From doodling on a notepad during financial meetings to creating the popular NFT series Rektguy, Ovie Faruq's journey showcases how web3 can turn a creative side hustle into a thriving brand.
As the CEO and co-founder of Rekt Brands and the rapidly expanding Rekt Drinks, Faruq (better known as OSF) cleverly merges traditional consumer goods with web3 principles, creating a brand that resonates both within and outside the crypto community.
In 2022, RektDrinks initially started as a free NFT mint, and has now evolved into a brand with a strong community, innovative rewards, and real-life products. Recently, RektDrinks collaborated with OpenSea to launch a limited edition flavor on June 3.
OSF shared his background with us, and how his passion for art and technology contributed to the founding of this brand, attracting a wide audience ranging from NFT enthusiasts like Snoop Dogg to traditional beverage consumers.
The following interview explores the evolution of Rekt, its community-building approach, the challenges of integrating a digital brand into physical products, and hints at their future developments as they continue merging the web3 community with mainstream consumers.
Note: This record has been edited for brevity and clarity.
OpenSea: I know you started your initial career in traditional finance and worked there for about 10 years. What prompted you to change career directions? What impact did it have on Rektguy?
OSF: Yes, that's a good question. I probably started buying cryptocurrency while I was still doing my old job, purely for personal reasons. I initially bought Bitcoin and later ETH. Like others, I fell down the rabbit hole with NFTs – I got really deep into researching NFTs. I found it really fun and enjoyable to be involved because I'm interested in technology, art, finance, and trading. It felt like a convergence of all my interests.
I was completely obsessed with NFTs. I took a break for a while, but when I went back to work, probably on the first day, I felt unmotivated. I was so immersed in the world of cryptocurrency and NFTs that I lost touch with my previous job. I remember one day, during a conference call, I zoned out and started doodling in my notebook. In the end, I drew a skull wearing a hoodie, and I thought it looked cool, so I decided to mint it as an NFT. I sold it as a 'one-to-one,' and someone actually bought it. I was like, 'Wow, someone spent money on this.'
Later, I created piece after piece, and over time their prices started to rise. As a creator, I began to gain some attention and noticed this character recurring in all my works. So, I thought, why not make it an avatar? At that time, it was fun, but not my main creative direction. I spent evenings and weekends creating but had no intention of monetizing it. I just gave the whole work away for free, which eventually turned into a free 'mint,' later known as Rektguy, which we launched in 2022 when the market was on the brink of collapse and everyone felt 'worthless.'
I think at that time we were just starting to gain traction. The whole thing felt a bit like an accident – maybe 'accident' isn't quite the right word, but I didn't really have a plan for what we are doing now. I think everything just happened naturally over time.
OpenSea: Was it because it was 2022 and the market was not performing well that you decided to offer the mint for free?
OSF: Yes, I think the main reason I made it free is that I didn't want people to have expectations about it. You know, I think I did something cool, and I want people to have it and appreciate it, but I don't want to monetize it. For me, it's not about 'Oh, I can sell it and make a lot of money.' It's more like I just want people to appreciate this collection without having any expectations of me.
When we launched it, I remember clearly saying, 'We don't have a roadmap; it's just a free mint; it's just art.' Honestly, that's how it should be.
OpenSea: One of them was sold to Snoop Dogg, right? So did your career start taking off from there? Did you ever think, 'Oh, I could make a career out of this'?
OSF: Yes, I think so. I feel like we started gaining a bit of traction. I remember being at a bachelor party, drinking beer, and halfway through, someone suddenly said, 'Hey, Snoop Dogg just bought two Rektguy.' I was like, 'What? What the hell?' That was a surreal and crazy moment.
Yes, at that time I wasn't thinking, 'Oh, yes, I could make a career out of this,' but I was well aware it had its value. Rekt is indeed very appealing; I can't quite put my finger on exactly why, but clearly, it resonates with people. In the next two years, we built a very strong community, even in the face of a really bad bear market. We naturally attracted some long-term holders who stuck around for the right reasons.
