Full Transcript for Can You Engineer Serendipity?

You could have 20 billionaires in a room, and you actually don't really know who the other people are. I have a writing club, but it's really just about talking to other people. The thing I spend most of my time on, and this is not an exaggeration, is curating the rooms for the events. It is very, very small. So it's like a packed house is like 20 people.

And so just by virtue of being there, there is no 100 person situation. You are going to be in an awkward situation where you go to the fridge, you grab a drink, you're the only one in the kitchen. One other person comes in, you're not going to ignore them. My whole life right now is trying to create serendipity. Something about the people and the institutions that were made possible in Austin were critical to enabling and unleashing civilizationally changing technologies.

They would say, but for Austin, this would not have been unlocked. That's the hope.

Austin will go through kind of a rebirth. Most advanced technology in the world, and if you can't actually build it or ship it, then what's the point?

You need storytellers who are able to paint the picture of what's happening at the frontiers of technology.

The U .S. needs to get back more to that and less like lawyer -ish and more we're building stuff. The frontier isn't just a place. It's forged in the fire. Welcome to Austin Next.

Chris, Zach, Evan, welcome to Austin Next. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having me. Yeah, good to be here. I think this was going to be a lot of fun. Obviously, I know all of you and have been part of the different things you guys are doing, but I want to just kind of start off the only thing that will be panel -like in terms of this.

Otherwise, everyone I want to see arguing and fighting amongst everybody. Just to kind of go around like, you know, who are you? What is it that you're kind of building in Austin? I'm Chris Taylor. I started my enterprise software company back in 06, and nobody knows or cares what my software company did, not even I, but I had it bootstrapped up for 15 years.

But what everybody knew about us was we had a very cool culture and very cool office space. So I bought an old 1920s house in 2009 that we based my company out of. And then as I grew, I started renting other houses in the neighborhood. So when I sold in 2021, I actually had six of these 1920 houses in a row. We got written up a two -page spread in Fortune magazine as their second -best place to work in America and coolest office space in America.

So I found myself after the earn out in 23, tried to figure out what I was going to do for my next move. I loved the culture part of building companies. I actually wasn't great, nor did I enjoy the actual company part of building companies. And I had my old company culture in this original 1920s house that I had between 5th and 6th Street in downtown Austin.

So I decided my why for the next move in my career was going to be helping Austin entrepreneurship. So I turned my old house into a founder club. So I run the Red Bridge Society, which is really a founder community around a space is the way I think about it. And so there's co -working and it's 24 -7 and it's kind of social club by night and co -working by day.

You have to be a founder to be a member. The teams don't work there. You can have a meeting with your team, but then your teams have to leave. So it really is kind of like almost like an EO or a YPO around a space where founders can kind of go and help each other out. And the ethos there is it's rude not to say hello. It's rude not to introduce yourself.

The point is the community and the point is the serendipity. And then I'll probably talk more about this later, but then that was what I intended it to be. And then what it's become as I've tried to fill it up is I do three to five founder events a week. So I mean, I'll have 140 people this week come through that are all founders in Austin of different types.

You know, only a few of those are actually my members. So now I have this huge community of founders that are the Fridge Friends, you know, kind of around the space. And then I have a core group that kind of funds everything. So so now I'm kind of thinking about it as, you know, how can I be not only create this wonderful serendipity inside of the Austin entrepreneurship community and provide a lot of value to the members that actually pay.

But how can I really become in this very small square footage space, this this kind of founder community in Austin? So we actually thanks to Jason, our tagline is now the luckiest 2000 square feet in Austin. You said that one time. That's it. Exactly. That's that's that's on the board now. And that's well, I'm sure we'll talk more about serendipity later.

But it's my great joy to watch that happen. Yeah. I also think 1920s is going to come up a lot during, I think, this conversation. But yeah, I'm not that old. But my name is Zach. It's interesting to hear Chris's story. I've heard it before, but every time that I hear it, I'm reminded that ours are kind of like the opposites of each other, where mine started with this very large community and has now become like this smaller physical space.

So I run a thing called the ATX Writing Club. And it's a social club for writers in Austin, which is a lot bigger than I could have or you or anyone probably could have ever imagined that there being that many writers in Austin to support an entire community. But there's about 4 ,400 people on like the total email list who's interested in Austin, specifically in writing of that.

We have about 210 members. And then of that, we have about 42 members of a much smaller space that is it's about 600 square feet. It's built in the 1940s. It's like a mother -in -law suite. And the idea was that we had all these writers and there were different levels that were starting to emerge within the writers of how serious they were and how much they wanted this to be a part of their life.

So I decided, hey, if you're very, very serious about this and you want to be around other people who are serious about this, then I'm going to create a space for you. And then very much like what Chris said, you have this intention of what you want this space to be and then it becomes something very different. And so it's been over the past 15 months, it's been really interesting watching what it has become versus my initial vision.

You talked about like what his origin point, what was I know you came here, we met like you were just like through X and you're like, hey, I'm just here. I want to meet like 100 people or something crazy like that. But what prompted the we need this and I want to do this? I was much more of a writer than I was a business owner when I first got here and I just wanted to be around other writers.

So I kind of put out the call and I wanted to get a lay of the land of other people who were writing because I wanted a community around me to help elevate my skill and like my craft as a writer. In doing so, it became like this whole big business. And now I actually do very little writing. Today was in preparation for this podcast was probably the best writing that I have done in a very long time.

But yeah. Nice. Evan. My name is Evan Baer, founder and CEO of Arena Hall. I got to Austin about 15 years ago, a serial founder of some operating companies, then ran a venture firm, now do direct investing. My kind of prototype moment for this was around COVID. Some old friends from New York and L .A. were moving to Austin. There were all these awesome people here.

Nobody moved here during COVID. I don't know, Sean Vaughn. And I just never saw them. I would like go to Medici or Matzo Rancho and like, where are all these awesome people? Like they're somewhere. There was a big culture of like people in Westlake would host interesting salon dinners and things like that. But I was like, oh, these amazing people are here.

So our sort of prototype was we took a historic mansion near the capital, put a few venture firms there, kind of like a co -working for venture investors. And just kind of started hosting events there. We were about a year into that. Founders would come by. Rogan's producer would call and say, Adam Sandler's in town tomorrow. Should he come over? Like, yes, that sounds very cool.

Say yes to that one. And so it kind of had this moment of like people would say, can we join this thing? It was like kind of an office. There's no parking and no restaurant. And it was kind of a moment of like, hmm, like I really like to build. I think I'm more of a builder than an investor. It's like, OK, let's really actually go build like a real thing here.

So that real thing is Arena Hall. So we have a 20 ,000 square foot historic church on South Congress. It's very expensive. We're spending a ton of money to build a very cool central headquarter building club for this community. But it's really a building that will receive this community that we've kind of been in the middle of and building for my 15 years here.

But it really accelerated after COVID. And I think it's interesting. So it's actually fairly wide. We describe our members as they have a builder mentality. But I think a lot about the interdisciplinary nature of a lot of the innovation that's happening in Austin. So if you were moving here and building a software business, you could have 10 engineers at a WeWork and just crush.

That's like all you need. If you're moving here and you're doing behind the meter nuclear, you actually need to know the mayor and people, the governor's office and landowners and title and insurance and brokers. And so all of our people are builder minded. But we have like traditional service providers. So there's people in real estate. There are academics at UT.

There are podcasters. There are landowners. And so we are really trying to have a builder mentality as a community of people. But bringing them together in like a really specific and intentional way that would accelerate the work that they're doing. So practically, this really cool, expensive building will open in March. People will be members of that.

Come and use it like you might use another private club. But we think a lot about how do we create community within that that helps people accelerate their professional work, but also their personal work. A lot of people in their personal lives are trying to improve their marriage or figure out a school for their kids or figure out their religious life.

And so it's like challenging, but like a really cool opportunity to just walk alongside members and figure out, you know, what are you working on? And not that we as a team who run the business, like we don't solve those problems. We help our members really find each other and be kind of walking together through all kinds of stuff they're trying to figure out in their life.

