Here today, we're talking about integrating NFTS into company culture, NFTS. It's just one of the biggest trends right now and we want to talk about what a company can do with this powerful new technology.Um Jessica, we're very lucky to have her with us today because she's successfully launched and manages an NFT program at Hellbor. Um Hellbor is an elite cybersecurity Blockchain company. Um And they have an NFT program that's positively impacted its company culture and it's um also allowed them to reach new audiences with meaningful engagement. So, um one of the things I just wanted to first start out with is give it the, the floor to Jessica so she can tell us a little bit about the NFT program with Horn to start us off.

Yeah. Yeah, no worries. Um You know, the NFT program was it kind of came about? Obviously, we're engulfed in the, in the industry of Ethereum Blockchain and all these different things. And our company is um ethical hackers that kind of break into these blockchains to try and figure out where the rug pulls can happen and how there's vulnerabilities and we help fix those things. Um So with that, we just kind of wanted to implement the entire culture we're living in and working in and really engulf our, our staff into it and make sure that they're very well knowledgeable and kind of, they're, they're trying new things and they're trying to, you know, get new cards and new NFTS in this case.

And one of the things that I absolutely loved when Jessica and I were talking offline is she told me about the program, but also it's inspiration. You wanna talk a little bit about the inspiration?

Yeah. Yeah, of course. Um Our CTO is a huge gamer. Um always been a great ethical hacker. Excuse me, how um we are actually inspired. Um Our CEO and CTO were actually inspired by the movie, The Matrix, um Hence hburns uh A I um personality in the back of uh the Matrix that's kind of talking to them. Um And we really wanted to live in the industry that we're asking people to work with us then. So it kind of, it made it all kind of like tie together with adding the NFTS and making sure that people got, you know, rewards for staying a year or staying two years, maybe they got a reward for um being the Doge killer and finding vulnerabilities in doge.

I think it's really fantastic. Um The inspiration that NFGS have brought to uh the aspect of employees with within Hellbor um when it comes to those additional motivating aspects for employees. What's motivating an employee to actually wanna get an NFT from the company that they're working at?

Um Well, in our case, um a lot of our NFT badges of, are they more of like achievements they're attained with the learning new skills? Um Being a specific amount of time at the company as well as um this past annual retreat that we just had in Majorca Spain, which was amazing, by the way, um We were given out about 12 different NFTS this year. I got bit Bitcoin, Maxi, go figure I couldn't stop talking about Bitcoin. Um It's all I talk about to everybody, including my Children. Um but it made it more competitive. It makes people more anxious to try and see what they're able to win and how their peers can vote with them. Um It also allows um them to qualify for quarterly bonuses that we put together for them further in their education, writing blogs, spending time training, doing, attending conferences, speaking at conferences, speaking at technical schools and quarterly, we like to go back and review those kind of things and find out how people are doing and if they're eligible to be, you know, pushed into one of our bonus pools.

Fantastic. So if I was, well, I, I am an attorney with Hal Board. I if I was an attorney with Hal Board, um It sounds like I have a lot of different motivational aspects in order to participate in the program and to get an NFT. Um Can you talk a little bit more about those badges of achievements? Um I know that there's some type of skill awards that are also involved which, yeah, so we have

certain employees, yeah, we have certain languages um cos laws and salon and solidarity and things like that, that people, it takes them a couple um tests and CTF um to take, to find out if they're able to qualify for those badges. But once they've qualified or they've passed like the third uh badge, then they're able to, um get a bigger NFT and it shows on in our little Metaverse or little hell worn Metaverse, which is really cool, which we have available for all of our staff to go visit at any time.

And it's really bringing kind of the whole picture together with the ethos of Horn. Right? Start at their inspiration with Matrix and there's the Metaverse uh or hell's own metaverse that the NFTS are displayed as badges of honors. Um When we're talking of, I really, one of the things that I really liked was the, the skill aspect of it. So. Right. So if I was an employee and I got um an additional language uh under my belt, um and I've got this NFT to go along with it, this is also a form of benchmarking for. Yeah, definitely. Right. Yeah,

it lets us know exactly where these where these staff and the contractors that we're working with are at in our program.

Yeah. So you've got that internal benchmark then? So, um, does that help with maybe allocation of resources, uh, on, hey, there's a select number or a certain number of employees that, um, could benefit from getting more training in a certain area and then those BEN, those NFT are used for a benchmark in any way.

