so this was the start and then more leagues, more clubs were added and the more leagues, the more fans, the more fans, the more managers and the game continued to grow. The cards prices also continued to grow. More people were making money and it's not only because the game was growing that people were making money and because there were more clubs that people were playing the game and making money.
00:10:22
Speaker
One fact that is super interesting also is the concept of
Market Stability through Thresholds
00:10:26
Speaker
3 shots. So since the beginning and now it will change, it will be removed now in 2024, so 6 years after the lunch. So where was giving every week the possibility to win 50 euros and the equivalent of this 50 euros in Ethereum. So I don't know if you can imagine, but to give you an example.
00:10:45
Speaker
I guess in 2019 or 2020 I need to check. Exactly. It was around 200 euros. I record this podcast on Sunday 8th in February 2024. So since six years, Soray has given the possibility to win 50 euros. And this I'm speaking only for rare cards. I'm not even speaking of superior and of unique.
00:11:05
Speaker
50 euros per week or sometimes two times per week in ethereum and so with the prices of ethereum that has gone crazy a manager that was performing well has made an incredible amount of money and sorry has burnt an incredible amount of cash in this
00:11:21
Speaker
system allow the cards to have a certain value and the market to reach a certain stability. I know a lot of people are complaining. Yes, a rare is not the market is broken. Yes, the cards has no value. Yes, I want to continue to play the thresholds. I want to continue to win my 50 euros per week. I will sell off my cards if it's not possible anymore, blah, blah, blah.
00:11:45
Speaker
The reality is that Saria for 6 years has given this money and I guess I have no information about that. I guess that it was to give the market a certain value because of course if you have a player, a card of a player and if you have 5 cards of players that because you need 5 cards to win.
00:12:04
Speaker
and to play in a division that can bring you 50 euros every week. These cards have value and the more the card is scoring regularly, the more value this card has. Player can have a score of 100. So if he's playing really good, he has, I'm speaking about football, not about basketball and baseball. So 100, and if a card and a player is scoring 50 answers, so 250,
00:12:34
Speaker
it was possible to get this 50 euros so the goal to summarize it was not exactly like this was to have five players that scored 50 points if it was more then you can add the cards etc that you can sell
00:12:49
Speaker
So all this to say that the younger player is, the longer the utility is, the higher the price is, the higher the score is, the higher the price is. So that's how Sare tried to price the cards, because if we think about how Sare can give a value to a card, initially there is, if there is no reward in Ethereum, there is only the possibility to win cards.
00:13:17
Speaker
But who decides the price of these cards? The market. So if the market knows that every week 50 euros can be won, then the market will price the cards depending on the performances, the age, the utility, et cetera. And this concept I found it really interesting that they accepted the fact that they have to lose some money initially, distribute it to the market, distribute it to the managers,
00:13:47
Speaker
for them to price the cards, get a certain stability, and then remove the restrictions, because of course it's not sustainable.
Transition to Fiat and Cost Management
00:13:57
Speaker
Because you can imagine if, for example, you succeed or I succeed to have a team that cost me 250 euros,
00:14:05
Speaker
If I have won five times, 50 euros, then I got my return on investment. And if I win the additional three short of 50 euros, it's bonus for me. And it was the case for a lot of managers that play in the last six years, it was the case. The return was absolutely insane. When you think that the cards in 2019 or 2020 were around 30 euros. So the managers that bought five cards or 10 cards or 100 cards in the early days and played, hopefully they were not mentioned and tried.
00:14:34
Speaker
at this time, and that's why also I think military and trade are only possible today, is that if you can play with five teams and potentially five times get a threshold of 50 euros, then it would have burned an incredible amount of cash. So that's why it was only possible to play one lineup, so five players per week, five cards per week, because if it was not the case, then it would have cost an even bigger amount of sorrow.
00:15:02
Speaker
So this is for the concept of thresholds, so every week there is one game week that a manager needs to use 5 cards to play and to win rewards and depending on the ranking the rewards pool is divided into different tiers and the higher you rank, the higher I rank.