I think it's interesting that I even prep for this. I actually went through and was like, how did I actually meet each person in the thing and showing how small the world was? And it was different across each. So like for Chris, it was a just a mutual VC friend was like, hey, you're building stuff in community. You've got a podcast like Ecosystem.

You guys should talk. And then Zach, you know, you're kind of the I was still new on X and that you're kind of blind reach out and everything. And you're like and what was funny is we were saying offline is like there were some changes this morning and I texted you. It was like, hey, can you be on? And then our mutual friend, you're like, oh, I'm going on the podcast.

He's like, I know. It's like because I texted him first. It was like, hey, I realize I don't have your phone number. How do I get a hold of him? I have told your story many times. I like I was invited to an arena event. It was the one I think that the tablet was coming and speaking at. And so like you always had great speakers were coming.

I think it was like maybe six months in. I was at one. You pulled me aside. You're like, we know 100 people in common. Who the hell are you? And it's just these kind of different ways, these kind of threads that go through, which I think is one of the important parts of these kind of, you know, the ecosystems. Right. You have the we want like all the robot people to be talking and kind of building together.

You want all like the bio people. You want all the writers. But then when like the writer, the bio, the, you know, the robot person gets together, then really, really interesting things happen. So how do you think about the what you are building for the specific the founder, the writer, and then how it intersects with like everything else that's going on? One map that we've built.

So we have 16 verticals, AI, robotics, space, K -12, higher ed, future of Austin, energy. And those are verticals. And then we think about rows. The rows of this member matrix are LP, GP, founder, operator, service provider, elected official, and intellectual. And it'll be hard to fill out that entire matrix. But to us, that's sort of the important social map of all the kinds of people that reflect different kinds of capital.

So I think we will have components where we can be wide and components where we can be deep. So I think some communities like the writers or founders are served really well by other things that are happening in the ecosystem. One of our members is a really involved CPG investor. And he's like, man, this is like the CPG community like doesn't really meet up very well.

So we hope Arena can be basically providing like hospitality as a service or community as a service where members want to go deep in their area of expertise and be like, you know, easy food and beverage and a cool place and like help them do their deep community work. I think the sort of cross -pollination is really interesting on some of the issues that our members in Austin is kind of dealing with.

We had an event the other day on sort of the data center crisis. So we have a member of Congress and a data center developer and someone working very closely with the White House. Some of the challenges we're facing and opportunities in front of us are like extremely interdisciplinary and like need the intellectual support, need the PR media people broadcasting the message.

The policymakers shaping the laws, the investors backing the companies, the LPs backing the GPs, the founders actually doing the work, the service providers shaping legal, regulatory, real estate, etc. So a lot of these things like space or AI or data centers or consciousness, they're like super interdisciplinary. So that's kind of fun. I didn't hear narrative in there, which is one of the biggest issues that I think is going on in the data center stuff.

So, yeah, that's a hole in that challenge for sure. Yeah. So who is the thing about the resources in Austin? I mean, I think that we have Lex and Chris Williamson and Rogan on the literary side. You've got Nautilus and Arena Magazine and Palladium. It's really pretty cool. Ovik Roy was riffing on this a few years ago that could you almost imagine like an Austin school of thought emerging here? And I think kind of my experience starting like 15 years ago, interesting people like there were a few here, really neat people were like maybe come through and give a keynote at South by or something and then leave.

But what we're doing, what I'm doing would not have made sense 10 years ago. And serious people that show up raising their hand, wanting to lean in and like create community, but also have serious capital, financial, intellectual, social capital in a space like amazing resources are landing here. And it kind of feels like it's just starting.

Writing is such a broad topic. Like how broad is it? Is it fiction, nonfiction? Is it intellectual? Like where are these like lines starting to cross? Yeah, it started. It started very much because of the way that I initially seeded it, which was through X started with a lot of newsletters. And then about a year into it, it changed and it became much broader.

So it was very, it was very, very niche in the beginning and now it's become a lot broader. And then the Rosedale, which is the physical space that I have, is even more broad, which strangely enough, right? Because the idea is we're filtering more towards like seriousness in the way that we communicate with each other, the way that we discuss ideas, the rigor in which we discuss ideas.

And the kind of like our non -dogmatic approach towards things, it's I, Rosedale is created as a space where you can talk about, where you can kind of stress test ideas that you might not necessarily even believe yourself, right? But nobody's going to hold you accountable. And it's also not online. So you can say something crazy and it's not going to be held against you.

And we're going to try and find a deeper truth together. But Rosedale specifically, there's definitely like overlap in between these as well. Like I have a lot of filmmakers that come in. There's no writing necessarily involved in that unless you're a screenwriter. We have a lot of entrepreneurs come in and they're just looking for a space to be around other creative people, which will help enable their best creative work.

So I've just kind of created the container and it is filled with whatever people want it to be filled with. A lot of our programming is designed and hosted by members. And I just kind of give a thumbs up, thumbs down on whether or not it aligns with the broader culture that we're trying to build. But I have probably given like two thumbs down ever.

By the time that you approach me with an idea where you're a member and you approach me with an idea, you kind of get the gist of the kind of programming that we do. So, yes, to answer your question, the types of writing is all over the place. And it's starting to drift away from writer to just creativity as like this like nebulous idea. Whereas like entrepreneurs are creative.

I had somebody who is who applied this week who has a she does. I think she does 12 million dollars a year on creativity journals. Right. Yeah. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. She's like, oh, I want a place where I can I can get back in touch with my specific creativity. And one of the questions on our application is what is something that you can provide to the community? And she's like, I'm pretty good at like making companies like if anybody needs help with this, I can help you.

And so I will definitely tap her to to teach something to the other people who might be struggling to start a company.

You hear this mostly about music, I think, in Austin, you know, like, oh, it's priced out. Of course, you know, I I'm sure I'm going to get in trouble for saying this. There's a reason we have the struggling artist, you know, motif is because, yes, usually I have a day job while you're trying to figure this out. Ten years overnight success kind of thing.

The creatives, the writers and the creatives, how many of them are like this is dedicated to what they're doing. This is the side hustle they're trying to build out. Like, how does I'm guessing it's the the ones in Rosedale is probably more in that direction versus the, you know, general people. I think the struggling artist thing is kind of fake and has always been fake.

Yeah, I think I think it's kind of always been fake. A lot of the people who are Rosedale members, they have other jobs. Right. I have four attorneys. Right. And it's like so they're working eight to six every single day, but they still write from five until seven every single morning. Right. And so it's like they're the one that I'm specifically citing right now.

She's written six books. She's published six books. Right. And so it's like, do you have to struggle to be a writer? I'm not exactly sure. Based on the thousands of writers I have now met, I don't believe that that that is necessarily true or has to be true. One thing I would pick up on and I love is asking members sort of how do they want to contribute? How do they want to be a part of it? And it's Sebastian Younger writes a lot about the crisis in our culture right now is not that we are being demanded too much of, but actually we have too few demands on our time.

There's some cool stories about this in history. There's the halfway house in Texas 100 years ago that Marvin Olasky wrote about. And the tradition was when a man would try to enter this halfway house, he'd first have to chop a cord of wood. The equivalent for the woman was to sew some linens. And the principle was not I mean, it was kind of helpful to the community that they kind of chop some wood, but it was more to sort of show like, hey, you are needed here and you can do something that creates value.

And so I think it's really interesting, like so much of hospitality and clubs, the sort of name of the game is like never lift a finger. You go to Austin Country Club or any of these fancy clubs that are coming out. It's like you're here to be completely delighted. And I think what you're working on, what we're trying to figure out is like, no, actually people sort of want to be needed.

They want to get like, hey, would you come early and like help us do coffee service or, hey, would you talk to this other person? Because they really need help with this thing. And it's sort of contrarian because it's like, wait, I'm going to have the customer pay us money to be here and I'm going to like put them to work. But I think actually it's kind of the right way to go.

