Paris Hilton invests in Afterparty's new NFT ticketing platform

Angel investors, including Paris Hilton, and other notable names, invested a total of $4 million in Afterparty's upcoming Polygon-based NFT ticketing platform

By Shashank Bhardwaj

Paris Hilton
Image: Shutterstock

Afterparty, an NFT-focused platform, has successfully raised $4 million from angel investors for the development of its NFT ticketing platform on the Polygon Network. This round of funding brings the total funds raised by Afterparty to $7 million.

The angel investors’ list included notable names such as Paris Hilton, Jason Calacanis, NBA star Andre Iguodala, Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff, executive producer of ‘Project Runaway’ Desiree Gruber, and VC firm Headline’s Nicole Farb. The unsolicited funding round also had the leading seed investors of Afterparty - Acrew Capital, Blockchange, and TenOneTen Ventures.

Afterparty, an all-in-one ticket organiser, has plans to launch its second NFT collection, ‘The Guardians,’ along with the NFT marketplace on the Polygon Network. The NFT marketplace is expected to launch sometime in May. Afterparty’s CEO David Fields said they were moving to Polygon to lower the transaction fees for Afterparty users and differentiate themselves from the traditional platforms such as TicketMaster and Stubhub, known for high transaction fees.

Fields envisions extending Afterparty’s scope beyond an all-in-one event host to becoming a dedicated NFT ticketing platform in the future. Afterparty minted its first NFT collection, ‘The Utopians’, on Ethereum. The collection garnered huge celebrity attention and boasted of a number of celebrity Utopian NFT holders, including Heidi Klum, Sia, David Dobrik, Josh Duhamel, Loren Gray, and Bryce Hall. Both the NFT collections - The Utopians and The Guardians - provide direct access to their respective events organised by Afterparty.

David Fields said, “We took the approach of launching our own events [for] one, to prove out the model at a large scale and two, to really build deep relationships… but over time, we see ourselves building out more of a marketplace for experiences… [with] concert ticketing being one.”

Afterparty aims to offer its holders perks such as flexible NFT custody, credit card payments for users without a crypto wallet, etc. Fields said, “Without 99.9% of those creators’ fans having a crypto wallet. We’re sort of far from a world where NFTs can really be used to their full potential for creators, and we want to be part of the solution there.”

The writer is the founder at yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist. Twitter: @bhardwajshash

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