Ep. 69. Friends with Benefits FEST, Feelings Check in with Alex Zhang, mayor of FWB

[00:00] Okay, on today's podcast. Oh, we're going right in. We're going right in. Oh my God, okay. Zero chill. We have no chill. Very no chill. Sorry, we're like type A intense. [00:09] Can't help it. [00:29] Hello. [00:30] Hey, how's it going? [00:31] Good. [00:32] Recovering. [00:33] Post-fest? Red Eye is... I think I might be too old. [00:38] I know that I'm definitely too old for a red eye on spirit. When you sent me your flight info, I was like, mistakes have been made. Huge errors have been made. But it was an incredible weekend. So we went with a group of five and... [00:53] We all had no idea what to expect. We were just traversing to the middle of the forest with a bunch of strangers from the internet. [01:01] With no expectations. And it honestly ended up being. So fun. Such a fucking end. So fun. I love the two hour drive there. Where all of us were like. [01:11] what are we doing? Like, where are we going? No idea. Totally no expectations. And then now... [01:19] I'm back home and... [01:21] Saw some friends yesterday. [01:24] And everybody's like, so like, how was your weekend? How was it? And it reminds me of this will not hit for you, but for any Christians listening in, like whenever you go on like a missions trip or you go on like a, like some sort of community service trip, like a volunteer trip, a volunteer trip. They're always really formative. You come back and people are like, so how was it? And you're like, it was great. But like, you can't really describe it. And I'm

[01:54] a spiritual journey it was incredible shout out to the fw team especially caitlin davies is just a dream to work with boys club did trivia night at fest we were the personality hire for the weekend which we made that joke when we first started trivia night but then seeing the talks on saturday on friday and saturday i was like oh we really were the person really were for truly truly which i actually think was really good listening on their part because we had a meeting with them [02:24] What kind of programming? [02:25] And I was like, nothing intellectual. [02:27] We're not the intellectuals in the room. We're fun. Fun only. And they were like, okay. Fun only from Boys Club. But it was really great. And honestly, the talks were incredible too. I mean, in our group chat, we have not stopped talking about Reggie James. So whatever he did to all of us, it... [02:43] worked it's like borderline embarrassing at this point i know it's in the privacy of a text message with only my friends and i'm like we need to stop it's getting weird i'm gonna link to his talk um and his slides it was it was a spiritual experience listening to him it was so good so you guys definitely should just you know spend the 30 minutes listening to his talk um but anyway that's not what this podcast is about we had on the man the [03:09] Alex Zhang, the man of the hour, the bell of the ball, if you will. So, yeah, this is a feelings check in. [03:14] With Alex Zang, the mayor of FWE post- [03:17] FWE Fest, [03:19] And just some really insightful thinking around what it's like to have an on-chain community, how that shows up at IRL and the challenges and the highs and lows of leading this community over the past few years. And figuring out an entirely new model for what this thing is.

[03:41] I really, really like Alex. He's a real one. And I think that what I... [03:48] have... [03:49] found in knowing him in the short time that I know him is that he's like really genuine. I think you could look at FWB and you could have, if you're not in it, have some assumptions about, um, [03:58] what they're like. And I was struck by this this weekend. And I think it comes from the leadership [04:03] and Alex is there's just a pervasive friendliness to, uh, [04:08] the people that are a part of FWB and it's really refreshing. And I think you could very easily not to be that way if you were there. And, um, so yeah, this is a feelings check-in. [04:22] Are you a Pod Save America listener? Pod Save America? No. [04:26] Oh, OK. [04:27] You know who they are. [04:28] I've heard [04:29] I've heard. I mean, I'm a podcaster, so I'm in the industry. I've heard. But I don't know. It's news, right? [04:36] Yeah, and like really left. And they started a few years ago, and they were previously worked for the Obama administration. [04:45] And they're like three dudes. And their first, first podcast is an interview with Barack Obama as he's leaving office. [04:54] And it's just like, it's a great interview. And I was like, this is our Barack Obama moment. [05:00] I was like, Alex is out. He's on his way out. He just finished this weekend. This is a perfect time to talk with him. I love that. Another reference that you won't get, but that other people may, that I hit the car with on the way home was similarly for the Hamilton fans in the house. There's the almost climax of Hamilton, which is this big showstopper song with the George Washington character, where he's talking about how he's leaving office and how he, they all want him to stay and they all want him to continue being president.

