Randy Wasinger wanted the 1952 Topps of NFTs; so the lifelong baseball card collector started coding (and Mark Cuban came calling)

Editor’s note: The following includes excerpts from “The Corporate Couch” podcast as part of a collaboration between host Jeff Pelaccio and Startland News to highlight Web3 companies and founders in the space.

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The 15-year-old boy within Randy Wasinger — so obsessed with baseball cards that he opened a card shop in downtown Russell, Kansas, to sell them — is still collecting, the CryptoSlam co-founder said, detailing the passion that shaped his jump into the digital world of NFTs.

“It’s been quite the ride so far, but in some ways it feels like we’re just getting started,” said Wasinger, whose startup — an NFT data aggregator that merged with an industry media outlet in early 2023 — still reflects his childhood wonder and all-encompassing love of memorabilia.

Now a 49-year-old father of six, Wasinger recently shared his journey with Jeff Pelaccio, host of the podcast “The Corporate Couch: Work Stories I Only Tell My Friends.”

Click here to listen to the episode and hear how such investors as Mark Cuban, Reid Hoffman, and Ashton Kutcher (as well as other renowned investors like the founder of FanDuel and the co-founders of Rotten Tomatoes) got behind CryptoSlam.

It all began in what Wasinger called the baseball card boom of the 1980s, he told Pelaccio, describing the early venture in Russell that he started as a teenager alongside his father.

“That experience with my dad was an integral part of my childhood,” said Wasinger, then-a budding baseball player who at the time had never ventured east of Worlds of Fun. “Certainly I had a passion for sports, but this was collecting. All of my friends collected baseball cards, but I was that kid who really collected baseball cards. I took it to an extreme, like it was weird how much I enjoyed it.”

“It was a blast,” he said of running the short-lived, but personally impactful business. “I wouldn’t say it was like a thriving economy of my friends and their parents buying packs of baseball cards — It wasn’t meant to go on and run forever — but while it lasted, it was great.”

Randy Wasinger, CryptoSlam; photo by Social Apex

“That planted the (seed) as an entrepreneur,” Wasinger added, though it would be years before he’d make the leap again.

A stint as a public accountant notwithstanding, his heart was in coding.

“I didn’t go to Notre Dame to be an accountant. I don’t think I even knew, to be honest, what it even meant to be an accountant,” Wasinger said of the conventional education path he took after high school. “And that’s the truth. I was pretty good at math … and I’d heard I could get a job if I went that route.”

As the internet emerged from its infancy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he kept an eye on trends — following the rise (and bust) of the dot-com bubble, Wasinger said, eventually delving into affiliate marketing, now seen as the Wild West days before SEO marketing.

“If you could crack the code and reverse engineer how Google works, then you could drive leads to dot-com companies that needed them,” he said of his endeavors in the space, which found a particular foothold with clients like eBay.

That project eventually allowed Wasinger to quit his job as an accountant, later founding Wasinger Tech, he told Pelaccio.

He grew as a leader and entrepreneur with each gray hair, Wasinger said.

“I had to learn on the fly — and I realize that’s part of every CEO’s journey — but I had holes that other people perhaps didn’t because I didn’t go the MBA route,” he said. “By the time I started CryptoSlam, I’d already been through the ups and downs of Wasinger Tech, which had a great run, but its business model had run its course.”

Watch a clip from Wasinger’s “The Corporate Couch” podcast interview with Pelaccio below, then keep reading.

When Wasinger stumbled upon NFTs in 2018, he immediately identified an opportunity — viewing the digital token assets as baseball cards on the blockchain.

“I saw that and got it instantly. I was hooked within a minute,” he said.

But Wasinger felt like a late-comer to crypto, he acknowledged. He didn’t have a stash of Bitcoin or Etherium built up. And the processes behind the scenes were still immature, making it a challenge to dive in.

“I was jumping through all these hoops — but I was doing it for the sole purpose of wanting to buy these NFTs because I saw them — as I still do — as the 1952 Topps of digital baseball cards,” Wasinger said. “And I wanted as much as I could get my hands on.”

With no tools already built, Wasinger headed to the deck, recognizing the potential for a chance to snag the industry’s mint Aaron Judge or Salvador Perez — and knowing he could easily come off the sidelines to make it happen.

Click here to explore CryptoSlam, one of Startland News’ 10 Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2023.

“I didn’t know the rarities. I didn’t know the traits. We take for granted now what didn’t exist back then,” he said of the conditions that led him to found CryptoSlam as a solution to his own need for NFT data analytics.

“I didn’t say I was going to do a startup,” Wasinger said. “I just started coding — for no other reason than myself. I wanted this.”

And he wasn’t alone.

Soon, Wasinger would be “Shark-Tanking” on the phone with billionaire investor Mark Cuban from the parking lot of his daughter’s cheer competition at the Hy-Vee Arena.

Click here to learn more about how Wasinger built CryptoSlam — first by bootstrapping, then through venture capital interest with firms like KCRise Fund — demystifying blockchain, NFTs and the Web3 experience.