This Week in Startups - NFT exclusive restaurant: FlyFish Club CEO David Rodolitz + Reviewing We Crashed & The Dropout with Lon Harris | E1423

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Lon Harris joins us for This Week in Streaming to break down WeCrashed episode 4 AND The Dropout episode 6 (1:54). Then, we have David Rodolitz, the CEO and Co-Founder of FlyFish Club, which is NYC’s first NFT restaurant (45:20).  (00:00) Jason and Molly intro the show (01:54) Lon Harris on WeCrashed (12:23) Odoo - Get your first app free and a $1000 credit at https://odoo.com/twist (13:33) The persuasive power of Adam Neuman (16:09) Shifting to discuss The Dropout (22:55) OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist (24:13) Lessons from The Dropout (32:20) Gun.io - Get $250 off your first developer hire at https://Gun.io/twist! (33:37) Lon’s thoughts on "the slap" (44:59) Transitioning to our interview with David Rodolitz (45:20) David Rodolitz, CEO of FlyFish Club FOLLOW Lon Harris: https://twitter.com/lons FOLLOW David: https://twitter.com/rodolitz Check out FlyFish Club: https://www.flyfishclub.com/ FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Okay, everybody, it is Thursday, and you know what that means. It's TV time. Yeah, Lon Harris is with us to do this week in streaming to break down. We crashed episode four and the dropout episode six. There will be some spoilers. But these were real world stories, so you probably know what we're going to talk about anyway. It's true. Get caught up on episode seven, if you haven't already.

It's a great discussion about what we're realizing is two really great pieces of television. Great stories, great TV, well executed, just absolutely fabulous. And then we have David Rodolitz on. He is the CEO and co-founder of Fly Fish Club in New York. He's partners with Gary V. Gary Vaynerchuk on that. It's New York City's first NFT restaurant. You buy an NFT, you get a membership.

You can sell those memberships on NFT platforms. Really fascinating idea. It really is. It's a very interesting conversation. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This Week in Startups is brought to you by Odoo is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps

that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business. Your first app is free forever, and right now, Odu is offering $1,000 off your first implementation pack at Odu.com slash twist. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com slash twist. Open Phone As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back, but using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them. Openphone makes it easy to to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of your existing devices. Visit openphone.com slash twist to get 20% off your first six months.

And gun.io, the simplest way for anyone to hire world class developers, expertly vetted for you by senior engineers. Get $250 off your first hire at gun.io slash twist. Okay, everybody, Lon Harris is back to Tom. streaming, everybody's new favorite segment, the part where we watch TV for work, which you get to do every day. It's literally my job.

Literally your job. It's literally my job. Getting paid to watch TV movies. Pretty great. I don't get paid. I got paid for the writing that I do about. I don't know nobody's paying me to just like watch TV, but it's part of it.

As like a long time tech reviewer, it's true. Like I didn't get paid to just goof off with phones and got cars. You know, like they say that I like, but you kind of sort of did. There has to be some rigor, but you kind of sort of do. I mean, that's part of the job.

So we crashed and the dropout because we have booted, super pumped, thank God from our watching lineups. I haven't even thought about it, but I'm in severance an issue into severance

and I'm going into episode two. So we'll do severance after this, but I think we should do severance as a one episode just recapping the whole season, which will be in two weeks. There's only two left. So we'll do it.

as a package. Yeah, we're almost at the end of season one, except. All right. So just a recap with We Crash, which is on Apple TV Plus, we're now four episodes in. The last episode was Summer Camp, where we saw, you know, Rebecca Paltrow by Anne Hathaway, Rebecca Paltrow, Newman, kind of come into her own, I would say, in a way. And then episode four, we're basically teed up with Adam Newman being quite mercurial, running out of money and I guess the beat is

the VCs aren't putting any more money in and they kind of in their offhand of comment say like you know we're not Masayoshi's on or something which lights up Jared Lettos, Adam Newman to oh right, there's the next person who will be the baghawder where is he? He's in India and he's going to go on a flight to India. What did you think of the episode of Molly and Lund? They really did one thing I thought was very clever

which is the constantly interrupting with their spend, like how much they're losing per week or month, day, whatever it is. And that, I mean, you know, it's the old Hollywood, like a ticking clock. Like, if you let the audience know, there's an hour, the characters have an hour to figure this out. It lights a fire under it. The whole thing becomes more compelling because we know that we're working against

a deadline. And I thought that was very cleverly used in this one to like, we're kind of keyed into ads. emotional state based on the spend. The higher it is, the more trouble he's in, the more manic energy. Runway. He's got a limited amount of runway in startup terms, and it's a perfect device. Yeah, and it works.

I think they really use it to their benefit in this to just keep that, keep that, you know, it keeps moving. This episode almost reminded me it's got like a Scorsese movie or, you know, the Saffty brothers. They did uncut gems with that. Joms, I mean uncut jams. They did uncut jams. It's a masterpiece of I do, so I saw myself.

Julia Fox is their muse. But their movies have that relentless. It's like an anxiety attack on film. And I think that they really captured that well. And it puts you into, as much as we're kind of mocking Adam Newman or not mocking, at least, you know, looking at him with a critical eye, I think this really helped to kind of put you in his mindset as well of like he's up against it.

He's got, you know, he's bleeding this money. He knows he has to think big or it's over. He doesn't really. And that's another thing I liked about, you know, the show.

And they're really driving home that idea that it's not, it's not we work as a concept that he's selling. It's this vibe. It's this, it's this aesthetic idea. It's this bustling, fun with the, you know,

modern. workspace. And so he knows he's got to keep the momentum going or it's over. And I think that you really get into that mindset in this episode. And just like side note again on the acting. I mean, Jared Leto is phenomenal. Just full stop. He's phenomenal. Like it is mesmerizing. And I will tell you like, I'm a little weird about I know they're doing a great job of humanizing this story and humanizing the relationship and you know, him and Rebecca and her kind of like figure, trying to figure out who she is and being neglected. I like don't care about that.

I'm such a, I don't care about the feelings. I love the sort of mechanics of this show. And were we not talking about it, I would probably get bored by the kind of like rom-com factor. But every time he is on screen being utterly insane and manipulative and selling, you know, whether you want to buy it or not,

like I am here for it. And I think they do a good job also. of thinking about how strategic premeditated he is. So while, you know, he has a plan. This idea that he was like a non-participant and this got out of control, you're kind of like, maybe not. He seriously is a momentum player. And he's like, listen, if they don't want to give us the lease,

then take them out for, you know, lobster, make it fun. We sell the lifestyle. We sell the vibe. How would you feel like that? about a bigger lease? How would you feel about a longer lease? And they're kind of tipping into unit economics. So they're kind of showing us like, okay, he's doing things to win these deals, to change the industry that probably are not going to be sustainable, but he's still got that momentum and winning. And when they're like, hey, there is somebody who actually will

give you the ability to spend this money and go crazy. His name is Mashiyoshi's on and he likes big bets and you're willing to play into his worldview amazing. And then he figured, out, oh, SaaS, they explain this so perfectly. Oh, so good. One of the things I love about the show is he's like, oh, SaaS, it's software, it's not hardware. We're selling software. It's an operating system for your life, all this bullshit.

