Dapper Labs Hires Former NFL VP as Marketing Chief; NBA Top Shot Gets New GM

Dapper Labs has hired a former National Football League (NFL) social media executive to serve as the senior vice president of its marketing department. 

Dave Feldman will join Dapper Labs after seven years at the NFL, where he served as the VP of social media marketing, the company said Monday. Before the NFL, Feldman was the director of social media at Major League Baseball (MLB), helping build its social team and strategy, the company added. 

The hires come as Dapper Labs has earned millions of dollars in venture capital as it looks to build on the success of its flagship product, NBA Top Shot. 

Dapper Labs also hired Tristan Rattink as the new general manager of the non-fungible token (NFT) platform. GM of Top Shot is a new role, a company spokesperson told CoinDesk.

Rattink was the former head of studio at Hyper Hippo Entertainment, where he co-created the mobile game AdVenture Capitalist along with its two sequels, Dapper Labs said. He has more than 15 years of experience in the gaming and software development sector.

Among his projects within the company, Rattink said he will seek to double down on optimizing NBA Top Shot’s marketplace experience, which peaked in late February with a frenzy of buying and selling.

Speaking last month at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2021, Dapper CEO Roham Gharegozlou said NBA Top Shot notched over $700 million in total sales in less than a year and now boasts 1 million users. 

"The operating playbook for running at this speed, at this scale, in such a new industry has not yet been written," Gharegozlou told CoinDesk via email. "We need the best possible talent to help us not only continue to get it right, but push us to meet our aspirations for what is yet to come."

Update (June 21, 20:26 UTC): Adds comment from Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou.