While Web3 is poised to transform existing businesses and entire industries—from finance to film—MyCo co-founder Phil McKenzie believes marriage is more meaningful than making a martyr out of Web2 and the associated business models.
“It’s about marrying the two and connecting them,” McKenzie said Decrypt at the inaugural MetaCannes Festival in France, which he helped co-organize. “Web3 is amazing, and it has so much promise and opportunity—just don’t ignore it all.”
When you arrive at Web3the pitch is generally an evolution of the internet, where applications built using blockchain technology can give users more control over areas such as asset and data ownership than currently provided by tech giants.
“It has the potential to solve a lot of the problems we face in the entertainment sector, and it can open all kinds of other doors,” McKenzie said.
MyCo, a Dubai-based streaming platform that allows users to earn crypto by watching content, “turns the whole idea of consuming content on its head,” McKenzie said, while founding this roster to include content such as live sports, podcasts, and short-form content.
The company also devotes considerable resources to the creation, acquisition, and financing of projects featured on its platform, such as movies, short films, and TV series. And, at the end of the day, McKenzie says that this process mirrors traditional media in events such as MetaCanneswhich coincided with this year’s Festival de Cannes.
“Web3 is still not mainstream,” he said. “We want to be here and interact with all the other people that are on the ground – whether that’s producers, sales agents, distributors, [or] financiers.”
Partnerships with established media players are key to MyCo’s growth, McKenzie said, adding that its platform is in a unique position to serve as a bridge, helping traditional organizations to media to “dip their toe” in a changing era of content distribution.
“We’re kind of socializing in a traditional way,” McKenzie agreed. “We need to get people on board.”
McKenzie said the elements of MyCo’s Web3 are used primarily by its users, as opposed to how the company creates and purchases for the streaming platform. But McKenzie signaled that the split could disappear in the future.
“The Web3 element is more audience-facing for us at the moment,” he said. “Although we have some plans up our sleeves for maybe using the platform to help generate funds for future projects as well.”
The revenue generated by the streaming platform is split between its users and creators: 35% goes to viewers while 65% goes to content license holders, McKenzie said. And he noted that MyCo recently surpassed its 2 millionth user, noting that more users are acquiring crypto by viewing content on the MyCo platform.
“The watch-and-earn model is really catching on,” McKenzie said. “It feels like a modern and innovative representation of what streaming and content consumption should look like.”