You're like, wow, he really kind of. Space says when he just is like, deliberately we're going to become a tech company so that we can get this money. Because that was the question every journalist was asking, is why is this real estate company, a tech company? And then they perfectly answer it, which is like, oh, so they can get Masas money. Oh, okay.

Exactly. They were literally leading the witness. There's something clever that the Cohen brothers do a lot in their dialogue, which is they show somebody hearing something, and then it wiggles into their brain, and then they start saying it like it's a thing that they thought, like in the Big Lebowski, he sees the TV where George H.W. Bush is like, this aggression will not stand.

And then an hour later in the movie, the dude says this aggression will not stand. The same kind of thing in this, he hears that tidbit of in New York real estate, it's not about what you can see. It's about who can see you. And it just sticks in there as like, oh, that's a smart sounding thing someone said to me once.

And then at the perfect moment, when he's doing the pitch and they're like, you notice we got a we work right across the street. Well, it's not what you can see. It's who can see you. And there is a genius to that. Like, he's repeated. It's not an original thought that he had,

but to hang on to it and to know, this is a good line and I'm going to use it at the exact right moment in my pitch is like, well, there is a close. cleverness to that and that that is that's salesmanship and like that's what he was doing and every time you want to laugh at him like every time he seems like just a cartoon right a moment like that hits and you're like no he's a goddamn genius and that's i think it is as much as i can't believe that i'm about to say this like i think it's a real credit to jared letto's performance in this that he's

capable of getting to the big zany moment but he's not it's not over the top all the time it's not a cartoonish performance. He's also keeping it, you know, a little grounded. There is something to playing somebody who's this mercurial, this, you know, larger than life, and not playing it larger than life. Like, it's, it feels like this is a real character in the world. And he's not over the top, even though he is over the top. I don't know if I'm explaining it correctly, but I guess enacting there's some restraint that goes on here. And he's showing some restraint while just getting right to that line of being insane, like when he uses his dad in his pitch, you know?

Right. And you start to see like, oh, wow, this guy is really playing next level chess. Yeah. He is, he knows Masayoshi Son is going to be there. And he says that line. And somebody says, who's that? And he says, my audience? Yeah.

Something. Well, he comes over after the speech and he says, I really enjoyed that. Maybe I'll come by and see we work and then walks away. And the guy goes, who was that? And he goes, that was my audience. Right. Like that was like, wow. He went around the world, uses his dad as like a prop.

Yeah. And there's thousands of people there and he gives us incredible speech. And you realize it's like a speech for one. And you literally find yourself thinking, you know, as excessive, as we've said many times on the show, as excessive as this whole thing was as like bonkers and maybe terrible idea and bad investment, da da da da da da, da, da. You still find yourself thinking like, man, what am I doing? Like this guy will go to any lengths.

And that is portrayed so well that you find yourself being like, do I have any hustling? at all? Because, damn. I mean, I think that's what we're in this interesting cultural moment where I was saying, too, about this, I think it was the last WeWork episode where they were playing like naked and famous and they were at the silent disco and we're just that because we're 10 years removed from it. This really, this moment would drop out and we crashed and all these kind of start shows. It feels like we're taking our first real analytical cultural look back at like millennial hustle culture. Like this was a whole time. This was a movement. Like,

We can now with a little distance look back on it and be like, that was a thing that happened culturally around, you know, late aughts, early teens of this idea of like every, you know, young, younger person was becoming this like professional with the laptop bag and working 16 hour days and code and all that stuff. Rise and grind. Yeah, rise and grind. And so that's what I feel like this moment is with all these shows. It's like we're looking back and for the first time we're kind of being like, okay, there were some, there were some positive aspects to this. also like, wow, like we weren't really interrogating this mindset at the time. Listen, when you start scaling quickly, your company needs to be run professionally. And Odo is the software that helps you maintain control of your fast running business.

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Well, done, O-Doo. Well, and talk about the journalism. The credulity of journalism is put on display here. I mean, how he just is like, call-wired and offer them an exclusive look at the WeWork Labs. And then it's like, boom, cover you. story. It's a little embarrassing in retrospect to watch. Like, God. Wow. Yeah, I see in the comments

they're like, well, Hustle culture's life, well, I'm not saying it went away. I'm just saying this was like the birth of it as like a movement as like an immediately identifiable thing where you could like look at an image of a person and be like, I know exactly who that dude is and what he's all about. I think there was startup culture, right? And entrepreneurial culture.

And then there became larger than life characters, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and I forgot what the name of that tech giant series was. But do you remember that one that had the 90s, like, heartthrobs in it? What was the name of the... There was a series with, like, 80s brat pack playing Bill Gates, Steve Jobs series. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. Oh, God, what was that called?

I do remember that. It'll come to me in a moment. Pirates of Silicon Valley. There you go. 1999 TV drama. I do remember that. Right. Wow.

I guess this is, and it was Noah Wiley and Anthony Michael Hall. Right. Yeah. And they were jobs in, Jobs and Gates or? Oh my God.

Yeah, exactly. And it was really compelling as a show back then. That's one we should do a rewatch of, is the Pirates of Silicon Valley, because they kind of told, you know, the 70s and 80s of the making of Microsoft and Apple.

That lays the found work, the groundwork for startup culture and the boom post both the dot-com era and then after the dot-com era we did have a couple of movies like startup with Khalil disease Tizman in it you remember that documentary

he wound up going to jail for SEC violations I knew him look at that I yeah I mean I vaguely remember this title but did not watch any of it TNT

1990 I mean this was you know this was pre peak TV it was if you were going to make a limited series it was basically basic cable or HBO with Holmes who is this Melissa McBride as Elizabeth Holmes.

Who is this pretender to the Elizabeth Holmes role? Wait. That's a different Elizabeth Holmes. That's not. I'm not even having this. That's not Therunus Liz Holmes. That's not our Elizabeth Holmes. She's from Walking Dead.

She's Carol on Walking Dead. Yeah. So this is a young. Yeah. There she is. 20 years before walking Dead. Speaking of which, should we turn to the dropout? Which, well, that's where I was trying to get us.

and then you build on top of that, obviously seminal film, the social network, then... To me, that's really... The social network is what's informed all of these subsequent shows. Like, that's the birth

of this genre, the like modern startup genre. Yeah, that all started, I think. Because they're sort of still following that pattern of the protagonist is, you know, we're sort of taking this critical, cynical view of them, but we're also

noting how, you know, the innovation. And it's like this sort of balanced back and forth between they were doing these groundbreaking things, but in this kind of morally questionable way and we're sort of back and forth with it. And to just go one step back, but Barbarians at the gate was the story of, Oh, right, with James Gron. And Obesco. Now, I don't know if that was an HBO movie.

Yes, I believe Barbarians at the gate. I made him in Shote. It was, it was premium cable. It was a premium cable. That came out in 1993. And that's the earliest business drama I can remember. Right. But that was, that was like, that wasn't even tech.

That was like Nabisco or. It was RJR. Nabisco. Yeah. The cigarette company and all that. And the leverage buyouts. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. There was a whole 80s kind of genre that, that, that led into that, which was like, you know, Wall Street. Right. Or like other people's money or, you know, all those stories about. high finance and Wall Street tycoons and Larry the liquidator kind of guys and like that.

