Seed Club Podcast

Jess chats with Nick Grossman, Partner at Union Square Ventures, to explore USV's investment theses. They delve into how USV tackles significant markets undergoing transformative pressures, spanning social networks, vertical networks, crypto, and climate in order to identify opportunities at the peripheries where change is most promising.

Jess sits down with Brian Flynn, Founder and CEO of Rabbithole (https://rabbithole.gg/) to talk about the rise of points, the challenges they present, and some insights from building in consumer crypto in 2023. 

A look at the people and products in SC06, Seed Club's Consumer Crypto Accelerator featuring...   Host: Jess Sloss   Guests: Patrick Rivera, Steph Alinsug, Sam Spike, Ed Fornieles, Ren Stern, Jessica Van Meir, wijuwiju.eth, plus7, Thomas Chen, Ryan Hamilton, Ryan McMahill, Adi Sideman, Lucas Campbell   Collect this episode on Pods: https://pods.media/theevent   FOLLOW US Seed Club: https://twitter.com/seedclubhq  Jess: https://twitter.com/thattallguy Website: https://www.seedclub.xyz/ 

Jess sits down with Benny Giang and Jayden Windle from Future Primitive to talk about ERC-6551, a new token standard that enables every NFT to have its own wallet. In this conversation, they break down how an EIP works, why they chose to identify the Future Primitive brand so heavily with an EIP, and they lay out some interesting use cases for ERC-6551. Tune in for interesting takes on the Metaverse, NPCs, digital fashion, and more.    FOLLOW US Jess: https://twitter.com/jessewldn  Seed Club: https://twitter.com/seedclubhq  Benny: https://twitter.com/BennyGiang  Jayden: https://twitter.com/jayden_windle    LINKS https://www.seedclub.xyz/  https://m.twitch.tv/futureprimitivexyz    TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro  1:05 What is Future Primitive? 2:35 Launching Future Primitive as an EIP 6:11 What is an EIP? 8:04 ERC-6551 8:59 Future Primitive's brand strategy 13:12 ERC-6551 use cases 17:42 User experience of ERC-6551 22:28 Benny's view on the Metaverse 36:23 What makes Future Primitive novel 42:09 Closing thoughts 43:51 Outro   DISCLAIMER: The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.  

On this episode of Building at the Edges we sit down with Deana Burke and Natasha Hoskins, co-founders of Boys Club, a social collective bringing new voices to the internet. We break down the structure of Boys Club, how the DAO fits into the larger brand, how the brand can become profitable, and their choice to focus on building the media business first. We discuss bootstrapping vs. venture funding, community growth vs. audience growth, and we have a really interesting conversation on how the belief in a brand is what makes a brand valuable.   FOLLOW US Jess: https://twitter.com/jessewldn  Seed Club: https://twitter.com/seedclubhq  Deana: https://twitter.com/medeana  Natasha: https://twitter.com/natashaghoskins  Boys Club: https://twitter.com/boysclubworld    LINKS https://www.seedclub.xyz/  https://www.boysclub.vip/newsletter    TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro  0:41 Boys Club 4:55 Is Boys Club a DAO? 11:27 Turning Boys Club into a business 22:44 Bootstrapping vs. venture funding 31:18 Belief in a brand 37:26 The Boys Club zine 38:55 Community growth vs. audience growth 40:34 DIMES 42:28 Outro   DISCLAIMER: The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.  

On this episode of Building at the Edges we sit down with David Greenstein, co-founder of Sound, to talk about how Sound is creating better incentive alignment in the music industry. David shares why he co-founded Sound, how the project has evolved over time and what we can expect to see in their new mobile app. We discuss David's choice to build Sound as a protocol and the value that interoperability and permissionless building brings to the larger Sound brand as we talk about the value of curation, how Sound is empowering listeners to be tastemakers, and how curators can build businesses on top of Sound. Tune in to hear discussions on music collection and digital identity, the impact of AI on music, and the redistribution of value in the music industry at large.    FOLLOW US Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessewldn  Seed Club: https://twitter.com/seedclubhq  David: https://twitter.com/dgreenstein1  Sound: https://twitter.com/soundxyz_    LINKS https://www.seedclub.xyz/  https://www.sound.xyz/    TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro  3:04 Sound.xyz 5:38 What blockchain technology can unlock for musical artists 8:13 The evolution of Sound 12:48 How Sound ships so fast 15:31 The choice to build Sound as a protocol 21:12 Turning listeners into tastemakers 25:22 The value of curation 27:21 Redistributing value in the music industry 29:34 The Sound mobile app 36:29 The role of AI in music 42:43 Closing thoughts 44:22 Follow David 45:59 Outro   DISCLAIMER: The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.  