Yeah, definitely. When we go back for reviews, we go over what those people have accomplished and how they've done it, how quickly they've done it from their start time to the time that they've accomplished those benchmarks. So it's really imperative for us to be able to use those for internal, you know, promotions and, and raises internally. But on more than that, it helps everybody else, um, see that the efforts that they're putting forth are being recognized and it encourages others to motivate them in a way to get those same kind of badges and those same kind of, um, those skills. And we find that, you know, Cryptocurrency in general Blockchain in general is, is a over, it's always a developing industry that we feel like you can never like top off, you consistently learn. And that's the, that's the biggest thing about Horn is we want to teach and we wanna learn together and we feel like learning together is the easiest way because we can find out easier ways to get to the end results without having to go the long way. And in Cryptocurrency, it's never gonna stop. Things are gonna consistently being added, new blockchains are gonna be added, new, new skills are gonna be needed.

And I think it's really important for us as a company to make sure that we're consistently rewarding, training and extracurricular activities that they're doing.

Yeah. And it's a, you're hinting at it also being a community aspect with the employees too. Yeah. So they're able to see what their um colleagues have accomplished and they're um able to just say, you know, great job. This looks amazing. And then internally they can see what is going to be happening or maybe there's a motivation to do something or there's enlightenment because they see that that's an opportunity that they can do also.

Yeah, definitely. And on our Wednesday meetings, we announced it publicly to the entire company to make sure that those, those efforts that they've been putting forth, those, the time that they've spent has been rewarded as well.

So helpful for employee retention. Definitely we talked about and, and we all see this from everyone. Everyone talks about this at a company, but employee retention can be costly um in terms of right time, time and resources. So if we can as a company find certain unique ways that are within the ethos of the company um to build that camaraderie and the that community within the uh with an employ employees is so important to help with the retention aspect.

Oh yeah, training and uh turnover has always been very costly off boarding on boarding is very costly. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of extra hands to be making sure that things are getting done. So it's really helpful to keep it all a game inside the company and make it where people can talk about things and they can ask questions.

So also one of the things that I think is helpful for employee retention we talked about is the ability for a client to actually reward an individual employee. Um We do you wanna elaborate a little bit more on how that could happen with an NSC

at this, at this current time, we, we haven't implemented anything like that, but we are definitely looking into the possibilities. Um Of course, on a very safe network and making sure that there's no um options of vulnerabilities. Um But possibly having the client to find a large um our, our engineers to find a large bug in one of our clients protocols or one of their um one of the different areas of their Blockchain and that client can come back and reward the and purchase the NFT of the engineer and the engineer can get the bonus.

Um It hasn't been approved yet, but it's been, it's been in the air to be talked about. So uh we're trying to still grasp about all the vulnerabilities of bringing, telling our NFTS and trying to make sure that everything is super safe because we're only going to practice what we preach. You know, we're, we're a very safe and security conscious company. And I think that that's the, that's the path that we kinda wanna take. But there is a lot of options to find really cool ways to incorporate our clients and making sure that they feel like they're part of our NFT process as well.

Yes. Yes. And I know that it's not something that's happened yet, but I, I really hope that it maybe it'll be some inspiration to some of the people in the audience today because it's another unique way that you can use NFTS. Um I mean, if there, if it's a company that has several different clients and that client wants to reward the individual employee, I mean, the client is already paying a flat fee for the services it's getting from the company. But uh theoretically, it could also purchase the NFT from the employee if it wanted to reward that particular employee in um in a, in a specific way.

Yeah, definitely. And we feel like that could be definitely beneficial to their morale and to the company in general and bring more, more interest in it.

Yes. And we kind of skipped on this too, but for benchmarking internally, we talked about externally too, there is um an aspect that Horn can use for maybe clients or not even Horn but anyone on this call, you could possibly use this for an external benchmark. And that, um you know, if you're tying your NFTS as a certain badge or reward, you could tell a client, hey, uh we have this benchmarking and it's transparent on the Blockchain. I'll let Jessica talk a little bit more about that transparency and how it could be used theoretically as an external benchmark too.

Yeah, definitely. Um So internally, we have um almost like a, a benchmarking. Uh but it's an, it's an aspect of basically that we can show our clients who they're gonna be working with as an internal um offensive security engineer on their team, who, what their qualifications are, how much education they've pushed themselves to how many extra tributes that we've recognized as a company that that person entitles.