And that's kind of morphed into this, you know. It's so interesting watching those genres build on each other to this moment in time of prestige television where unlimited budgets are drawing just the best actors in the world. What's so interesting is back of the 80s and 90s, it was everything was more like super pumped where it was like, we're going to pull back the curtain and let you the regular schlubs see what the world of high finance and big business is really like. And now we get this more sort of nuanced, interesting take where it's like, they're just flawed folks like everybody else.

They just happen to have access to billions of dollars. All right. Let's tee it up for us. On that note, if you will. The dropout recap of. Right. So this, we're, I feel like we're at the moment in the dropout. Iron Sisters was the most recent episode.

The most recent episode, well, up until last night when the new one came. We're really kind of at the noose is starting to tighten. They're in pretty deep now. They're actually using Siemens machines on patients from Walgreens, and they're kind of misleading everybody into thinking it's their technology that they're using. They're also using questionable tech that they're developing their Edison machines to actually use on real-life patients, which is what starts to create qualms among their own staff and employees, some internal division.

And we're also following outside the company all of the efforts to kind of start to investigate and look into what they're doing more deeply. John Carrey Roo is now involved. He's in communication with, I'm blanking on some of the character days. Tyler Shultz and Erica Chung. That's how that episode ends with these two. Oh, he's in right, with D. D.Fuse, Dr. Fuse. Right, Dr. Richard Fuse, which the William H. Macy character and then the Stanford professor played by Laurie Metcab.

Basically, the forces that are very cynical about Theranos and what they're doing are aligning. The mobilizing. Mobilizing to begin a sincere look into what's really going on. And then, of course, Rochelle Gibbons, Ian Gibbons widow, also joining that effort. And so collectively, now we're into the people are starting to gather evidence about the bad things they've been doing. And then, you know, not to spoil the one that Lon hasn't seen, but the episode that came out last night is when we start to see this journalistic effort pay off, which it gets extremely exciting. This is one of the best moments of, like, journalism TV that I feel like I have seen in ages. I mean, I was like jumping out of my, my chair over it.

But, you know, last time we talked about this show, I said, I think I'm to the point where I might start to get a little bit bored with how, now that they've made the full turn into cartoonishly evil. and I Did it happen? Are you less interested now or more? Well, luckily now that these supporting characters and the journalism stuff is picking up, I'm definitely more interested, but I'm also more uncomfortable.

Like, I mean, there were a couple of moments in there where you actually think, like you forget that you know how this story turned out and you think they're going to kill someone. Like, you know, they're talking about the security and there's a sense of danger that these two young people are in because they want to sort of be whistleblowers

and you, and there's this weird scene where, you know, Erica Chung is like all alone on Thanksgiving, has something go wrong, and someone comes to fix the machine and sort of just like shoot the test result out anyway that feels almost X-files. Like it felt like they just sent an android in. Yeah, it was foreboding.

Like, you really start to get that this is turning into a nightmare for everybody involved in that now we're going to move into, I don't know if this is like a second act kind of thing, but, you know, the war is basically starting. And they're so... Awful. And the evil is so evil that it's sort of like, I mean, I'm fine time I finished watching last night, I was like, I don't understand how that woman's not in jail.

Why is she not in jail right now as opposed to just convicted? Like, woo. Yeah. For me, this is now getting even more riveting. Yeah. Because, yeah, it was kind of interesting to see her want to get out and not be in the mafia. And they pulled her in, right? Like she had that moment in episode five, I think it was, where she's like, well, what if I just didn't do there?

Right. With her mom. She was telling her mom. Like, maybe I'll just give all this up. And the mom was like, you know, no, you can't. And then she goes to Sunny Balwani and says, hey, listen, what if we just, you know, we just didn't do this anymore? And it's like, we're $150 million a student. What do you mean?

Yes. And as we go into it. Now they're all in. Now you see her intimidate Tyler Schultz when he comes to her and tries to, you know, confront her and say like what's going on are we using these things it's it and she just is like you don't know what you're talking and you see that weird moment between her and sunny valwani too where he essentially says like i know everything that you know right i have all of the receipts and she's like i'm the CEO maybe i don't read all my emails love you by lena tiger jesus yeah listen lots of founders

are lucy goosey with their personal numbers we all know that they put it on company documents they use it for sales calls and more. And that's where things get super messy. You don't know who's calling you, right? Is it a sales prospect? Is it a coworker? Or is it somebody from your kid's school? Is it spam? Well, open phone helps you create business phone numbers for you and your team. And it works through an app on your smartphone very elegantly or on your desktop. You just pick a number. You install the app and you're done. There is no need to carry two phones like I do. And there's so many features you're going to love, including you know how we all create catch-all emails like support at our company name.com.

Well, you can do something similar for a phone number. You can have a shared phone number with multiple employees fielding those incoming text and the calls. What a brilliant idea. See what Open Phone can do for you. It's already affordable at a starting price of just $10 a month per user. So affordable. And Twist listeners can get an extra 20% off any plan for your first six months by signing

up at Openphone.com slash twist. And if you have existing numbers from another service, no problem. Peasy, Lemon Squeezy, Open Phone can port them over for free. Just head over to O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E-C-O-C-O-C-O-S-T-T-T-T-T-T-E. OpenFone.O-P-P-E-L-E-E-W-T-T-E. I love one thing that they're weaving into the show that I wasn't sure they were going to sort of deal with head-on that is, that is, I think, a pretty bold choice in 2022 is the way that Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes kind of weaponized the fact that she was a woman and how scared people would be to

confront this powerful woman and, you know, like the sort of social pressure to not. Like even when Tyler Schultz brings up to George Schultz's grandfather, what's going on, it's immediately shaming them. Like, Elizabeth is doing this amazing stuff and she's this incredible woman. And why would you try to bring her down? He's trying to help so many people. And I think that's really fascinating. It's because it's complex, right?

Like, you can, there's a lot of shading there. Like, you understand the motivation. And you do want to support a young woman CEO. That is a rare and special thing in Silicon Valley that we should support. But at the same time, she was using that person. And you said it's like, that's what's fueling so much of Laurie Metcalf's anger towards her is that she's sort of abusing the fact that she's a woman. But I think that's a really interesting theme they've come back to a few times now.

Yeah, gender dynamics. Silicon Valley, who'd he guessed it? What do you think of that sort of angle, Molly, and gender in general? Oh, I mean, I am thrilled that the show is going there because this was always, always a massive part of this story. And that incredible confrontation that she has with Lori McHaff's character at the bar where, you know, in episode seven, yeah. In episode seven, sorry, Lon. Where she's like, it's not just you. It's every woman's CEO that's going to come after you and won't get funded.

as a result of what you have done here. Like, you know, the fact that you're this fraud means you're setting all these other women back. And then there's also that great scene where this are kind of, you know, collaborator crew, or motley crew of collaborators is sitting there going like, why? And it's the professor and Dr. Ruse whose name I just said and instantly forgot. And the wife of Ian Gibbons are sitting there talking about like why they're seeing her, again, journalistic credulity, my God, on every magazine cover. And they're like, why is this woman getting?

everything and he says Dr. Fuse is like, it's because she's young and blonde and pretty. And then Lori Metcalf's character is like, well, she's a woman and you want to see him succeed and da-da-da-da-da-da-don. He's like, yeah, she's young and blonde and pretty. And both of them are so right that you're just like, oh, society is the

worst. Yeah. I love where she's like, oh, it's so great to see you, Phyllis, and she's like, it's Dr. Gardner to you. Do not call me Phyllis. It's not. And I think this new, introducing John Carrie Rue and that character and just how brave they were.

