Uni mate startup makes blockchain easier for marketers

Credit: Eyasu Etsub via Unsplash

Four friends, pushed closer together by the pandemic, came up with a plan to make it easier to use blockchain technology to create loyalty and consumer engagement programs for marketers.

Nathan Hur and Samule Li were software developers at Atlassian and Canva. James Lin was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. Kane Lu was at Microsoft.

They met at university and later shared a flat. It was during the shutdowns that they came up with Plaza.

They have initial venture capital backing, enough to ensure they get paid, and have started working with organizations and agencies globally.

In the advertising world they have the support of Simon Hadfield, adman and recruiter for agencies.

They describe their venture:

Plaza provides software for agencies and brands to launch forward-thinking Web3 campaigns centered around real-world aids, community building and brand engagement.

This includes one-step consumer onboarding and integrations with existing brand marketing and loyalty initiatives across consumer platforms (e-commerce, social media, CRM and others). Plaza enables brands to establish a Web2->Web3 presence and seamlessly track consumer engagement metrics.

Using Plaza’s software, any agency and brand can begin building a meaningful Web3 presence without prior expertise and development resources.

They see Plaza at the start of an adoption curve.

Lin: “It helps any organization enter the blockchain space without a blockchain developer.

“And right now the applications globally are very much in the marketing and loyalty space. So you’re seeing a lot of Nikes in the world starting to implement web3 strategies.

“What we’re doing is building software that basically makes it easy for any organization to start exploring.”

An example could be player trading cards, where physical cards were traditionally traded.

“Now athletes, teams, musicians can launch their own digital tokens, which, as a fan, if I attend a Premier League match or action, my badge can level up, it will unlock other prizes and benefits, I can exchange it with other people. So it creates a new ecosystem of engagement and loyalty for digital assets.”

Almost half of the top 100 brands globally have now launched in Web3, and there is a great focus on consumer engagement.

Industries include sports, hospitality, e-commerce, fashion and retail, FMCG. Recent initiatives have included Starbucks, Hennessy, Adidas, Gucci and Shopify.

Companies and their agencies globally have built Web3 teams to serve this growing demand.

But for many organizations, without the resources, they face technical barriers to blockchain development, which slows down the adoption of this technology and real-world applications. That’s where Plaza fits in.

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