Um So we feel like that's really important. We are uh listed on open sea. Um You can go straight to open sea, go into the top type in Halbur and you can see the NFTS that we have available. Um And we find this really clean and clear for people to find us and to, to prove authenticity of our people and the people that um the people that we put our trust into

absolutely critical. Um When it comes to using NFTS for an internal community aspect, you can use it internally, but then you can also own NFTS and I know that some companies do own NFTS. Um And I, and it can open up other communities there as well such as potentially new introductions to clients. Uh Do you have any thoughts on, on that

one? So we are current owners of a Mutant Board, Abe and a kettle club. Um Those are from the Horizon Labs. Um Most people know them as for APR Club, but their company's name is Horizon Labs and they are one of our clients. Uh we did purchase these while we were doing the audit on their systems. Um and we have kept them on our balance sheet. Um But in this case, it essentially gave proof to our customer Horizon Labs that we believe in their product and what they're doing. Um But more than that, we've kind of already been looking at trying to acquire um new assets to add on to our balance sheet because we feel like this is our future, this is the future of our company. This is really what we're doing and what we're really engulfed in and it makes us really happy and proud to show those things off. Um Beyond that, it opens up the doors to let other clients see that we own these items and that we possibly if they had an NFT, we might want to own one of theirs as well. And it unlocks intros to other businesses. It opens up people's doors to say this person's not only talking about this business, but they're actually buying from businesses, they're doing things to make this economy grow, to make this our little metaverse of Cryptocurrency grow into a big Cryptocurrency metaverse

it. Yes. And I'm so excited when I learned about the board a um assets within Horne and I've seen other companies do this too, which is why I wanted to uh bring it up just in case another person here on in the audience was considering doing this or is doing this. But if you own an NFT or your company owns an NFT, it can potentially open up um communication doors with other people that own the same uh type of the same NFT from the same collection. Um And it's also can be used as another form of revenue if you're, if you're licensing the artwork that's attached to that NFT. Um So several different things that can be done from uh a business aspect by owning the NFT too. Um So, OK, Jessica, one other question I have for you is what helped Hellbor launched this program successfully because I feel like this is going to be helpful for anyone on this call that's interested in incorporating NNFTS into their company culture too.

Yeah, definitely. Um I, we feel like the first thing that helped launch us into the company culture was having an amazing CTO that creates our NFTS because I feel like without him, we would be lost. He creates all the cool you know, spins and turns in our little metaverse that our, our NFTS have and he names them as well. Um, so that's the first thing is you wanna have somebody that's creating your NFTS. The next thing is somebody that actually, um, will push them on to the open network. So in this case, we're using Open CS, there's lots of different networks that you can use to mint NFTS. Um, and then you're gonna go ahead and mint it. So you're gonna pay a gas fee to add that to the network and it's going to be for sale. Um In this case, um we felt as though the NFTS uh they keep, they kept, I'm sorry, they kept providing other people with um the ability to see that we're doing something that's fundamentally proven and it's going to be documented on a Blockchain and it's gonna stay there and it's not gonna be able to be removed, edited, changed or anything.

So there, it, it proves that, that follow through and that plan of attack and, and per se. Um But integrating the program in general is just really getting the right team together, getting the right development, the right mindset, understanding how to infiltrate, you know, um open seas and pushing your, your artwork on there and making it public to everybody else.

Yes. And um having the technical background in launching a program like this is, it's very important. Um I know from my experience working with several digital uh artists. Um just having the someone to support you in the minting process is helpful or you can do the lazy man on the open sea, which is great. Also you have a couple of options, but the last position you want to be in is um not having that background knowledge and then just letting someone else that you don't have that relationship with uh take control of, of the time side of things

costly. Yeah, it can get costly with the gas and also paying attention to what the gas fees are for. Ming at the time. Sometimes doing in the middle of the night is a little bit more affordable sometimes, you know, checking out the network and finding out how busy it is because obviously the gas fees are on the network's demise. It's really about how busy the network is.