And now we're getting basically all the president's men, shattered glass, that whole, what do they call it, Ovra? Overe? Yeah, Overe. Overe. Overe. Overe. I'm trying to use a fancy word here.

So this ovar of journalism, spotlight, all the presidents men, shatterglass, hey, we're going to expose this giant fraud and we're threatening to get sued is now being introduced. So now you have a collision of two genres. you know, the investigative journalist was the other one with a guy from Gladiator Russell Michael Mann movie

The Insider The Insider Jeffrey Wyganne of the insider Brown and Williamson The Tobacco Company and Jeffrey Wagner was the whistleblower and Al Pacino's the 60 Minutes producer Yeah

And it's a great by It is a great flow because it's not this boring ongoing exploration of the evil people Now it's the effort like the series is really well constructed because now they're telling a new story with new characters who are super compelling. I call that genre competence porn

when you're just watching people who are really good at something do their job very effectively. There's something very satisfying about that because it's not like journalism is a good example but like space is a whole like hidden figures and Apollo 13 or it's just like I just want to watch like people who are very good at something do something that's very difficult.

That is a great company. build it and succeed at it. Like, there's something very sad to the Martian. Right. The engineer and the Martian is like figuring out

how to survive. It's like the McGiver kind of. But no, it's even better when it's journalists doing something that feels, I don't know. Like, righteous.

Yeah, but it's also clerical. Like that's what you want journalism to be. It's also like clerical. Like I called a bunch of people and I asked them questions and then I saved the world. It's not like, you know,

I went outside in a space suit and I fixed the, you know, flux capacitor. They're like, yeah, when I talked to a doctor and I asked them three questions and they told me the truth after the three questions. And the fourth one, I actually got the piece of information in the four hour meeting that I needed. Boom. And now we broke the whole thing open.

To make that compelling, knocking on doors and asking questions is a tribute to, I think, the screenplay writer and the dialogue. I mean, it's a little bit. I think these things are super collaborative. Like, obviously, you know, this was written with a real eye towards just like Molly saying, like bring it a lot. You can't just be in Elizabeth's head the whole time. You've got to figure out where the beats are and how the world keeps sort of expanding, because that's what happened. It's her, she started the company, and then it grows, and she's got all this staff.

And Sunny comes in. And then people become, you know, Walgreens. And then it becomes this, you know, huge news story. And that's the story you've got to tell. So it is that organization. But it's the direction, too. It's the performances, too. I mean, it's a little bit of everything.

Yeah. Editing even. I mean, that's like. I was going to say the editing, too, especially to keep those things. moving, you know, and moving between things without it getting confusing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a lot of great jumps. I was watching some YouTube video about how the South Park guys kind of put together the show.

And there's like, we don't have any ends in the script. Like, this happens and this happens and this happens. It has to be this happens, therefore this happens. This happens, but this happens. So he said the construction of South Park is therefore or but, never end. And when I was watching the show, it was like, okay, lab technician finds out that the machines are not the right machines. Uh, therefore, they, uh, send somebody down to do the test for her, but she tells Cariru, therefore Cariru gets in touch with these people. And it just,

yeah, you're just so paced into this that I can't look away. The, I mean, these shows are going to sweep up the Emmys, correct, Lon? If you were to look at this. Oh, I mean, I definitely think we're seeing some performances that are going to be remember. Safe read to me feels like a lock for a nomination at this point. Everybody's thought. I've seen a lot of people talking about that performance.

She's nailing the voice. They're doing the look very well. It's very like memorable. I feel like, and I feel like. Dancing. The dancing with the mask of her own face on. Her physical acting, the way she has nailed that weird dancing and then how she like runs all strange.

Like her physical transformation is phenomenal. I think, I mean, I hate to diagnose, but it feels like an Aspergery spectrum kind of personality. But we set that up in that first episode. Remember she's like, you know, her second where she's like, you know, I don't feel people things the way that normal people do. I think that was sort of the like throw that out there and say she's on the spectrum. Without putting like a point on it, without being like, here's what's wrong with her. Here's the diagnosis.

Or here's how she's weird. It's like, yeah, it feels like, you know, shaded and like, you know, unpredictable in a way. I also was going to say, I think Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto are also sort of in the mix at this point. I mean, it's a long year. I mean, if Jared Latter doesn't get enough. It's a long year. Who knows who knows what happens between now and, you know, the Emmys. But I feel like those are the those are all very much in play, along with writing and directing.

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Wow. Near. Here it comes. what happened at the Oscars and what should be the proper fault because it's kind of over now we've all processed it sure and I'm sure that you have a lot of thoughts on just all the processing of it the question I have now is the end game

the off ramp how this all gets settled because the Academy has a code of conduct they're investigating him the apologies have been given but I think now the fallout is what in Hollywood well and to add to that do you believe for a second

that the Academy really asked him to leave? Well, they're already sort of, they're already kind of walking that back. The Academy's now, they're saying they're investigating, there's going to be some kind of panel that's making a decision about what happens with Will Smith. I do not feel like they take an Oscar back. I think that's a huge, I don't think they want to cross that line because now the moment you take one person's Oscar back because of bad behavior, it's like, well, you know, Roman Polansky has some Oscars and Woody Allen has some Oscars and Harvey Weinstein has dozens of Oscars.

And I mean, now you're starting a process that doesn't end until you go back and review the career of literally everybody. And I don't think they want to cross, I don't think they want to go down that rabbit hole. I think they'll probably come up with some sort of slap on the wrist type thing to be like, we're taking this seriously, but not that seriously. That's what I think is they're already in terms of the, did we ask them to leave, they're saying, well, now they're saying there were mixed message. So some people were maybe suggesting to Will Smith that he should leave, but other people, it was not a, you got to go. Initially, they were making it sound like somebody came up to him.

They were like, Will Smith, get out of here. And he was like, no. And like, that's not what happened. Talk to his publicists or his people and said, hey, maybe he should leave. We've gotten a lot of reports that, you know, he was talking to Denzel Washington. He was talking to Tyler Perry. He was talking to Ditty. You saw that on video.

They had pictures. Right. And we, like, there were a lot of coverage. It was a very chaotic. few minutes. And I mean, even Questlove was talking about because that was the award that was being handed out was the team from Summer of Soul won for Best Documentary. It's a great movie. It's on Hulu now. Highly recommended. And, you know, so even their view on the chaos was like, they thought it was a bit. So they were like, do we go, do we go up and get the award? Is the,

is the bid, oh? Like, they don't, you know, they're in the confusion of the moment. Chris Rock decides to move ahead and give out the award, which was the right thing. But everybody in that room is doing the same thing we were doing at home. Like, what? What's going on? Well, and then did you see this new development, too, where one of the producers of Summer of Soul had a long tweet thread the other day, basically being like, not only was that whole experience for us and it ruined our, it unquestionably ruined our moment. But on top of that, Chris Rock then made this lazy, crappy joke about four white guys coming to accept the award and this producer, Tony about it is South Asian and was basically just like, everybody involved, you suck.