[05:30] America to be able to stand up on his own feet. It's like, it's this big, you know, obviously, literally song and dance. And... [05:37] Again, that's Alex saying. That's Alex saying. Okay, give it a listen. [05:42] Hey, Natasha, if someone wants to get into crypto or is looking for a better way to trade, where should they go? Oh, Dina, I'm so glad you asked. The place to be is Kraken. It's more than a crypto platform. Kraken is your bridge to the new world of finance. A simple, gorgeous place to trade with a redesigned trading interface that's so easy to use. From degen to day trader, first timer to full timer, make your trades in just a few clicks. [06:11] Sign up in just a few minutes and you can even get started with as little as $10. We love you, Kraken. [06:17] Okay, on today's podcast, we have a very... [06:20] special guest. We're recording live from Idle Isle, California. [06:24] in the woods at FWB Fest and we have the man himself, the mayor of Friends with Benefits, Alex Zang with us. Welcome to the show, Alex. Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here. We're so happy to have you. My first question is, what does it mean to be the mayor? Can you explain? Yeah, so firstly, thank you for having me. I've always really adored you guys and think what you are doing is so rad and so important. So you guys were one of the first, I think when we met up in Europe, I was like, I want you guys. [06:50] I want you guys here. It would mean a lot to be here. Thank you for making the journey out to Idlewild, California. So, you know, I think titles and language, while seemingly trivial, I think can actually be kind of important, especially in spaces and ecosystems like ours, where we're

[07:05] very much defining a lot of this language in real time. [07:08] And when I first got involved and we were getting friends with benefits off the ground, [07:12] It was an early team of contributors, like seven to eight folks just kind of hacking around, you know, Trevor, Rayhan, Dexter, etc., Derek. [07:20] I was sort of the first person who [07:23] was able to and interested in going full time because I sort of saw a lot of the opportunity and [07:29] frankly, the demand for it, the community was just really, really growing. And it was kind of like, [07:34] You know, the first NFT big conversations really starting to happen and [07:39] Trevor had sort of approached and he was like, hey, I think we're looking for like a full-time CEO of FWB. And at that point, there wasn't a lot of literature or language even on what DAOs were, let alone social tokens. [07:51] Did you guys have a token out in the world at this point? Yeah, we did. Okay. We were actually token first before really any... [07:57] organizational structure philosophy. Trevor just did it, which is why we love Trevor. He, weekend hackathon project, taught himself to create a token, put his own cash in for liquidity and sent it. It was like worth literally nothing and just posted a tweet. Who's interested in crypto and culture? I have some free tokens for you. DM me. And like 60 random people DMed him. And that was the first... [08:19] group of fwb so it wasn't at all meant to be a community or business or project it was purely frankly an art project it was he was just really interested in [08:29] playing with the medium itself. [08:32] His initial thesis was if crypto can store financial value, could it also store cultural value? The initial sort of petri dish of FWB was a mix between interesting kind of creatives who were just starting to make NFTs.

[08:44] a lot of the founders of the now institutional marketplaces and just creatives. And this was like about two and a half years ago now or three years? Yeah, 2020, the fall of COVID. And everyone was locked at home. And [08:56] really curious what was happening. Everyone in the Clubhouse era and phase, Amazon Clubhouse, kind of talking about what crypto was. And FWB kind of became this discord space where people could just kind of ask questions and hang out and kind of get slowly on board. [09:09] their friends it became you joined because someone helped you make a wallet sent you the tokens taught you how to buy the tokens [09:16] kind of onboard you hand-to-hand combat style into the discord. And so I was one of those people. And Trevor was like, hey, you should come check this out. Within a couple of weeks, I started to contribute. And then he was like, hey, I think FWB would really benefit from having [09:29] a full-time CEO, there's really no money in the treasury, but if you're down to just get involved and we can help raise a little bit of capital or figure it out if you want to do this full-time. And I think within a couple of weeks, I just didn't feel to your original question, what does being a mayor mean? [09:43] I didn't feel like being a CEO was the right title for this. It just, I didn't want to be the chief executive officer of 50 people on a Discord. And I didn't want to introduce a power dynamic of that level. And frankly, I didn't even have a title for the first three to four months. Okay. Just was, I think it was like project lead or something random. And then Jacob Horn on the Discord from Zorro, where he was like, [10:02] Hey guys, have you ever thought of FWB as a city? And we were all kind of like, what? Are you smoking? And he was like, no, it's like, if you think about FWB as a city, [10:09] that just isn't physically distributed yet. [10:12] we all just started to really like run with that narrative. I have a background and huge interest in urban planning and urban theory from past projects I've worked on. And it just kind of like opened up my sort of eyes of like, whoa, I can totally apply a lot more.

