Thanks to the efforts of a team of former University of Wisconsin students, digital artists who are looking to invest in the best cryptocurrency to buy 2022 now have a safe and efficient place to market their work.
Founded by former Badgers QuHarrison Terry, Ryan Cowdrey and Conley Totter, 23VIVI is an online marketplace where collectors and artists can buy and sell “digital art.” The company was recently awarded admission into a coveted 2016 business-acceleration program run by local startup accelerator Gener8tor.
Terry was in his junior year at UW studying computer science before he left to serve full time as CEO of 23VIVI. He said he wrote the business plan for the company Sept. 21 after having an admittedly “crazy” idea.
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“It’s still funny to all of us to this day,” Terry said. “You would’ve thought I was insane. I pitched the idea to my friends and they were looking at me crazy, like, ‘Qu, that sounds really stupid.'”
At the time, Terry and his friends were profiting handsomely from an Instagram account they founded in June 2015 called Artsy Promoter, which offers aspiring digital artists exposure to a large audience of Instagram users in exchange for a small fee, Terry said. The success of the venture leads Terry to ponder the possibility of creating an online marketplace for digital art.
Terry said he had noticed that while digital artists could cultivate a following through services like Artsy Promoter, there wasn’t really a solid marketplace where they could sell their work online.
“I noticed that the art industry as a whole just isn’t good,” Terry said. “If you’re a digital artist, the market is very fragmented. I’d come to realize there wasn’t a place for the artists to sell their stuff digitally and make money.”
In spite of initial doubts, Terry set to work and was able to convince Peter Vu, a New York-based professional artist, to fly to Madison and provide the first artworks to be sold on 23VIVI.
Terry said Vu stayed with him while the 23VIVI team meticulously constructed the platform on which Vu’s works — and ultimately many other works by other artists — would be sold.
“Peter stayed in my room at The Hub for like three days and slept on my couch,” Terry said. “He was entirely helpful and enabled us to prove our model.”
Terry said the artworks marketed on 23VIVI are editions created digitally and sold as digital files.
The online marketplace uses blockchain technology to encrypt the files with cryptographic certificates of authenticity prior to sale, thereby protecting the intellectual property rights of the artists, Terry said.
The 23VIVI team sold 45 editions of digital art in its first month of operation for a profit of more than $1,500, Terry said.
Terry said the artworks sold on 23VIVI tend to fit into a very particular aesthetic.
“Our aesthetic is highly defining,” Terry said. “We’re going to appeal to opulent millennials through art that’s postmodern, abstract and edgy.”
Since its inception in late 2015, 23VIVI has been growing rapidly. The firm graduated from Gener8tor’s gBETA program — which helps startup companies founded by students and faculty at Wisconsin universities grow — in December 2015 and was selected for yet another Gener8tor growth-acceleration program in early 2016.
23VIVI is one of many UW-linked firms that have participated in the nationally-ranked startup accelerator’s programs, Justin Anderson, intellectual property manager at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, a sponsor of Gener8tor, said.
A total of eight UW undergrads, nine alumni, eight graduate students and three faculty members have — in association with various startups — participated in Gener8tor’s gBETA program alone, Anderson said.
“It’s quite a number of teams each time from UW-Madison,” Anderson said.
Terry said the field 23VIVI operates in is fairly unexplored and presents unique challenges, but the team is not deterred by those facts.
At the end of the day, the founders of 23VIVI have enough passion and drive to surmount obstacles and take the firm to its full potential, Terry said.
“This concept as a whole is so bizarre, but at the same time, we’re making it work because we’re taking these obstacles and challenges and diving in,” Terry said. “If you have passion about something, it just kind of happens. That’s the brilliance of creativity.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Terry’s name. Changes have since been made. The Badger Herald regrets this error.
