Yassi Pressman, Jon Semira, and team debut startup group at Philippine Blockchain Week

Held from November 28 to December 4 at Resorts World Manila, Philippine Blockchain Week gathered industry leaders from around the country and the world for a week-long expo and conference based around the eponymous technology.

While there were renown entrepreneurs, investors, and technologists in attendance, one delegate arguably stood out from the crowd: Yassi Pressman. The 27-year-old actress, who has nearly 20 million followers across her social media accounts, was not at Philippine Blockchain Week as an entertainer, but as an entrepreneur.

Pressman is fresh off the heels of raising a US$2 million seed round from Sonla, a European cryptocurrency exchange and digital asset custodial provider. The seed round is for her startup group - influencer marketing platform BrandNation and play-and-earn gaming platform PEG - that she co-founded with Jon Semira.

According to Pressman, she made it a point to attend Philippine Blockchain Week to strike industry partnerships with other organizations in the space.

“The state of the industry is at a crossroads. In this kind of environment, it’s important to collaborate with other leaders in blockchain, cryptocurrency, and web3. By doing so, we can bring the industry into the mainstream, enabling these technologies to improve the lives of consumers and enterprises everywhere,” she said.

While Pressman was open to any possible collaboration, she had particular goals for each brand. For PEG, she was primarily interested in meeting game developers, game publishers, and other gaming businesses. For BrandNation, she was primarily interested in meeting influencers, celebrities, and brands.

Pressman stressed that the team was after higher level collaboration with partners, using PEG as an example. BrandNation.io is not just a middleman, more effectively matching influencers with brands - it provides a suite of features that make it easy for both brands and influencers to interact with one another.

These features include automated campaign creations for influencer marketing; real-time analytics; social media integrations with Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube; and rewards and payments via PEG Token, the native token of PEG and the PEGFi ecosystem.

These are some of the features that the PEG team determined as important for an influencer marketing platform. But of course no one will know better than what is needed than both the influencers and brands themselves.

Leaders from both groups who join by December 31, 2022 will be celebrated on BrandNation as founding influencers and founding brands respectively, a distinction that will be displayed on their profile.

“I personally invited these founders and influencers to co-create the influencer platform that they have always dreamed of, but never got. They could give feedback on existing features, request new features, and even help us prioritize items on our product roadmap. Through this collaboration, BrandNation will more quickly grow through our shared vision,” said Pressman.

Co-founder Jon Semira explained that the team is eager to work with individuals and organizations from all different levels of technical expertise.

“If you are an influencer or brand who is crypto-savvy, BrandNation is perfect for you. But if you prefer transacting via traditional methods like bank deposit, that can be done on the platform, too. As an influencer marketing platform, BrandNation is agnostic, working in the way that influencers and brands individually prefer,” said Semira, reiterating comments from his speech at Philippine Blockchain Week.

Pressman added that there are many opportunities for this deeper level of collaboration across both BrandNation and PEG, given that both are powered by the blockchain, BLOX. Registered as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in Wyoming, BLOX is a global blockchain that has made inroads all over the world, including everywhere from Africa to Asia.

As BLOX will be providing the technological foundation of both PEG and BrandNation, supporting the blockchain is tantamount to supporting the efficiency, security, and transparency of both startups. Individuals and organizations could mine BLX, the native token of BLOX; become a RewardNode; or even stake BLX via BTC, so they can have a voting stake in the DAO.

One of the key developers of BLOX, Rien Lewis Pecson, was also honored at Philippine Blockchain Week, taking home the honor of “Blockchain Leader of the Future.” The teenage prodigy shared Pressman’s sentiments.

“What’s special about PEG and BrandNation is that transactions across both will be powered by BLOX. Because they are blockchain-backed, there are more ways for Filipino individuals and organizations to get involved. By supporting these brands, you advance both influencer marketing and gaming in the country,” said Pecson.

Brands or influencers interested in partnering with BrandNation.io for its coming Philippine launch are encouraged to visit its home page or reach out to Pressman and the team at Admin@BrandNation.io. GameFi or Web 3.0 market participants interested in utilizing the PEGFi financial infrastructure bridging Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 are encouraged to visit its website.