Art without limits
Museums are often the gateway in our relationship with art, but could the role be widened with technology? Anh Nguyen, Co-Founder and CEO of Nimi Collectibles talks about the groundbreaking opportunities in digital art.
“How do we empower the public to stand behind the arts and back many of the exciting cultural institutions that we have in a much more engaging way?”
Connecting museums with patrons is an age-old issue. But what role could technology play in bridging the gap?
Anh Nguyen, Co-Founder and CEO of Nimi Collectibles, talks with Debbie Forster MBE about the groundbreaking opportunities in digital art. Learn more about Nimi’s approach and how it overcomes financial, engagement and diversity challenges to make art accessible to all.
Transcript:
Announcer:
Ready to explore the extraordinary world of tech? Welcome to the XTech Podcast where we connect you with the sharpest minds and leading voices in the global tech community. Join us as we cut through the complexity to give you a clear picture of the ideas, innovations and insight that are shaping our future.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Hello and welcome to the XTech Podcast by Fox Agency. I’m your host, Debbie Forster, MBE. I’m the CEO at the Tech Talent Charter, and an advocate and campaigner for diversity, inclusion and innovation in the tech industry. Today I am delighted we’re joined by Anh Nguyen. She is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nimi Collectibles. Thanks for joining us, Anh.
Anh Nguyen:
Hi Debbie. Hi everyone. Thank you for having me.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Now, Anh, what we try and do in the podcast is everybody seems to have a different pathway into tech. Some people are born with a laptop and a keyboard in hand tapping away. Others of us have squiggly careers where we find ourselves in tech. Can you walk me through from when you were little, how did you get into tech?
Anh Nguyen:
Yeah, it’s definitely an interesting question. I grew up in Vietnam in the ’90s, and I definitely feel that technology was this shiny, exciting thing that I really got myself interested in at an early age, but definitely as a consumer and I was really an early adopter of different types of tech tools. What I noticed that was interesting was that that period of time, the ’90s in Vietnam when the country started to open up is a very interesting period to observe innovation and technology because the country was definitely behind the West, but things were happening really quickly and very fast.
What was really exciting was the fact that in some aspects of everyday life, Vietnam and developing countries essentially leapfrogged the development in the West where in many cases we may have skipped traditional banking and went straight to mobile banking. In many ways we didn’t really use the landline as much, everyone had a mobile phone as the first thing that they got exposed to when they’re a teenager. So that’s definitely an interesting time. Then because I was always thinking about that from a consumer standpoint, I was always interested in the problems that technology can solve.
When I went to the U.S. for my education and then moved to London after a few years of working in the U.S., I continued to have that mindset in thinking about what problems are we solving with tech and what might be non-problem that technology seem to try to solve that are not necessary. So it definitely has been an interesting kind of thought process throughout most of my life.
Debbie Forster MBE:
I think it’s a powerful journey, and I think tech benefits both from what I call the natural geeks that are so excited about what tech can do but are problem solvers that want to think through what it should do, what it shouldn’t do, and keep that focus on problem solving, where organizations and companies and products bring those together. You get some powerful pieces. So tell me about Nimi Collectibles. So you were a tech consumer, you were liking the problem solving. How did that turn into becoming a co-founder, becoming a CEO of something like this?
Anh Nguyen:
You definitely tee it up really well for me because it is very much about being an obsessive problem solver that define probably the first 12, 15 years of my career where I was in consulting. I was working on solving problems in many different spaces and industries, primarily financial problems. Then through COVID, I became really interested in reading a lot more about the underlying problems within the arts and public sectors around cultural and art institutions. That really got me really curious to understand what are the underlying financial sustainability questions around the arts and museums in particular.
So I started reading a lot of news through COVID times around really the struggles that museums and public institutions in the arts were facing. It is very much through that mindset of here’s an interesting problem that is very much aligned with my interests in the arts as a hobby, as a personal interest. Let’s see how I can use my problem solving hat to solve this. That journey ultimately led to many conversations with museum directors across the U.S. and Europe. I was really interviewing them purely in my learning tour to just understand what’s going on and how can I apply the private sector hat to understand the problem better.
