Nearly everyone loves emojis to express themselves through messaging and texting apps. And recently, a number of tech companies are looking to monetize them.
Yat, co-founded by entrepreneur Naveen Jain, is the company behind a new type of online identity called “yats,” a unique combination of emojis that act as an identity symbol. custom, domain, username, NFT and collection, all in one. Yats is advertised as providing users with the ability to own their online identities independent of companies like Meta and Google. A one- to five-character design costs anywhere from $4 to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Usually, the shorter and easier the combination, the higher the price.
Nearly 160,000 jackets have sold for a total of $20 million since last February when the company launched. The highest price paid for a yat was $425,000 for a one-character keyed emoji.
Similar to the NFT wave earlier this year, Yat is attracting a number of prominent investors and promoters. Among them is rapper and songwriter Mack Maine, who recently shared more with Luck about his decision to invest in the company.
- Start up: Yat
- Location: Nashville
- Founded year: 2021
- Valuation: Refuse to disclose
- Investment: Refuse to disclose
- Number of employees: 80
- Other big investors: Blockchain Capital, Collab + Currency, G-Eazy, Hack VC, Lil Wayne, Slow Ventures, The Roots
Why he invests, in his own words
I joined Yat shortly after its launch in early 2021. I thought the concept was dope, and immediately locked Yats for me, Lil Wayne and Young Money. Everyone uses emojis to communicate and this is a great way to use emojis to express who we are.
Over the years we have established the brands of Young Money, Lil Wayne and Mack Maine. Yat is a great way to expand and strengthen your brand identity online, where people can visually associate with our brand. Emojis help tell stories, and there’s no other way to communicate as much with just a few characters.
Ownership is important to us, and we now own these emoji identifiers forever. That means a lot. Empowering all self-expressive creators to own and control their identities has helped me invest. On top of that, Yat is building amazing new tools for web3 creators and collectors.
This is part of Why do I invest?A series of well-known investors from all different backgrounds and industries, reveal what inspired them to invest their own money in a new business.