00:15:18
Speaker
the better the reward, the more rewards, the stronger the team and the gallery is, the more rewards again I can get or you can get and this is how the platform is working. Now, initially, Seram was directly using the Ethereum blockchain, so now we speak a bit more about the technical aspect of the game and they realized really quickly that it was pretty expensive to use only the Ethereum blockchain. So what they have done is that they have partnered with StarkNet, that is a layer too, we have touched a bit the concept of
00:15:48
Speaker
or two when we presented the history of Satoshi the first crypto with Sam I let you check the podcast I guess it was the number five or four it's called the history of Satoshi first cryptos listen it if you haven't yet
00:16:03
Speaker
So a layer, if I need to summarize it really quickly, is to group the transaction and instead of publishing them directly into the Ethereum blockchain, publish a batch, let's say of transaction, so instead of publishing each transaction one by one on the Ethereum blockchain, grouping 100,000 transactions and then send it directly to the Ethereum network.
00:16:21
Speaker
So Subaru has decided at some point to partner with this company to save cost because you need to think about something also to make the user experience as smooth as possible. Subaru has covered the fees for I don't even remember but for a long time at least four years I guess three between I think at least three years four years so
00:16:40
Speaker
All the cards could have been exchanged for free. One manager can send it to another one, even if it was a blockchain transaction for free. It was also possible to send it around from one wallet to another wallet inside Sera for free. And all of this, it was for free because Sera was paying to make the user experience as easy as possible, even if all the crypto was a big challenge. And this is linked with a topic that I really enjoyed because Niko Nagini at the CEO of Sera is sharing a lot of content on social media is that he has identified two or three big priorities and one of the big
00:17:10
Speaker
was to make the user experience as easy as possible and to avoid all this crypto, let's say, disorder or a mess.
Partnership with StarkNet
00:17:20
Speaker
Because for someone that has never transacted on a blockchain, you know how it can be confusing if you have already created a wallet, create a private key, to store it,
00:17:30
Speaker
to remember the address, the crypto address, to send, to confirm the transaction, to sign the transaction, to check the etherscan that the good transaction gets confirmed for a lot of people. It doesn't make sense and it's hard and they don't want to do it. They think a server is a scam because it's linked to crypto. So they try to make this crypto mess as easy as possible and that's why I know that they have added the cash wallet
00:17:54
Speaker
it's making their life I guess really easier even if it's impossible to pay in theorem a lot of people are using cash and this goes with challenges as well because using Ethereum as a currency or using fiat and euro as a currency changed totally the game initially when the game started people were thinking in Ethereum so if I was buying a card at one Ethereum I didn't want to sell it to sell this card for less than one Ethereum because I was losing money
00:18:20
Speaker
now it's depending on the value of euro if i buy a card of 200 euros i don't want to sell it than for less than 200 euros because people are thinking in euro initially i would have never received an offer that is i propose you x euro against shark and i was always a receiving offer in ethereum no people are thinking in fiat and this also brings stability moving from ethereum to euro because the price of the cards are priced in
00:18:48
Speaker
And this is linked also to the fact that at some point instead of giving 50 euros in the in ethereum sorry has said okay, we will Because initially it was 0.01 in the room and 0.02 and then it become really or 0.1 and 0.2, but it was
00:19:06
Speaker
It was a sum and they say, okay, we will stop to do this. We will send, we will reward the equivalent of 50 euros in a term. So depending on the price of the term, the sum of the traditional will vary as well. And this was also an interesting move from them because they say, okay.
00:19:21
Speaker
at least
Strategic Collaborations for Growth
00:19:22
Speaker
we can plan a bit more how much it would cost us and the bigger the amount of this cash is distributed the less cash is available as a cash price because if sarah knows that for example i'm using crazy number i don't have the detain but let's say cost them every week 100 000 then this 100 000 they cannot be rewarded in another way so that's why they will remove these three shorts and they will use this money to add bigger cash prices in another division so this is this was to illustrate
00:19:50
Speaker
the biggest moves the biggest challenges so then clubs saw that there were opportunities to connect with fans to create content with server to sign the cards to because it's really good to receive a card of a player that is signed because the player can sign his card if he creates a server account and send directly to the community they were more and more
00:20:15
Speaker
investors coming from the football world, this is also something really strong for sure to have been able to connect with world champions such as Andrea Schirle, Girard Piquet and Antoine Gresmann, ambassadors such as Kiliam and Bape, Vian and Messi, Zinedine Zidane and other names. So having a board of champions to advisor was also a big strength because the game was directed by people that know the game.
