The Wolf Of All Streets - This Web3 Club Sells $100,000 NFT Memberships | Lucas Foertsch, House Of Muse

Starting point is 00:00:00 Web3 offers endless opportunities to bridge the physical and digital worlds together. Lucas Furch is the founder of House of Muse. I'm actually sitting in the House of Muse in New York City right now, which is a membership club with a Web3 basis, but a very, very high-end real-world feel. What they're building is extremely exciting. He'll tell you about all of it right now. So we're sitting in a gorgeous five-story building in Soho, New York City. House of Muse is a pop-up shop. We've got a swimming pool, art everywhere,

Starting point is 00:00:43 a really creepy basement, as you told me about. What are we doing here and what are you building here? So this is a pop-up that we're doing. House of Muses is a Web3 private member club that's going to launch in Soho in New York next year. And I really wanted to show the community that we're building a representation of what it's going to be like when we open next year. We've been working on this for a little while now, starting to get the community members to come together. And I figured Mainnet was on, and it was a great chance to show people the kind of experiences we want to put together in an amazing space with amazing people coming through on a daily basis. You talked about the community coming together. How do you build a

Starting point is 00:01:22 community like that? Because it doesn't come from nowhere, obviously. So I don't come from a long time in Web3 at all. I'm very, very new into this. I had a chance meeting with Kane Warwick from Synthetix in November of last year. He has mentored me through this whole process and helped me learn about everything that I know. Going to conferences with him and to events with him,

Starting point is 00:01:47 I realized that this Web3 space is phenomenal and that the technology behind it is changing the fiber of our future. But people in the community are quite insular and very sort of shy. I'm the polar opposite. I talk too much. I love networking. So I said to Kane, I was like, why don't we create a space that brings these people together I talk too much. I love networking. So I said to Kane, I was like,

Starting point is 00:02:05 why don't we create a space that brings these people together and I can leverage my skillset, which is networking and community building to help them come together and meet each other. And that's what the House of Muse is meant to embody. So we're calling it a co-networking space, space where you can come and get some work done,

Starting point is 00:02:21 but I'll have membership managers that will float around and bring the members together within the community. You somewhat described it as a mix between the Soho House, which a lot of people may not know what it is we're watching, but Soho House and WeWork. Exactly, yeah. So I don't want to have any offices in the space. I think WeWork can handle that side of it. And I don't want it to be as raucous as Soho House can get. I really want it to be a space that can nurture collaboration. And we'll do a lot of stuff to facilitate that, having different people coming in and doing presentations. We'll have a permanent podcast studio in there so we can have people coming through. I'd like to have a

Starting point is 00:02:56 small recording studio in there so we can have musicians that can come in and then collaborate on web-free music projects. I just think there's such an opportunity to bridge that physical and digital coming together. And I think that's what's really necessary in the Web3 space and definitely in the NFT space to take us outside of this. An NFT is a piece of digital art. Right. And when you describe it as a Web3 club, what does that really mean? Does that mean that everybody who is a member is working on something in Web3? Does it mean that you have an NFT that's your membership card? What are the different aspects of it that make it sort of Web3 as opposed to just a social club? So membership applications will open December, January, and then be ongoing.

Starting point is 00:03:41 We'll go through a membership process where when you're applying, it's going to be quite a rigorous process to fill out. I want to make sure that we're really understanding who you are as a human. And no, you don't just need to be webbed through. We'll allow anyone to make applications, but we definitely want people that are at least crypto-curious to be coming into the club. The membership committee will then vote. I'm very lucky to have a pool of advisors, mentors, I guess I call them, like G Money and Jamus from Pleaser and Kane from Synthetix who will sit on that committee to help us make the decisions on who the right people are that join that community. The membership will be an NFT.

Starting point is 00:04:15 So once you've been approved, you'll get an empty shell of an NFT that has four tiers of utilities coded into it. I've never wanted to do a project where I don't deliver something straight away. Someone gives me money, I want to give them something back and not say, hey, we're going to do this in some time in the future. So in March, we'll drop the first NFTs for the members that have been approved, which will be access to a digital house of Muse, sort of a precursor towards the first house opening in July and August. And that'll allow you to communicate with other members. It'll have VIP event invites to both Web3 and music and fashion events. Then when we open up the physical club, there'll be

Starting point is 00:04:51 three more tiers of utilities you can unlock by loading and staking our token into the NFT. Access for you, access for you plus two friends, access for you plus four friends. So the higher the tiers go, the more monetary value will be assigned to that membership tier. When you say there'll be this community when the NFT drops, is that going to be a metaverse of sorts? Or is it more like a Discord server? No, so we're going to be a little bit traditional and it'll be a mobile app that will connect people. There'll be different channels outside of that that we work with as well. but I kind of like having something physical in your hand. And we're very good at building apps.