[10:26] urban theory practices to building this online community, even if it's purely digital for now, as opposed to thinking about it as if I were building a traditional brand or building a company. And then quickly, someone made a joke about it. They're like, are you our mayor? And I was like, [10:41] I guess I'm the mayor, self-elected mayor, maybe a little bit. Everyone's like, dictator mayor. And I was like, mayor. And then it sort of stuck in the community. And then I think I went on like CNBC, some traditional media outlet. And they were like, what title would you prefer to go by? And I just was like, mayor. And then it ran. And then everyone like memed it in the community. And then... [11:01] all of a sudden I just started going officially by mayor. To more appropriately answer your question, it really is more of a philosophical framework. So for me it's thinking about, okay, how do I lead this community less sort of unilaterally and monolithically and more so [11:14] like any good. [11:15] public servant, [11:17] It's thinking more about how do I enable the people or the community to create and build interesting things on top of FWB, our quote unquote city. [11:25] It's how I lead the core team and the operational team where I really [11:29] Try not to ever be like, hey guys, this is my decision. Sorry. Everything is a lot more sort of flat and structural as well as how I think about, frankly, my tenure and [11:40] I don't think communities should have CEOs. [11:44] forever. [11:45] That is my decision to stay or leave. I'm very interested in democratic transitions of power for groups of people. I'm very interested in [11:51] having different perspectives and leadership for [11:54] nebulous networked communities and so from both the day-to-day operational level all the way to the high level philosophy of i think governing a community

[12:04] the the title mayor became very very interesting for me to continue to reference and reflect on and look back on [12:10] Especially when I'm making a super, super critical decision. I'm like, cool, what would a CEO do? [12:15] Probably shouldn't do that. [12:16] What would someone who's here to represent the people do? And that sort of just stuck with it and the community since its inception. That's fascinating. You are coming up at the end of your tenure as mayor, two years. Just a quick feelings check-in. How, in terms of that transition to what's next, like, how are you feeling about it? And I want to get into lessons that you've learned and what the past years have been like. But just like, what's the vibe with Alex? Yeah, the vibe with Alex is definitely very emotional and bittersweet right now, honestly. [12:46] serotonin depleted after like putting a lot of energy into an amazing weekend here in Idawild where we had about a thousand [12:53] people come out and all weekend people are coming up to me being like, it's so amazing. What you have done here, I'm like, it's not me, but it's all of us. But still, like, it was just really impactful. I met a woman at dinner. [13:04] on Friday night who I've never met before, who she just sat down next to me and she [13:09] Came from Shanghai, has never been to the U.S. before. Joined FWB through our first FWB Shanghai event like two years ago. Has been translating all of our... [13:18] content into Chinese. [13:20] for like the local Shanghai community runs like an artist in residency out there. [13:25] And she just kind of sat down and was like, hey, I just want to let you know, like, this is my first time in a, in a, in a, [13:30] English speaking country. We like pulled together some money to put together a flight for me to come out here. This is

[13:36] 10 times more than I expected this would even be and my whole world view is [13:40] sort of changing and i want to thank you for that and i just started like crying i was like i was like wow this is very intense and amazing and re [13:47] affirming of like I'm sure why you guys do what you do too where it was just [13:50] her whole introduction to [13:52] the Web3 crypto [13:54] was through this community and to see the friendship she's had already made here this weekend to see the support people were sort of giving her and just kind of that little push to keep doing your thing was really really inspiring and so yeah definitely feeling a little bit bittersweet but also feeling incredibly ready because I think [14:10] just seeing how much the community is taking hold of this concept of transition. I don't think it's, I mean, I don't think it's ever really been [14:16] done before in this sort of like DAO in our early ecosystem and on [14:22] Thursday here at Vest, we did a members day or like a token holders day where if you're a member of FWB and you hold tokens, it was like sort of a behind the curtains conversation on everything and sort of town hall style about ways that FWB can improve and grow and where you want to see things going. [14:39] There's a whole section on [14:41] Leadership council transition, I was shocked at the amount of people who came. And I actually, I sat in the back and just kind of in the book stacks, like didn't even want to be. [14:48] visibly seen just to kind of see what people would say even about me or like about it and the level of like [14:53] constructive thoughtfulness around the structure itself. [14:57] and [14:58] things that they want to see improved. [15:01] I was just truly blown away from people. I literally have no idea who they are. And they were just like, this has been the advantages of having a single individual mayor. This is what we want to see in the next mayor. Here's what we think Alex did really well. Here's areas where we think the community can improve. And obviously it was

[15:17] subjective per person, but I found it to be just like really fascinating that someone said an interesting way. They're like, no, no, I'm on the board of co-ops. We are essentially the board, but the board is made up of the community and we're here to place the [15:29] and structure the leadership. [15:31] to sort of navigate the next chapter or term. [15:33] of the leadership here at Friends with Benefits and just found it to be really inspiring. Yeah. I see Friends with Benefits as sort of like our older brother who's done. That's so cute. Gone before us. That is so cute. And laid the groundwork in many ways for what Boys Club is. And I'd love to hear from you what you feel some major learnings are around the [15:55] So much of what you guys have done is like very groundbreaking and revolutionary and they're, [15:59] are many downsides to being a first mover on something. What would some things be that you either wish you had done differently or just learnings that you've had generally that you would impart to other communities? Yeah, I very much resonate with [16:15] The privilege and the pain of being first in that, you know, we walked through the fire so others didn't have to. Would I have done it differently? No, I think it's been an incredible journey and a ride for the entire community. We're still so excited about sort of collectively co-creating what we're building here. [16:32] But yeah, I think in terms of hindsight 2020, what would we have done differently? What could we share with other communities who are thinking about this space, especially knowing how hyperbolic and pendulum-swingy this space is, where so much of the success [16:45] of a project depends on when you start it and how you start it because of just