On this episode of Building at the Edges we sit down with Robin (aka SuperMassive) to discuss the intersection of storytelling and web3 tech. Robin tells us about his experience as a filmmaker over the past 20 years and how the advancement of technology has impacted his career. We talk about the implications and inevitability of the Metaverse - what Robin describes as “the internet built by game developers.” He walks us through everything he's working on at BasedAF including the groundbreaking way he's utilizing Unreal Engine to create instant motion capture, and we dive into his takes on co-creation, storytelling, and the web3/crypto industry at large.    FOLLOW US Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessewldn  Seed Club: https://twitter.com/seedclubhq  SuperMassive: https://twitter.com/IamSuperMassive    LINKS https://www.seedclub.xyz/  https://linktr.ee/based_af    TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro  5:56 The state of the filmmaking industry 12:16 Robin's thoughts on NFTs 13:55 Thoughts on the Metaverse 18:52 The inevitability of the Metaverse 25:53 What Robin is currently creating 38:31 The business side of BasedAF 43:55 The valuation of IP 47:11 Co-creation 54:58 Storytelling 1:07 Outro   DISCLAIMER: The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.  

On this episode of Building at the Edges we sit down with Matthew Chaim of Songcamp to discuss the intersection of music and web3 tech. Matthew shares how Songcamp has evolved over time, and what his experience has been like leading a decentralized music collective.  We cover topics like tastemaking as an individual vs. tastemaking as a collective, the value and challenge of leadership in DAOs, the concept of a headless band, and the intersection of music and NFTs - a space Matthew believes is still being defined.    FOLLOW US Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessewldn  Seed Club: https://twitter.com/seedclubhq  Matthew: https://twitter.com/matthewchaim  Songcamp: https://twitter.com/songcamp_    LINKS https://www.seedclub.xyz/  https://songcamp.mirror.xyz/    TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 2:23 Songcamp 4:39 The success of Camps 9:18 Experimenting at the edges of tech 18:55 Collective tastemaking 22:23 The challenge of collective consistency 25:07 What is a headless band? 27:46 Is Songcamp a music label? 33:22 Music NFTs 36:37 What's next for Songcamp? 39:41 Outro   DISCLAIMER: The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.  

On this episode of Building at the Edges we sit down with Li Jin and Jesse Walden, Co-founders and General Partners at Variant Fund. Variant Fund is an early stage fund investing in web3 that believes the next generation of the internet will transform users into owners.   We kickoff the episode by diving into that thesis as Li shares her vision for the ownership economy one day leading us to the passion economy. We break down some of the narratives around decentralization and distributed ownership to analyze what is truly driving value in the space - what kind of ownership experiences do users actually want?   Li and Jesse share their bedrock convictions in the ownership economy and Jesse gives his thoughts on token design as well as some frameworks to think about when designing a token. We also discuss tokens as products and token design as a consumer experience.    To close out our conversation, Li and Jesse give us the inside scoop on their recent announcement, the Variant Founder Fellowship, as well as how early stage founders can get involved.    FOLLOW US Jess: https://twitter.com/thattallguy  Li: https://twitter.com/ljin18  Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessewldn  Seed Club: https://twitter.com/seedclubhq  Variant Fund: https://twitter.com/variantfund    LINKS https://www.seedclub.xyz/  https://variant.fund/     TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 1:43 Welcome Li and Jesse 3:16 Ownership economy and passion economy 7:33 Turning users into owners with tokens 11:09 Why aren't more products user-owned? 17:10 Do people actually want ownership? 20:17 The evolving culture of ownership 22:26 Bedrock convictions in the ownership economy 26:53 Tokens are products 32:16 Unpacking Jesse's recent tweet 36:54 The Variant Founder Fellowship 41:12 Closing thoughts 41:52 Outro   DISCLAIMER: The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.  