Starting point is 00:05:28 My co-founder is a phenomenal developer, has built everything we've done so far. We've actually already launched a project called Social Muse, which is a Web3 iteration of an old influencer platform that I had called Into. So we have 30,000 influencers that use a mobile app to connect with localized content creation opportunities. And now with it being called Social Muse, we reward them with crypto for the content that they create. So we know how to do that. We know how to build products. We know how to deploy products. I know how to build communities.

Starting point is 00:05:56 I'm zero technical. But I'm really excited about this journey. I think that everyone that's come through this house over the last four days that's met me and has experienced the space and has seen what this vision is all about absolutely agrees that having physical spaces for people in the community to come together and collaborate is really necessary. Yeah, I agree. And you touched a bit on your background, obviously the social platform that you founded previously. What else were you doing before this that kind of inspired this idea? So I spun up a COVID business in London during the pandemic and opened up 15 COVID testing centers. I sold out my share in the business

Starting point is 00:06:30 to my co-founder November last year and had zero intention of being a founder again. And I don't regret it at all. I love every minute of what I'm doing, but it was that chance meeting with Kane that got me to where I am now with what I'm doing. He introduced me to the world of Web3, and I thought I'd be an absolute fool if I didn't take a chance with this.

Starting point is 00:06:51 It's such an interesting industry, and there are so many incredible minds. But like I said, a lot of them are quite shy, and they don't come out of their shells too much. I'm the absolute opposite. So I'm hoping my crazy personality helps change it a bit. So obviously, you've talked about what it will be like when it first opens, sort of the general concept. If it came to fruition, your greatest dream about what it could be is this in every city

Starting point is 00:07:16 in the world, every major city in the world, what utility can we add to the NFTs? What will you be doing with it if it really fulfills? So the vision is already in place. What I'd really like to do, so after we open up the digital and then the physical, we're going to open up a major series A round, going to look to raise 100 to 200 million, and then be able to go out and buy A-grade real estates in great cities in the world that the community will vote on where they want the next club to be. We've already started having conversations with people that are already in our community. So I'm guessing the next one's going to be Miami, seeing as it's crypto hot stuff. Crypto capital. But there's a lot of interest for London.

Starting point is 00:07:55 There's a lot of interest for Lisbon. But the next sites that we're going to move into won't just be a member club. We'll have boutique hotel rooms and wellness as well. And I'd like to start seeing the spaces then being used as destinations for off-sites for crypto companies as well to be able to say, hey, we want to take our team to House of Muse Lisbon, and there'll be a 50-room hotel plus the member club event space and wellness in there as well. So creating destinations for people to go to, but always in mind of the community saying, this is where we would like the next House of Muse to be. Because if I had my way, I'd put it in Tuscany and be on a vineyard somewhere and relax.

Starting point is 00:08:26 Sure, but it's hard to get people, everybody else out to Tuscany when they're already traveling all around the world to these destinations that you talked about. And obviously I know the Soho House model, you have a membership to your local club or you can pay more for membership to the clubs worldwide. Is it going to mimic that model

Starting point is 00:08:44 or will your NFT be your entry into every house of Mews everywhere in the world? There'll only ever be 2000 OG NFTs, which will give you full worldwide access. If anyone chooses to leave the club, they'll burn their NFT and release the tokens back into supply. The membership fee that you pay- Okay, so you can't transfer the membership because you're heavily vetted. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:09:07 But you can release the tokens back into supply so you have a monetary position that comes back to you then and then one more NFT is available for the next person in line who'd been pre-approved. But I'm conscious of the fact that the more clubs we open up, we need to have people coming through the doors.

Starting point is 00:09:19 So anyone that's been pre-approved but there's none of the OG NFTs available at that stage will then start selling one-year access passes to come in, which would be required to be re-upped every year. But the OGNFT is lifetime access, and it has a value that can then be unsold by releasing the tokens back into supply. So that motivates people to be a part of the really from the very beginning of the genesis of it to be there for the first minute. Do you have any concept of what it's going to cost initially? Yeah, so I don't want to make it cheap.

Starting point is 00:09:48 I want to make it at a point where people understand the value that's associated to it. So digital house of news access will probably sit around sort of $1,500 worth of our tokens. The first access of physical club just for you will be probably around $15,000 to $20,000. You plus two friends will probably be about $50,000 to $60,000. And then the top tier one will be around 15,000 to 20,000. You plus two friends will probably be about 50,000 to 60,000. And then the top tier one will be sort of north of 100,000. That lifetime or yearly? Lifetime. And once again, if you choose to leave, you burn your NFT, the tokens that were staked into it are then released out. So you will- So your membership has literal monetary value. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:22 And so is that really the motivation for tokenizing it? I mean, is that, you know, why does it need a token, I guess, is the classic question in crypto. Exactly. And look, there's plenty of reasons why it wouldn't need a token. But I feel like if I want to have credibility and I want to be part of the Web3 community and I want to bring the Web3 community together, utilizing Web3 technology within the club through the NFT for membership and through other mechanisms that we3 technology within the club, through the NFT

