Woman-powered Web3 Startup Gives NFT Holders Hollywood Access

key takeaways

Amanda Archer is the co-founder of Women of the Metaverse, a creative studio that focuses on establishing projects by women artists
Archer recently launched her first NFT collection, First Ape Wives Club, and hopes to bring the entertainment industry to the doorstep of her crypto community

In the same way the dot.com boom changed the tech landscape, public relations pro Amanda Archer saw an in for a Web3-focused startup that she hopes will change the entertainment game.

The tech-savvy Archer told Blockworks the goal of her Women of the Metaverse (WOTM) — an agency founded in October 2021 working to highlight women-led projects, such as the recently launched First Ape Wives Club NFT collection — is to “break down doors” for women in crypto. Though digital assets were supposed to upend the male-dominated paradigm of traditional finance, industry participants say there’s still a great deal of work to do.

Archer is tapping so-called ambassadors, who are active members within the community and act as spokespeople for WOTM. Some of these people include Oscar-nominated producer Cindy Cowan, actress Natasha Bassett and jewelry designer Phia Broadus.

“The entertainment business can be quite hard to crack into, so part of the utility that we have is to give our members access,” Archer said.

Archer moved to the United States from Australia eight years ago and worked as a publicist for Michal Jackson’s family after the singer passed away. The gig, she said, opened up her world to scores of Hollywood actors — the same people she now wants her NFT holders to be able to network with and have access to.

“I want to try and make Web3 more commercial to the general public,” Archer said.

Navigating a bear market

To get Women of the Metaverse off the ground, Archer relied heavily on colleagues and consultants in Web3 to help her lay out a roadmap.

For those looking to move into the space now, Archer said she prizes free online resources, such as tuning in to and even participating in Twitter spaces and Discord communities to stay up to date with a market that changes by the second.

“What we want to do is educate people on how to navigate the Web3 space, because we’ve made these mistakes,” she said. “I suggest that they go and find people online, even if they don’t know them directly, and start following them and getting into the conversation with trusted people.”

Though Web3 remains nascent — and cryptocurrency has been especially volatile as of late, with bitcoin and ether plummeting over the past few months — Archer deems the sector primed for explosive growth.

“When we started in October last year — we had a roadmap, but the NFT space has moved so quickly and things don’t always go as planned,” Archer said. “It’s a tougher market right now, and a lot of projects have come and gone, so it’s important to stay very aware that the project is a utility rich environment for people to seek real value — that will differentiate it from other projects.”

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