Tuning In For Good Times: A Conversation with Friends With Benefits Mayor Greg Bresnitz

The web3 quasi Soho House gets a new leader.

For a certain crowd of web3 culture kids, FWB is a community that needs no introduction. 

Since 2020, the Soho House-esque members community has been canonical in driving adoption of web3 through culture - especially for that particular segment of people in your life who drink a lot of natural wine, listen to Peggy Gou and have a particular affinity for small plates restaurants. (It’s me, I’m people or at least I wish I was). 

With a rich career spanning radio, food and events, working with covetable brands like VICE Media and Ace Hotels, Greg Bresnitz, FWB’s new mayor is certainly a fitting CEO. 

Several months into his tenure as mayor of FWB, we caught up with Bresnitz for a brief check on how things are progressing during his mayoral tenure, the secret to running a successful culture business and how web3 models can be used to better reward cultural creators. 

It’s been a few months since you were elected the new mayor of FWB. How are things feeling at the moment? 

They’re feeling great! I’ve been part of the FWB core team since August 2021 quietly working in the background overseeing events in our City and Event Key program so it really just made sense when Alex [Zhang] stepped down to step into the role myself. 

I care deeply about FWB and I have a great deal of experience of working at the intersection of culture, technology and commerce, so I know how to run a good business and a good cultural business. A lot of people think the two aren’t married but if you want to build something sustainable, you have to succeed at both. 

I’ve been publicly in the role for about two months and I think everyone’s rowing in the right direction. We’ve had a number of successful projects like the FWB Bazaar, our World Coin Activation during Mexico City’s Art Week (which was deemed the most daring work of Art by L’Universal, the biggest newspaper in Mexico) so it’s been great! 

We’re really speeding ahead on our mission of using culture to drive the adoption of emerging tech and we’re excited to push it even further. 

You’ve had a long career in culture across music, food, events and especially radio. How did you get your start? What is it about culture that fascinates you? 

Yeah it’s really interesting!  Radio is my first love. I started as a college radio DJ and my first show was called Let The Kids Have Their Rock’n’Roll on KWVA at the University of Oregon. I just loved it. It was two hours just to sit and listen to music before cell phones came about and became such a distraction. It was amazing to always have those two hours to shut out the world and listen to music, and I’ve always pursued that. 

From there, my passion for radio only grew—I explored avenues like Little Radio in Downtown LA and later found myself drawn to Heritage Radio Network in Brooklyn. It’s funny, my brother Darin and I wanted to do a music show but Heritage was a food policy network so what ended up happening was that we carved out an hour show that combined both food and music. Over the years, and through over 600 episodes, we blended the two worlds and we even published a book called "Snacky Tunes: Music Is the Main Ingredient," which dives into music's impact on culinary culture

Radio has always been about discovery for me and everything in my career’s really tapped back to that feeling of uncovering something new. First it was music but then as my interests have expanded - using the work I do to dive into the cultural things I’m interested in. 

How do you feel about the intersection of culture and commerce? What’s your view on the secret behind creating a successful culture business? 

Before FWB, I was leading events at Vice and then Head of Programming & Venues at Ace Hotels, and one of the things I learned really early on is that someone has to pay for all of it at the end of the day. I realized the role I could play was to make a really healthy business model where culture drove revenues, and the revenues could feed back on funding more culture. 

A little inside secret insight for example is that in venues, cultural events are often paid for by a percentage of F&B revenue. And that’s really interesting because in a boom cycle like when it’s summer or high season, you have the money to do projects. Yet, on the flip side, if there’s a cold front or bookings are down, budgets are slashed. It’s so important to make sure revenue is healthy and it’s just really stuck with me that if you have a good business you can actually drive culture. 

A lot of membership clubs for example Soho House struggle with maintaining exclusivity and cachet as they grow in size. How do you plan to avoid the same pitfalls with FWB? 

Our mission statement is to use culture to drive the adoption of emerging tech so everything we do is through that lens. We’re probably not ever going to get behind a 10,000 PFP project for example. 

When it comes to deciding the right partnerships, it’s about being open and honest with our community. Most of the time everyone’s into the partnership opportunities that arise but when there’s disagreement, we aim to open up the floor for debate and that includes asking our partners to come in and speak to the community. 

It’s very interesting to do growth within a DAO because any one of our 4,500 FWB members can put their hand up and be like ‘hey, you’re messing up’. And I take it very seriously to listen to them.

