Profile Picture Projects with Lara Ghraoui

Yosos are a diverse collection of 10,000 unique beings illustrated with the spirit of community.

Lara is the Founder of The Yosos, a female-led project with a female artist who previously designed the multiplayer gaming characters for Call of Duty.

Lara first entered the space in 2020 during the pandemic, she recognized the brilliance of the technology of blockchain and the lack of women that were in the space. She was motivated to help onboard more women and created an educational Discord in late 2021 called the "City of Angels". The City of Angels became a small female-centered community that was inclusive of all but connected primarily women and provided an easy way to learn about Web3 using simple language and bite-sized information.

Today, The Yosos is her top priority. Lara has been working diligently to form an incredible team with an initiative to give back to real life heroes and has a goal of creating a community that she hopes will inspire more women to become a part of Web3. She hopes to bring people together and make history with the power of community.

We dive into how hard it can be to start out in crypto, transparency in PFP projects, and doing your research before buying.

Eve #WealthWednesday Highlight 50: Lara Ghraoui, Founder - The Yosos

What’s your background?

I was born in Orange County and lived there for nine years. I went to Lebanon because my mom wanted us to get more in touch with family and have more of a cultural background. I lived through a war over there. I survived. I wanted to come back to America to pursue other things. And so I begged my mom, can we come back? Because America's where you could make all your dreams come true. She took me back here when I was about 17. We moved to Los Angeles and I worked until I moved to New York. Now I'm back in California and I'm in crypto. 

What was your first investment?

I was actually in New York and I had just started making some money from modeling. I had no idea about crypto or what it was. I had one of my really good friends, who's actually now the Founder of Surge. She was like, “What's Bitcoin? How do we invest in that? How do we do that?” I'm like, “I don't know, you're older than me, so let's figure it out together.”

We got one of our friends to show us. He had us download Gemini. We put in a very small amount, because we were scared. Everybody says if you put your money in crypto, consider it gone. We didn't have knowledge about the space, so we didn't know that that's not true. If you look at it every single day and you learn to read the graphs, you'll know you have time to move it if something happens. So we just put in a small amount. We left it and we forgot about it for around three years. Then, the pandemic came and all of a sudden there's $10,000 off my $500. 

That really started to get me thinking about investment with long term return. I've done well in modeling, but if I don't learn how to invest my money right now, then I'm not going to be fine later. 

And I love finance. I have always loved it, since I was younger. I would always challenge myself to learn about it. So, in 2020 I'm living in Joshua Tree with the Founder of Surge. Now we're learning about the stock market and Apple and Facebook. We’re looking at our crypto asking, “How do we buy this coin that's more complicated?”. We’re trying really hard to figure it out and watching all these YouTube videos. It actually took us about a year to get the hang of things and learn things. I remember the first time I tried learning how to use MetaMask, it took me an hour to figure out. I was really upset with myself but now it's very easy. 

We started to invest more and more. Obviously now the market's bearish, but we learned a lot, and it's been paying off. We've reached a point where now our friends come to us and ask us for investment advice. Which, especially as a woman, is really empowering to know that other people see you have that knowledge.

How/why did you get into your space? 

I started with City of Angels. Back to that story of being in Joshua Tree with the founder of Surge, Denise, I really didn't know anything about finances or investing. It was such a challenge for me, trying to figure it out together with just Denise. It got me thinking, how can I make this easier for other women? Just really any woman that has that same thirst for knowledge that I have. How can I make it easier? 

One quality of mine is the ability to make things that are extremely complicated understandable. I use simple English to make it clear. That's what brought City of Angels together. It started off as a Discord. I had people that wanted to invest in it, but as I was still figuring out the space. I decided to just leave it as an educational platform where people could just go in on the discord. It's still live, if anybody wants to join it. I wanted to make it into a website and have chapters of a 1-10 walkthrough guidance.

Maybe I'll revisit it in the future because it's a really nice place for people to go and learn. I got about 500 powerhouse women - CEOs and such - in it in a couple of weeks. I didn't get the chance to connect with them as much as I wanted, but some of them I definitely stayed in touch with and became really good friends with. 

What role do you play in the wealth space and why is it important?

As of right now, a lot of the female PFP projects that are out there do a great job being doxxed and being transparent. But it doesn't change the fact that we need more of that, especially with news about other projects, where it's extremely disappointing to know that you have a founder that's abandoned the project. That is why I'm happy to do these interviews, because I want people to see me and I want people to know me. I want people to know that they can message me and talk to me and that I'm going to answer, whether it's through Discord or my Twitter. 

My main goal right now is this PFP project called The Yosos, which I'm extremely excited about. We have a female artist from Call of Duty who used to make the gaming characters there. We also have an initiative to give back to real life heroes, which includes women to me, first and foremost, and doctors, nurses, firefighters and teachers too, because they are our forgotten heroes. 