Yeah, if that's so interesting, I'm wondering how that's gonna pan out in the, in the short run. But we'll see. Um, yeah,

well, you know, they have big plans to make bigger block sizes and cheaper gas fee. So we're hoping for it in the future, but we always are hiring. So, you know, if you wanna have your opportunity,

it's been Horne, you're going to Spain apparently, didn't you recently go? You

said? Yeah. Yeah, we just went to Palma de Majorca Spain and we spent a week out there doing team building, getting to know each other and like I said, we had a uh retreat dinner and we were, we announced new NFT Unlocking. We announced new um badges and rewards for staff. And it was really cool. I mean, it was, it was pretty amazing to see and to feel the congratulatory feeling in the air. Just people were so excited for everybody else and it just made them want to strive harder for next year. Because every year we go on a company retreat to a warm, warm location

and you give Ethereum away for prizes. We do. So

this last retreat. I my team came in second place, but we ended up doing a scavenger hunt. And at every stage of the scavenger hunt, we had to kind of figure out cool things about Palma Bay Majorca. And when we got to the next clue and we passed the challenge that they had at these, these little stations, we got these little cards and we put these cards in like our pocket. And then when we got back to the end of the scavenger hunt, we had to put those cards together and figure out what they were. In this case, it was a private key. So we now had to go online. We had to insert that private key, sweep the funds and pay and try and administer the fee or the, the funds to our own wallets. Uh When we were doing that, it's funny story. Uh When we were doing that I um, I previously was like a financial controller for a wallet. So I was always aware of a child over parent transaction. And if you have a private key, not a public key, but a private, the key to a wallet and you try and sweep them and you send a very low fee.

You can do a child over parent transaction, essentially taking the funds first by pushing more gas towards the fee. In this case, Ethereum and Bitcoin, you can do bits towards it. And um I threatened to do that and my CTO looked at me, he goes, that's what I want to hear. I'm gonna go refill it and I want you to have your team go take their transaction because they were being cheap on their gas feed. So we kind of went through it, they up their gas fee, they did the child of repair and transaction took it, but my team still got a half of these. Um And I made sure that they knew that that was for them and not for me. My biggest was teaching them about child of repair and transactions and how you could still take somebody's money if you have a private key.

I it's so great in that every aspect that Horn is doing. They are um really again keeping to the ethos when it comes to the NFT program or not. But um NFT programs, it can go beyond a Blockchain related company. Too. I know that we're clo closing up on time with three minutes. So, um because there's those creative use cases and Jessica, you're really showing how there is a variety of ways that can be used um within company culture. But as the last question um is, has there been any challenges with um implementing this program? You

know, I feel like the biggest challenge is, is just keeping up with it. Uh making sure that every amazing talent, every amazing skill that we have at our company is being recognized. And I feel like that's the hardest thing is just trying to make sure that these skills are recognized. These badges are made, these NFTS are minted and these people feel that congratulatory from our company and not just, you know, from the work that they did.

Fantastic. Um So we have a few more minutes. I'm not sure if we have any questions um for either Jessica or myself, but we're more than willing. How can I make sure my NFTS are purchased by others? Ok, Jessica, this one's for you.

So no financial advice. Um I don't ever throw financial advice but definitely publicize yourself. Um Try and find yourself a friend in the community that is prominent in NFTS and reach out to them and ask them, you know, do you have any friends that are looking for? Really interesting NFTS? What are they looking for? Try and find yourself your niche. Don't copy what everybody else is doing because they're just gonna think you're a copier, you gotta really create something really intricate, something new, something developmental and publicize it, push it out as much as you can.

And to that point, there's, I've uh come across people that specialize in marketing NFT collections or drops. Um And they do it through several different platforms. I know Twitter is a really big one right now. Reddit

is another one. really

OK, reddit. And then um yeah, there's a few different platforms that they're specialists with.

What do you recommend us to start a Blockchain career as a developer? I would definitely, if you wanted to work in Blockchain, be familiar with the languages of Blockchain. There are some um like Doge in general, it uses C++ so it's an older code phase but you have solidarity. There is uh rust, those are really important ones that we're seeing a lot more developers come out in. Um And I feel like, you know, just trying to keep your finger on the pulse of what new cryptocurrencies are coming out and then trying to figure out the language that they're coding in. That is your best key in.

I have one other note to add to. If you are not technical, you're a lawyer or a marketer or something, read the blog posts that are coming from these technical um aspects like Ethereum, I read the NFT uh blog posts on them and it just helps you understand the tech background of

it. Yeah, definitely. And all of my jobs are open right now. They're posted against my linkedin. So you guys are feel free, not all technical jobs, so feel free to check it out.