So, it wasn't until a year and a half to two years later that my co-founder and I felt, okay, this is obviously a good thing. I think we can do bigger things than just collecting NFTs, Discord, and Twitter accounts. We felt a strong resonance with this idea of 'being wrecked,' and we realized it has a bigger opportunity to become a more recognized brand, not just in the cryptocurrency and internet space, but also beyond the internet.
That's when we started thinking about what to do next and how we eventually came up with the idea of making drinks. But yes, over time, we increasingly felt, 'Damn, we really should try to do something because this is an opportunity.'
OpenSea: Yes, it sounds like you saw the potential of fully committing to it and transitioning from an NFT project to a bigger project. You mentioned before that 'Web3 principles can help you accelerate building a brand and IP.' Can you elaborate on which specific Web3 principles have been the most valuable for Rekt?
OSF: Yes, absolutely. I believe everything we've done has essentially been about building a community by giving away free items and getting people involved in our ecosystem. So, you know, I mentioned before that Rektguy was a free mint, and after people minted it, they could earn a lot of free things from our future products. When we founded Rekt Brands Inc., we actually gave equity in the company to all NFT holders, so now our entire community essentially owns a part of the company.
I think we are the first cryptocurrency-related company to really do this and in a compliant way. We also have the Rekt token, which was airdropped to people. Many people in our community never spent a dime but have made money. They've invested in this story, and still do. I think, especially in terms of equity, there may be hundreds of people who have never owned private equity in their lives and possibly never will, but now they own a stake in this company, which is starting to perform very well. All of this has only been made possible in the Web3 era.
It's like you buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, drink it, and that's it. That's the entirety of your interaction with it. It might taste good or be cool, but that's all there is to it.
But when you buy Rekt drinks, you ultimately become part of all our work, almost like a stakeholder. This is a very substantive difference between traditional B2C principles and Web3. If I woke up tomorrow and decided to start a beverage company, that would be very difficult. It's an exceptionally competitive and saturated industry.
But because of the rewards mechanism within Web3, we were able to develop a massive community in a very short time. Now, when we want to create a product, we have a large number of people supporting it. I think that's the biggest difference and what I mean by Web3 principles allowing you to rapidly develop IP.
OpenSea: Yes, the way you integrate ownership and rewards for Rekt is really great. I know it took about 18 months for Rekt Drinks to fully launch. What was the biggest challenge in that process?
OSF: Yes, I mean, our team has only ever had three full-time employees, so the scale is very small, and we have absolutely no experience in beverages, fast-moving consumer goods, or manufacturing. You could say we had no experience at all. My background is in finance, so making an NFT (non-fungible token) and then minting it with a few clicks is one thing, but actually mass-producing a physical product is really hard. We've gone through a long learning process.
Our first batch of drinks was expected to yield 15,000 cans, but we ended up losing 5,000 cans. The initial cans basically peeled off due to the pasteurization process, and all were damaged during shipping. We originally planned to produce in about three months, but due to frequent accidents, the whole process ended up taking about 12 months.
When we started out, most manufacturers had been working with the same large beverage company for decades, producing hundreds of thousands or even millions of cans each year. So when you find them and say, 'Hey, I want to produce 15,000 cans,' you simply don't get customer support. People in the traditional world are very slow to respond. It's not like Web3, where you just need a quick Discord message or a Telegram ping. In the Web3 world, it's like dialing a landline in the Scottish countryside, trying to figure out what's going on.
It was tough, but now we are in mass production, and we've been through it two or three times. We are doing better, we know where we went wrong, and we know what to do with each iteration to make progress. Of course, there were times when we thought about giving up, but we persevered.
OpenSea: Well, you guys are doing great because your products have all sold out! Liquidated Lime and Abstract Apple sold out quickly as well. Did you feel surprised they sold out so fast? Did you expect the demand to be this high?