00:20:43
Speaker
that know how to play football, that know how the fun behaves, that knows how to connect her with the leagues, how to make the thing easier. And that's why I sort of took the opportunity to sign the Premier League, to sign La Liga, to sign different leagues in order to be the biggest entertainment game, football game in the world and the biggest entertainment company in the world. I think that is the goal. And by getting in touch with ambassadors such as Serena Williams and, you know, the other footballers that I haven't mentioned before,
00:21:12
Speaker
it helps to get faster with the league, it helps to get credibility, it helps to get in touch with the right people and this is also something that every business should think about who I want to speak to and who can help me to speak with these persons, who can invest in my company and can help me to go faster, who can I speak to that other companies cannot.
Outreach and Partnerships with Clubs
00:21:31
Speaker
So this is also a question of confidence and of trust and to go and say okay I want to speak with you, I have something to present to you and
00:21:38
Speaker
I think Nicolas Julia was picking with everyone he could about server and this isn't so important that I guess an entrepreneur at some point we can as entrepreneurs we can be afraid that someone will steal my idea but at some point I think we all have to go out and speak and say okay I have this idea I want to present it to you can you get me in touch with these people even if it's super ambitious of course I won't go and pick with someone if I don't have something already to show so
00:22:02
Speaker
the first step is to have something and then go to speak with the people I guess and this is what sir has done always in the big in the first years okay my priorities to get as many clubs as possible my priorities to get as many managers as possible then when this was done okay I have proved that my concept was working people are investing for our spending money on the cards people are playing the games people are creating content online the community is here
00:22:26
Speaker
here, I want to speak on the English, okay, let's go, let's speak with ambassadors, let's raise some funds, let's continue to price the market, let's continue to reward the managers that are early, let's make the market higher, let's make the market stable, let's raise an incredible amount of money, let's spend this incredible amount of money to burn it and to distribute it to people and then let's remove them, let's make price puts that make sense and let's make money after some
00:22:50
Speaker
years I think this strategy is incredible and it's super smart so that's why I wanted to speak about also the affiliate program also how to make people wants to bring friends okay let's reward them let's give them some cards and some good cards let's speak with influencers let's give them advantages
00:23:06
Speaker
push the community if time on the social network when it's possible.
Content Creation and Community Engagement
00:23:10
Speaker
Let's retweet the good tweets of the content creators. Let's have some people that create content by themselves and incentivize to create content by inviting them in some games, by creating leaks that help them to engage with their communities, by providing tickets, by providing meetups, by connecting people, etc. So the more value it was bringing, the better it was for sure and at the end it's a win-win.
00:23:34
Speaker
relationship. So this is what I wanted to speak about. I think I have covered almost all. Now what I want to speak about is the content creation because as some of you guys, I have created a community that is called SoreInfo and because it was not easy to find information in the beginning and this is also something that
00:23:54
Speaker
I guess it's pretty interesting is that server was partnered with KPMG or blockchain partner to provide some insight and one guy from KPMG blockchain partner Maxim has created server data that is a software that is connecting to the API of server and so the API is a way to collect data and he instead of displaying it in server he is displaying in it his own website that is server data that displayed all the statistics that are needed for managers how much is a price how much is the price of a car etc because
00:24:22
Speaker
Also something that you need to think about is that the prices were not really easy to get. In the beginning, to sort and to see the evolutions of the price, it was only by listing or by new car. So the listing of a car by a manager can be more, for example, three times higher than the last auction that was issued by, sorry, but whole manager can do that was needed to be done manually inside the next century. That's why, sorry, that has an incredible job to connect everything and to
00:24:47
Speaker
make a lot of information regarding prices but not only also performance is accessible and I said okay I was with my excel file also and I said okay it can be really interesting to create content about server because I see the community that is growing and there are some content that are hard to get so
00:25:02
Speaker
I will do, I will kill one bird with, two birds with one stone and share content, share my journey and create informative content for people to become better managers. And that's what I have done with Story Info. So it started with a Twitter account.
00:25:18
Speaker
And then I started the newsletter and again, same as it was the same case for me. I had not a lot of things to share and I had no process to create the newsletter. I had never created content in English. So it forced myself to improve my English, to interview people in English. And I said, okay, my goal is to create one article per week, one newsletter per week, and one interview of a manager per week that I record.