That really led me to the creation of Nimi along with a few friends who became my co-founders. So what Nimi does is really to create a platform that connects museums and cultural institutions with what we refer to as the next generation of patrons, so essentially millennials between 25 and 45, and really empower them and engage them into a really different mindset in terms of thinking about art engagement. So with that, we really wanted to democratize access to art philanthropy. So it is not just about getting access in terms of walking through the galleries for free, but it is rather about having an agency to think about the responsibility of your generation, of our generation to actually become a patron of the arts.
So that’s where we are, very much thinking about how do we solve this fundamental problem of over-reliance on government funding as well as private and major donors, and how do we really empower the mass and the public to stand behind the arts and back many of the exciting cultural institutions that we have in a much, much more engaging way. We arrived at tech as the solution for that after we kind of gone through that journey of understanding the problem, understanding the space among both consumers and cultural institutions.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Well, there’s so much about that I get excited about because, one, Winston Churchill has that saying never waste a good crisis. So while COVID was going on and other people were making learning to make sourdough, I loved that you were grappling with something. We all watched all the arts institutions and they weren’t in a great place beforehand, were they? Then COVID just drove them to near extinction. The idea that you’d then bring in everything, from you in the ’90s, the millennials seeing tech differently and how they can see institutions. But what I also love is there’s a lot of entrepreneurs in the space that have that idea, see the problem and then think they know enough. So you’re listening tour is really powerful. So talk me through first of all how that went, that listening tour, and when we think of these cultural institutions, because these are not usually the cutting edge of technology and breaking into new ways of thinking. How did you engage them?
Anh Nguyen:
Yeah, so I started with very much an open mind. I was just a very, very curious person. So I reached out to, I started first with my undergraduate alumni network and I just went through the directory and just picked out people who work in cultural sectors and museums. Luckily, many of them actually became senior leadership in museums in the U.S., some of them on this side of the pond. It was just an open question at first. I just reached out to a bunch of people and asked, “Would you be open to our virtual coffee chat?” I think, to your point, because everyone was stuck at home with COVID, people are definitely more interested in entertaining a random request from a curious person. That really started the journey.
So it was really from one person to the next, people introduced me to the friends, and after a 30 minute conversation, they were like, “Oh, you should talk to so-and-so.” So over that period of a couple months, this was early 2022. Yeah, so I had more of that mapping of what are the perspectives from directors of museums to director of advancement and developments of people who are thinking about the fundraising side, to marketing, to the curatorial perspective, and I recognized through that process that there are just so much silos. It shouldn’t be a surprise because silos exist in any organizations, in any sector, and of course it would exist in the arts and in the public sector, and maybe even more so precisely to your point because it has been perceived as a space that has kind of lacked that sense of innovation and application of technology.
So from the recognition that there were so much silos, I understood at a deeper level that the revenue and financial challenges are dealt with completely separately from the engagement challenge. So they’re owned by two separate people. They have completely different background, right? They have different timescale of how they think about their problems. On one hand, they may be thinking about the next 10 years, and then on the other hand, they may be thinking about the next exhibition in the next three months and how do we bring more people through the door. So that’s definitely one that I recognized where it’s really just a great example of how large organizations and complex organizations become, and that was what was very motivating for me as someone who’s looking to solve a problem.
Debbie Forster MBE:
I think that’s something to think about because I’m always listening and trying to think, okay, what can the audience learn from this? I think when we are designing products or services, we think about talking to our stakeholders, but sometimes we see our stakeholders as one homogenous group. Maybe sometimes what we should be doing within tech is to think about when we’re looking at a stakeholder, we’re looking at client bases, are there even silos in there that tech could break down because a great solution? Okay. So were there any big barriers beyond the silos with the institutions that you encounter?
Anh Nguyen:
There’s definitely a sense of hesitation, to adopt newer ideas. Certainly there’s a big institutional inertia or even sector inertia because it has always been a slower moving space. Things are happening the way that they have been happening for a long time.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Probably since the Renaissance. Probably arts and arts institutions have relied on individual rich patrons probably since the Renaissance. Yeah, that’s a long thing to overcome.