On this bonus episode of Building at the Edges, Jess sits down with Alex Zhang and Mike Bodge from Friends with Benefits to get the inside scoop on their new app - a reimagining of social media without the ads, algorithms, or spam bots. Alex and Mike explain how the app came to be, and how they built it with the FWB community alongside them every step of the way. They share what they feel is lacking in the current social media landscape and how they envision this new app creating a cozy place on the internet that's optimized for meaningful connection and positive group dynamics. They wrap up the episode looking to the future as Alex and Mike share how they envision the app evolving over time. GET IN TOUCH Seed Club: https://twitter.com/seedclubhq FWB: https://twitter.com/FWBtweets Jess: https://twitter.com/thattallguy Alex: https://twitter.com/alexzhang__ Mike: https://twitter.com/mikebodge TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 0:49 FWB's new app 5:39 What does this mean for the future of FWB? 10:37 Building in alignment with your community 18:21 User experience of the app 19:53 Design choices 30:42 Long term goals 39:37 Outro DISCLAIMER: The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.

On this episode of Building at the Edges, Jess sits down with Yancey Strickler from Metalabel to discuss the new era of digital records, the egalitarian structure of Metalabel, and the true value of creation. They dive into what Metalabel unlocks for creators and explore how Metalabel utilizes a heterarchical structure to distribute ownership and responsibility.    TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 0:36 Welcome Yancey 1:03 A shift in eras 4:04 The on chain era 8:35 Owning your data and your identity 12:56 The future of digital history 16:42 Metalabel's unlock for creators 20:54 Distribution and metalabels  26:24 Metalabel's organization structure 31:47 Ownership of ideas and responsibility 42:52 Exploring governance 45:35 The value of work 47:57 Closing thoughts 50:25 Outro   FOLLOW US Jess: https://twitter.com/thattallguy  Yancey: https://twitter.com/ystrickler  Seed Club: https://twitter.com/seedclubhq  Metalabel: https://twitter.com/Metalabel_xyz  RESOURCES Seed Club: https://www.seedclub.xyz/  Metalabel: https://collect.metalabel.xyz/    DISCLAIMER The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.

Down cycles clarify true product market fit, especially in highly financialized industries like crypto. In this episode of Building At The Edges, Jess sits down with Scott Moore, co-founder of Gitcoin, to discuss insights from building the leading web3 grant funding DAO.     FOLLOW US Jess: https://twitter.com/thattallguy  Scott: https://twitter.com/notscottmoore   SeedClub: https://twitter.com/seedclubhq Gitcoin: https://twitter.com/gitcoin    RESOURCES Seed Club: https://www.seedclub.xyz/ Gitcoin: https://gov.gitcoin.co/    TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 2:19 Market cycles 4:42 Product-market fit 9:07 The evolution of Gitcoin 18:57 Community and DAOs 24:54 Making an impact 31:40 The sustainability of impact DAOs  46:19 Bringing web3 to the real world  52:29 Outro    DISCLAIMER: The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.

We're taking a brief winter break and will be back soon with new episodes of Building at the Edges. In the meantime, enjoy this episode from the archive. For our final episode of Season 2, we return to web3 first principles: community tokens create yet-unrealized opportunities within an immeasurable design space at the intersection of culture, ownership, and value creation. The realization of these opportunities is inevitable — but the timeline and cadence remains unknown. Derek Schloss is a partner at Collab+Currency and a regular guest on Proof with Kevin Rose. Derek and Jess explore possible futures for the community token design space, taking both inspiration and cautions from Nouns, Art Blocks, Chromie Squiggles, and $10 pizza with a friend. While internet native communities have leveled up innovation on the side of pooled capital, we have yet to unlock truly novel ways of allocating that capital using shared decision-making. The builders who both perceive the unrealized opportunities and sit in the discomfort of a novel design space will be the ones to watch through the next cycles of innovation.

