When friends with advantages broke into the conscience of the crypto in 2020, it is the kind of inductor project of Fomo which immediately made people talk about people. With a wink, a sexy name and members, including musicians Erykah Badu and Azealia Banks, it was a club that many wanted to be part.
Emerging at a time when everyone was locked up and eager to connect, he filled a void and showed that crypto could bring people together for real. About 6,000 joined the token (becoming members) and chapters have pushed all over the world, focusing hipster-tech centers like the and NYC.
The New York Times, as it tends to do with the crypto, slowly made fun of the idea. A 2022 profile has opened its doors with an anecdote on members developing a “Yerba Mate, flavored and sparkling” with a coffee company. “That makes your $ 6 soda instead of $ 2,” said a member. The inference was clear: it was cryptographic children with ideas, an disposable income, a lot of time in their hands and not much to show.
However, the New York Times struck what was definitely new at FWB. He called the group – which was mainly trained on Discord – a “decentralized Soho house” and “a VIP lounge for the creative class of crypto”. It was the tokenization of a community (with a DAO) in a way that proved that you could create something precious IRL as much as in line. The NYT said that the group had raised $ 10 million to investors and that after a financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz, it was estimated at $ 100 million.
It was not clear what FWB did exactly. Of course, it was good to organize nice events around the world. It was good in the community of the community, generating FOMO through the media and increasing its token price. But after that? TBD.
“The original model was only a group conversation with a token. The advantages at the time were only alpha,” said CEO Greg Bresnitz in an interview.
Quick advance until 2025, after FTX and the crash, FWB looks like a more serious outfit. Today, it is focused on the construction of products that people really want to use and hopes to widen the web3 beyond specialized financial products. Less from Yerba Mate, more innovation in clothing in music, cinema and culture.
“It is a good inflection point for industry. We have the opportunity to encourage a new wave of manufacturers in space. Making this vision and the pie more important is incredibly important, “said Bresnitz. “We have succeeded very well in the physical world. Now we focus on revitalization of the world online and we bring this value. ”
This week, FWB announced friends with Builders, a cohort -based construction program that has teamed up with AWS, Alchemy, Thirdweb, Quicknode, Akave, Flecoin, Base, World and several others. The idea is to invite creative technologists to work collectively one quarter per quarter on projects at an early stage, using tools provided by partners. The first cohort (request deadline: April 28) will focus on the development of products around AI agents.
Bresnitz underlines that friends with manufacturers are certainly not a hackathon.
“The general hackathon model does not work. You get eight hours at a conference, 48 hours to build it and then get the price.
With friends with manufacturers, the award is the developed product, not the price and the Gong awarded by the hackathon organizers. It is also focused on products where web 3 technology is under the hood rather than on the thing itself.
“Someone could come and build the 700th DEFI platform and we are not going to stop them. They can completely. It is great. But, for me, personally, what I think is needing is to group all this in something that seems completely normal,” said Bresnitz.
He underlines projects like Blackbird, the loyalty application of the restaurant, as an example of the type of product of friends with the manufacturers wants to incubate. Blackbird is useful and has a consumer attraction, and the cryptographic element (it has a cryptocurrency called fly) is deactivated. The point is usefulness, not that it is the crypto.
“We need a new type of person in this space,” said Bresnitz. “The character of FWB has always been a creative technologist. These are people who understand what people want and they are looking for technology to support this. It is different from what we often see [in crypto]Who is “we have built a hammer which is also a screwdriver, who wants it?” “”
Bresnitz maintains that Crypto has created a large tool infrastructure for manufacturers. Now he has to develop products that focus on technology. The manufacturers of its program will have access to the founders of partner groups via Discord and Meetups. They will receive developer credits and will be able to press the vast Devrel (developer support).
Friends with the manufacturers will present themselves in quarters 1, 2 and 4. The quarter 3 will be left for the annual gathering of FWB holidays in California, where the manufacturers will present their work. Last year, Base, an FWB key partner, held its annual meeting, the base camp, in the same place (near Idyllwild) shortly before the start of the festival.
As a driver for the new program, FWB recently organized a cohort with World (previously Worldcoin). FWB / World received 140 requests and the participating manufacturers have created 40 new mini-supports. The manufacturers flew to Buenos Aires to participate in Crecimiento, and now some will participate in a demonstration day in New York on May 21. Two of these projects already have investor mandate sheets.
Bresnitz is an ardent defender of his initiative. But it also displays a humility towards the crypto which is not always obvious in conversations with other founders. He thinks that web3 has not yet shown what he can really do for the world.
“We haven’t cracked the code yet. It is for me to say” can we try something different? “”