[16:49] general consumer financial adoption and climate, add on like the regulatory aspects of crypto that make everything a little bit more scary and intense. [16:58] But yeah, I would say a couple of key learnings for us have been firstly, um, [17:03] I think we talked about this a little bit in New York, but [17:05] Just the tooling of Web3 Evolves. [17:07] so rapidly but is still so nascent and infantile. [17:12] For us, even just the fundamental form factors, I think had we started FWE, even six months later, we probably would have done an NFT. Just from the fundamental mechanics of being able to accrue revenue through a digital asset versus a lot of people still don't understand that when you have a free floating token, [17:29] When that token is purchased, it's being purchased off of Uniswap. [17:33] and someone else is providing those FWB tokens for liquidity, there's really no value capture going back into the fundamental central entity. [17:40] except for price reaction, up or down, which can be fun and interesting, which was the initial experiment we had early on, but very difficult for running a sustainable organization. From the consumer side, it feels like you just paid for something, [17:53] But from the other side, we didn't get any of it. Brutal. Do you see what I mean? I do, yeah. So it's almost like it's not quite a service because it's not like, hey, you gave money to us and we are in exchange providing you XYZ. You provided money to someone else who provided the FWB tokens for liquidity. [18:10] You are now a part of our community. But my fundamental challenge over the last two years has been like, how do you come up with a sustainable revenue stream where it actually isn't even the primary mode of activity, aka membership? Yeah. So I think high level, like, yeah, I think NFTs have proven to be much better form factors, whether it was the 10K PFP format, which sort of proliferated six months after we

[18:29] existed. I don't think F2V should have been a 10k PFP project, but I still, I saw a lot of projects launch out of F2V who generated more revenue than we've ever generated times 10 off of some animation project, no longer in existence. Probably not a great use of capital deployment that probably would have gone a lot further in this community. And then, you know, [18:47] 10K PFP evolution to now in form factor one a day. [18:51] don't think that's either 100% right for us, but still, [18:55] Really brilliant model in terms of everyday individual onboarding, much better governance structure, one in a T1 vote, as opposed to one token one vote. So just a lot of learnings across both governance, revenue, value accrual. [19:07] that [19:08] Maybe if we had started six months later, the business position of FWB might be different. [19:12] But like I said, I wouldn't change anything in that. I don't think we would have nearly have... [19:16] captured as many minds or hearts how do we launch later because we would get yet another now versus we were [19:22] I think one of the first from a social context. How are you guys thinking about recurring revenue for Friends with Benefits? It's something that we spend a lot of time thinking about with Boys Club, why we've shied away, even from NFT drops, because that's a one-time money to the treasury, which is great. But then, especially if you're like building utility into that NFT, it's just a bank account that's going down, right? It's not then being refilled by any type of recurring revenue from that particular drop. [19:52] how you guys are thinking about it. I mean, we have some ideas that we're experimenting with, but nothing feels like [19:57] a silver bullet. And I imagine that might be the same for you, unless you have some secret, just this hot tip that you can give us in terms of what you're thinking about.

[20:06] Yeah. [20:07] FWB token holder day, we actually unveiled our refined revenue strategy and plan that we actually got a lot of really great feedback on and it's sort of been [20:17] in the works now for the last year. And it has been very manual and laborious, but relatively successful in that, you know, we're about to do like 1.2 mil this year in revenue, primarily from partnerships. I will say like from a very, very philosophical high level, I don't think it's very strategic to build [20:33] a network business entirely relying on partnerships and sort of let's call it b2b [20:39] However, I think [20:40] given the [20:42] structure the audience in the community of FWB, it's actually been the one that I've come most around to over time because in the beginning I actually was like, [20:50] No brand partnerships or sponsorships. They're too labor-intensive. [20:55] There's no recurring. It's... [20:57] Extractive. It's extractive if done wrong. But what I've actually seen [21:03] is if we view the partnerships less as a traditional slap a logo on a thing, [21:08] and more so as building a deep collaboration with [21:11] a protocol, a brand that we can actually provide value to, [21:15] They've actually been incredibly abundant in positive sum. [21:18] like what we're about to see here at FWB Fest this weekend. So FWB Fest is going to break even, which is like a huge success milestone for us. Congrats. Thank you. Given like two year festivals never break even, let alone something of this scale and ambition. [21:32] And a lot of that was how we viewed the collaborations we did this year. We don't like calling them sponsorships. We call them collaborations.