We're taking a brief winter break and will be back soon with new episodes of Building at the Edges. In the meantime, enjoy this episode from the archive. First Club episode! We talk with Aaron Wright, the co-founder of OpenLaw, the team behind the LAO, Flamingo DAO, Neptune DAO, and more. We talk about all things DAOs, and the value of having a sense-making organism. We talk about his excitement for the Metaverse being the next big play in crypto, and of course, we dive into Social Tokens.

Jess sits down with our very own Peace Node, the anon behind the indelible Seed Club brand. They talk through the unique discipline that is building a DAO's brand — a project that expands beyond the traditional modality of creating a static style kit. DAOs turn branding from single player to multi-player mode.

Kevin Owocki is the founder of Gitcoin. Earlier this year, Gitcoin transitioned from the original company structure to a DAO, and Kevin exited from his leadership role to cede full governance over to the token holders. In this episode, Kevin and Jess talk through the road that led him there and the many challenges and opportunities of decentralization that he — and Gitcoin — learned along the way, and how blockchain uniquely enables the transition from centralized company to fully decentralized organization.

Dan Romero is the co-founder of Farcaster, the decentralized social network that many in crypto are turning to as a Twitter alternative. Jess and Dan explore what it means to be a decentralized social network in 2022, the critical differences between stewarding an open protocol and a client, the transition from users to customers, and how to build for revealed preference vs. stated preference.

Nouns DAOs are having a moment in the spotlight, with Jacob Horne —founder of Zora — as one of the more prominent evangelists. In this conversation, Jess and Jacob discuss a core question: Why are ERC721 tokens (NFTs) a more compelling form of ownership than ERC20s? They explore the connection between Nouns DAOs and hyperstructures, and a compelling take that forkability is additive to the ecosystem as a whole. Nouns DAOs enable localized nodes of functionality, thereby increasing optionality and infinite possibilities for proliferating a community meme. Communities exist, communities want to do things together, and they need a medium to do that — the Nouns model provides the tools to do exactly that.

Justin Alanis is the founder of StoryDAO, an IP incubation hub and multi-media storytelling platform with community at the core. Justin argues for a rethinking of our NFT interactions as experiences in the stories themselves. With StoryDAO, he's hoping to create and incubate fresh stories told by emerging voices, and meaningfully empower creatives within the novel value-generation models of blockchain.

Are DAOs the logical evolution of a post-lifestyle culture? Toby Shorin is the co-founder of Other Internet, and author of the recent essay Life After Lifestyle. In this conversation, Steph (Media Steward) sits in for Jess while he's AFK. Toby and Steph explore DAOs as subcultures within a post-lifestyle zeitgeist, the evergreen moral impulse of world building, and the hubris of brands attempting to supplant meaningful community connection. In spaces without clearly defined doctrines, it's critical that we attune to the things we're dually instructing and absorbing.

Web3 networks, from DAOs to tokenized communities to metalabels, have so much to learn from the work of David Elrichman. He's the author of Impact Networks, and co-founder of Converge and Hats Protocol. Pulling from his experience in decentralized organizing, David walks us through the organizing tenants of an impact network and shares his theory of self-organization. Jess and David discuss the need for the DAO ecosystem to move on from faulty coordination principles that emphasize leaderless and structureless organizations. Instead, they argue for a vision of leader-full orgs and co-created structures. Also explored are what it means to exclude with purpose, the usefulness of constrained delegation, and a theory of DAO leadership.

Nathan Schneider is a teacher in Media Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he runs the Media Enterprise Design Lab. He's the originator of the “exit-to-community” meme, and as the co-founder of Start.Coop, Nathan thinks deeply about what crypto can learn from the long history of economic justice. In this episode, Jess and Nathan unpack the provocative concept of innovation amnesia that accompanies moments of great technological disruption. He argues for a rethinking of ownership as citizenship, inviting people to be more than just economic actors in relationship to an entity. Ownership enabled by blockchain creates the possibility for people to define their relationship to productive activities and the fundamental human pursuit of a more just, democratically-owned future.

Internet native organizations — whether we call them DAOs, tokenized communities, metalabels, or other — are novel organizational containers allowing people to collaborate in previously impossible ways. Rueben Bramanathan is a General Partner at Ideo CoLab Ventures, and he believes in the power of tokens to enable more equitable means of organizational participation. How we incentivize, reward, and design for the specific interactions within these containers remains an exciting design space.

