How Founder Jaime Schmidt Got Into Crypto and Cofounded BFF

• Jaime Schmidt and Brit Morin founded BFF, a crypto and NFT community for women and nonbinary people.
• Schmidt first bought into World of Women and Farmers Marketverse NFTs.
• Data from ArtTactic in November showed that 16% of NFT creators were women.

Jaime Schmidt still remembers the first time she became inspired by non-fungible tokens, which are unique, creative digital works that live on the blockchain.

Schmidt, a cofounder of BFF, a crypto community for women and nonbinary people, saw World of Women, an NFT collection that features futuristic women wearing geometric earrings and vibrant colored hair, made by Yam Karkai, an artist and a cofounder.

As soon as she saw it, she wanted to be a part of the community. “I loved what they stood for,” Schmidt said, referring to its mission to increase female representation. “It was just really cool to finally see women represented in an NFT collection.”

Last year, NFTs raised a total of $17.7 billion, NonFungible’s yearly report showed. In November, ArtTactic reported that 16% of NFT creators were women.

Schmidt has been an entrepreneur since 2010, when she transformed her 800-square-foot home in Portland, Oregon, and repurposed her kitchen’s pots and pans to make natural deodorants and shampoos out of her home kitchen. What began as a hobby turned into a business, and she started selling her products, known as Schmidt’s Naturals, at local farmers markets.

Within seven years, Schmidt’s Naturals’ products were sold in more than 14,000 stores in over 30 countries, making $45 million in yearly sales. By 2017, Unilever acquired it for an undisclosed amount.

Schmidt has since written a book and started Color Capital with her husband, Chris Cantino. Color is a venture firm that aligns with her mission “to really help support other up-and-coming creators, artists, and entrepreneurs find their passion, their purpose,” she said.

Schmidt went further down the NFT rabbit hole and bought into a project called the Farmers Marketverse, inspired by her time selling Schmidt’s Naturals at local farmers markets.

She started to see how her “passion and obsession with brands and the consumer space” could collide with Web3, she said. And she asked herself: “How can brands tap in and take advantage? How can I help push that forward?” So she started a crypto community with her husband called Crypto Packaged Goods, where early-stage entrepreneurs can find mentors from later-stage founders by purchasing an NFT from its collection.

Last fall, Brit Morin, the founder of the early-stage venture fund Offline Ventures and Brit + Co, an online-learning company and community for young entrepreneurial women, contacted Schmidt. The two entrepreneurs had been friends for years, but Schmidt said Morin reached out to pick her brain on the NFT space. Morin also shared that she was building a community to get women involved in profiting from crypto and NFTs. 

The duo decided to partner to found BFF, a Web3 business and community that has a chat group on

Discord

to understand crypto, NFTs, and Web3 — and learn how to profit from them. BFF also offers informational events to its members and the crypto-curious. This month it plans to release an NFT collection called You, which showcases 10,000 NFTs for profile pictures, and is in the works of hosting a conference.

To reach communities across different industries and backgrounds, BFF has 70 founding members, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Mila Kunis, Randi Zuckerberg, ClassPass’ Payal Kadakia, Refinery29’s Christene Barberich, and Loom’s Erica Chidi. 

Web3’s characteristics of being decentralized allow anyone to become creators and be monetary owners of digital collectibles, Schmidt said. And NFTs have “huge potential to be an equalizing force for those historically marginalized by existing systems,” she continued.

Related articles

SEC became a defendant in the NFT classification lawsuit

30 July 2024

DraftKings Dumps NFT Business, Citing Legal Developments

30 July 2024

While there is hype surrounding digital collectibles, there are also risks, such as

ADVERTISEMENT

liquidity

and

volatility

, fueling speculation, three experts — a crypto investor, a market researcher, and a computer-science professor at UC Berkeley — told Insider. 

BFF launched an NFT in January called BFF Friendship Bracelets, which people can purchase to join the BFF community. As a part of its initial launch, 8,444 bracelets were airdropped for free. Three months since that, 7,073 have been resold on the NFT market, each at an average price of $3,399, according to NFT Statistics data to date. So far, the resales from the Friendship Bracelets are its only source of revenue. The money is put back into the community to host events and launch its You NFT collection, Schmidt said.

The gender imbalance is prominent in cryptocurrency investing, which gives rise to a “crypto bro” culture. Data from the investment platform eToro showed that in 2021, 15% of bitcoin traders were women. “We’re not out to make fun of crypto bros,” Schmidt said. “We see men as allies in this movement. Anybody’s welcome here.”

Schmidt’s advice for women and people from underrepresented communities looking to get into crypto is to acknowledge that these disparities exist. “But there is room for us,” she added. Schmidt encourages people to approach crypto investing with vulnerability and ask questions.