[21:38] because they are really, really deeply integrated. A good example, and I can kind of peel it back for us here, is like, [21:44] We did a big partnership with base. Jesse Pollock was in FWB. [21:48] We've been talking for months. [21:50] he was sharing his vision for launching base. [21:53] main net out of Coinbase and creating a new L2 with Coinbase's scale, you know, 10 million active wallets a day via their distribution. [22:02] And not only did we sort of help them [22:04] craft their marketing launch strategy this summer. We also helped set up a corporate retreat for them here the week before Fest and leading into Fest. They launched Maynet out of Idyllwild. [22:14] and we're curating a whole curatorial program and [22:18] series of artists drops on base kicking off this Wednesday and Thursday. [22:23] in which the Dow is receiving a significant portion of that incoming revenue. So there's [22:28] Things like that where it's a blended deal, if you will, of traditional partnership and sponsorship, but also positive some like, hey, let's put something out there. Let's work with an artist. Let's curate an artist. Let's do a large scale drop. So we're doing... [22:40] a huge drop with cosimo medici and dk and like you know that'll probably be one of our biggest [22:45] curated projects. [22:46] And if that goes well, you know, that'll be revenue that flows directly back into the Treasury. So I would say how we are approaching revenue and using our city analogy sort of increasing GDP or increasing economic activity, FWB, I think short term, we're thinking a lot about these types of sophisticated partnerships and collaborations, which [23:06] By the way, it can actually be a relatively profitable business, if you will, because we have a relatively small team, not a lot of overhead, mostly digital in terms of no physical footprints, etc. But long tail, we've been thinking a lot about what we unveiled on Thursday is how to actually connect that revenue.

[23:22] to increasing more economic activity on the fwb token level so what that means is it's what a lot of people don't understand with building these types of on-chain communities you actually have to think critically about what [23:32] category you're trying to flow your value accrual into if you're running a traditional business you're [23:38] From a traditional business structure perspective, your core goal is EBITDA or profit margins. So you generate enough revenue. You hope that your costs are lower than your revenue. And you post every year what your margin is. And if it's a small business, you either redistribute that back to your owners. Or if it's a large business, you reinvest back into it. [23:52] with the goal of increasing equity value. That would be traditional business structures. With these on-chain communities, [23:58] you've now introduced a new component or category to that, which is, are we actually trying to increase token price? Are we trying to increase NFT floor price? [24:05] That directly competes with profit margins, because you're now asking, at least from a token perspective, you have a different sort of call to action, if you will. And so what we've been thinking a lot about is... [24:15] How do you actually generate... [24:17] revenue through a stable format and a stable currency, so stablecoins, Ethereum, etc., [24:23] How do you take a percentage of that revenue and actually give it back to the community? What does that look like structurally, operationally, and give that capital? [24:33] to [24:34] incentivize ecosystem and developer activity. [24:37] on top of the fwb token to drive more value to the fwb token so we essentially outlined yes on thursday was hey if we're going to do a million and a half this year in revenue [24:47] What does it look like to give the community [24:49] 10%, 20%, 30%.

[24:52] into a [24:53] Community Treasury that is exclusively focuses on funding FWB token use cases, more parties, [25:00] more content, more events, fun businesses, et cetera. But there's a very explicit mandate, which is create more utility and use cases for things that the FWB token can connect to. [25:10] And then the core business unit, which right now let's call them partnerships. [25:14] can now actually just build a [25:16] business over time by accruing more partnerships that as our pie grows, so should the community sort of pie that eventually allows us over time, [25:26] to get into more exciting high margin business opportunities like [25:29] say, building software and licensing software out, which has been something that we've had a lot of great success with on a small level, but excited to sort of invest more resources into that. Per our community funding proposal, where we just restructured FWB to launch a software company that will focus on creating software, like our event ticketing platform, like our social... [25:48] application, things like that. Cool. I am curious with the software component, is the idea that that will be white labeled to other communities? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we're not 100% sure if the model is white label per se. Like, I don't know if it's like, hey, take [26:01] this [26:02] app and now it's a board ape app i don't know if that's exactly the model but we're definitely planning on as you've seen sort of this weekend [26:10] we have larger ambitions to abstract friends with benefits into more of a community of communities to be a lot more sort of pluralist where like you know we were even talking like should we just drop fwpb from the title of this festival next year and it's just called fast and or we rebranded and we're known as the curators of it but