00:25:42
Speaker
with my phone with a voice recorder and then I transcript to improve my English and that's what I have done I have not written every week because then I developed the website I decided to develop my
00:25:54
Speaker
computer skills, but what I mean is that initially the first newsletter was maybe really short comparing to what I can create, no because I didn't have the process, because I didn't have the feedback from the community, but I started anyway sending 50 messages, hi I'm creating a newsletter, do you mind to subscribe and giving me some feedbacks, and people are helpful I guess.
00:26:13
Speaker
they always try to help and give feedbacks when it's possible so it started like this a newsletter every week, one tutorial every week and one interview of managers every week and also managers are eager to give advices to people via the interviews and from then we have never stopped I have created another account for my adventure and it is called road2d1 that I will link also in the description of
00:26:36
Speaker
this podcast episode and there are different projects from clothes, from login in the website, from a comment section, from a paid plan to the newsletter, from YouTube videos that I will create a lot of things and the main thing that I wanted to share is that and I have said it also in the first presentation of this podcast that is
00:26:56
Speaker
either i share or not the content the most important thing is to get the knowledge and then i can decide if i share it or not having the option to have content to share it's still good even for me if i don't share it it's good for people that consume it if they like but first of all it's good for me because i have a kind of internal data knowledge base
00:27:19
Speaker
this is what i wanted to mention and then for the newsletter i always try to keep the thing simple and say okay i have one hour let's write a newsletter in one hour okay i want to record the youtube videos okay i spend maximum two hours on the script and the recording and then two hours on the editing
00:27:36
Speaker
okay I have this tutorial I want to spend only one hour so to decide which time I decide to spend to create content have helped me to create more content because the goal is to put things out first and then polish them, reread them
00:27:52
Speaker
rewrite them and then the community started to grow, the people started to follow more on Twitter, the subscriber base began to be bigger, the WordPress website was shutting down because it has some bugs so then I decided to start learning, the ball keeps rolling and this is really important so by sharing my researches it was also helping me to structure my thinking process and to say okay
00:28:17
Speaker
I want to structure this I want to research that I want to research players that don't have cards yet because I want to be the first to buy the cards of these players when the first cards are minted because I guess they will be less expensive than in the future because the player is young not a lot of people know this player etc I want to buy young players card because I want to play the game long term so this is my strategy
00:28:41
Speaker
I think that I need to own this specific amount of cards for these divisions because I guess it's where I can get the most returns based on these computations.
Future Plans and Conclusion
00:28:50
Speaker
I think that this division is too expensive so I decided to switch my focus from these divisions to another one. I sell these players because I see that these players have the price that is the higher in the history.
00:29:00
Speaker
I buy this player because this price is the whole award in the history, setting alerts, trading strategies. By defining different categories, community initiative, I see that this guy is creating content I want to comment on the twitter because I want my account to be shown.
00:29:16
Speaker
I want to interview this guy because I want him to remember me in the future if I launch a YouTube channel then I want to get in touch with this person because he can help me grow and I can help him grow also in the future via the website because I have a subscriber reading base of people that read and he has people that view that watch video so it's complementary I need to declare my NFTs I know people that can help me doing that I want to create content for the different countries and people are looking to declare the NFTs but they don't know how to do it
00:29:44
Speaker
So this is the plan, and then I want to finish to conclude, because it has been already 36 minutes that I'm speaking about server, and I don't think that I will do more than 40. I think what are the next plans? So the next plans are to code the website, create a login section and a command section, then to create some YouTube videos about statistics to try to connect to the API of server that allows me to do so.
00:30:06
Speaker
I have certainly forgot to forget a lot of things about server. It was things that were coming to my mind. I can definitely record another episode with a server manager to go more into details. So maybe there will be another episode to complete that with someone from the community, but I'm not sure. And yeah, continue the newsletter, creating a subscription base for the website and continue to enjoy and play the game. That's all. I think I made it all. Thank you everyone.
00:30:34
Speaker
To listen to this podcast, Numeramesh is an agency to help projects to develop. Sore has decided since the beginning to reward 40% of the cars minted for rewards, so it underlines the importance of tokenomics. And community management also, we have spoken about business development, event support, so these are all services that we provide with Numeramesh, so don't hesitate to contact
00:30:59
Speaker
as if you have some web tree needs or metaverse needs or AI needs. Thank you so much for your time. There is the motto of Sura info that I want to share with you before stopping record those podcasts. Is FIFA is good, Sura is better, but real football is even better. Work well, take care and ciao.