Why we invested in Absolute Labs, a Web3 CRM and wallet relationship management platform
Luxury, retail, and consumer brands are increasing their exploration into Web3 via airdrops, NFTs and more for acquisition, novel reward programs, community building, and gamification. Brands with deep investment and interest in their customers’ lifestyles and identities such as NBA, LVMH, Reddit, and Starbucks are leading the way, but the tools to systematically integrate web3 data and engagement into existing marketing workflows have been nonexistent.
Additionally, brands rooted in Web2, and their marketing teams often lack the tools and expertise to build campaigns and programs that leverage Web3. Accessing users’ on-chain data (e.g., owned tokens and smart contract interactions) for targeting, segmentation, airdropping, or updating NFT contracts is not possible with the enterprise marketing tools they’ve had until now..
Enter Absolute Labs, a Web3 CRM software-as-a-service (SaaS) company and its Wallet Relationship Management™ (WRM™) platform – a purpose-built, comprehensive, full-funnel growth and marketing solution.
Absolute Labs empowers Web2 brands to build omnichannel marketing campaigns across both Web2 and Web3 technologies using familiar marketing interfaces and workflows. The platform achieves this with a novel data warehouse architecture, enterprise integrations, real-time Web2/Web3 converged data and analytics, and no-code Web2/Web3 marketing automation. With the addition of WRM™ implementation, growth and marketing teams are poised to revolutionize how they acquire, engage, convert, and retain customers in Web3.
We believe Absolute Labs is well positioned to serve Web2 brands while also taking substantial Web3 market share. While Absolute Labs is not the only Web3 CRM provider, they are unique in how they are able to onboard large Web2 brands and enterprises to serve their wide-ranging customer bases, and are the only full-funnel marketing solution. Absolute Labs’ founders Samir Addamine and Antony Gardez have deep experience in the enterprise marketing space; they previously built and sold martech to F1000 companies at FollowAnalytics, a company they also founded together.
Since launching in July 2022, the company has made considerable traction, including partnerships in a variety of industries like NFT marketplaces, NFT publishers, metaverse and games, DeFi protocols, luxury, retail and consumer goods, and media and entertainment. Brands leveraging Absolute Labs include LVMH, Ledger, The Sandbox, Moonpay, Mocaverse, Chainlink, Polygon, and TIME, among others. The company recently raised $8M in seed funding from Aglaé Ventures, MoonPay, Near Foundation, and Sparkle Ventures (Animoca Brands), among others.
While Web3 marketing is nascent, the momentum is increasing and the complexity will expand as more brands explore how to leverage it for customer engagement, and as new blockchain-based engagement approaches are developed.
Andy Duong is an Investor at Samsung Next. Samsung Next's investment strategy is limited to its own views and does not reflect the vision or strategy of any other Samsung business unit, including, but not limited to, Samsung Electronics.