Yeah. I mean, I literally when I'm people are interviewing, I'm like, you know, if you want to overpay for a floating desk and occasionally take out the trash, you're going to love this place. Yeah. Right. I mean, but it's the expectation, right? This is a community, right? I mean, this is a longer story about all my personal hangups from my PTSD from being a founder.

But I have no staff. It is me and I have some event staff that help me with. But I do all the event programming. I do everything, including cleaning toilets and taking out trash. And so it is a sometimes I'm on vacation. And, yeah, my office manager that's 20 hours a week will come through and do things. But, you know, if we're out of sparkling water, you know, the sparkling water is, guys.

You know, load it up in the fridge. And but that sense of community and helping out. And now when people know I'm going to be going like literally five or six members will ask me, they're like, hey, is there anything you need me to do while I'm gone? Is there I was like, no, we got it. We got we got to cover. But it's but it's but I find that I seed so many things in the interview process for the founders.

Right. And it's all trying to get effectively culture fit for the space. Right. Which is that we're very low maintenance by by nature. Right. And but it is the it's rude not to say hello. It's rude not to introduce yourself. I also plant the seed of, you know, the value of this place is the conversations in the community. So that's why you want to engage.

And you'll have a conversation here in the first couple of months. It'll pay for the first couple of years. And I say that a couple of times and without fail, new members within a few weeks come and they're like, it already happened. Right. I already have my fifty thousand dollar conversation. And I hear those stories like which is like like get my great joy to hear all those stories.

But I really feel like that before someone actually joins, they need to hear those stories. They need to hear those expectations. And that's what builds the culture. And the culture is what builds the serendipity and the and the uniqueness of the space. And every space should have its own culture. Right. Of whatever that is for them. I do think the ownership drives the leaning in.

I mean, I've been invited for breakfast at one of these other kind of clubs for a couple of times. And it was like no one here. Like, like, I keep hearing about this place. It's supposed to be like this happened. And it's literally we're the only ones like you don't see anybody. You don't get anything versus like, you know, there anytime I go to Red Fridge or like lunches at Arena, like always random people kind of hanging around, which is, you know, I think really interesting.

You all came at. I mean, you were you born here or you you've been here a lot? I've been here for 32 years. OK, so like very different levels of this.

Why? Wasn't it? Why didn't exist already? Like, why wasn't the founder like these kind of I mean, I've said I've noticed that for as open of culture that Austin is like you can meet anybody. And I mean, really mean anybody really easily, you know, two degrees. It still feels fragmented, which surprises me for kind of like the small town turning into the big city.

But you would think that a good founder like that kind of thing would have existed, you know, already. Or that's even you were talking about like the the social clubs that we kind of think about in theory were what we're supposed to be doing, what Arena is doing. What is your sense of why that is? I think the observation that our civil society here is very thin, I think, is right.

I lived in New York and San Francisco before I looked at the history of kind of the clubs in New York. You've got Union, Union League, the Nick, all these sort of multi, you know, 50 to 150 year old clubs in New York that have atrophied a little bit, but sort of definitely like the 70s through the aughts were very important civic places. Where the mayor would meet the banker would meet the filmmaker and was very important, like connective tissue for the people shaping the future of the city.

I think it's empirically true that those don't exist in Austin. I'm going to talk through the infrastructure that we have of a headliners or Austin Club or some of those things. Relative to those great old cities of Boston, Philly, D .C., New York, L .A. We're a newer city. I think we're also a city. Most of those meaningful projects were philanthropic projects by people that were like multi -generational.

So I think when you think about Austin starting to have a lot of money, someone said like, why would you a reason someone may put their name on a wing of a museum in Houston is that their grandkids would see their name on the wing. Very few people that are living in Austin that could fund a wing of a museum even would remotely think that their grandkids would live in Austin because they didn't come from Austin.

So I think we're kind of figuring out philanthropy as a city. So it might be kind of one reason to explain it. I think the empirical observation is absolutely true. The fact that most universities, including many state schools, have a faculty dining room is not a place to eat caviar. It's a place where the important leaders intellectually are in community.

And UT Austin eats like at a boba tea shop on Gwad. It's embarrassing. And so why can't they do that? Does it look like they're spending too much money on things? But just across the board, like we don't have excellent third spaces where these kinds of relationships are built. My quick take on it is Austin's grown so quickly. There is no establishment here.

And personally, I think this is great news. I'm glad we don't have any old school clubs where all the old school establishment is sitting in a room and behind closed doors and doing those things. We have this ability now to build all that from the ground up for all these different both pockets and horizontally that we want to do in a very Austin way.

And so I think it go back to when I moved here 32 years ago when we were fourth the size. What Josh did with Capital Factory, I think, was this. Right. That was the very Austin version of this. It's now grown to a scale that it lost a little bit of his charm along that way. It does a lot of things for a lot of people, and it's almost at a scale where now I think there's room for smaller concepts to come in and pick these niches and build these communities around them.

We're probably too big as a city now to have a one thing. Correct. The one place for this, the one place for that. Yeah, which is, again, all great news. Yeah. Right. I mean, I think, and the other trend that happened, I think that's obvious, but I'll just throw it out there to say it, is everything changed during COVID as well. There's two trends that are happening now that are driving in -person communities.

The first one was, you mentioned third space. Nobody has a second space anymore, right? Everybody working home collapsed into the same space. And so I think our places are now second and third spaces. They are both places to get out of your house to have a human connection and get a little bit of work done. But the human connection part is the important part of that.

And the second is with so much online and so much AI, and now you can't even trust anything you see anymore about is that real or not. The only thing you can trust is this. And for those of you watching out there, this is real. But don't worry, I'll deepfake something later. So I feel like we're just getting the, we're getting kind of the pendulum swing on both those things.

I'm, yes, it's super efficient from work from home, but I'm sick of working from home. I need, especially if you're going through the founder journey or the creative journey or the building something big journey, I need to interact with people to do that effectively. And I just, I just need somewhere where I can actually trust and build trust.

I think the creative community, my sense, has always been, I feel like CPG is the same way. It's always been kind of over here in its own thing, even though when you think about, it's this interesting thing because going back, even with New York or going a while back to like Florence and the Medici's, right? Like the, the patronage model, right? And this kind of connection of like, yeah, you build these things because we're, that's how you, you're not the starving artist if people are, you know, commissioning things or whatever it may be.

But there's a greater tension, I think, now than in some of these, you know, artistic places of the past that you're actually able to kind of connect. It's like, you want the, one of the big complaints, like when we look at the city, like Caleb Hammer, I've gone back and forth on X about this. It's like, okay, we don't have any great museums.

I threw a thread. I found out we have one of the few Gutenberg Bibles, which I think is really cool. And they should be yelling that more because I'm actually get to the Ransom and I'm going to go see that. Like that, I'm an old books fiend. That's, I think it's really cool. But like, these are the kinds of things you, I said, you, the wing on the Houston kind of thing, you want to build that.

And I think that a lot of what's that energy right now is, I think, in the builder culture because I've mentioned on the podcast many times, but like Base Power, when they did their raise last year, they had this amazing ad that was like, you know, kind of that old, you know, 50s kind of look. Like a grandfather holding his like grandson on the hill and it says, don't tell your grandkids you did B2B sass.

And so I love that ad. Because it just meant like where things are big and you think about my grandkids going to space and my grandkids, you know, in driverless cars, I think is really kind of the mentality here. Real quick, we were in Japan a few weeks ago and my kids had watched all these videos and were like, it's all futuristic and they were really geared up and we had an amazing trip and all that.

But they were like, dad, there's no Waymos or cyber cabs. It's like, it's not very futuristic at all. Like we don't see robots running around. I was like, oh, wow. It's weird. We're on the edge and feeling that kind of future now versus coming to these other places. Well, just on the art question specifically, the Blanton, I think, is a real treasure.

A recent big New York Times spotlight on the Blanton Museum by some rankings, like a number three museum in the country. So just to shout out the leadership team there. I think it is an amazing place. It's also a place that like I'm kind of in the know and like I didn't really know what was going on there. So I think there's sort of a discoverability problem.