Having survived the last transition from bull to bear, today's community-owned networks are discovering the merits of curated communities aligning around shared passion. In episode 2 of Building At The Edges, Jess explores the future of value creation through the lens of passion with guest Gaby Goldberg. Gaby is an investor at TCG Crypto, an early stage crypto fund. Their emerging thesis on “investing in passion” could be described as shorthand for the intimacy and connection that comes from building intentionally with small groups of dedicated people. While much of the crypto space incentivizes people to get out, fork, or rage quit, the most promising products and experiences will arguably come from the communities where people are incentivized to stay and create.

In our Season 3 kick-off episode, Jess sits down with Marty Bell, founder of Poolsuite, for an inside look into the Poolsuite universe. Poolsuite is one of those irresistible brands that's nearly impossible to explain. That's partially due to the precisely executed, multilayered experiences across Poolsuite's world, including auditory, visual, digital, and physical goods. Jess and Marty pull-apart the experiential details that define Poolsuite, and surface lessons from their most recent release, Grand Leisure. They explore the novel interactions of web3 brands and businesses, DAOs as incubators for community ideas, and the importance of technology optionality.

David Phelps is the co-founder of JokeDAO, a governance platform for decentralized, bottom-up governance. In a recent essay collaboration on Not Boring, David takes a stand against consensus in DAO governance. He argues that forking — more specifically, contrarian opinions — presents a more interesting opportunity for governance innovation. Jess and David touch briefly on the value of community curation, the complications of off-chain + on-chain coordination, and the persistent challenge of the attention economy.

Pet3rpan is in an investor at 1kx, an early-stage crypto fund. DAOs have a strategy problem, conflating decentralization with structurelessness. In practice, Pet3rpan sees an opportunity to start with governance constraints and then build toward governance minimization. Decentralized coordination and community building are developable skills. And yet there is no replacement for the experience of running and failing experiments.    

Julia Rosenberg is the co-founder and chief pod officer of Metropolis (formerly Orca). Metropolis is the trustware layer for scaling socialware: pods. Pods build on the embedded socialware within small groups of people, creating an automated container for coordination. Jess and Julia explore current governance experiments, both successes and challenges. Recent DAO shakeups demonstrate an over-indexing against centralization and corporate structure. As we move toward scalable trustware, there is one socialware that cannot be automated: leadership.

Jango is a developer at Juicebox, a protocol for community fundraising. Web3 coordination often exists at the intersection of large treasuries. Innovative means of capital allocation is one of the most promising crypto design spaces. Jess and Jango discuss automated funding mechanisms, the use case for frequent proposal and discourse periods, and how this could unlock more DAO experiments.

Joy and I discussed how her mindsets from her time as a musician inform her current work as a founder in web3, her philosophy on what a member-owned apparel community will look like, her approach to good growth, and the way they are iterating with their community as they bring their physical products to market and their digital tokens to community with their upcoming NFT launch. This episode has so many deep takeaways from a builder with tons of cross-industry experience who is now learning and building in real-time in web3.

In this episode, Nicole speaks with Deana and Natasha from the Boys Club founding team. Natasha and Deana shared a multifaceted look at the evolution of taking a DAO From 0 to 1, including the genesis of a leadership team, the work behind their first membership NFT launch, and lessons learned from putting their first proposal through governance. As Boys Club moves into its next stage of development, there is a lot to explore from how they are building their future business model.

For our final episode of Season 2, we return to web3 first principles: community tokens create yet-unrealized opportunities within an immeasurable design space at the intersection of culture, ownership, and value creation. The realization of these opportunities is inevitable — but the timeline and cadence remains unknown. Derek Schloss is a partner at Collab+Currency and a regular guest on Proof with Kevin Rose. Derek and Jess explore possible futures for the community token design space, taking both inspiration and cautions from Nouns, Art Blocks, Chromie Squiggles, and $10 pizza with a friend. While internet native communities have leveled up innovation on the side of pooled capital, we have yet to unlock truly novel ways of allocating that capital using shared decision-making. The builders who both perceive the unrealized opportunities and sit in the discomfort of a novel design space will be the ones to watch through the next cycles of innovation.

