Nashville-Based Startup Yat Adds Investors G-Eazy, Lil Wayne, More

Nashville-based technology startup Yat is transforming online identities through personalized emojis. Building on the concept of emojis as a universal language, Yat offers a universal internet identity, website URL, and payment address through the use of personalized emojis. Yats are also a new form of NFTs, with real functional utility.

Yat co-founder and serial entrepreneur, Naveen Jain, launched Yat in Music City to build the next hub of media innovation in Nashville. Over the last six months, the company has grown to 55 employees. A group of high profile artists, including Questlove, Black Thought, G-Eazy, and Lil Wayne, have invested in the company, it was announced today (Oct. 14).

“Our vision for Yat is to transform online identities from usernames that have little meaning to a short string of emojis that tell your story,” says Jain. “At Yat, our slogan is ‘Be an Icon,’ and we’re giving people a new way to express themselves online while building the groundwork for a self-sovereign universal internet identity system–all built from the emojis that everyone knows and loves.”

Since launching in February, the company has built a community of Yat Creators spanning world-class artists, students, musicians, and celebrities, including Kesha and Disclosure, with some creators giving more than $425,000 for their own online identity made up of a personalized string of emojis.

Unveiled in July of 2021, the platform’s new feature allows creators to turn their Yats into animations with the Yat Visualizer. They can also mint their Yats on Ethereum and share them on OpenSea, one of the world’s largest NFT platform.