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How Gary Vee Thinks about NFTs | My First Million #209 with Gary Vaynerchuk

In this episode Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) joins Sam (@theSamParr) and Shaan (@ShaanVP) to give a master class on NFTs. Gary shares his predictions on the future of NFTs and how they'll be (eventually) used by everyone.

Gary VaynerchukguestSam ParrhostShaan Purihost
Aug 13, 202150mWatch on YouTube

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At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Gary Vee’s NFT thesis: utility, royalties, and long-game conviction

  1. The conversation opens with Gary Vaynerchuk explaining how VaynerX/VaynerMedia scaled headcount quickly, crediting relentless selling and tight awareness of cash coming in versus going out.
  2. He describes operating for years without a line of credit and relying on straightforward, conservative spending tied to signed client revenue rather than elaborate financial systems.
  3. On NFTs, he predicts most projects go to zero but argues the broader NFT/smart-contract shift is being underestimated beyond art and flipping.
  4. He outlines specific NFT utility cases—ticketing, publishing, music royalties, and unique real estate with perpetual resale royalties—and frames NFTs as a large-scale consumer asset behavior.
  5. He explains his content engine as something he does because he enjoys it, supported by a team that records and post-produces at scale, and shares a founder-first philosophy shaped by missing the Uber investment.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Rapid hiring was enabled by strong selling and a long-term mindset, not complex finance.

He says the agency scaled largely because he could consistently generate top-line revenue and treated both Wine Library and Vayner as “forever” businesses, which gave him confidence to hire ahead while staying close to what was coming in and going out.

His cash-flow approach was conservative and back-of-the-napkin, especially early on.

He describes learning cash-flow discipline from his father running Wine Library without a line of credit, and says early Vayner growth was mostly “not spending what you don’t have,” using simple math off signed/expected client retainers.

Outsized sales velocity can temporarily reduce business fragility.

He says “selling hides everything,” meaning a high pace of closing clients can mask operational and cash-flow vulnerabilities that would otherwise force painful decisions like layoffs.

He views today’s NFT market as hype-heavy, with a small minority of durable winners.

He predicts most current NFT projects fail and compares the moment to 1999–2000 internet stocks, saying he looks for whether customers actually care and whether there’s real business substance behind the hype.

He believes NFT utility and embedded royalties will reshape multiple industries over time.

He argues NFTs are not just collectibles: he emphasizes smart-contract utility—tickets becoming NFTs with ongoing collectible value and royalties, creators funding work via NFT-linked royalties, and even unique real estate being “NFT’d” with perpetual resale royalties.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Fucking selling hides everything.

— Gary Vaynerchuk

I think 98% of the current projects go to zero.

— Gary Vaynerchuk

I believe that there's not a single sporting event or concert in 10 years that the ticket is not an NFT, because there's no incentive for that organization and that artist or people to launch it as anything but an NFT, because a QR code or a piece of paper means nothing.

— Gary Vaynerchuk

Humans, humans are inhen- inherently hoarding assets.

— Gary Vaynerchuk

I have completely gone the other way. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I am now completely infatuated with investing only based on the person.

— Gary Vaynerchuk

Read the available transcript
VaynerX/VaynerMedia headcount growthCash-flow discipline and no line of credit earlySelling as the engine of stabilityNFT market shakeout and dot-com parallelsSmart-contract utility and embedded royaltiesNFT ticketing and digital identity via walletsVeeFriends strategy and VeeCon utility window

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SPEAKERS

  • Gary Vaynerchuk

    guest

    Entrepreneur and CEO of VaynerX/VaynerMedia, known for marketing advice and NFT project VeeFriends/VeeCon.

  • Sam Parr

    host

    Co-host of My First Million and entrepreneur, focused on business/operator questions in interviews.

  • Shaan Puri

    host

    Co-host of My First Million, entrepreneur with strong interest in crypto/NFTs and web3 use-cases.

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

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