[26:25] You know, Boys Club comes and they do a thing. We know Optimism comes and they do a thing. And it just becomes more of like a city where there's, sure, an overarching brand, but there's different neighborhoods and different vibes and different aesthetics and different cultural values. I like it. [26:38] neighborhood, just like the Upper West Side to Bushroom. So that's how we're also thinking about a lot of our software, which is how can we actually create more digital spaces, digital tools, [26:48] for other communities, other brands, other groups to build on top of and use, because at least our core thesis is [26:54] Web3 assets, tokens, NFTs have inherent social graphs tied to and around them. We were just one of the first and maybe one of the more fun ones in the beginning. But Ethereum has a social community around it. ETH swap has a... [27:06] social community around it. You guys have a very clear social community around it. How can we help you create what I call social or economic scaffolding? [27:14] around that or civic scaffolding around that. [27:16] to allow for those folks to connect with each other, to self-organize things like this, but further propagate and develop the fundamental community, which then should drive value back to that fundamental connective tissue, aka the asset. Nice. That really checks out. Thank you so much for walking us through sort of the fundamentals of how you guys are thinking about the business and the value occurring to the token, how that all sits together. Bullish. Super bullish. I mean, we could sit here and talk about it for another two hours. Like it's fascinating and feels really [27:46] into more of what you were saying at the beginning around really, I think Trevor's original vision around creating cultural currency and that

[27:56] Our experience here at Fest was so rich and so fun and so wonderful. We had such an amazing time. And especially last night at the show, I was just like became very clear that it was like, okay, I get the cultural currency that is being built in these moments. And it's really special. And I think it's really rare. And I think a lot of folks in the space have aspirations to do that, but you guys are executing so well. You're doing that in an industry or in a category that's very market dependent. [28:26] and it changes the price and it changes all of these things. What's your mental framework for navigating swings in market and prices? [28:33] with sort of this bigger vision that you have that's like kind of disconnected from price entirely and is about art and creativity. What's your way to navigate that? Crypto has both the blessing and the curse where like the initial onboarding or the beginning of an early adopter or whatever S-curve is price discovery, which is fundamentally, it's not going anywhere. It's what makes crypto, crypto, whatever, right? I think John Palmer's talk on Friday, you guys were there, was really interesting because he just said, [28:59] gave a super utilitarian overview of crypto over the last sort of like eight years and [29:04] talked about the correlation of its sort of peaks and booms and busts based on [29:07] new adaptations of the fundamental technology and how at the end of the day what crypto is is currency [29:15] meets technology built into each other which i think is really really interesting [29:19] The key is having a really, really clear and explicit [29:23] Vision. [29:24] that transcends price and transcends

[29:27] Mark it. [29:28] activity, but not shying away entirely from the market itself. Because I don't know if you guys are succession heads, but I think in the last week, favorite quote last season, Logan Roy saying, like, everything is a market. This room is a market. This festival was a market. It was a cultural market. I see things incredibly similarly, where you see social hierarchies, you see social status, you see people using not just capital, but other format, other mediums to [29:55] increase or level up in the game and ultimately it's really interesting to sort of not necessarily shy away from market design or market theory [30:04] but actually integrating that into the fundamental like [30:07] game design of what you are creating but you just need to have a much clearer vision [30:11] of what you're doing over a longer [30:13] tail horizon that isn't entirely dependent on the market itself. We haven't figured it out. I don't think anyone really has, but at least for us, I can just speak to like an operational data level. You just need a mission. [30:24] It's basic consulting verbiage, but you just need like a clear mission, vision, and purpose. [30:29] that transcends that, mostly to keep the team and the squad motivated and the community motivated. If it's purely about money, then yeah, you see what happens with these NFT projects where it's like, [30:37] boom explosion and then one number go up and then the community begins to disintegrate and attack itself and then it's gone [30:43] at least for us, we've been able to really continue to maintain [30:48] core level participation because i think what we're doing here is clearly defined enough could always be better but clearly defined enough where folks are like cool i get it and i'm here it isn't about the

[30:57] financial value. Yeah, totally. Two questions on this. [31:00] Going into this weekend, what were your goals and what did success look like? And then also, secondarily, in your tenure as mayor, did you have... [31:11] a set of goals that you wanted to see happen or some sort of vision at least start to [31:17] blossom before you transitioned out. [31:19] - Great question. [31:21] Yeah, so I... [31:24] I'll start with the second question, which is goals I specifically had over the last two and a half years in my role, which the time limit itself was never predetermined. I kind of was like, all right, I actually want to get. [31:36] three things done before I even think about transitioning to somebody else. Because when I was initially in the role, I knew I wasn't going to be in this role forever. But I also knew I had a lot of work to do because I had a lot of figuring out what this thing even was. And so some of those key goals were, I think, one was untangle the mess of the tokenomics or the token model. So we passed that proposal three months ago, four months ago. We're transitioning to a non-transferable membership ID. [32:06] That is now how you join FWD. So you now pay a flat fee. So now we've. [32:10] We're sort of getting out of the gentrification mess of like, the more demand on FWB, the more expensive it becomes. And at its peak, it was like 10 grand to join FWB, which was like ridiculous. It like pained me every day. [32:20] When people who were cool wanted to join, like, what? I'm not going to spend this money. So now we've finally separated immigration policy from financial policy or from fiscal policy. So joining FWD is a flat fee. You purchase. You receive tokens in that purchase. So you have equity in the community. Some revenue goes to the treasury. So now there's a revenue stream.