Anh Nguyen:
Right, I would agree. I would agree. So I think there is naturally that resistance to change and that’s very understandable. There’s also a high level of risk aversion for all good reason given that they are very public facing. They are, in many cases, the shepherds of cultural movements and what people look up to as an example. So to navigate more of that sense of inertia, we recognized very early on that we need to establish ourselves as a partner and a thought leader in the space, not because we think we could come in from the outside and know better, but it’s because we are engaging with all the right conversations and the right people who may not normally talk to each other. So I think having that fresh perspective coming in and being very humble and open mind in our conversations and in engaging with different stakeholders has definitely been the way that we’ve been able to establish our voice.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Then because you’re appealing to that younger group, is that what guided you to NFTs? I mean, I want to get into this why NFTs. Because there was such a furore at the start, and then until I started talking to you, I had yet to find something that really compelled me that this is sticky, this is going to work. So walk me through how with your younger target audience, the democratizing, how did NFTs enter into that discussion?
Anh Nguyen:
Yeah, so interesting because as you recall, even in the way that I explained what Nimi does, NFT didn’t really come up as a headliner. It is precisely because we think of NFT and blockchain technology in general as a tool and an enabler. So what we wanted to enable is that sense of ownership of your visitors’ engagement with the museums. So instead of just being a guest and a visitor that walks through the galleries and leaves, we wanted to have more of that ongoing relationship that’s started by a sense of ownership of an experience and a sense of ownership of their responsibility and actually their love of the collection and the words in the building.
So the model that we propose that has kind of been very well-received by institutions that we’ve worked with and then talked to is essentially turning the user journey of looking at the buildings and the artworks in the building to now actually knowing that they can collect something that’s coming from the museum as a memento of that experience, but also now the digital collectibles that they have would also allow them to partake in future opportunities for further engagement. Because given that you collect this particular piece of work from the institution, there is that willingness to then, yes, I would be interested in going to a tour with a curators. Yes, I would be interested in a happy hour event that now includes people that are also interested in collecting this style of art or the arts from the museum alongside me, and I have made that commitment by becoming a collector in the first place and taking that very baby step towards a journey of becoming patron rather than the more transactional model that exists currently in museums when we think about membership.
Membership adoption is a very transactional decision, consumers often think about how many times they go a year to make it worthwhile, and then if it’s a year with a massive blockbuster exhibition, then they may sign up for a membership and then not renew it next year because there isn’t something that they would be interested in anymore. So we want to turn that transactional relationship into more of that emotional relationship where you love something in the building, you can take a piece of it home and you now start the journey of engaging in a different way. So that’s really the idea behind the collecting behavior that we wanted to encourage and empower to demonstrate that sense of interest in engagement.
NFT currently is a technology that enables that. It’s gotten a lot more energy efficient and cost efficient to produce, and actually even more so than your coffee table books that you may never read. You pick up a book and you may never read and you walk out of the door and the museum has no further way to engage with you again. So that’s really the idea behind what we’ve come up with the Nimi model.
Debbie Forster MBE:
I was talking to my daughter about this, who is your target audience, right? So she’s 26, et cetera. She loved that idea because I think you were doing some things with Klimt that she liked and she was saying, and because she travels, she’s a digital nomad, and so why would she have a coffee book or something? It’s greener, it’s easier that she has that going on. I love that weren’t just looking at what we would consider arts institutions just like museums. You did something with the Sziget Festival, which again, my daughter’s been to, so her eyes lit up. It’s interesting because it’s taking you into very different realms, but engaging an audience that must be just over the gold dust from museum’s perspective for their own sustainability moving forward.