Differently than the other female projects, we also have a few male characters in there. Growing up, I loved playing Lara Croft and Tomb Raider. When you're playing Lara Croft or Tomb Raider, you're not thinking, “Oh, I'm playing as a female character”. You just love the game. That's the message that I wanted to give out with our project and our artist: to create awesome art. We start there and have all of our utilities be a plus. 

What is a PFP project?

PFP stands for profile picture. All the integration that's going on with Instagram and Twitter is really amazing because there's verified ways to add your wallet and confirm that you're actually holding those NFTs. If you have the hexagon on Twitter, it shows that you have connected your wallet. It's your online identity. 

That's what I love about all the PFP projects. It is so exciting when you join a community and get the right PFP that looks just like you. I love the fun aspect of animation and community that PFP’s are bringing. 

What do you believe is the most exciting thing you’ve learned and want others to know?

The most exciting thing I've learned is learning how to invest in crypto and understanding blockchain: how it works, why it works, why the technology behind it is so beautiful. Knowing about it long-term and where it'll go. 

And the strength of community and how close and tightly-knit everybody in web3 is. Not to mention, I don't think I've ever worked in a space that actually feels this supportive, especially with women. If I say, “I need this kind of thing”, someone will lean in and connect me to someone who can help with what I need. Everyone is right there to support. I love that. 

Who is a person or company that inspires you in the space and why?

You're definitely an inspiration to me. I always find that you're very put together. You always answer my calls whenever I have any questions and need to learn anything. 

I haven't seen any newer projects to that level of education with a passport like Surge’s NFT. I think Denise is that first one, unless She-Fi ends up doing one. Maggie from She-Fi is also great. I haven't spoken to her as much as I would like to, but she's pretty knowledgeable from what I can see. 

There's still a lot more women out there to discover that have that same hands-on touch that you, Denise and Maggie have, and I can't wait to personally discover them and, and get connected with them. 

What advice would you give to someone getting started?

There's so many projects. Whenever you go on Rarity Tools, Rarity Sniper, or LooksRare and find a project and think this is going to be a good buy, really look at the website. Do your research. Where is the team? Who's a part of the team? Who's doxxed (has revealed their identity)? Because there needs to be transparency and if there isn't transparency, I personally wouldn't invest in it. Because any project that actually has a goal of being there long-term, its founders and its team members, including its artist, are going to be doxxed. They're going to say, “Hey, I'm here. This is me. This is my name. Message me if you need something.” And if that's not there, it might not be the best investment. Further than that, it won't be the strongest community. 

With my project, our top priorities are transparency and community. They're hand in hand for me. Without community and a strong team, there's nothing. If you're looking at NFTs as an investment, you need that to know that your investment is going to go somewhere. If you're looking at it as wanting to be a part of a community, you need that strong team that's transparent with you and doxxed to know that they're going to stay there in the long run. When you're making a PFP project, if you actually want to be there, it's not a six-month thing. It's not a one-month thing. You're in it. You're there. If it's performing well and people are loving it, you have to keep coming back and giving them more and showing them that you care just as much as they do. 

Do you remember what your first PFP was? 

I do. When Denise and I were still learning about how to invest, we were going on YouTube saying, “Let's figure out how you buy an NFT and use MetaMask.” We downloaded MetaMask, connected all our wallets and we went on rarity tools to see upcoming NFT drops. We ended up buying Based Fish Mafia with no knowledge about the space or what it is. 

I don't know what ended up happening with the project. We invested in it because they said they were going to make a game. We bought a couple. As time goes on, I'm looking at the website and I swear they were saying that they were going to do a game. We had noticed it was deleted. I don't know if they ended up doing it, but it definitely wasn't there. 

We ended up selling one of them. We took a small loss, but there are a lot of projects that are like that. We didn't know how to research anything that we know now. 

Now, our knowledge has exponentially grown, considering that Denise just had a really incredible successful sale for the Surge Passport and I'm in the process of doing mine.

How can we stay in touch?

We just opened our discord. We're still fairly new. We already have 4,500 members, and we're just having people join our discord right now. We will be listing on pre-mint soon and our website will be live soon, but I'd love to get people in there early while we still have pre-sale spots and we're still expanding the community to just get people used to us and actually have the time to talk to us and get to know the core team hands-on before we expand. 

What can we expect for the community and roadmap?

First and foremost, women. We are a female-led team, so having a strong female supported community is extremely important to us. Secondly, real life heroes. We had a veteran join us the other day which is great and what we want more of because later, we want to make donations particularly to real life heroes.

I have the groups in my head, but I want our roadmap to be as collaborative as it can be. I'll leave that voting up to the community, and I don't want to reveal too much of our roadmap until our website is live. We're taking baby steps. We have two, three roadmaps planned out, but we're taking it bit by bit. We want to make sure that we deliver and execute step-by-step and move on and upwards.