[32:38] and you have a membership id that sort of tracks your reputation and your status inside of the fwb ecosystem [32:44] So that'll go into effect over the next month or two. So that was one big component. Second, recurring revenue stream. We've now opened up this new stream through memberships. [32:52] as well as really crystallizing the partnership sort of collaborations route it's not exactly where i want it to be of like great there's a cash spigot and we got x predictable revenue coming out every quarter but [33:03] It's at least in a place where I'm like, cool, we broke even on this year. We now have a clear focus on how we partner with folks. [33:10] So that was sort of the second component. [33:12] And then the third was really around nailing fest, frankly. I viewed my role in the beginning as [33:18] throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what stuck from both the operational financial perspective, but also a cultural perspective. And we did everything under the sun. We did like content, media, events, decentralized events, big festival conference, like, [33:31] you know, software and, you know, half stuck, half didn't. We were very quick and iterative. And if it didn't stuck, we quickly recapped. [33:38] stored that sort of knowledge on what worked what didn't work and moved on to a new thing so i always viewed it as like platform building [33:45] or like creating pillars that other people can then build [33:48] on top of. So for instance, [33:50] What I'm most proud of is this festival or this conference and that, [33:53] I think if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, this festival would probably happen again, and it would be just as amazing. I really didn't. You asked me before, like, oh, why are you so chill? Like, do you have any to do days? Like, no, honestly. Like, there's enough – [34:04] teams and people involved and [34:06] We had a partner meeting yesterday of every partner who came and created something here in terms of partner sponsorship. And everyone was like, cool, we're down to come back and build more stuff here and commit to next year. And so that already has me feeling...

[34:18] really confident that I think there's now enough consumer awareness in our community of communities of what FWB Fest is. [34:25] There's enough. [34:26] sort of partner visibility where folks are cool there's value in bringing my brand or my protocol or my thing here to do something here [34:33] And the future leadership can, I think, totally build on top and within that to allow for FES to be probably like the main thing every year. And the main community thing, the main financial thing, the main operational thing. [34:44] that continues to sort of grow and proliferate the FWB network. Someone will have a different style and a different approach to it, which I think is great. [34:50] But it's now not like... [34:52] someone coming in and having to go zero to one, I think it's now more like one to five in terms of like, cool, let's scale things that work. Yeah. Or let's retire things that don't. [35:01] but it's a little less like ground zero. Okay, last question. I want to end on a high note. You were on a panel here yesterday. You were talking about this idea of many-to-many world building versus one-to-many world building. And I'd love to just capture that and to have you talk a little bit more about that idea because I think it's really beautiful and I think really encapsulates what is happening here in many ways. I think a lot of this thinking has been informed with conversations that I've had with Toby Shoren from Other Internet over the last few years and a lot of other folks who think about and research Internet culture. And that I think what's fundamentally interesting [35:31] or [35:31] We, collective we, like crypto, Web3, but also the trends of internet and network media over the last like 10 years, is the opportunity for sophisticated many to many relationships and brand building and world building to sort of form. Great examples that are more commonplace are, you know, Wall Street Bets, right, where you can actually have an entire culture of DJ and YOLO, Jordan Wolfson vibes emerge entirely online, no clear leader.

[35:56] figureheads emerging and evolving in the community that coordinate around a single goal like shorting GameStop and actually having an impact on a larger market. [36:03] What happens when the tooling and the coordination, all that stuff begins to increase and become more effective? Quicker scale brands are able to be built and also be tore down. More intense sort of coordination around both positive and negative events begin to occur. But I maybe am a little bit of a techno maxi in that. I just think it's interesting for those types of things to occur. [36:22] versus be scared of them. Like, Oh yeah, I think, I think like, yeah, there's going to be horrible things that happened, but I think [36:27] Nothing can stop it and it's more let's think critically about it and challenge it and build parameters around things we can control. [36:33] But I just think the relationship of crypto creating programmable money or currency meeting technology [36:39] and where larger trends of social media and network media and tick tock culture of like remix culture is going that the ability to sort of to introduce an idea how people build upon that idea and [36:50] have that idea then take shape into the form of a brand for what else is a brand but just a collection of like symbols language ideas that [36:57] Sure, traditionally a CMO might create, this is our logo and this is our marketing campaign. [37:02] But that's all changing. And now brand sentiment is, [37:05] is, you know, at least I viewed the sort of transgression to be traditional one to many of like cool CMOs. [37:12] coming up with a brand strategy, [37:14] running that through traditional distribution channels, and that's hitting audience through print, news, digital, whatever. [37:19] I think the organic next step that happened was the rise of the influencer model, where you saw the CMOs begin to actually outsource their brand influencers, right? The rise of niche micro influencers, where now as a brand, you actually don't want to be seen talking about your brand from...