“The next generation of internet protocols and platforms and applications will be owned and operated by their users.” Mason Nystrom is an investment partner at Variant Fund, and he – like Seed Club – firmly believes in this bright version of our collective future. In this episode, Jess and Mason explore emerging trends and challenges in web3, and what they mean for community token networks. Governance makes a cameo, as does the call for more DAO leadership and structure. They touch on the increasingly blurred lines between users, consumers, builders, and owners. Web3 unlocks new types of consumer interactions; creating containers for those novel interactions to emerge will accelerate onboarding the next billion people to crypto.

In this episode, Nicole speaks with Bas Grasmeyer and Jeremy Grinberg from the COLORS DAO founding team. Colors is a global community of creatives supporting each other across disciplines, building off Colors Studio, the global music talent showcase, and discovery community. Bas and Jeremy discussed the importance of building cadence, basic structure, and predictability in a community and how that allows people to build cultural legos, plus the process of evolving a DAO out of an existing organization and navigating the various organizational and token structures that best meet the needs of the community.

We've got a special episode of Club Pod with Seed Club Co-Creators Jess Sloss and Nicole d'Avis. Jess and Nicole recorded the episode late on a very hot summer Friday to bring us a comprehensive exploration of what we can expect for SC05. We hear about the thoughtful, significant changes to the Accelerator (shoutout to interval training), the updated selection process (double shoutout to the Accelerator Portal), and what makes a great project for the Accelerator. We cover why the Accelerator matters and the role of Seed Club as an unmatched sensemaking network of the leading web3 innovators. Applications for SC05 opened earlier this week, and the application period remains open through August 15.

The core value at Seed Club is our network, which traces its origin to its nascent days in crypto. Wong Joon Ian is one of Seed Club's earliest co-conspirators. He's a shining example of the “thoughtfully” in lets f*cking thoughtfully go – integrating historical insights from the physical world into the high-velocity design space of web3 community-building. Joon runs Amplified, a web3-native premier event and conference planning service, which amplifies the role of gatherings in cultivating great communities. We jam on token insights through the lens of loyalty points programs and local currencies, pulling apart the parallels and key distinctions. Our conversation ends with a jump down the web3 media rabbit hole.

In this episode, We spoke with Gabriel Tumlos from the Mochi founding team. Mochi is a team-based goal-setting game focused on collective accountability and growth. Gabriel shares how the idea for Mochi evolved through multiple crypto cycles and the different approaches to building community market fit he is currently exploring. Mochi is experimenting with in-game economies in novel ways and leaning into web3 native partnerships to understand and design with communities - whether for shared productivity or even to achieve lucid dreaming. Lots to learn from an experienced web3 builder!

The questions motivating Arkive are not distinct to the needs of a decentralized museum — they're universally resonate considerations for anyone building community-owned networks in web3. Tom McLeod is the co-founder of Arkive, the self-proclaimed “last museum” and simultaneous first-ever decentralized physical museum. Arkive's design space exists at the intersection of physical objects, digital community-building, and member governance. Tom walks us through decision-making experiments enabled by their in-house DAO tool Atrium, providing a justification for bespoke DAO tooling solutions. He shares the coordination tensions they're hoping to solve, guided by a strong belief in embedding community engagement ahead of financialization. We're left with a clear takeaway: the most exciting DAOs will become institutions.

In this episode, we sit down with Matt Medved, co-founder of NFT NOW. We talk about his experience building media brands in the legacy world, having worked at Billboard and Spin Magazine, and how that has informed what he is doing with NFT NOW stepping into the web3 space. We talk about how DAOs and communities can be effective media organizations. And how to build great founding teams and culture.  

Nicole d'Avis sits down with Jonathan Mann, aka songadayman, aka the founder of SongaDAO. It turns out they have been in the same music/crypto circles for 5+ years, on similar tracks, though just connected in the last year, so it was cool to look back at shared history. They explored the genesis of SongaDAO, including the early inspiration for the DAO, as well as its start in the last bear market cycle and what current builders might learn from his experience. They discussed the power inherent in creating something daily and shared some of the very cool community and technical experiments that are happening right now and in the future of SongaDAO.