Anh Nguyen:
Yeah, yeah. I think it is very much that sense of empowerment because what we think about is also for museums and festivals and cultural institutions to have an effective way to segment the audience. If you have let’s say 500,000 people that are your visitors a year, and how do you give people a very easy way to demonstrate that they’re the super fans? They love it so much that they want it to be in the inner circle, not because they have thousands of dollars to donate, but they are willing to spend a few hundred pounds to really think about collecting things from the collection or becoming a super fan at the festival because they really wanted to demonstrate that commitment. So I think it is very much coming from the same desire to enable users and members and visitors to have that deeper level of engagement and would be rewarded for their deeper level of loyalty and engagement through interesting experiences and activities that continue to further that relationship.
Debbie Forster MBE:
I think we talk a lot about collectors and aficionados and patrons, but you’re bringing that into the 21st century. I’d love to call myself a super fan of art and to think about it in that way is super. So it’s something I’d really encourage the listeners to have a look at your website and I want to keep watching that and to see, because as you said, the other thing I really like about it with your focus on solving a problem, the tool you’re currently holding is a nice loose grip. So you’re not completely emotionally entangled into that, and that keeps you nimble and agile. I think that’s important when we’re in tech. What we need to have is a deep, deep understanding of the problem and then an agile grip on the tools we use to solve it. Because if we’re getting tech right, that tool’s going to charge. So love that, love that, love that. Want to find out more about it.
Anh Nguyen:
Yeah. I think to your point, that deeper understanding of the problem is something that we also need to do and continue to maintain on the consumer side as well, since ultimately we’re B2B2C business. So on the consumer side, the needs and desires to engage in art are quite complex. The interesting part that I noticed a lot is oftentimes museums or cultural institutions are not able to truly address the different personas of consumers because we’ve come from decades of thinking of equal access as the goal where it is about something that is accessible for everyone, which means that it may not be the best solution for anyone group in particular because the average of you and me may not be a real person, right?
Debbie Forster MBE:
That’s fantastic.
Anh Nguyen:
So I think that’s really interesting, and museums are starting to think about it much more differently in recent years in terms of how do they appeal to the learners, how do they appeal to what we call the social butterflies, people who actually would love to meet one another and network with one another. So Nimi actually is able to fill that gap very well because we naturally attracts people that really want to put themselves out there and want to go and meet more people who are lovers of arts and lover of museums, and like you, the art super fans. That’s really where the value lies. Most of those people have talked about how they can’t possibly be members of multiple museums. They would love to support multiple museums, but there isn’t a natural way for them to do that.
Debbie Forster MBE:
True.
Anh Nguyen:
So that’s really interesting that there is also very new consumers’ face problems that we learn as we get onto this journey and we continue to see a lot of interesting ways to be matchmakers between the two.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Love that. Absolutely love that. Again, that’s important for our audience to always remind us to see those customers in a really differentiated way. Sometimes that means it takes taking stakeholders on that view as well, but that adaptability is fantastic. Super. Okay. So we also like to let guests have a chance to stare at the horizon a bit and have a moan and have a moment to celebrate. So thinking about tech in general, what’s coming up on the horizon? Is there anything that’s frustrating you at the moment or worrying you?
Anh Nguyen:
I think probably the general theme of our conversation so far also would lead to a pretty obvious sort of observation that I would make now and it’s probably not surprising. I would love for us to see more problem-obsessed tech entrepreneurs rather than tech-obsessed tech entrepreneurs. I think the frustrating part, which is really natural in an environment where there’s just so much technology innovation is that perhaps we don’t put enough emphasis and attention to the core underlying problems that those innovations can solve. So I think we may have more of that general trend of applying or bringing tech in for its own sake. That’s sometime natural that people have to go through that phase and then they realize that no, they don’t need those tools and those extra fancy shiny things.
So for example, in many cases with COVID, there is such an accelerated adoption of virtual technology that enables remote work. In the space that I’m most invested in lately, in the cultural space, there is endless amount of virtual content, the virtual tours, virtual talks, all kind of virtual events and everything in between that are free for the public. But I actually think there is very little measurement on the level of successful engagement and outreach and the target audience for those types of programming. So I think generally it tends to be a bandwagon that people jump on and not having a very clear reason why. I think now we have that trend too with AI, and I certainly think that it’s a very, very powerful innovation, but I would love to see more of that intentional adoption, intentional articulation of the problems that we are looking to solve with a very powerful tool.