Starting point is 00:10:45 for membership and through other mechanisms that we'll have within the club was important to have it as part of it. But more than anything, I know that I'm good at pulling people together and having a great time. I want House of Muse to be all about that. I've been to so many crypto events and conferences, and sadly, they're just stale. And they're so momentary. You meet someone, you have this connection, and you go straight online and you never see that person again, or maybe six months later, another conference. It needs to change. People need to have more meaningful connections that are ongoing in a physical space because

Starting point is 00:11:15 there's something about human element and touch that is, to me, ultimately important to life. And I think that's the one key thing that's missing from the Web3 crypto space that will help us grow. I agree. One of the most compelling narratives that we have for NFTs and Web3 is actually what you're doing, which is bridging the digital and the physical. Anyone who walked around this space over the last few days would notice the presence of physical art everywhere. So talk about the bridge there between the digital art and the physical art in the space and how artists will be able to utilize it yeah so i want a house of me is also to be a gallery space i love art and the artist that's in here is a very dear old friend of mine uh he's

Starting point is 00:11:56 been for the last year or so on my back wanting me to help him look at doing an nft project and he came up with lots of really bad ideas and And then finally I was like, hey, I'm doing this house. Why don't you paint a giant mural in the house while we're here and we'll offer people the chance to buy an NFT of the mural. So loads of complications, which I feel like is the perfect narrative for physical meets digital. It's going to be complicated to make this happen. And just doing this art project was complex as anything. First of all, the can canvases didn't fit through the door so we had to hoist them up the front of the building they had to take out a window to get it in then he started painting and we had all these complications with everything so it's been wildly complicated but the end result is a beautiful

Starting point is 00:12:36 massive piece of art that's going to get donated to a major modern art museum so if you buy the nft you'll be able to own a digital piece of a physical piece of art that's hanging in a major modern art museum in the world. So a real beautiful representation. We're going to do some fun utility stuff where if you buy X amount of pieces, you'll be able to meet the artist. If you buy even more, you'll be able to get a print of the work. So encouraging people to have more ownership. So you're fractionalizing this physical piece of art that he's been doing live over the period of House of Muse being here. Yeah, so we were open during Fashion Week as well.

Starting point is 00:13:08 So we did a pop-up and had a little model lounge in here for five days. So it's really interesting to see people from that other world, right? The world of fashion and models coming through here. And they were in love with the concept of seeing an artist paint. Because it's not something many people get to experience, right? They see final pieces of art, but they don't ever really see the process. I've seen the process a few times, and I love Robin to death.

Starting point is 00:13:30 I will never do another project with him. I love him as a friend, but working with artists is definitely a strenuous activity. When you tell an artist that they need to paint at 6 p.m. on a Thursday, and they're not in the mood, it's obviously not going to happen. I'm assuming that's to some degree what you're describing. A little bit. I think that that's an accurate stigma probably for every artist that I've ever known. So you're basically fractionalizing this piece and you're down to a thousand, which is really an interesting concept and one that

Starting point is 00:13:59 we've seen across. And now you talk about having fashion week here and models and doing a lounge. Were they also interested in the Web models and doing a lounge were they also interested in the web 3 side of it or were they just interested in seeing this guy paint this amazing the response from our influencer community has blown me away i thought they would be interested in the uh like the web 3 space uh we have really great relationships with the major modeling agencies in new york so i invited them to come down to the space and these agency owners were grilling me on how they could integrate blockchain technology into the talent space for smart contracts to secure the jobs that they do with Gucci, Balenciaga, wherever it might be.

Starting point is 00:14:34 So I think there's a huge opportunity in that talent space to bring blockchain technology in. I have enough on my plate to not try and do that, but I'm sure there's some smart people out there. If there's anyone listening, by all means, reach out. Happy to help make introductions to those agencies. But yeah, then the models would come through. And we've already experienced this in some other events that we did. They love this whole Web3 space. They love NFTs. They love the idea of what's going on in this world. And they love being pioneers on social influencer platforms. So I definitely think there's a huge scope for us to bring that influencer community into the house of Muse. And they'll be able to as well.

Starting point is 00:15:09 Anyone that uses social Muse has a dynamic NFT. The more they use my social Muse app, they build up the value of the dynamic NFT, which will allow them access for one day or one week into the house of Muse. But they'll get a chance to hang out with like G Money or whoever's going to be in there at the time and get to know them.

Starting point is 00:15:24 So if you had to give it a ranking one to 10, what are my chances of membership? Well, it comes down to the committee. I don't know. From the short time we've spent together, you seem fun. You seem like you- Can I get a six? I'm going to go 7.5. I'll take it, man. Thank you so much. We appreciate you having us. This is the space and everything you're building. Glad you came down.

The Wolf Of All Streets - This Web3 Club Sells $100,000 NFT Memberships | Lucas Foertsch, House Of Muse

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