Securing the Future of Collectibles: Dibbs Is Your Physical to Digital Partner in Web3

Hey Hackers,

Dibbs has been nominated in HackerNoon's annual Startup of the Year awards in Los Angeles, CA, USA. 🎉

🧑‍💻 Please vote for us here.

Read more about us below to understand why we deserve your vote ⤵️

Meet Dibbs

Everything evolves – even collectibles. Web3 is the unique opportunity that brands and IP holders have been waiting for in order to secure the future of collectibles, and fortify brands’ legacies.

Our TaaS (Tokenization-as-a-Service) business gives brands’ physical objects of desire a new digital life and activates a whole new universe of collectors.

Web3 can be intimidating. Through our team’s deep blockchain expertise, unique tech and financial rails, and ability to handle any crypto-related compliance and accounting considerations on any business’ behalf, we can help put any lingering security concerns they may have to rest.

Plus, with our live team available 24/7, brands never have to feel like they’re going at it alone.

My Role

My name is Evan Vandenberg, and I am the Co-Founder and CEO at Dibbs. Under my leadership, Dibbs has raised more than $15 million in venture financing from investors ranging from Amazon, Foundry Group and Tusk Venture Partners to Chris Paul, Kevin Love, and Skylar Diggins-Smith.

I have been working in the web3 space full-time since 2018 (and collecting sports cards since 1995 🙂). I started Dibbs to bring the best out of my two passions.

As a lifelong collector of memorabilia, I founded Dibbs amid the COVID-19 pandemic — a time when many people were finding ways to connect with others while at home, including by digging up collectibles. I watched as the NFT market soared, alongside the sales of trading cards.

And then, when web3 emerged as an outlet for those using digital expression to form authentic, meaningful connections, I saw an opportunity to converge all these trends and, as a former early team member at WAX, I was equipped with the blockchain experience to bring Dibbs into the world.

My role at Dibbs is to rapidly evolve our TaaS offerings to help brands, collections, institutions, and IP holders create a digital presence for their real-life collectibles and forge a new path for a deeper connection with their communities.

As the CEO of a young startup, my day-to-day changes, you guessed it, day-to-day 😅 but my job mostly surrounds investor relations and business development tasks.

I honestly couldn’t do my job without my trusty executive assistant, Sandy (my miniature English cream dachshund). She runs our office.

How We're Disrupting/Improving the Collectibles Industry

We allow brands to futurize new revenue streams.

We give brands’ physical items a digital presence and increase their earning potential tenfold. (Literally.)

Our platform makes it easy to create physically-backed digital assets that can generate new royalty streams, remove pesky intermediaries, and capture 5-10x more over the lifetime of a brand’s collectibles — all while delivering more delight to brands’ end customers.

We open the door to web3.

With Dibbs as a brand’s tokenization partner, they can become empowered to build exclusive online communities with a global audience and create a two-by-four-way connection between brands and users, data, and insights.

Businesses can use our blockchain and deep marketing expertise to modernize rewards programs, strengthen consumer loyalty, and improve their bottom line.

We never let businesses lose their sense of security.

With our integrated physical-to-digital vaulting services, every mint, drop, and transaction is closely monitored to protect brands and their IP. Businesses can utilize our proprietary technology and web3 compliance systems to ease their concerns and feel safe every step of the way.

Standing Out From the Crowd

Since its inception, Dibbs has managed to be global, meaning we have hired employees from every single continent (except Antarctica, of course). It has been challenging having a global team, given frictions like time zone and language barriers, but we have made it work.

In the words of our CMO, Ben Plomion, “We will hire good talent even if they live on the moon!”

Additionally, we have long believed that the web3 industry could not evade regulation forever. Unlike certain crypto-native folks, we have always been proponents of regulation.

In fact, we are so adamant about our stance on this issue that we wrote a comic book about how we regulate ourselves.

This comic book explains our approach to trust in web3 and how we believe regulation can help to create a more secure and sustainable ecosystem.

Our Predictions/Thoughts on the Collectible Industry in 2023

The collectibles industry is divided into two subsections: physical and digital. Digital collectibles are being led by blockchain technology, and I believe that the collectibles industry would be remiss not to utilize this technology.

On the digital side, there will be a web3 component to everything. On the physical side, I believe that growth will continue to accelerate. We are seeing a lot of categories being monetized that have been untapped for a long time.

There is so much cultural relevance and global reach to many of these other sectors within the collectibles industry. We want to support both of these sectors, and we want to combine them in a way that makes sense.

Our core team is very crypto-native. Our executive team comes from Gemini and various blockchain companies. We have a very different worldview from most in the collecting space, especially the physical collectible space.

The sentiment around NFTs is currently down, but I believe that the technology is undoubtedly going to be a major part of the future. What it will take to bring sentiment back up is to get people back into it with trust.

We can use NFTs as digital ownership receipts, transfer mechanisms, and ways to showcase these assets to allow a global audience to reach the assets they love. There is a fandom for these assets in literally every corner of the world.

NFTs offer a truly unique opportunity here. We are going to start to see massive adoption of this technology in the coming years.

We are committed to bringing this to the global market, and we are doing so by building the infrastructure and making it feasible for large IP brands in the collectible space to feel comfortable putting their items out there.

We also want to make sure that end consumers feel comfortable when they buy these items. They are real, and you can redeem a physical copy of them at any time. This is very different from most NFT projects, which tend to be extremely volatile and most trend to zero.

There is a real market for physical-backed digital collectibles.

What Word Defines the State of the Collectibles Industry in 2023?

NFTs are an incredible transfer of value mechanisms, and it is only a matter of time before they unlock all sorts of things, defining the future of the collectibles industry.

This could include anything from access to exclusive groups, upcoming drops, or even different characters in video games.

The margins for IP owners in this industry are also significantly higher than they were in the analog, physical-only world.

This increased margin comes with a responsibility for IP owners. We believe that they need to capitalize on this opportunity by doing something for the collector, consumer, or fan.

There is so much that IP owners could offer their fans, such as exclusive experiences, early access to new products, or even just the ability to interact with their favorite athletes or teams.

The collectibles industry has become much more utilitarian in recent years, and the web3 cycle is only going to accelerate this trend. This means that IP owners need to think beyond just making money.

They need to focus on providing value to their fans and creating a more engaging experience. Amazon, one of our investors, says it best: brands must be customer obsessed.

The backlash against NFTs is a sign that the industry needs to change. IP owners need to move away from the "how do we make money" mindset and focus on "how do we create value for our fans." If they do this, they will be able to build a sustainable and successful business.

Why We Decided to Participate in HackerNoon's Startup of the Year Awards

Truthfully? We mistakenly received an email that we were nominated for best startup in Los Angeles, but when we went to check, our company wasn’t there. So, when we learned that we could nominate ourselves, we decided to do so ¯\(ツ)/¯ If you don’t love yourself, who will?

In all seriousness, HackerNoon is one of our favorite publications. The community here is vibrant, and we seek to have a strong tone of voice such as HackerNoon’s on our own blog. We are truly honored to be a part of this contest.

Final Thoughts

Thank you for taking the time to read about Dibbs. Our mission is to help brands and IP holders build deeper, more authentic, and monetizable connections with their communities by safely and securely creating a digital presence for their physical collectibles.

We hope that you understand that after reading this interview.

If you align with our vision, please vote for us.