OSF: Good question. When we did the first one (Liquidated Lime), it was still just a hypothesis. We had never sold drinks before, so we jumped in and produced 222,000 cans. We went all out. At the time, I had no idea if people would be interested, if they would buy, or if we would fail. The concept hadn’t been validated, but it sold out in 48 hours, which absolutely exceeded my expectations.
At that time, I thought maybe we would have to promote really hard for weeks to sell out, but it really did sell out. It was so crazy. I thought the concept might work, but we weren't sure at the time because we had only done it once.
Then, when we did the second 'Abstract Apple' event, I thought, okay, we did it once and it was successful, but can we do it again? Is it just a flash in the pan? Would people really care about a second one? I was really worried about that. We even considered reducing the supply multiple times, but ultimately decided to go for it.
The response from the Abstract community was so strong, and we could feel that momentum from our social interactions. So, I thought at the time, if we could sell out in 24 hours, that would be amazing; it turned out to sell out in 40 minutes, 13 minutes in Europe, and 16 minutes in the US. That was just crazy, far beyond my expectations. I had no idea it would sell that fast. Afterwards, I thought, 'Okay, I really feel we’ve accomplished something. Since we’ve done it twice, this isn't just a flash in the pan. I think we can create some really cool things in the future.'
OpenSea: Awesome! I had Liquidated Lime in Marfa, and I thought, 'Oh, cool, I have a chance to try it.' You have the DRANK points system, which seems to be a key interaction mechanism. Can you talk about the idea behind creating this loyalty program?
OSF: The way the DRANK points system works is that whenever we launch a season, players can earn points by completing social tasks. In the first season, players could earn points by creating content or buying drinks. I think many companies have similar loyalty programs, but for us, it's different because we airdrop REKT tokens based on the DRANK points players earn. Some people made 3 to 10 times their investment by buying drinks, depending on when they sold the tokens and how long they held onto them.
We just did the second airdrop in collaboration with Abstract, where players can earn DRANK points and also receive REKT airdrops. They can also earn Abstract XP, which is like in the cryptocurrency space, where people dangle carrots in front of you – like, 'Hey, we're going to airdrop you for participating in on-chain activities.' But going back to the whole Web3 principle of accelerating IP, we did the same thing, but this time we incentivized off-chain behavior. That's my take on how this system works.
OpenSea: I know you mentioned before that 50% of your sales came from fiat, and only 50% of people claimed DRANK points. Does that surprise you? Does it reflect the state of your customer base? What impact does it have on your future strategy?
OSF: Yes, it really surprised me. The first time, the ratio of fiat to cryptocurrency was about 50/50; the second time, it was more like 65/35. So, the fiat proportion was very large, which is surprising because it means there are obviously many non-crypto users buying these drinks.
I think a big part of the reason is that we encourage holders to recommend friends and family to buy the drinks. For example, if everyone recommends one non-crypto person to buy, it can accumulate quickly. Many people don't want to rely entirely on cryptocurrency, so we said, 'Okay, let them go to rekt.com', which is our Shopify site, and they can pay with a credit card; it's very simple.
I think most people do this. I even invited some friends and family to buy drinks. So the first token event ended up being split 50/50, which isn't surprising. By the second token event, I felt we were starting to accumulate some Web2 followers, so it leaned more toward fiat. Seeing that we were attracting non-crypto people to our events was surprising but also encouraging.
OpenSea: Yes, this is a great way to help Web2 users quickly transition to Web3 without having to make a huge leap. So you have Rektguy AI, which can also create really cool art. I find that X account very interesting. What prompted you to create it?
OSF: Yes, I think AI will become very popular in the cryptocurrency space. I'm fascinated by AI agents, especially from the perspective of art and creativity. I think it's really cool. So we trained the AI agent with my art style, including animations and so on.
The role of this agent is to read cryptocurrency Twitter, generate prompts for trending topics in the cryptocurrency field, and then use a trained model to create a piece of art based on the prompts. I think conceptually, it's really cool to be able to do that.
You know, in this era where everyone is trying to explore how to leverage AI for efficiency, marketing, etc., this is a perfect use case for us. I thought, let's make our AI agent our number one fan. What it does is talk about Rekt and its optimism about Web3 while also creating art.