There's a practical thing, which is parking is difficult. Yes. But there's amazing stuff there. But it's kind of related. Like I'd love to spend more time with artists. I find it kind of hard to find them. Maybe I can come hang out with you guys. I find it very easy to find them. Okay, cool. Yeah. Let's hang. We are friends. This is the point of the podcast.

Getting these things together. But a similar example is actually spending time with academics. So to sit with someone who's been doing super deep research in AI or robotics or consciousness. We've had some really fun connective tissue with UT. The resources, the visiting faculty, the tenure faculty at UT. It's like an incredible university.

The more I learn about it, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like totally world -class stuff is happening right here.

And I think of the 40 acres as basically the 40 acres of quicksand. For non -UT people, it is impossible to park and to navigate and to know what's going on. And so some of these, like we're trying to figure out ways that we can be a part of this solution. But like, gosh, there's like a lack of town gown connective tissue with the amazing academic resources of the faculty and the students at UT.

So you get top CS kids at UT saying, oh, Austin companies kind of suck. So I'm going to go to the Bay and work for a real company. And then you have some investors in Austin or founders in Austin saying, well, we want to hire the best engineers. So of course, we're not going to go to UT. We're going to Stanford. And then it's like the UT kid goes to San Francisco to work at a company that Joe Lonsdale invested in.

Right. And it's like, guys, no, like we're actually all right here. So I think there's like some opportunities to identify some of those resources and just create those spaces. It's probably not Twitter. It's probably not job boards. I think there is something about bringing the people together in actual collisions in spaces because something very different happens when you're embodied with another person and had a few minutes of like you're kind of assessing.

Oh, like I connect to this person. Like there's some trust. They're like, yeah, let's go have coffee. So that's why I think the physical built environment question is so important because it's kind of this container where people could actually show up and have meetings with other people that I used to think like, oh, my gosh, Twitter and LinkedIn and all these digital tools.

Obviously, more rationally optimized for who should meet who. There's like a real reason those things aren't working. Like I could browse all of the UT faculty directory and all of the important students on LinkedIn, some mix of I don't or even if I found them, you send them a message or whatever. But you're at some bridge event or arena event or whatever, and you sit next to this person and they're talking about crazy research on the future of consciousness.

Oh, my gosh, I learned so much from this conversation. Like, where do you live? Down the street from you. I was like, let's go have coffee sometime. So built environment, How we bring these people together for these kinds of collisions where trust can be built and a real relationship formed helps us unlock these amazing reservoirs of different kinds of talent in Austin that feel pretty siloed right now.

My whole life right now is trying to create serendipity, right? That's like, yeah, we can manifest serendipity is our first value at Redbridge Society. And it's all about we can create our own luck, right? You get the right people with the right culture. And I'm just completely blown away. I mean, I'm sure you both see this a lot. It would just, you know, there might only be five people in there at 8 a .m.

in the morning and like two people having a conversation about something completely unrelated. And the third one that's working at a desk would be like, oh, I know that person. I'll make the intro. It's just absolutely insane. And I've been actually thinking about these kind of two modes now. Yeah, thanks to my newsletter that you and Ethan helped me create.

I had this topic of there's this fast serendipity, right? Which is the you go to an event, you sit next to somebody, you get this lightning strike. You know, the thing you were thinking about, you meet somebody that does that, you get an intro. And that happens. And I see that just every day, all the time. And that's more of the events, right? That's why I bring all these non -members in for the events because you get this energy that comes in and you get a lot of extra energy and a lot of people meet each other and they leave.

And then you have this core group. But for the core group, you get that what I call slow serendipity, which is I really get to know your businesses. I know what you're looking for and what you're thinking about. And then when I'm out in the world, I'll meet somebody. I'll be like, oh, that person should meet Zach because they're doing something similar.

And so I think when you, you know, with that framework, these communities is like you, you create this like closer knit community that has the slow serendipity, but then provide these opportunities for the lightning serendipity. And, and I just can't recreate it online. I don't know how you would recreate it online in a way that, that I see it happening.

I want to pick on this a little bit. I like this artisanal serendipity concept that you're developing. So I've been part of whether it's a business school alumni association or a YPO or these different groups have tried a lot of these online platforms, matching mentors to interests. I think HBS spent several million dollars on theirs, like total fail.

So weirdly they have like all the data. The matching algorithm is actually awesome. But something about when the introduction is made digitally or by a algorithm, like it doesn't land. The other end of the extreme is like you curated a really awesome set of people. You could have 20 billionaires in a room and you actually don't really know who the other people are.

And there's so many like bids and asks that are in the room, but just pure social over a great meal, like probably doesn't surface those. So we've been playing a little bit, like we call it the mullet approach, AI on the back end and human on the front end. And so on the one hand, we want to recognize like, I'm getting to spend a lot of time with our members.

We're learning their kid just got diagnosed with autism. They need a new lawyer. They're trying to expand in Europe, but you source all these needs. So how are we appropriately with the right amount of privacy, like recording those, noting what those needs are. And then do we think about, okay, who could be helpful with that? What I think has to happen is like that introduction has to be from a real person.

It's like, Hey Jim, man, thanks for sharing with me about your kids, you know, autism diagnosis. Hey, a friend of ours, Shelly, there are three years into this journey. Like maybe it could be helpful. Like we don't have coffee. There's something about a human, both exerting like the wisdom to know that that's the right intro, but like even more so it's like, Oh, Evan thought or a real person thought that I should kind of spend time with this person.

So we're trying to manage both ends of that of like, be right on the data side to know things and capture them, but then think about how the relationships actually formed, which might be human. But like, how did you learn about, or how is serendipity manufacturing working? Yeah. So, you know, lucky as 2000 square feet is a very important part of our tagline.

I have a very small space, right? So I, and I, the thing I spend most of my time on, and this is not an exaggeration is curating the rooms for the events. I always talk about it. I think people overthink events. Like I've been here for 32 years. I know all kinds of people to stick on a stage in a very intimate 30 or 40 person environment that is interesting, or just do a wine tasting or a poker night or whatever it is.

Right. The hard part is getting the room correct so that it's a very, so that, so that the collisions are, are high quality 90% of the time. So I, I spent all my time doing that. So I literally, I, I, I have, you know, AI is helping me research people now, but I kind of know everybody that's in the room. And my attitude is that I, and instead of the AI on the front, I'm human on both sides.

I, well, AI is helping me do the research, but I am, my attitude is anybody that comes to the store, remember or not, my goal is surely I know somebody in my network that I can help. It might be me, but it might be somebody else in my network. And so that's kind of my goal to personally make sure that everybody that comes to the door is going to get, go forward a little bit through me or, or a connection.

And so I'm just doing a very like hand to hand combat because it's such a small space. And I can kind of personally manage that at this scale and it's going great, right? At least I think it's going great. Um, but, uh, uh, but again, and it's what I enjoy and I'm, and I'm, I'm trying and I'm trying to shake off the ambition of the, the, you know, the founder, uh, you know, addiction and curse and all that, and really keep it to this one location.

How much can I, how much impact can I have from this one location? Um, because I enjoy it so much. I enjoy being in the middle of it so much. I don't want to turn it into this, like, Oh, let's go do 10 locations and make it a job that I hate. And now I don't have time to actually do the things I like, which is how can I help Zach today?

On the human side, the, how do you do with, and I pick, not pick on you, you help me in this case is that there's also like the personality type. Like, like I'm fine. Like talking to thousands of people on a stage or on X or anything like that. You put me in a room of a hundred random people and I can't like, I've been in some amazing rooms and I'm just like, I'm naturally more shy.

I've like literally had like, you're like, get up, go talk to this person. Like, and so like, how are you dealing with that kind of like the personality spectrum in that where there are like great people and they could meet and they're just people who just aren't naturally the type. And that you guys are, we're like, you can go talk to anybody.

