In mid-2021, the NFT world was on fire. Pixelated penguins, sharks, and apes were selling for tens of ETH. Every week, Twitter threads bragged about “life-changing mints.” I was watching this unfold and thought, what if NFTs could be funny?

That was the spark behind Humor NFTs (H-NFTs)..

The concept was simple: 10,000 unique NFTs that told jokes. Not just another profile picture, but something that made you laugh every time you saw it.

I teamed up with artists to build the characters and backdrops. The centrepiece was Guru, a long-bearded figure with a planet for a body. The idea was to add variety: the same Guru across multiple planetary themes. But once we minted him, people thought he looked like an alien, stranded in our universe, hopelessly addicted to crypto. That accidental quirk became the backstory of H-NFTs.

At the time, I thought this was my edge. While others were selling sharks, I’d sell humor.

Looking back, I knew nothing about launches, community, or marketing. I thought a good product would sell itself. It doesn’t.

I had enough validation back then (many said it would click), but by the time H-NFTs were ready, the market had already shifted. The trend shifted from paid NFTs to free mints, where creators earned from secondary trading commissions. Suddenly, what we were offering felt outdated.

We launched anyway. Out of 10,000 H-NFTs, only 250 were minted!

And to make things worse, without visibility we became targets. Random ‘promoters’ flooded our inbox promising to shill our NFTs, influencers demanded huge payments for a single tweet, and fake accounts popped up everywhere. It was overwhelming.

That experience taught me a few things I’ll never forget:

I’m not saying my H-NFTs would’ve been a hit even with perfect timing. But I know for sure we never gave them a real chance. To understand the depth of my failure, this was not the only project that flopped. We started many others, burned money, and never really launched them. 2021-2022 was a pivotal time for founders - some failed big, others won really big! People who failed, never talked about it!

Here’s where the story flips.

To get the H-NFTs deployed, I needed a smart contract. I posted in a community for help, and that’s when Umesh entered the picture. He quoted $400 to deploy his first contract. I paid, we got talking, and quickly realized we shared the same drive and ambitions.

That failed project sparked our friendship, and eventually, our cofounder partnership.

And funny enough, the Guru and the planet themes didn’t die with the NFTs. They morphed into something bigger, the lore and character DNA of Origins of Lume.

What began as a flop became the foundation of the game we’re building today.

My wife still teases me about that long-bearded Guru. Coming from a traditional background, she never really understood the start-up grind: the wear and tear, the ups and downs. I hope she’s reading this far.

In the next issue, I’ll share how we stumbled into creating a game, and the mentor who asked the hardest question that reshaped OOL’s core.

👉 For now, hit reply and tell me: Did you enjoy this? Do you want a deeper dive into how each feature of OOL took shape? Your feedback will shape where this newsletter goes.

Thanks for reading, and let’s build this journey together.

Until next time,