Like you're both, you're all a . Which I was like, fair. Fair. I mean, I think that that is my overall take, is that it was a crummy joke that probably Chris Brock should not have made definitely in light of her illness,

but also you can't, you can't get, especially during the Oscars. You don't get up and hit somebody. Is some bigger interpretation in terms of this moment in time in society, or is this like, I know,

I see the comedian. are like, oh my God, comedy will never be the same. I also feel like on that level we're reading a little too much. Like, yeah. I've been around dudes who hit other dudes after that dude said something about their girlfriend. Like, I think, haven't most of us been in that situation? You've seen that happen. The only thing that is different or weird about this is that it was the Oscars.

Like, the idea that a guy made fun of somebody else's wife and then that guy hit that guy. It's like, well, that's not weird. That happens all the time. That happens all the time. So with this idea that it's not an endorsement, but I don't think this is like the end of power. Is comedy going to change forever where comedians now, you can't going forward have Ricky Jervais do a roast like golden globes anymore. That's off the table for now, like the next couple years, we're making fun of celebrities. I really don't think so.

Are going to be safe in comedy clubs? You believe any of that hyperbolic or whatever, strong reaction? I really don't. I really don't think this is going to, this is going to fade. I think within a few years, there'll be a Super Bowl. commercial with Will Smith and Chris Rocksharing a Corona or, you know, candy bar going halfs on a Little Caesars or something. Like, I think this is going to be, you know, I think this is going to fade it.

I definitely don't think this is the end of roasts or making fun of celebrities. You have to do some of that. I'm not saying this joke was appropriate. I think it was mean-spirited, especially because she's been so open recently about her alopecia diet. Particularly if it was ad-lived, you know, it sounds like it might have been. I do believe it was ad lib because I don't think you write down a GI Jane reference in 2022. I do think that was off the cover.

So it was out of line. He said he didn't. The thing I always wanted to know was did he know he had this, she had this disease or she's referring to her having a haircut? I don't know, but it's a low hanging fruit. It's a really dumb, easy joke. He's gone after Jada Pickett Smith before. I'm ill-advised joke. That's the other thing that's crazy is like after this whole thing happened.

there's a thousand pictures of them together, you know, at various events, smiling and people together. They're both very prominent celebrities. So, yeah, you know. Yeah, it's a very weird moment. It's a very weird moment. I mean, you know, give us, as we wrap here, give us a suggestion, something you're watching or you've watched over last year that was exceptional that maybe people missed and

then what you're most looking forward to as we wrap. There's a show on HBO Max right now called Our Flag Means Death that I've just jumped into. It is based on a real historical pirate named Steve Bonnet, who was like a wealthy aristocrat who gave up his boring life on the manner and became a pirate and got his own ship and ended up working with Blackbeard. Tycho Waititi produced and directed some episodes of this, and he plays Blackbeard in it. Reese Darby, who you might know from the Jumanji films, and he was in Flight of the Concords. He stars his Steve Bonnet. Great cast, really fun.

It's got comedy. It's a pirate show. It's got some action. And that just wrapped up so you could binge the whole first season. Oh, Rees Darby from the... He was the Flight of the Concords manager, if you watch Play of the Concord's manager. Yes, I love him when he would take... In Flight of the Concord's where he'd take attendance in their life meetings.

Exactly. He's great. Tycho Wait, T, T, T, great. And, like, you'll recognize a lot of, like, Joel Frye who is in Cruella. He's on board this boat. There's some Game of Thrones guys. He popped up in the show. And then most looking forward to him.

It was a great, great, uh, Wow. Let me, let me, I'm going to pull up. Obi-on, maybe. Oh, sure. I mean, noon night just started. I'm looking forward to digging that. Oh, there's Apple.

Apple has got two things coming out that I'm looking forward to. Slow horses, which is, I believe, this week, uh, with, that's with Gary Oldman. And it's a spy. series. It's about like, uh, the worst spies at MI5 in London all get put in like the, the storage closet where they hide like the useless people they don't have any need for. And it's this small office run by Gary Oldman and they're like the misfits and the rejects. But then they stumble into an actual espionage case. Slow horses.

Slow horses. That's based on a book, which I have not read. But it looks good. And I like Gary Oldman. So I'm going to check it out with Gary Olman. I love Gary. And then Shining Girls, I don't think that starts until May, but that's a big one coming to Apple TV Plus with Elizabeth Moss. And it's like a crime thriller, but with a fantasy element that I don't know much about. So I can't spoil. But basically, she's a Chicago archivist. She survived some kind of attack. And then she starts investigating other people who have been involved, who've been attacked in a similar way.

But like, seemingly impossible, like a person who was attacked. in this way 20 years ago or in a different city or in a different part of the world. So it's like, how is this person, how is this assailant doing this? So maybe like supernatural kind of silence of the landscape? I believe there is a supernatural or a fantasy element, but I don't know what it would be. And Jamie Bell is the nefarious person who she's sort of investigated. Wow. I mean, when Elizabeth Moss comes on the screen and this is what she kind of is executive

producing and was like driving this one to the screen. So I didn't look just like trailer came out the other day. It looks really good. It's also got Philippa Sue from Hamilton is in the mix there. So looks good. Love. Love. Amazing.

All right. There you have it. Everybody. Follow at Lonz on the Twitter, L-O-N-S. Go to inside.com slash streaming to get his newsletter. It's absolutely amazing. And then we'll have the new community site launch tonight. Lon.

It looks like it's starting to percolate. are liking. So tonight, 9 p.m. Pacific. I've already been using it. It's pretty cool. You have to admit. Yeah.

No, I think people are going to like it. I think people are going to like this new participatory newsletter system I built with Lon. Okay. Molly, any closing thoughts there or should we wrap here? No, but I hope that Lon will, that Lon will join us at Top Gun. Jason has promised to rent out a movie theater for the Top Gun release because it's my birthday.

I'm going to do a Molly birthday. I have the need for speed. And it's my all-time favorite movie because I'm trashy. Have I seen the new one? No, I haven't seen the new one. What's the buzz? Because I heard buzz from people who said this is the greatest thing Tom Cruise has ever done. I do like, it's Joseph Kaczynski directed it.

He did that one Oblivion with Tom Cruise, which is really good. I like that one. So, yeah, so I'm hopeful. My dog's name, they're asking in the comments, Taco. Taco, Taco. Oh, look it. Look at Taco. Oh, how old is Taco now?

No, no idea. I adopted him. They thought he was like six or seven. That was three years ago. So nine, ten. Who was the dog before taco? Buddy, buddy, buddy, buddy, God, the old days.

Fondu passed the other day. Oh, you remember Fondu from the holidays. Of course I remember Taurus and Fondu. 15 years, nine. I'm old enough to remember Tora. You remember Tora, my original bulldole eight and a half years. Yeah, that was when I. Torres Fondu's brother, 12 and a half years,

Fondu 15 years, nine months and just passed in her sleep the other week. Oh, but she had a good run. Yeah. She had the greatest of bulldog runs, rest in peace. And now we have Maximus, our fourth bulldo. My fourth bulldog, you've starting to realize you've had two dogs in your life, Lon, as an adult. As an adult, yes.