Very, very social. And there's the ones who are just like, yeah, I want to be, and I want to talk to people, but that's just not the natural inclination. Hmm. We've experimented. So we're in a prototype site right now, testing a bunch of things in advance of kind of opening the full clubhouse in March. So we're in prototype mode. I think, um, giving people kind of easier excuses to go look for someone.

So we've tried out everyone coming to a 40 person. There's a speaker giving a talk about something. Uh, we know a lot about all the people that are coming and we suggest here are two people that will be at this event. Here's one line on the person and one line on why you think you should talk to them. Uh, go look for them at the event. And we kind of try to make it a joke.

Sometimes we're like, Hey, our AI bot suggested this, but just like, Hey, go find at least one of these people because of this. So I think giving people like a little bit of an excuse, we try to give people an opportunity, like talk in a public forum. So events that might have a speaker where they want to be honored and they're kind of giving a presentation on something.

Uh, we have a little set. We just call community notes where you might call on a few people and it's like, Hey, take two minutes, talk about what you're working on. So give people a few opportunities to speak in front of a small group that I think is kind of their public introduction to the group in a way that like, it's kind of more natural.

If there's someone that you kind of wanted to meet, but if they stood up and said one minute, it's kind of like their permission to you to kind of go up to them. But then setting good expectations with your members. Like I might walk over to this guy, Jason Scharf, who's sitting down at a table and I lift him up and I'm like, I will walk you over and you will go meet this person.

But it's right to recognize that some people are like, Oh, I don't want to join arena hall. Just be socially. It's like, Oh, so many people all over the place. I'm like, we have small spaces where you can kind of have some of your own kind of quiet time. And that's good to like recognize people have different levels of social appetite.

I think the first event that I went like was one of the, like go to the coffee shop writing events. And I think it was always good to go and actually like, Oh, I can go write for two hours and not have the kids interrupt every five seconds, which of course then was on weekends. So that was a huge negotiation. Yeah. But so how are you thinking about like serendipity? Because I think a lot of it, when you think about like, you know, the, the famous mastermind, like the inklings, like it was the discussion actually, that was the value, but those were structured.

So where, where are you thinking about serendipity? Yeah, that's what that's, um, I've been speaking with a friend who also has a community about this in town.

And, um, I think I've come to the conclusion that it's like, there's this, there's the thing that everybody says it's about. And then there's the thing that it's actually about. So it's like, I have a writing club, but it's really just about talking to other people. And it's like, people use the writing like you did as the excuse of like, this is why I'm going to go.

But the thing that you actually enjoy doing and the thing that's going to keep you coming back is the talking to people. So as time has gone on, I've changed the balance of writing clubs to like more talking, less writing, and people are happier. Um, I'm also way more hands off than both of you. And so I like just like listening to how like architected this is, especially like, that's phenomenal.

Um, where mine is, my creative constraint is the space. It is very, very small. Um, so it's like a packed house is like 20 people. And so just by virtue of being there, there is no 100 person situation. You are going to be in an awkward situation where you go to the fridge, you grab a drink, you're the only one in the kitchen, one other person comes in, you're not going to ignore them.

That's too weird. So you're going to talk to them like the space is too small. The amount of people are too small. I've never had this situation where somebody is like off to the side being you, um, being just like weird in the corner, not talking to anybody. Yeah, super weird. I talked to people when I was at the pizza night. So you've seen the house, you know how small, how small it is and how weird.

It's also hard to find. Yeah. It's also hard to find, which is kind of cool and gives us like writer mystique, right? Of like, oh, I'm in a writer's shed. It's behind a house. And it's like, you have to, I don't know, there's very explicit, weird directions to get there. But the whole thing is like, it is so small that I can be very, very hands off.

And my only job is very similar to Chris's where it's like, it's just who's in the room, right? It's everybody in the room is going to be interesting in some way. You figure it out. Um, I really enjoy the, like, you should meet these two people. I might try and do that. But also it's like, how many, how many like combinations of 20 people could you possibly have? I don't, I don't know.

So yeah, it's a, there's a map behind that. Yeah. 400. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then a lot more than I thought. Yeah. And then, well then, and then two quick thoughts on that. Yeah. One is, uh, uh, Kenji does a good job at this while he does founders fund. He does a bunch of like, you know, uh, creative, he does the, here's two people you should meet for a lot of events.

Sometimes we'll also in the intake form, ask like, what's one thing, you know, you, you want to get out of the event or one thing is top of mind right now. And he'll actually put it on the name tags, by the way, like I'm obsessed with name tags. Like, you know, like I print name tags that are like all on breaks, just mainly because I'm 53 and the Kenny Mara holiday.

I am. Uh, and I can't, I don't remember anybody's name anymore. So, um, right, John. Um, and, uh, uh, so, uh, but the idea of actually incorporating the conversation right into the name tag, I haven't done it yet, but I thought, I thought that was like a really interesting concept. Um, but I'll go back to the, one of the other ways to, to, to, I, I'm trying to overcome that goes back to the culture setting with the members, right? Cause there's always at least a few members around at all my events is it is rude, not say hello, it's rude, not to new shelf, including, and especially to the guests.

Of the place. Cause they're either a guest of a member or they're a new founder that's here for the first time. And so, uh, and I, and I always tell, I always love it. Cause when people come through for like the tour and the interview or whatever, whatever, if there are any members sitting around, they will always get up, walk over and say, Hey, how you doing? I'm, you know, and introduce themselves.

And it's, it's great to see that. But that happens at events as well. Right. So I almost like rely on, I'm always trying to either myself or my, my event staff always try to greet people at the door and just kind of lay the land, right? You know, bars there, drinks are there, food's there. Um, but, uh, but also to try and try to steer them into the right conversations.

They walk in the door, but yeah, I can't always be listing them. I think it's so critical. Uh, you know, so that ours is, we're spending tens of millions of dollars. We'll have GM and many dozens of staff of valet and bell. I mean, it's a whole hospitality operation, but we're trying to hold on to some of the community elements that you guys are working on.

And one example through, we had some good friends from IDEO. So we do a lot of our sort of design exploration work with them. And we're like, how would you design something that if you're a member, um, you don't just feel, uh, weighted on by the staff, but like you get to play some kind of a role. And, uh, we were kind of doing some prototyping design thinking prototyping on this.

And it resulted in the following plan. So our main bar in the lobby, um, there will be staff and you can come up and order a drink. But sort of the left third of the bar is actually designed for members to walk around, uh, the back of the bar. And you might have like a pre -batch cocktail or some wine where the member for hosting their guests could choose to be like, Hey, uh, let me make you a drink and let them sort of like walk around and actually kind of be the host while they're there.

Um, so maybe we're messing this whole thing up, but like, no, no golf club or country club, like would ever do that. So we're trying to, I don't know, fuse the two of them together. Cause we wanted to, I don't know, take a swing at it at a, at a larger scale with enough square footage where it can be a place where people are doing 20 person private dinners and 400 person events.

We wanted to design something that large. And there's a real challenges to like, how do you hold onto a special community feel inside of something like that? So we're trying to hold onto some of the intimacy and intentionality of the community that you have situated in kind of this larger infrastructure. So, Hey, I love that. I'm going to steal that a hundred percent.

So we kind of have that already. I mean, it's already help yourself to the bar and we have a member bar in the back. And then depending on the event, you know, members can get anything they want. And, you know, the guests have to go to the bar bar, but encouraging members to serve drinks to guests out of the member side of the bar is actually a great thing.

The other thing I do that, uh, I got obsessed with, uh, obsessed with name tags. As I mentioned, I got like this crazy laser engraver etcher just to make name tags for the members. And so members have these metal, nice name tags that sit on the fridge and then, you know, and guests have nice printed name tags for whatever the event is. Um, and, uh, uh, that just that little visual identification of, Oh, you remember what's it like here? Hey, it's just good for the promotion of the space and making the members feel special, which they should, cause they are literally funding all the free events.

Um, and, uh, but yeah, taking it one step further off, if you want anything other than beer and wine, you got to find somebody with metal name tag and have them make you one. I, I, I'm, I'm going to lean into that. Have you heard of Maxwell social it's in New York? I don't know. Tell me about it. Um, it's kind of similar to yours. Um, but it's more, I guess it's less civic.

