VERO’s Marketing lead talks ownership opportunities, membership, and social sustainability.

Lily Horton

What does it say on your business card?

Lily Horton, Marketing Lead.

I build and manage creative solutions to help people find VERO, help people understand what VERO can do for them, and help define where VERO is heading.

Where is home?

I have family and friends on both sides of the pond — so you’ll either find me in London, UK, where I work and play, or in the White Mountains, USA, for some fresh air and family time.

Can you describe your professional journey and how you ended up at VERO?

I’ve spent most of my career working with creative agencies in tech, entertainment, retail, and luxury spaces. Agency land is both weird and wonderful. The weirdest? Shoot locations. Rarely glamorous — most likely abandoned multi-story car parks. The wonderful? All the people I’ve met along the way are a truly glorious bunch of creative folks.

I get a huge kick out of creative problem-solving, so working with a start-up has always appealed. I was lucky enough to come across a super interesting opportunity with a fintech start-up in 2022, Tokenise, which VERO was acquiring at the time.

Combining the forces of a thriving creative community with a new finance solution geared towards supporting creators to monetize their work directly… Well, needless to say, I was hooked on the concept. I now have the privilege of working with both VERO and Tokenise teams on creative marketing solutions. Watch this space!

“We’re rethinking how money, identity, and privacy work in spaces where we gather online.”

So what is Tokenise exactly?

Tokenise provides a regulated trading environment for tokenized securities.

To break down the jargon, a security can be pretty much anything that has value — it can be a physical item, like a piece of art, a security can be music royalties, business equity…. truly… anything.

Tokenise has built a one-size-fits-all regulated solution for trading a huge range of asset types via token mechanics. Token mechanics also enable multiple owners — fractional ownership — which can make owning a part of something you’re passionate about more affordable and accessible.

Why has VERO acquired Tokenise?

As you might have seen in our roadmap, VERO is building an ecosystem to support community, utility and ownership online. Tokenise is a key component within the VERO ecosystem to unlock digital ownership.

Firstly, the Tokenise tech will enable creators to sell their music royalties, channel equity, art, and more to their fan base via the VERO platform. Secondly, Tokenise enables VERO to become owned by its community.

You played a significant role in launching VERO’s product roadmap. What parts of it have you particularly fired up?

I’m most fired up by the holistic ecosystem we’re building. We’re rethinking how money, identity, and privacy work in spaces where we gather online. The world has been sitting in an uncomfortable social-media-doom spiral for too long with no noteworthy innovation that truly supports the people that use it. And so we’re building an ecosystem to solve this.

But, if I had to pick one, it would be the Utility segment of the roadmap. This is where I see game-changing moves for VERO and our community.

The Utility segment will launch with tools that enable creators to directly monetize their fan base via channel subscriptions. A layer of exciting token mechanics will follow this for creators to earn equity, reward fans, and build and retain channel subscribers.

“Firstly, the Tokenise tech will enable creators to sell their music royalties, channel equity, art, and more to their fan base via the VERO platform. Secondly, Tokenise enables VERO to become owned by its community. ”

Can you tell us more about the VERO Membership model?

VERO has been built from conception to adopt a paid membership model. Paid membership is on the horizon, Member benefits are being finalized, and there will be some more exciting announcements to come on this! It’s worth noting that when the paid membership model is switched on, all existing VERO Members will get access to VERO free for life. After all, without our founding community, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

My thoughts on the free social vs paid social debate — I fundamentally believe that a paid membership model is the only socially-sustainable solution for social networking online. We’re laser-focused on building a product for the end user. For their benefit. Not for advertising revenues.

We’re all too familiar now with the harmful impact free social media causes — the attention economy model is anti-social, it’s polarizing, it fractures communities. This is what gets me out of bed every morning.

What’s your favorite VERO feature?

If I can have two… First, is data privacy. Plain and simple. Second, I love sharing recommendations and appreciation for local spots, authors, and artists. I also seek out recommendations from the VERO community when I’m in a new city. Jamie has a pretty epic bank of spots worth checking out!