Bessemer Steel DAO invests in NFT Marketplace OWND

• Bessemer Venture Partners has invested in NFT marketplace OWND, which it found through its DAO.
• ONWD’s founders, aged 18 and 21, met as high school students in Denmark. Now they have collected 750,000 dollars.
• Their marketplace curates NFTs from top fashion and apparel brands like Nike.

When Anker Bach Ryhl and Mads Lunau Liechti sought to raise money for their NFT marketplace, they didn’t have a long list of Silicon Valley contacts to lean on. They were a whole continent away, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

But after dozens of social media contacts, they caught the attention of an investor who was part of a new decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, devoted to supporting crypto and Web3 startups. Even better, this DAO had the backing of one of Silicon Valley’s blue-chip venture firms, Bessemer Venture Partners.

That’s how OWND, the marketplace for non-fungible tokens that Bach Ryhl and Lunau Liechti founded, became the first startup deal picked up by Steel DAO, which Bessemer launched in March. OWND has raised $750,000 in pre-funding from Bessemer along with Skyfall Ventures, based in Oslo, Norway, and byFounders, based in Copenhagen

OWND’s co-founders, who each grew up about an hour away from Copenhagen, started coding as early teenagers. They met in high school and started building apps together, dreaming of starting a startup.

“I was fascinated with building a startup ever since I saw ‘The Social Network,'” Bach Ryhl, 21, told Insider, referring to the 2010 movie.

When crypto began to gain mainstream attention, he and Lunau Liechti, 18, turned their attention to the space. Bach Ryhl read all the crypto-related articles he could find on Medium and took a Web3 course on Udemy.

The two decided on the idea of ​​helping people find and buy NFTs. Lunau Liechti in particular had followed the efforts of brands such as Nike and LVMH to launch NFT versions of their physical products. When the hype over collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club died down, he and Bach Ryhl still noticed chatter among their friends about wanting to buy digital fashion. (Several VCs also agree that the resurgence of NFTs is a trend to watch.)

Their company, OWND, set to launch this spring, will operate a curated marketplace for fashion NFTs. Customers will be able to purchase these NFTs without having to set up a crypto wallet beforehand.

“We want to make it as easy to buy a Nike NFT as it is to buy a Nike sneaker online,” said Lunau Liechti.

Given their young age, starting a startup was a gamble. Bach Ryhl had just graduated from high school – students in Denmark usually go up to 19 and he had taken a gap year to live in Kansas City, Missouri, before starting – while Lunau Liechti is finishing his senior year. But the two found a cheap office in Copenhagen and started fundraising, mainly through cold emails and tweets.

Still, crypto VCs turned out to be surprisingly friendly, Bach Ryhl said. One connected him to Kipras Daujotas, an investor in the venture arm of energy giant Saudi Aramco, who had recently joined the steering committee of Steel DAO.

Steel DAO launched a scouting program dedicated to finding promising founders off the beaten track. When seeking their first investment, Bach Ryhl and Lunau Liechti certainly fit the bill and are well positioned to tap into both NFTs and Gen Z culture, Daujotas told Insider.

OWND will debut its marketplace in the middle of a deep crypto winter, but that doesn’t scare the founders, they said.

“It would be a lie to say it’s not tough at all, but building a startup is everything we’ve ever dreamed of,” Bach Ryhl told Insider. “We’re almost more positive than we’ve ever been, now that all the grifters have left the place.”