Um, and they, the, the, the big draw for them is like this big communal, beautiful communal kitchen where the idea is that you host your dinner party there. That's just one element of it, but it's to give ownership of the space to the person because there's nothing more like intimate than having somebody over your house, you cooking them food, you serving them drinks, whatever it is.

Um, so just to, to be like, Hey, this is my space only. I can do this and I'm going to do the, I'm going to do the cool thing for you. So not only does the member feel cool, but like the guest of the member feels cool. Um, whereas being served on, like you can be served on anywhere. Yeah. Right. We've been just thinking about, you probably go to these, it's a, some venture dinner at Jeffrey's or three forks or like these private dinners happen all the time.

And those are great places. The food and wine is great. The service is great. But I think a lot of people, whether it's corporate or personal, um, they kind of want to be a host and it's sort of art that was, we lost home ec years ago, people probably didn't grow up around it. Maybe they don't know how to cook or they don't actually have a dining room.

Their home infrastructure isn't really set up for it. So how can we offer like hospitality as a service? Where really you're being a hospitality platform for the member to let them kind of be the host where they, you know, of course get to like choose the food and wine or whatever, but like, man, play this role of like helping pass the meal or lay out the name tags or whatever.

I think people really long to do that, but feel sort of ill -equipped in their own home or the right skills. They kind of fumble the ball. Um, so give them that. And like, what a cool, rich, special experience. We were at a friend's, uh, uh, house recently and they do these small barrel batches of their own, like cocktails. They have these kind of cool printed, like labels of the house.

I like that. It was Sarah and I got obsessed with it. Now we're like, okay, we need to have like the, the sharp menu and we're going to barrel our own things because it was, it was such a, we enjoyed it. I'm sure they really enjoy telling us all about it. Right. To be able to be the host kind of thing. And so I think the idea, like making things like that easier, even if it's like not hosting in your own home, but it's funny on X the other day, which was like, I think it was some, Paul Graham had some, a picture of somebody.

It was like, Oh, this so -and -so came over and there was the comments like, wait, just do all these tech people. Like they just have people over their house. That's where the new meetings are. But it's like, people want to be hosts. Like a lot of these kinds of things you, you can always do. And I've done plenty of dinners at those places and been in and hosted, but it does become something different when you're like, yeah, come to my home and you know, we can be more as friends than like a little, that formal structure.

Right. Yeah. Pro tip, a one gallon, uh, we have one in the red fridge, the logoed aging barrel that's charred on the inside, uh, is 80 bucks. So like, go, go nuts, go, go, go get some barrels and start aging. Yeah. We have a, a mezcal Negroni, which is our house cocktail that we've been aging for. Yeah. So parts of it have been aging for like a year and a half.

We're working with, we have a whole AI project thread going right now to develop the perfect, like what we want that fits our house and everything. So even like I got some AI generated images for labels. So yeah, we were, yeah, this is things we do in our spare time. And also just to thank you again for another great idea. The hospitality as a service is something I've been struggling with.

So I've always said that, uh, one of the big benefits of being a fridge member is you can throw events here for free, right? You know, if you're above 10, bring your own food and alcohol and your own staff and all that. But you know, the, the space is yours and where appropriate, um, it's not like your company event, um, where appropriate invite the members.

Right. And so a lot of the programming is now starting to be member led. I do a lot of the kind of core programming and then members do things and invite other members, which is fun to see. But I, my attitude at the beginning was this goes back to, I'm trying to keep this simple for myself and their staff and all this was, but you're, it's on you, right? You leave the space, how you found it.

And what you realize very quickly is nobody knows how to do that. Right. I mean, my staff can put the, yeah, we're going to go presto change. Oh, into this format or that format. And then back again, cause we're really good at it. But a random member does. So it was actually causing stress on them. Hey, did I do it? Okay. Is it look okay in the morning? Cause in the morning people are going to come into cowork.

Uh, so I'm just now starting to flip that and say, okay, we'll probably have to charge something just like a staff here. Or something of a couple hundred bucks, but we just want to make this easy for you now. So we want to encourage you to use the space, especially when it's a, you know, what's going to benefit the other members. And we just want to really make this like super easy.

And I'm going to have to go a little off my no staffing, but, um, but that's something I'm literally, we were working on this week. So. I want to pull a thread on a couple of things that you, you said, and it was it. So one, we have kind of like the, the thin civic kind of infrastructure at the same time.

Austin has been really good. I think if you move here 30, starting a family, have a family or later like established. And so we, we lose a lot of the 22 to 28 kind of operators, early founders are going to go to New York or SF for kind of all, all the reasons. And at the same time, all of these things are all like members, right? So there's a curating the room, but also kind of being somewhat exclusive.

So how do we balance the, we need better social infrastructure connecting these different things, but it's not as simple as being like, well, everybody can come and all that. Like, how do you balance that? So we are having to spend an absolute fortune on our building and the lease and the construction and everything we do would be really expensive.

We wanted to be world -class. I toured a bunch of clubs, about 25 around the country. And I learned to ask like pretty early, uh, what's the founding story of the club? Because I'd be in some, there's one in particular in, on the Embarcadero, it's 50 ,000 feet. It's the most beautiful, stunning thing. And I'm getting this tour and it's crushing it.

And the food's great. And all these same things like 50 ,000 feet on the Embarcadero. And I says, what's the founding story? Uh, well, our founder is from Sweden and it's a, uh, a patron who is very excited to support. Anyway, about half of these clubs we found were just like rogue billionaire projects and they just lose a ton of money. Um, I am hopefully not rogue and definitely not a billionaire.

Um, it's like not what we were building. And so I really came to it from the perspective of like, um, sustainability means highly profitable. Um, so we raised equity capital. We are hopefully returning money to our investors, have a targeted IRR. And so get to, and have to go build a business model against that, that makes it work. Um, interesting feedback from one club operator, a really successful guy in Dallas.

He also has some interesting clubs. He said, either your price point is like $20 ,000 and up in terms of like an initiation fee. And it functions like a empty private dining room. Um, those definitely work as models. Um, there's a lot of them. They can come and have dinner, but it's like always empty or you're like $5 ,000 and below. And it's like super high energy.

Um, and much larger TAM. Um, and I was sort of like, well, I don't really like either of those models because if you have to go build a huge membership base, you have to grow really quickly at the sub 5k price. Um, but the empty private dining room, like we have goals of what the business does that would not be met. If we had the really small community, high price point, empty all the time thing.

Um, so we forked it. So we built a bunch of different price tiers. Um, and there's a really expensive tier and some people are like, I don't care if this should happen. Sign me up. Um, and then we have all the way down to if you're running a nonprofit full time. Um, we actually have a free version called the golden ticket, which will be for like extraordinary under 25 year olds.

So we've sort of tried to build all these different situations of membership to all in a for -profit business model where initially the observation, I was a little bit like, well, someone paying an insane amount of a very high price point. Are they going to be annoyed that like some kid gets a golden ticket? Uh, and actually it's been really interesting.

Those high price point people love the golden ticket people. And this is reaffirmed by talking to someone that studied the Bohemian Grove very closely. And the cool story about Bohemian Grove, when I would think about places like Soho and other places having kind of like the artist, um, stipend or subsidy, sometimes it came across as like, well, we want our photography and our quarterly magazine to show cool looking people.

And we want cool people to be at the bar. So it feels cool. And I, I think that's kind of what happens in some of those things, but the story of the human Grove actually was these Titans of industry pay a fortune to be a part of this thing. And then, uh, creatives and musicians have a separate application process. Um, but the patrons actually found incredible sources of inspiration and creativity from being with these amazing musicians and artists who were allowed to come be there usually for no fee.

The inspiration innovation loop, be inspired, then you go build. Yeah, exactly. So we've just been testing out kind of how do we do some price discrimination down that list and get as much money that feels appropriate from people that are able to pay for it. And they find the value from that and then just build situation price wise all the way down.