[37:34] The central perspective and what's actually more valuable is getting 15 people on TikTok or Instagram to organically talk about your brand that can then make or break your brand. The natural evolution of that is instead of the 50,000 Instagram influencer model that you're paying, [37:51] 50K per post to do some launch for you will now be [37:56] 100,000 traditional users with 1,000 to 3,000 followers, the average person, who is incentivized to promote, distribute, build upon brand in a way that the traditional influencer was like, or everyone is an influencer now. But that sort of that scale plus coordination. [38:12] starts to get really really interesting to me and toby shorn writes about like bitcoin is like the first great example of that we're like [38:17] There was no brand guideline book for Bitcoin. It just was that first white paper that is like an anonymous... [38:23] Dude. [38:23] And [38:24] now has a full culture instead of brand. [38:27] That is described to it where you think Bitcoin maxi, you think, you know, whatever the five things you are that you think of. That was all decentralized emergent coordinator on a financial asset to increase the value of that asset over time. So what does that look like for traditional consumer products is really interesting. Cool. That's really interesting. Well, Alex, thank you so much for having us this weekend and for hosting us and also for doing this podcast. [38:48] Thank you for having me in the library, Bookstacks. It's actually really nice to talk with you guys after like a crazy, intense, amazing, fun time. [38:56] weekend, but then just to kind of like drop in with you guys in a much more chill, [38:59] environment. [39:01] It's been very sweet. Congratulations again on a wonderful, wonderful, successful event.

[39:31] This is a true story. I've actually hit them up a few times with very dumb questions about our account, and they were so nice and so patient. It just takes a few minutes to get started today at kraken.com backslash boys club. [39:44] Hi. [39:45] Hey. [39:46] Is it time for draft tweets? [39:48] Yeah. [39:50] I'm very much looking forward to this because you had said that you had some ready to have some. [39:57] Okay. [39:59] This one's dumb. [40:02] you ready for it i'm so i couldn't be more okay [40:07] micro dosing Europe. [40:09] by cutting micro bangs and a mullet on my kid. So stupid. [40:13] Ha. [40:14] Mmm! [40:15] it's true which kid has micro bangs which one [40:22] Bruno. [40:23] micro bangs and a mullet right now this is the problem it looks incredible honestly i'm sure it looks great this is the problem i have with it you live in tennessee [40:32] So it doesn't read Berlin. It reads. It does read. It does. It does. But I'm like his father's English. Right. That's like that helps. It helps. But they if you're just seeing us in passing, that doesn't necessarily play. I also have this one. I cut micro banks in a mullet my kid, but I don't know that the other kids at daycare get it. That one that one is less of a cognitive load. [40:59] So I think it will go.

[41:01] Better. You think I should do this one? I think you should do that one. Yeah. That's funny. Okay. I'm going to post it. Okay. I have... [41:07] I have a concept of one, but I don't have... [41:11] The key component. [41:12] of this thing. [41:15] And honestly, it was just something you said that I want to tweet. But I want to do a tweet that says, his job is just DJ. Yeah. And either have an image... [41:25] of someone or something. [41:27] that like wreaths [41:29] funny okay okay or there's another way you can go about this tweet [41:34] That's like... [41:36] I don't know who needs to hear this. [41:39] but his job is just DJ. Okay. Because there's a lot of girls out there who need to wake up. [41:45] Oh, to girl, to women, to women, the PSA to women. [41:49] Okay, okay. Like a PSA. Yeah, PSA. Maybe it's just PSA. [41:54] - PSA. - To all my girlies. - His job. [41:58] is just... [41:59] DJ, I do think it kind of needs a visual. I know it needs a visual, a visual element. So think on it, pray about it. Get back to me. Okay. Dina, where are we going to be in September? We are going to be at Permissionless in Austin, Texas. Permissionless too. It's happening and we're curating the culture track for the conference. So if you're into the stuff we talked about here, you should come and have a good time with us. So email your boss, [42:29] ticket now. They will never be as cheap as they are today. And we also have a promo code in our discord for boys club members. Come hang in Austin. Friends.

[42:41] This is where we make an ask. We're in our call to action era. It's CTA times. Rate and review this podcast. Subscribe to our newsletter. And if you're feeling extra generous, [42:54] Send it to one friend. [42:56] Thank you for listening. We love you. Bye.