I took the time to code and create the models myself. I think it's really an experimental thing, more important than anything else. I feel like everything I've done has had an experimental nature, and it will eventually grow into something. Right now, it's still in the experimental phase, but I just find it interesting to see what it will ultimately turn into.
Over time, it started to remember all the data and gradually develop its own personality. I find that quite interesting. We even added a little backstory, like an agent who often goes to bars, gets drunk, and starts talking to strangers about Rekt. In fact, everything we do is meant to add a little fun.
OpenSea: Yes, it's really cool to see these agents learning and evolving over time. Speaking of creative collaborations, I'm very excited about the collaboration with Rekt Drinks. What can consumers expect?
OSF: We initially approached OpenSea because I am good friends with Matt Miller (Balon), who said we should do something related to AI art. We thought, oh, maybe we should make an OpenSea drink – that would be cool. As for Abstract, we thought, okay, this is a consumer chain; how can we get involved? We didn't actually have anything on-chain, so we said let's make an Abstract drink.
Then with OpenSea, we thought, why not do something cool, make an OpenSea drink ourselves, and sell it on the OpenSea marketplace? Isn't that a cool crypto-native product? Plus, it can be made into a real-life product.
So we decided to go for it, and the folks at OpenSea were very enthusiastic. They said, 'Okay, let's do this. Every purchase can earn OpenSea XP,' so both Rekt and OpenSea users could earn rewards. Plus, we can offer rewards at various events. We're heading to Lisbon next month, and I think OpenSea will be there too, so it will be great to drink together at all these events.
Fortunately, we nailed down a flavor. I actually don't want to reveal exactly what it is because it will be nice to talk about it once everyone gets to taste it. However, we have previously tested a flavor, so okay, the flavor is set, and then we collaborated with OpenSea on the design. The design process was really simple – using OpenSea's colors and making the silhouette of the ship as the background for the print. We also came up with a really cool name for this flavor; it was just a perfect match. The whole process went very smoothly, and the team was very friendly, making collaboration enjoyable.
OpenSea: I'm excited! Yes, after joining the Slack channel, I've been going through past messages because I wanted to see what these cans look like; they are really cool, and I want to try them. Currently, you have NFTs, hosted IRL events, have a podcast, and consumer products. What are the next plans?
OSF: Yes, we just launched flavored sparkling water, but we've actually been developing other products over the past few weeks.
So in the beverage space, it won't just be limited to flavored sparkling water; it also won't just be limited to beverages in the entire food and beverage sector. I think the functional nutrition space is really taking off right now; you know it's big. People love drinking clean energy drinks, people love drinking focus drinks, and people love drinking hydration powders and proteins.
All of this is now very popular and growing rapidly. Personally, I'm very interested in this. I like to think of myself as healthy – I love working out and exercising, and everyone on our team enjoys these things, so it feels like a natural extension for us.
We've been developing products in this space, and I think by then we can really enter the mainstream market. Currently, this is a fantastic new product for Web3, and I believe traditional users will also like it.
The growth momentum for functional beverages (also known as 'functional products') is almost three times that of regular soda, which is why all supermarkets and distributors are interested. We certainly want to enter this space, and hopefully by the second half of this year, we can prepare some products for the market. It's fantastic that we can now sell these products directly to consumers (DTC) and cultivate that grassroots feeling.
But our goal is to make Rekt a global brand, both in and out of the cryptocurrency space. To do this, we need to be able to sell and stock as many products as possible, which means we need to engage in traditional distribution, wholesale, and get into every supermarket, just like other mainstream brands.
We have been collaborating with some experienced people in the beverage industry in the US and Europe. I hope by the end of this year, we can achieve some exciting and good results.
OpenSea: Oh, that's so cool! I can't wait to see what it is.
OSF: Yes, I think it would be fun.
OpenSea: Okay, thanks for taking the time to chat with me!
OSF: Yes, absolutely. Thank you very much, Hannah.
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