That's on the member side. Um, we intend to be very permissive of guests and that we want members to bring a lot of guests. Um, at some point you probably have to limit how many guests can kind of come through. Um, but so that's kind of the full stack on the member side and then a very, uh, aggressive approach of encouraging people to bring people as guests.

Some of which could drop into the membership funnel others, which has come and enjoyed being a part of a conversation once and not down that path. That's kind of my, my, my, uh, you know, my narrow is founder rights both for our guests. I always do one open event a quarter just so when, I mean, I have sometimes 30, 40 people apply for an event that has 20 spots that aren't even founders.

And so I have to say, Oh, this is a founder event. Sorry, but we'd love to have you at this event. So to try to be inclusive, but, but most of our events are really are, are down the founders, but I don't say, but you have to have a million dollars or $10 million or $5 million. Yeah. It is really like, Oh, it's on LinkedIn. It's your top thing.

It's, it's a full -time gig, or you've said that you're working on this thing on the side. Great. We're going to declare you founder and let you in to make it more exclusive, but still narrow enough that the curation of the room is really, is really strong on all these people are going through the journey and, and, and you really get the energy.

Uh, one thing I'm playing around with, I haven't done yet, but I think for your situation is would work even better is yeah, your, your golden ticket and your super expensive one. Uh, tell the super expensive what this we're going to, this is going to fund a scholarship, right? This is going to fund the golden ticket. Like the, one of the reasons you're paying so much is we're going to, and we're going to tell you who it is, right? So you're, you're actually funding this person's membership because, uh, so I, I'm working on kind of like a fridge fellow concept, which is like a lot of people that realistically aren't going to be able to do it.

Kind of use it realistically, you know, probably wouldn't join otherwise, but you'll come in. I'm going to use these funds to do these other things. And we'd love to have you in the orbit of the space, right? Uh, I haven't done any of this yet, but I've been playing around with it. But, um, uh, before Zach joined today, I was going to use Zach as an example.

Uh, so I'm going to let him tell the story, but I'll tee it up is the other thing about communities. And this is for, um, you know, everyone listening out there is they're great businesses, right? Like either AI proof, right? One of the, even like tech startups that are out there right now, I mean, one of the few moats that exists today is community, right? If you can build community around whatever you're doing, um, that is very AI proof.

Somebody can't come in tomorrow and recreate a community around your concept, right? Community is content. Community is valuable and that will generate data, blah, blah. Um, but they're great little businesses, right? If you can get this model, right. Um, uh, you know, and keep the, you know, mine was kind of low costs. I already own the house.

Um, Zach built the community first and then figured out how to, how to, how to monetize it. But, um, these can be great little businesses and Zach, I'll invite you to tell, I mean, you were working on community, running community, a tech company and started this journey as a side project. And now you quit your job and you're doing this full time.

If you could tell us a little bit of that, that journey, I think it's a great example of how younger people can go and create these communities and make a living of it. Yeah, for sure. Um, so I kind of had a test run of this in San Francisco. I was a member of the space you referenced and nobody talked to each other. Um, it was beautiful though.

It was very beautiful. Right. Um, so I'm sure. Yeah. Okay. I'm sure. Um, and so I kind of had, uh, like a little training thing there. I created a community called startup social and it was just the startup version of writing club. Right. And so it was just getting a bunch of people together. Um, it kind of, it was very interesting to me that this would exist, that people would pay to be around other people that are like them.

I had no inkling that that was a thing. Then I got picked up by a startup to do this nationally, to help them do this nationally, learned a whole bunch there. Um, but that was while I started writing club and it was kind of just puttering along cause I wasn't really focusing on it. And then once I left that, um, that company, I was like, I think I'm going to actually focus on this.

I don't want to ever apply for a job again. Um, and so I did and it, it really blew up. I learned a lot about like growing the business of it, about like how to approach pricing tiers and how to, to create community experiences that, um, would keep people coming back or sticking around or whatever. Um, and then that fed the, the clubhouse, which was funded by the members.

Like, so I just did a fundraiser. I said, Hey, do you want this thing to exist? I want this thing to exist. And I've been kind of joking about it on LinkedIn for a while of saying, Hey, I think it's just like cheaper if 10 friends rent a house in Austin, as opposed to like going to get a WeWork membership and it'd be way cooler. And we could just bring all of our own stuff.

Um, and that isn't what happened. Um, uh, but kind of, uh, that's how we met by the way, because of like four different people pointed you to me or vice versa. So you got your talk. It has become, uh, quite a nice little business job thing for me. And I'm the only employee similar to similar to Chris. Uh, I have a cleaning lady now twice a month.

Uh, so that's a, that's a bit of an upgrade. But, um, uh, aside from that, like everybody, all the, the members just got the, they got the picture. So I did a lot of writing because that's what I do on the, the vision and the mission and like what I'm hoping that this space will be. And then sharing some stories of members and then all of the applicants have to read those.

And then I go, okay, are you still okay with this? And they go, yeah. And then they join. And so, um, the closest inkling that I got, or the, probably the best, the best example that I got that it's actually working is that a member took a picture the other week of another member mopping the floors for us. Um, just because she wanted to, or thought that the floors needed mopping or whatever it was.

But I was like, oh, I, I never asked her. She brought her own mop. She like did her own thing. She wasn't even going to tell me that this existed if this member didn't, um, uh, take a picture of it. So there's, I mean, that's just like a microcosm of all of the other things that are happening in the house. Um, and occasionally I'll get a text of like, Hey, can we get a bread knife? And I'm like, sure.

Amazon, it's like there the next day and they're all happy and they can cut their bread with a bread knife now. Um, but it's really cool just being like this, just being the container organizer. Right. And then everybody else just fills it. And then I'm just, I guess the, oh, this is a question that I have for you guys. Um, I'm just the tastemaker around who, who comes in.

So I guess, how do you, how do you guys look at applications? How do you think about applications? I'm assuming that you have an application to, well, we started with, um, people that I knew really well that sort of like fit the vibe of what we were trying to build. I had some thoughts about that, like organized in Airtable and sort of thinking both like, what are some homogeneous features of people, uh, builder mentality, quick to raise their hand to help curious kind of person you'd like want to have at a dinner party and some heterogeneity within that.

Like not only venture people, um, different ways to kind of slice and have more of this ecumenical community that made it like interesting and diverse. Um, currently we are, we have a set of members and they are referring other members. Um, so we don't have outside applications open yet. The referral thing has implicit into just like a high trust component of like, I can vouch for this person.

And, um, so we'll see how it goes. I definitely think, uh, you got to protect the community from people that might show up and want to take advantage of it or be salesy or be weird or whatever. So protecting the community is I think really important. Um, and that's a real challenge is you, uh, scale the community beyond like you're able to really have like, you are the guy.

Right. A hundred people. Right. So it's pretty easy for me to be the gatekeeper. Yeah. And if you had 10 times a square feet and you felt like you needed five times the members, like it passes your Dunbar number at some point. And you're like, Oh, this guy said this person was really great, but like, do we have enough time to like really get to know them? Um, so for us, I think it's, um, how do you build a membership process where you can vouch for trust? You can maybe have some kind of period of getting to know them over time.

Maybe they come and interview with other members. Um, we'll have to go build it. Yeah. Ours is, I am the gatekeeper on that, you know, for sure. It's very much like a, entering for a company in my place. You get everybody, everybody's like, what's the application process? I'm like, you're doing it right now. You got to come and have coffee with me and we're going to sit down and talk.

And, you know, I, this is not an official part of the process. One of the things I also do is, is, you know, I shouldn't tell my secrets here to the world, but I, I tell people, come to a couple of events so you can meet some members and get a feel for it. But I'm really watching is how they act socially, right? How they treat our team, um, how they handle alcohol.

Cause we have, you know, $10 ,000 alcohol just sitting out that people can help themselves to. And, um, and just that seeing if, if basically the best way to figure out the no asshole rule is to see how they interact with other people, right? When they don't know I'm watching, I'm always watching for the record. Uh, so that, that's kind of an important, but again, it's very bespoke for me because it's a small community.