I grew up, we had a schnauzer when I was younger. So you're two. I'm now on my fourth. I think this is like you start to realize, like as a dog person, how many dogs you had. Sure. What joy they bring to your life. All right, everybody. Shout out, Lon Harris.

And thanks for joining us. Thank you so much, Lon. We'll see you next Thursday. And next up on the show, we have a really interesting interview with David Rodolitz, who's the CEO and co-founder of New York City's first NFT dining club. Get ready for some buzzwords, but also possibly a quite interesting concept. Great business model and partners with Gary V. Stick with us.

In other news, NFTs have been absolutely brutal to cover because, God, the majority of them are just some weird, wacky grift. and there's so much mischugina stupidity, grift in them that it's hard to know what's real

and what's not. And I was reading about NFTs for access. And I thought NFTs for access are such a great idea. The one idea

that I thought was particularly great was there's a restaurateur and he decided he's been in the hospitality

industry for over two decades. He decided he would create something in New York called the Fly Fish Club and that it would be an NFT gated dining club. Now what's a dining club? Well, we're about to find out. Welcome to the program.

David Rodolitz. Rodolitz. He did all right. Rodolitz. Okay, you heard my little preamble there. Meet Molly Wood. So, David, tell us, you're creating this club and I think it's based on a phenomenon that happened in Spain for food clubs or not?

No, it is not. So, I mean, my partners and I have been in the hospitality industry for the last 20 years. There's a common theme that, you know, relying on restaurant EBIDA as a business model is very challenging. We all love food and beverage. Everybody likes being around it. We love creating social experiences. The problem, though, is you put in all this work, you raise all this money. And at the end of the day, it's really hard to even extract 10, 15% margin.

So for a while, I'm a finance guy. I've been a business guy for a long time. I've been trying to find new models or ways to monetize the food and beverage industry. It also lacks a lot of technology. It's an industry that's been a little bit dated with his practices. Earlier last year, I teamed up with a good friend of mine, but also a very big tech media and marketing mogul, Gary Vaynerchuk. And, you know, he's kind of all things, you know, best in class from marketing tech

and myself and my operating partners, Josh Capon and Connor Hanlon, who are large chefs in the New York area, we formed up and thought, what does hospitality look like when you bring these practices, you know, tech, marketing, branding on top of hospitality operators, people that care. What could that yield? What would that create? So that's how VCR group started, which is our parent hospitality company. I juxtaposed another project in New York that I had read about in the same article. Which one is that?

I forgot the name of it, but they were based upon this phenomenon in Spain where you can kind of go in the kitchen and cook. So it's sort of like Soho House for chefs. I forgot the name of that one. I think you're going to start to see a lot of different people try to find ways to penetrate this technology and use it because everyone has a lot. There's a lot of mystique around it and people are thrown around this word. And for us, this is not about a digital collectible. This is not about is a picture of a ape or a crypto punk or a rock worth millions of dollars or not. It's not about a speculative crypto investment.

This is about utility. It's about access. So let's go through the mechanics. How many NFTs did you produce? What did you sell them for? What do I get if I bought one? Sure. So we produced 3,035 tokens was broken down into two tiers.

There's a flyfish token that will get you access. The club is not open yet. We are securing the real estate and then we'll be building it. So we've done all of this, you know, ahead of securing the real estate. It was really important for us to be first. And all of us have independent brands that we felt like we had enough credibility to put ourselves out there and do this first. So we created a flyfish club. The first tier is the flyfish token.

It gets you access to the restaurant, a cocktail. bar, a main dining room, and an outdoor space. Then there's a flyfish omacase token, which gets you access to everything I just mentioned, plus a private omacase room that is going to be curated by a leading Michelin star, Omacase master, who happens to be our partner on another restaurant that we own called Ito. 3,035 tokens were produced. The majority of those were the flyfish token, 2650. And then, about 385 or so were the Omacase token. We minted or we sold in January about 1,501 tokens that sold out in less than one minute.

And the rest I've held back in the flyfish wallet. And the idea behind that is we need to see the people's behavior on how they're utilizing the token. You know, our intent is that we want to build the most awesome dining club. But this is our in real life experience. This is not about a metaverse play. This is about leveraging technology to make an industry better and to find new ways to have a healthy business model. So normally these would be investors, correct?

You would go and pass the hat to investors. Instead, more like Soho House. So you sold 2,650 of these NFTs for the flyfish. We sold 1,500. And one. We've held back about 1,500. And the idea behind those hellbacks is to make sure that there's local people in the northeast New York area that want to use it rather than just people, you know, across the country buying it for a speculative investment. Ah, because you need people to come in, right?

That's correct. We need it to be a bustling, you know, experience-driven dining club filled with people and joining themselves and wanting to come back multiple times weekly. So 1500. Can we go all the way back to the basics here, which is the flyfish club itself? Like, can we start with what is a dining club? Yeah, so a dining club, I mean, similar you just referenced Soho House. You know, there's a lot of different places that are social experiences that you go to. There's some sort of vetting process.

And essentially, you're in a community and you're essentially like renting a social experience. You pay an annual fee. You have a food and beverage minimum sometimes, whether it's your local country club. whether it's a sow house, which is in, you know, a ton of different markets, zero bond in New York. There's a lot of different ones. Our whole idea was we like the model, but we want to flip it on its head. So there's no vetting process. There's no application process.

There's no recurring fee process. We didn't want to forward all these costs onto the consumer every year. So you buy our NFT. We minted them. The Flyfish one was 2.5 Ethereum. and the flyfish omacase was 4.25 Ethereum. People bought those from us directly. The term minting is essentially just turning a digital file into a digital asset.

Now people own their memberships. They could do what they want with it. They could use it. They could sell it. They could lease it if they're not using it. So it purely puts the power into their hands. So why is the, the NFT the better way to do that?

I think the NFT, well, NFTs authenticate ownership. At the end of the day, this is the technology, which is what I think people are missing of why this is so transformative and why in the macro, NFTs are not going away. In the micro, you're going to see a lot of bad projects and people with the wrong intent trying to make a lot of money off them, and we're already starting to see that. But I think the utility behind it and being able to authenticate ownership in a, very quick way and then being able to seamlessly transfer or sell that ownership in an instant way without five middlemen and months in between is a remarkable innovation. And then additionally,

the smart contract allows you to create this relationship digitally between you and the people that want this product. So you could create different things in that smart contract like royalties and such, which is why you're starting to see artists, musicians and other businesses. And other businesses are going to put their IP, you know, and sell things through NFT because they're not going to get removed from a transaction down the road. So stupid question. I come in, I have the NFT. I paid a couple grand for a couple of Ethereum. Do I show you it on my phone somehow to get into the restaurant? Is this now like, you used to have a Soho house card or you would be greeted at the Soho House. They would look up your membership number. Is there a mechanical device to do this?

Yeah, so, I mean, your phone is going to basically authenticate that you are a member, and that's going to give you access to a private reservations portal that will have an allotment of inventory. So essentially, your ownership is validated. And then once it is, you then have access to our reservations platform, which will be mobile and desktop friendly. And then you make a reservation like you would on a resi or an open table or seven rooms. all of that process will be the same. It's just about getting access to a private portal, which will be authenticated versus blockchain. So super clarify, you can only make that reservation

if you are a Fly Fish token holder. That's correct. Yeah. And you could bring guests with your token. You could bring guests to the size of a table. If you have a six-stop, you could bring five guests, but you have to be a member to enjoy the Flyfish Club. Right.