Today we have Seed Club's very own Ben Jacobs on the podcast. Ben was one of the earliest contributors at Seed Club. In this episode, we talk about his inception and involvement in SC. We talk about some big lessons that we've learned. Some contrarian points of view. This conversation feels like one that Ben and Jess would often have which is trying to create space to broadly make sense of the world that we're operating in.  

In this episode, we sit down with Steve Klebanoff. Steve is a developer. He's worked at 0x protocol. He's been involved with several NFT experiments in the generative artspace and is an advisor to Artblocks and, most recently, a core contributor at Party DAO. We talked about his early days getting in the space and what he found so appealing about Ethereum. About what enamored him with generative art, we finished talking about Party DAO, the genesis story there, and what we can expect from Party DAO v.2.

Today we have Brian Flynn, CEO, and co-founder of Rabbit Hole. Brian is a dear friend who helped inspire the birth of Seed Club. In this episode, we dig into reputation, DAO tools, what we get right, and what we get wrong. How do we ultimately scale DAOs from 50 people collaborating with each other to 5,000?  We spent a bunch of time talking about Nouns DAO. The bull case, the bear case. We also talk about building value in DAOs, the importance of it, the challenges of it, how far we've come, and how far we have to go. 

Today we're joined by Devin Lewtan, the co-founder of Mad Realities, the world's first interactive dating show where the community decides what happens. We get into Devin's educational background and journey from creating NYU girls roasting tech guys on the clubhouse app to building Mad Realities. We explore the potential and value there is in creative commons projects. We talk about their goal to turn Mad Realities into a protocol. And what they imagine Mad Realities could look like on a larger scale. 

Today we are joined by generative audio-visual artist DEAFBEEF. In this episode, we get into how DEAFBEEF got into creative coding and making generative art. What makes gen art so special, especially when paired with the blockchain. We dive into lessons from zero to one and how he has navigated that. And finally, we learn about Frank Zappa's role in his life. 

Today we are joined by Stani Kulechov. Who is the founder of Aave and the Lens protocol. Stani has been a builder for years in the Ethereum ecosystem and today we explore the value of constraints when building products. How to create open permissive contribution opportunities in DAOs. The role narratives play when building products. Why we need web3 social and the economic business models that could sustain web3 social. And the Lens protocol. 

Today we have Joey DeBruin on the podcast. Joey is the co-founder of Backdrop and has been a long-time conversation thought partner of Jess Sloss. We talk about Backdrop's initial intention when building and has that has evolved. The idea of impermanence when building web3 products and platforms vs. web2 platforms keeps users locked—the next season of tokenized communities and what incentive structures could change. And Insight into tokenization of SAS products and how Joey is thinking about it today.

Today we bring you a conversation with Tina He, product designer, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Station. We got into some big topics: reputation, governance, token economic models, and Station. A web3 data aggregator focused on showcasing contributors' history of contributions and making that visible to DAOs.

Kristen Stone is our guest on episode two of the Seed Club podcast. Kristen was an early employee at Coinbase, has recently spent her time at Balancer Labs, and works at Seed Club on operations. In this conversation, we get into some of Kristen's hard-fought lessons being the 50th employee at Coinbase, about her early time in crypto since 2014, how Jess redefines his role at Seed Club and the importance of labels when defining a position within an organization. We get into how human consciousness has evolved relating to DAOs.   

Welcome to season two, episode one of the Seed Club podcast. In this episode, Jess Sloss sits down with Mike Dudas, Instigator, and creator at LinksDAO, a DAO aiming to buy and operate a golf course. We learn about the Links DAO origin story and, how they operate given the regulatory grey market of NFTs that have utility, why we need more DAOs rather than DAO tooling.  And what DAOs need to break through to the next level. 

This week, we spoke with Lg Doucet of The First Mint. The First Mint is a web3 media brand and leading content source for new & established NFT projects, with a focus on Sports & Entertainment. LG and I met during Seed Club's second accerlator, right when his community and podcast were exploding in popularity. We spoke about the rollercoaster LG has been on with the popularity of NBA top shot, and as the hype happened, how he has stayed true to his community and purpose. Lots to learn from someone who has been at this for over a year!