We are a Cardano-based project with real-world utility that aims to onboard non-crypto enthusiasts through its community-driven art and storyline. ADA Ninjaz is a project that serves more than an NFT – it comprises manga, games, music, and so much more.
After the successful launch of its first season (the Aramar Clan) in October last year, the team behind the CNFT project is launching the much-anticipated season two (the Atsuko Clan) on February 4, 2022 at 8.00 PM UTC, with 8,888 NFTs available Ninjaz to purchase. Each Atsuko NFT is uniquely crafted, with attributes that were also influenced by the community.
Tell us about yourself?
Zushan Hashmi here, I am one of the two Co-founders of ADA Ninjaz. I am also the COO and community lead of ADA Ninjaz. The other Co-Founder is Tommy Bui, CEO and Project Manager at ADA Ninjaz. Both of us have been mates for 3 years and used to work together in the public sector. After I introduced Tommy to Crypto, a few months later he told me all about NFTs and pitched an idea to me to create an NFT.
4 months later, and ADA Ninjaz is well on its way to becoming a full-fledged community-driven Multimedia NFT, manga, anime and music entertainment business.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Communicate with your NFT holders, speak to them, be transparent and honest, and listen to their views and opinions, after all, without them, your project is nothing.
What problem does your business solve?
We have created a lively and exciting space for all the manga and anime fans while at the same converting our art into valuable NFTs. ADA Ninjaz is fully community-driven and offers different utilities such as voting rights to shape our story, music, game, unique airdrops and much more.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
The NFT space is exciting, fun and most importantly, limitless in its potential. If you utilise the blockchain to create NFTs and build a community in the right manner, the things you can achieve are second to none.
At the same time, it is very experimental, and allows you to trial things and get instant feedback from your community, something that is very difficult in a conventional business model. ADA Ninjaz is a passion project for both of us, having run small businesses before, and has very quickly become our full-time business.
What is your magic sauce?
To be and remain community-driven. We listen to what our community members have to say and try to involve them as much as possible in every step we take as a company.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Well, with ADA Ninjaz, I see it on a major streaming platform as an anime with a couple of seasons at least. The manga being sold online and at your favourite comic book stores, and the music being listened to by hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.
Becoming a blue-chip NFT project on Cardano is something that we think we can also achieve in the long run, and 5 years from now all of these are very possible and achievable if we do things right. Personally, I’d love to be in a position where I am working with and guiding new, up and coming founders in the NFT space and helping them establish and develop their businesses.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
There was a lot to research and understand, but most importantly it was to find the right people to support and work with us to make ADA Ninjaz a success.
We were easily working 12-14 hour days in the beginning, while managing our day jobs. All the operational work was being managed by us, and our first team member at the time, EJ Boac (now our operations manager). Gradually we were able to find the right people and now have a team upward of 27 staff.
Another key challenge was the transition from doing operational work to managing staff and delegating. Besides both of us, our team members and partners are spread across almost every continent and not in Australia. This means managing staff in various time zones which of course is challenging, however, being able to truly become a COO and CEO was challenging.
As I mentioned, in the NFT world, things move so rapidly that within a span of 1.5 months we went from doing everything ourselves to suddenly having a team of over 20 people, which meant delegating and strategic thinking became our key focus. This is still something we are working on and improving day by day.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
Feel free to join our community on Discord and Twitter, visit our website: adaninjaz.com and stay tuned for the launch of our second season, minting on February 4th.