And so this could be done with a normal app, but then you wouldn't have the ability to trade it. you wouldn't have the ability to loan it out. So you're saying if, you know, this flyfish club became super popular and I, you know, didn't live in New York, I could rent it for $10,000 a year to somebody who did live in New York. That's correct. The idea of the leasing mechanism was designed as an ancillary benefit. We're not looking for this to be the reason why people buy it as like a passive income strategy

or anything of that sort. The idea was we have a lot of relationships and people that are well-traveled. They might leave town over the summertime. And we thought that it would be a neat idea for them to be able to lease their token out and get new people to discover Flyfish Club and kind of create this very circular people speaking about it, discovering it, and then hopefully wanted to participate in the future. And I feel like this is where the authentication comes in super handy because like, you know, I have belonged to a health club where I could resell my membership. You buy the memberships on Craigslist because they go, you know, they've structured in that way. they have to put in a bunch of rules around who can use it and guess and when and whatever because there's a higher likelihood of fraud.

So it's sort of like this model has already existed, but what you're saying is the NFT mechanism makes it more secure. It makes it more secure. It makes it more seamless. I mean, the blockchain, you know, is authenticating, you know, through computers and servers, you know, the validity of the ownership. So that's already happening. We're using the technology to improve.

and in real life dining experience. And there's also other benefits to it in our minds. I mean, people are communicating digitally. Social currency is real. NFTs, a lot of people are very interested in what this whole kind of movement is. There's a community around this being built. There's people in discords that are spending a lot of time getting to know each other. And like, you know, I've been a part of other restaurant groups that I've co-founded and created for years.

And I can tell you in the last three months of Fly Fish Club, we have more of a connection with these people, and there's more brand being built in three months than other projects I spent 10 years on. We were just in Miami with these people. We rented a yacht. We took all of our members away. We've done three different physical and virtual events.

We're doing cooking demos with these people. We're really creating a sense of community. I think this kind of crypto-NFT movement, not all of it, but what we're seeing with our club is people, that want to collaborate, people that want to meet new people, people that like, you know, social experiences. So we're leveraging the NFT to make this in real life social experience better. And just to go through the math, I mean, it's really staggering. You sold, if I'm my back of the envelope math, 1,500 members for the Flyfish and then 385 for the Omicasse, I think you said.

12,5001 was the total. Perfect. Broken down between Omicasse and Flyfish. We brought in over 10 million. Over 10 million. about a little north of 14. Oh, wow. And then because of the royalty component and the largest proof that this is an asset is that people could sell it to somebody else if they want to on a secondary market called OpenC. Yeah, that's happening. That's happened over $23 million of times in the last three months. So we take a royalty of 10% on all of those transactions.

That's fantastic. so you have an ongoing steak in it. Now, how big is the first restaurant and how long does my membership last? And I don't own equity in the, so I'm not, if it becomes profitable, it's not a security. It's not a security. It's just a membership card. It's access.

This is a different form of access. Got it. You have it as long as you want to own the token. How many years will the club exist? So if I have this and I give it to my kids, is this going to exist for 100 years? Or did you promise people, you have a five-year lease or a,

tenure lease on the new place? There's no term on it. Okay. You know, our intent is to build a large business around this with multiple clubs, ancillary offerings, other social experiences, pop up events and build a whole world around Fly Fish Club. So, you know, anything could happen and there's risk in anything, obviously. And I'm, you know, I can't just say like, yes, we're definitely going to have the same restaurant, you know, for 100 years there.

That's going to exist. That being said, we're very good at what we do. We have big plans to do this. We're well capitalized to do it. Clearly. And we're going to look to create endless value for our people. How big is the first restaurant? It'll be about 10,000 square feet.

So 10,000 square feet. So it costs you $3 or $4 million to set up a restaurant like that in New York. A lot more. A lot more. Yeah. But the finishings and the quality that we want, it'll be, you know, very well done. But people are going to go there and have to still pay for the food. You're not kidding, free food, just to be clear.

So the business could work on its own. The only criticism I've heard of this is the exclusivity. So you've taken a very democratic approach. If I bought it, or I should say if Molly bought it and she's super classy, and then she decides, you know, I'm not living in New York anymore. I'm going to sell it to JCal and I buy it and I'm a loud mouth and I'm, you know, obnoxious at the club. You have no control over the membership.

Whereas Sohouse is like, oh, we don't want any bankers here. We don't want any finance people. And they literally rebooted New York. Sewellhouse because it became all wankers. And they wanted more artists. So they just didn't renew all the banker memberships and they started over. You actually can't do that. You can't control who owns the thing.

So what happens if it becomes all finance bros and becomes a brodown? Good point. So we thought through that. We did want to make this democratic and make it accessible. That being said, there's a couple levers that are being thought about here. The first one is that by nature of the product and how you have to buy a token, using crypto, having a coin base, setting up a meta-mask. You generally have to be well-versed or be interested in learning about this,

which is a certain subset of people. A lot of bros, crypto-brose. But it still sort of sounds like finance bros. Secondly, there was a white list that was created, which was people that we sold to before the public minting. There was a private minting, which was about 20% of the inventory, which were to local New York people that, you know, run in different circles and will hopefully be, you know, a very good complementary

group to the project. And then the last peach, which is the most important piece, is that I've cloned a set of inventory, which I have, my group has in our wallet, which every day we're hand-selecting people in the area, you know, from art to philanthropy, to sports, to entertainment, to culture. And we are going to curate an environment that, you know, is enjoyed, that is collaborative and with all walks of life. So you can hold back tokens and then curate to make sure you have balance, which is exactly what the battery did in San Francisco. They had, it was a bunch of VC bros and CEOs and it was like, oh my God, this is leaning

so bro, so rich and elite. And then one night I was there and it was all artists, whatever, and I was talking to the founders and they were like, that's the San Francisco Philharmonic and that's the ballet. they come here every night after their performances. We gave them $200 a year, $500 memberships, so they could, you know, somebody who's in the ballet or in the symphony is not going to be able to afford $3,000 a year in all likelihood for the luxury of paying $18 for a cocktail. That's right. So you can stack the deck with artists and interesting people.

That's right. That's our plans. We're well connected with a lot of different, you know, groups of people in this area. So it's about curating an environment, which is, you know, stuff that we've been doing for a lot. long time. Absolutely amazing. What do you, what is the reaction bit in the restaurant community? You've been in the restaurant community for a while.

People must be calling you saying, oh my God, um, how do I replicate this? And then what happens if this becomes the new standard? Will we have two classes of restaurants, the ones open to the public and the ones for the elite? Because that is the next criticism of this. So address that one. Like, oh, it's Manhattan going to become just all exclusive clubs? No, no, no.