Debbie Forster MBE:
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve found in so many different companies and looking at products and talking to entrepreneurs, and you can just get lost down the rabbit hole. That powerful question of going back to, okay, what exactly is the problem we’re trying to solve? Not what are we trying to do, what is the problem we’re trying to solve? Because it’s what are we doing, what are we building, how are we… what’s the problem? Then because if you really understand that problem, then you should be able to measure the success, and like you say, COVID drove a lot of it and AI’s going to do a lot of that, of if we build it, we can come, and if we build it, we should build it. I love the thought and I’ve not heard it put that way, bring back that intentionality, that thoughtful approach to what is the problem. Super. Okay. But on a positive thing, is there anything that excites you about tech?
Anh Nguyen:
Yeah, I think we’re definitely living in a very exciting moment. We’re at the advent of innovation and technology that disrupts other foundational technology that came about not long ago, right? So we continue to just have a much faster pace of innovation that I think significantly reduce the timeline of new tech and new innovation coming out. So only a few years ago, we probably tend to see an 18 to 24 month cycle of technology and new trends. Now that’s probably reduced to six months timeframe where every six months things would look very different. If you go on a hiatus and unplug yourself for six months and you come back and you probably would be very, very, very surprised at the ways that everything is working and the world evolves around.
So I think very much excited about the pace of innovation and really excited about the ways that it’s a lot more approachable for entrepreneurs to step in. Even given the downturn and the softer market environment, we do see that is a great time to start a business because you are able to accelerate and build in a very lean way given the amount of technology enablement that exists.
Debbie Forster MBE:
I’m not mourning the loss of unicorns. I’m not sure the world needed so much unicorn mania. I think sometimes lean times force us to do it again, not just because we can, but because there’s a problem and there’s a lot to be said for bootstrapping and doing things that are in a really careful way, so.
Anh Nguyen:
Yeah. I definitely think that there’s always two sides to a situation, right? There’s good news and bad news. There are a lot of companies that raise significant funds and on a very crazy valuation in 2021. It’s actually quite a tough spot for them to be in, to kind of grow up that way. When you kind of grow up with so much abundance, you didn’t have to force yourself to think about the problems and the solution that you have in a more critical way, and it may be a lot harder for you now to face a tougher environment. So I do think there’s always that aspect of having the right constraints and challenges early on that you would have to overcome to truly train yourself and culturally to build a business in the right way.
Debbie Forster MBE:
That’s what will remind ourselves when times are hard is this will make us stronger one day. So Anh, is there anything that is inspiring you right now that you’re listening to, that you’re watching, that you’re reading that you’d recommend to our audience?
Anh Nguyen:
I listen to podcasts a lot on my commute. So the one that I continue to always go back to is How I Built This by Guy Raz on NPR. It’s just stories of entrepreneurs and some businesses or sectors that don’t have any immediate or on the surface level any common factors or similarities to what I’m working on. But I always love an entrepreneur story and I always love the lessons that you learn, and really, sometime I actually just think about on my day-to-day and thinking about the big decisions that we need to make and the big milestones. I keep thinking, what would I say in an eventual podcast down the line about Nimi when we become that unicorn and what are the key moments, what are the key really big bets that we make that we would only ever know? The verdict would still be out until the day that we can prove one way or another. So it’s definitely one to listen to.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Excellent.
Anh Nguyen:
Yeah.
Debbie Forster MBE:
We can say that this will be the before and that podcast again will be the after and you can remember back when you thought that.
Anh Nguyen:
Yes.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Oh, that’s Fantastic. So listen, thank you so much, Anh, for joining me on this episode of XTech.
Anh Nguyen:
Great. Thanks for having me.
Debbie Forster MBE:
Thank you for listening. If you’re a tech innovator and would like to appear as a guest on the show, email us now at [email protected]. Finally, thank you to the team of experts at Fox Agency who make this podcast happen. I’m Debbie Forster and you’ve been listening to the XTech Podcast.
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