We're almost full for a full membership. We have a few of our social memberships left, but, um, but so I can be very kind of choosy The other thing that's important is, do you have a way, like legally, in the policy of people who are signing, of kicking people out? Right. So just something to think about because, you know, occasionally you will have somebody that, for whatever reason, gets through and something happens.

And, you know, mine is just, you know, either party, for any reason, can cancel a 15 -day notice. Right. So I'm not trying to hold anybody hostage. I'll give them their money back if it's not a good fit for them, and that's great. But I have that right, too. I only had to use that once. But I'm curious for both of you guys. It sounds so, it's so special and intimate.

It's sort of like running your own little kibbutz. I appreciate the desire to, like, not scale, but I'm sort of like, man, I want for you to have, like, 6 ,000 square feet, not, like, 600 square feet. The draw is very real. It is something that I wrestle with. Yeah. But you're, so I'm in the simplification portion of my life, right? Yeah.

I sold my company. My kids are getting ready to graduate high school. I didn't want to get in anything that was going to, you know, especially when I started three years ago that was going to suck my time. I wanted to control my time and help entrepreneurs. That was kind of the first two things. So then making money was farther down on that list.

I know. You're sharing your family. You're still building your complexity and building your career. And so you absolutely should be in growth mode. My thing is, I mean, literally twice this week, people have come up to me and said, I've got a place in Miami, LA. You should come in and open one of these there. I'll provide the space. This is amazing, right? And I was like, no way in hell, right? That being said, I am so, sit down with me.

I will show you everything I've learned to the extent I don't even have a budget. But to the extent I have books, I would open them up with you. But let me tell you everything I've learned and what you can do and what works and what doesn't work and what you're trying to do and what your space look like. And I am happy to give you all that.

And you should go do it yourself. It's great. But I'm not going to do it. Do you think you could in New York or Miami? Do you think like you? I think it would be slightly different. I mean, Red Fridge is so awesome. You know, 1921 Craftsman House in downtown, right? It is. It could not be more of an Austin vibe. But I think you could do it.

You could figure out what the Miami or New York version of that is. Because I see a lot of people trying to do the inverse. The coming from New York or L .A. with their social club, coming here and then not changing anything and then thinking that it's going to work. And then everybody just kind of goes, no, why would I want to be a part of that? Yeah.

And the thing that I think is so– the hard part of that is a me or you or you. Right. It's the person that's going to take– that's going to pour all their energy into it, right? I mean, we have six different flavors of flavored branded ice cubes, right? Everybody's like, this is ridiculous. I was like, I have a lot of free time, right? I mean, it's like I went from running a company of 70 people to this, right? And it's like, so I go down rabbit holes.

I do this. And it's all care. And I personally put together like this crazy, you know, broad event calendar stuff that's frankly interesting to me that I enjoy doing and people I enjoy meeting. It would take that, right? So I think if I were going to do it, which I'm not, but if I were, it would be almost like how a Vistage or a Tiger 21 does.

It's not really a franchise, but it's you find a person that's, you know, an exited founder that's bored. And you say, hey, why don't you take the model? And I'll see fund or we can split or whatever. And you can take half the profits, whatever that would look like. But it would have to be around a personality and a person. This isn't a I'm going to go find a GM to open a club and run it.

This is I need a personality that is going to take this community and nurture it with the same energy that I am, because that's what it takes. I mean, I mean, if I left tomorrow, it would all fall apart. I think probably. I think we can definitely go for a lot longer. I'm going to adjust the usual final question I do, because I think it matters more for this.

What does like if we go out five years and Austin keeps kind of growing and all these three of you guys are successful? What does like the social infrastructure of Austin look like that is either the same or meaningful or different than it is today? I think it's I think it's this. I think you're going to see many, many, many in -person concepts.

I mean, I've seen multiple social clubs are coming online now. I've talked a lot of people were thinking about him. Come and talk to me, just get ideas, which I'm happy to share. I think you're going to see all these micro communities, a few larger ones. I mean, the arena will be one of the larger ones. You'll always have Capital Factory kind of backstopping everything with a very large community.

They'll be the ones without spaces like Fiesta. But I think you're going to see more and more in -person spaces of all different types. And I think that's fantastic. I think that's exactly what we need. And then, you know, especially if we're all, you know, we probably have been kind of working with a couple of folks on getting the community builder community together a little bit and to share these ideas more regularly.

Because it's like the couple of times we've gotten six or seven people in the room that are trying to do things like this. The ideas are just fantastic, right, to do it. And so I think as community leaders, if we can stay connected with all these like various concepts, many of which will be, you know, different types of silos, we can create a patchwork that's going to be so uniquely awesome.

It is going to be something that, you know, it's not there's no establishment of something that's uniquely us and it's going to be fantastic.

Yeah, I think kind of like, I mean, you probably have the best answer for this. You think about like cities and stuff. But I do think that like an archipelago of people that are similar to me where it's like you're a little bit younger, you're taking a very minimal risk, right? Where it's like I'm renting a space. It's pretty small. If like half my members drop off, all of a sudden I'm still OK.

Right. So it's like very minimal risk from community upwards. Right. I think that that's probably the most sustainable because now I have this gigantic pool of people that I could just onboard for whatever, whatever price point if I really need it. Right. You know, I'm not going under. Right. So I think that it's a very sustainable thing for a lot of people to be doing in very small pockets throughout the city for their particular thing.

There are seven other writing clubs that I know of. One more of them should have a clubhouse. Right. There are craft clubs. There are book clubs. There are accounting clubs. There are startup clubs like like Fiesta, for example. Like they're quite a large startup community. They don't have a physical space. They probably could, you know, and they would probably serve their community better if they didn't.

But I would like to. That's what I would like to see. That's what I hope hope the next five years looks like is that there's a bunch of these like modular community spaces all over the city.

I don't know what it's going to be. Here's what I hope happens. On the built environment side, Austin needs its version of old parkland, a serious campus where principal investors and family offices co -locate and has event and hospitality support the extraordinary people visiting Austin in ways to make it very easy for all those people to like quickly and easily spend time with each other.

So that must happen. Number two, Lake Austin. Austin. Lake Austin is the absolute crown jewel. Clearly, Travis Kalanick thinks so. We need more access for these kinds of people to be wake surfing and on the water. So we've got to do something to the office, possibly to the office. Number three, ranch. I'm really interested in the official historian of the state of Texas for the governor right now talks about Texas is a history of fusion that as immigrants come to Texas, they bring with them their own technologies, trades, recipes, languages.

They bring that and then they also come to know like the way of Texas and the challenge with these amazing people moving from the coast into Austin. If your experience of Texas is sweet greens and la la land, that's not the way of Texas. And so I actually think getting people into like the land and it can be as close as 30 minutes into Hill Country.

I'm actually having like an overnight kind of experience. It's more close to like the land of Texas is a really important component of that. So downtown core, Lake Ranch, all those should happen. Then on the group side, I love the work you're doing with founders. We think there's kind of a gap, kind of the sub 30 year old founder space. There aren't that many here.

A physical space is a real challenge for them. So we'd love to see an amazing world -class kind of invite only co -working space intended for sub 30 year old founders. I think that could co -locate with on the thought leadership side. There's some extraordinary institutes that are moving from San Francisco and LA to Austin that are convening of some of the top thinkers in the world on things.

And that energy will be landing in Austin. So to have this sort of a physical space that's the bridge between the existing resources at UT with faculty and students with startups and ways in a physical space through an office product and an event ecosystem to bring those people into collisions. I think it will result in like amazing companies getting built.

So if all that happens, I mean, thinking about the challenges we have coming up on physical AI, on space, on behind the meter nuclear. I hope there are stories told in five to 10 years from now that paint a picture of this crazy political technological mess and that they can point to events or this group in Austin that came together in this interdisciplinary way.

I was like, what do the landowners care about?

Thanks for joining the podcast. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Thanks, Jason.