Coinlive interviewed Anjali Young, co-founder and Chief Community Officer of Collab.Land, to find out how their Web3 documentary initiative, Let’s Form Group, has been going, and what else they have been up to.

Introduce yourself and Collab.land to our Coinlive readers – what do y’all do in the Web3 space?

GM Coinlive readers, my name is Anjali Young and I am the Co-Founder and CCO of Abridged Inc and Collab.Land.

I have a 30+ year history with digital communities as a creator, member, and in leadership, starting in the pre-web days when it was dial up modems and online bulletin boards.

My partner, James Young, and I run Abridged and Collab.Land together along with Raymond Feng, Alok Tiwari, and a dedicated community-obsessed core team.

We are also active in and holders of many of the top projects that use Collab.Land like BAYC, Bankless DAO, NBA TopShot, Axie Infinity, Doodles, Cool Cats, Pudgy Penguins and more.

My role at Collab.Land focuses on onboarding all types of web3 projects and partners onto the platform, ensuring Collab.Land’s “community of communities” is a safe and welcoming space, and educating others about web3 ethos and values.

Collab.Land premiered Let’s Form Group, a documentary initiative, earlier in February. Could you share some background about how that all came about, and how it’s going?

Being a community-driven project, our organic and word-of-mouth growth allowed us to channel resources away from marketing and into creating films that spotlight the artists, culture, and founders within crypto communities.

We first approached Thobey Campion, having known him from crypto conferences over the years, and he was a natural choice due to his extensive media expertise.

Thobey then introduced us to Adrian Buitenhuis, a remarkable documentary filmmaker and director.

Their synergy as a team was the key to our project, and we were fortunate to collaborate with them to make our dream a reality.

The result is a series of seven short documentaries for everyone to see what crypto really is.

While the mainstream media is going to show you all the horror stories - scams, Ponzi schemes, rugs, and pump and dump projects, we focused on what we get to see every single day.

It’s about telling the stories of how some of our most interesting leaders and creators and the ways they have been able to change their lives, and the lives of those around them, through innovation and the blockchain.

Did you have a personal part to play in curating the different documentaries and deciding who to feature?

Everyone who is featured in the documentary series is someone our team deeply admires and has shown an ability to take big risks.

In such a new industry, relationships go a long way and we had too many to choose from.

There are so many stories to tell. And these are historical times.

I do see more documentary style video content coming out in the space though, so I am very excited about that.

Tell us which is your personal favourite documentary, out of the seven released, and why?

This is incredibly challenging as they are all so different and special. Like choosing a favorite food or city!

That being said, the first one we made is incredibly special to me.

I will never forget the feeling of seeing a first look at the incomplete film and being totally overwhelmed with emotion that these very special people and their stories were going to be known.

I get shivers thinking about it now. Just so special.

What is your dream for future episodes of Let’s Form Group?

We’ve got seven short films to share so far, but this is just the beginning.

We’re dreaming big - thinking about season two, maybe even a season three, and just rolling on from there.

Relationships and community, they mean the world to us, but there’s something even bigger at play here.

We have this deep responsibility to spread some real good vibes about our industry.

There’s just too much doom and gloom out there, scaring folks away from something pretty darn amazing.

If we believe in the magic of what we’re doing and see it as the future, then it’s on us to share our stories, our passion, and our journey with the whole world.

You also recently launched Collab.Land VIP. Tell us more about that!

We’ve been supporting over 50,000 web3 communities across Collab.Land, among them are traditional luxury brands, sports IP brands, consumer brands, OG NFT projects, DeFis, etc.

We heard the need to provide groups with more tailored services. That’s why we launched Collab.Land VIP, which covers the following:

1) Expert Advice & Consulting
2) Weekly Touchpoints
3) Includes CollabCare
4) Your Own Custom-Branded Verification Bot
5) Educating Your Moderation & Administration Teams
6) Discord Security Audit

Lastly, let’s end the interview off with you telling us what you wish to see in the crypto space going forward! Thank you Anjali 🙂

I’d like to see us move away from the extractive zero-sum culture of Web2 and create a sustainable world for all of us, our children, our grandchildren, and beyond.

We have a huge opportunity here to align incentives in a way that was never possible before. Let’s not blow it.