There's a big learning. curve to do this. There's a large expense to create this. I spent the greater part of last year building this out with my team. We had 15 developers from Web 2 to Web 3, you know, in front and designers, full stack engineers. This was not something that we came up with overnight. You know, we spent over a million dollars building this out, you know, over the last 12 months. So I don't see it all becoming NFT land. I think you have to come back to why. You know, If people are doing this for the wrong intent, you know, I think the products are going to fail. If you're really trying to create a sense of community, find a new way.

You know, we really wanted to leverage technology to find a new way to do our business because our business is flawed. So we're hospitality lovers, food and beverage lovers. We love being in real life with people. We just now found a new way to monetize, which I think is going to provide us a leg up. And it's going to allow us to be more hospitable and less transactional because all supply chain issues, labor cost issues. I won't have to forward every dollar along to the consumer because I'm only relying on

restaurant EBDA. I think the community as a whole has been pretty wowed by this. A lot of serious groups from around the world have reached out and has sparked another innovation that we're thinking about right now. But the groups that are able to do it, I think, have to have a thoughtful approach. There has to be a real value proposition. It doesn't hurt that Gary Vaynerchuk's my business partner. who, you know, has a tremendous platform and provides a tremendous amount of value to people all

around the world. And he's become a pioneer and a trailblazer in the NFT space. You know, I don't want people to be mistaken that, you know, you could just kind of come to market with this and people are going to buy it. I think everything really has to line up and you have to have an ability to, you know, market and get this in front of people. And I think us being first with a very thoughtful product, with Gary as a partner, with chef partners that are very well respected, with the timing of NFT and crypto being this kind of explosive thing right now, I think was the perfect formula for us that a little bit of luck and a lot of thought created this excitement around Flyfish Club, but let's not confuse anything.

We need to execute. We do not want to be a one and done. It's great that we have some money in the bank, but we now have to spend that money to curate a really beautiful and thoughtful experience. And if we don't provide value, we're not going to be able to then do future ones. I mean, I think that is the biggest challenge you have. People are paying 10, 14K for these tokens now. Some people, well, that was on the minting. You know, the flyfish token, the general one, went up to, you know, mid-20s and the Omikaze one, some training that's $60,000. So there's a lot of expectations. Yeah, I don't, I've never heard of a

private restaurant club. That's $60,000. Although if you put it over 10 years, if this lasts at least 10 years, it'll be 6,000 a year, which is double so house, I guess. So it's still a lot of expectation. Yeah, you got to knock it out of the park. Yeah, I mean, the idea, obviously, is that there's not this reoccurring fee model that other clubs have. And the more important part, though, is that it's an asset and that you could do what you want with it. And if we execute our plans, hopefully that will be valuable to other people down the road.

So, you know, what would your table at Reos actually be? what would that asset be if it was an asset, not just that you have that table. What if you could sell that table? Not just give it away on a charity, you know, like a lot of people do, but if the families that were grandfathered

into their Rayos table 100 years ago, if they could actually say, if it was in a real asset. I don't know. You tell me what would be worth 100? But I mean, I would think at least. So I think that's the...

Fascinating. Do you get 10% of the leasing option as well as the sale option? All leasing, all resales, the leasing mechanism is being developed. It's not fully done yet. And again, I want that to be a very small piece of this business. The intent of it was really good, but we're definitely hearing a lot of people are asking questions, ongoingly asking questions about it, which is making us feel like some people are just doing it for the leasing mechanism without intent to be there. Yeah, that's another challenge. Like what if people are buying this?

Yeah. What if everybody's just an investor, not a consumer? Again, that's why that 1,500 other tokens were held back. That was a really important piece that is a hedge against people's behavior and people's intent. Can you boot people? I mean, is there any mechanism to say we're revoking your token? We've thought about it and we really just have to see how the experience goes and how people interact with the space. I think ultimately if people don't act responsibly in a space or threat to other people

or are doing something that's not proper, we'll have to address that. Code of conduct. That's exactly right. It doesn't matter how much money you have. If you're not following through with the rules and guidelines, we'll have to address that. It's a simple code of conduct. Maybe people have a dress code. So some places you can't show up in flip-flops.

The answer, unless you're Adam Newman. Who are the most famous people who bought tokens? You got any super famous elite people? We have a lot of famous elite people, none that I feel comfortable disclosing. Some of them have to be public. Are people making it their Twitter advertisers? Does anybody make it their Twitter? Yeah, I mean, some people I've made it public like Brooklyn Beckham, you know,

as a friend and supporter and a token holder. We have a couple of Yankees that are on the squad. A lot of people that have been discreet so far about it. And we'll keep it that way for now. but I feel comfortable saying that it's going to be a good mix of, you know, of all walks of life in the club. Will Smith can't buy a token. No comment there. Behave everybody.

All right, listen, it's super innovative. Congratulations. I grew up in the restaurant business. I know how hard it is. Appreciate it. And anything that, you know, helps restaurateurs be able to take a longer view and not live under the stress that I watched my family go through living months a month in the restaurant business in Brooklyn, I think, is beautiful and wonderful. And I love the innovation.

Tell Gary, I said hi. We'll do. Really appreciate you guys having me on. David Rattle, thanks so much. Take care. That was great. I am absolutely love

with this concept of membership clubs and people being able to support restaurants in advance of them opening. And there's some hard questions, of course. But what did you think, Molly? I like, I like this answers. It felt awful. I would like to see a version of this that,

I mean, and I think it'll develop. Like, I'd like to see a version of this that isn't for the Yankees, right? Like, I want to support my local bars and restaurants, and I think post-pandemic, there's going to be an interesting transition for the restaurant industry because their costs are so much higher

and they're probably going to remain high. And I would love to be able to buy a token that is effectively a subscription and a support mechanism for my local restaurant. I'm not interested in all this elite NFD capitalization crap. Sorry. Hey, what was the name of the company that was doing Kickstarter

and then came to our accelerator, I've got their original name, Bisley. Bisley. Get the Bisley clip all this and send it to the business founder. Make it a token. Make it a token in an NFT. And if they did that for a cafe and they did the whole back in.

What's that? Or don't do a token because it's environmentally indefensible. Come on. I don't think these things have to be like a Bitcoin token. It's Ethereum, which is less. No. I thought Ethereum is much less. Less, but it's not much less.

All right. Listen, you can use other platforms like Solano or whatever and do it with a fraction of it. of the energy. Yes, again. I'm just saying. If it's going to exist, I'm into restaurants. Get my Christopher Niblet, this clip.

Maybe he should be pivoting to this model. Yes. Okay. So, Lana. NFTs. You have a local cafe and you do NFT for your local cafe. You buy the mocha.

I buy the Cortado. It's one of one. You have 50 different beverages you can buy. You put a nice little image with each one. And somebody does that back in for you. You sell it for 500 each. Yeah. Now you sell a thousand of them for your local cafe.

They got a half million dollars. And you can trade them and it gets you what? You get first shot at the tables to sit and work in the co-working space? Totally. Perfect. Exactly. You get some kind of benefit. Like, I really, I like the innovation of a different way to support restaurants.

I'm into that. Hey, everyone. Producer Nick here. I want to tell you about the SaaS Syndicate. If you're a founder of a SaaS company with a product and market, our investment team wants to talk to you. Head over to the syndicate.com slash SaaS, S-A-A-S to apply to raise from the SaaS syndicate. And you can join Jason's syndicate of over 9,000 accredited investment. investors at the syndicate.com.

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