We have nearly a 99% approval rate on our proposals because we'll spend anywhere from one week to two months debating, adjusting the proposal and the decisions until we can get a very majority of the stakeholders to be on board.

Do you ever feel like that can slow things down when you have to make decisions through community approval? 

I think you can make decisions unilaterally that you don’t expect to be deeply unpopular and be caught by surprise - then you still have to deal with it anyway. I think listening to the community is healthier because you know where everyone stands before you make the decision. 

We have a high governance approval rate and then there are times things have been voted down, it was actually because we really did need to start over and I think that energy is better spent upfront. 

I’ve been through the process first as a FWB Community Member, then running Events and now as CEO so I actually think it’s incredibly worthwhile. 

In a recent interview, you’ve stated that traditional systems have often failed to reward creation of cultural value. Can you expand on what you meant?

It’s a good question. I think what you tend to see is that people who start scenes or movements in culture aren’t doing it because they think it's  going to become a multi-billion dollar industry. They do it because they think it’s cool. It's what they and their friends like to do. The people that monetise an industry are not usually the people who created it. There’s a gap between a person who is representing a scene and the person that’s profiting from it. 

When you have new models like DAOs or tokens, there is a much clearer sense of where culture has originated since actions are recorded on chain down to being timestamped.

I think there is a glimmer of hope through onchain attribution for someone to more easily and equitably lay claim to what they’ve created and reap the financial rewards of being a creator. They don’t need to be as business savvy to show where they are in the process. 

I imagine a situation for example where artists in a recording studio could hit a button and (provided there’s consensus) record each person’s contribution to a track so if a song gets sold, or acquired,  they already have the attributions, and that money goes to the right people. 

You wouldn’t need to spend all this money on lawyers to fight for it. Historically, a lot of creators are more sensitively tuned and say ‘fuck it, I don’t care’ when there’s conflict over money and end up getting written out of history and put in the margins. This is a chance to change that. 

In an ideal world, where do you see FWB headed? 

It’s important to understand it all really started off as a token-gated Discord that a bunch of friends started. What we’re most interested is expanding the industry. We’re not just interested in doing only things that are good for FWB. Our annual festival (FEST) acts as a platform for people, brands & companies in web3 and culture to be able to activate. 

Anybody that comes to FWB - whether as a member or a partner should know we are really, really serious about expanding web3 and emerging tech, and really serious about using culture to do so. 

We believe culture is the only way that the space is going to actually expand. It's not going to be the financialization of everything. It's not going to be currency exchanges.  Sitting underneath will be very interesting ownership decentralization, but ultimately it’s culture which you and I and everyone else care about. That's going to be the adoption driver. So if people are interested in that lens of tech those are the people that should seek us out.

Greg’s Taste

What are you reading right now? Three things. Noble Rot - an amazing wine magazine; Ryan Holiday’s stoic series. And then I’m also a self taught tarot reader so I’m reading The Way of Tarot by Jodorowsky (avail for readings).  

What tunes are on the playlist?

I am in a group chat called Neutral Milk Emo that’s named from our collective love of Florida based Home is Where. Lots of my music comes from this or the deep chats of FWB. 

• Fat Dog - King of the Slugs (klezmer punk rock chaos)

• Waxahatchee - Tiger’s Blood (the entire record is perfect)

• TRSH - Sherbert Island (pretty much what my brother likes I’m into)

• Max Richter - Sleep (8.5 hour perfect record that is also documentary - this is my tarot reading soundtrack) 

• Charli XCX - B2b (Charli is a legend in FWB lore & each next track deepens it)

• Mary Lattimore - Snacky Tunes Session (Snacky Tunes has recorded over 350 bands & this was a highlight - was great to see Mary play FWB FEST last year in the mountains)

• Radio - (tend to throw something on when working and zone out)

  • BBC Radio 6 - The perfect run of shows starts Saturday 9am CST with Giles Peterson and runs through The Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show

  • KEXP  - Seattle independent radio that mixes your dad’s fave indie and future classics with the best live performances

  • The Lot Radio - opened on a triangle plot of land when I still lived in Greenpoint & has become the go to spot for every living musician to stop by 

  • WWOZ- living in NOLA, this is the roots music station that is the heartbeat of the city (and foundation of American music)

Where are you hanging out? Going out and listening to DJs is my first love. I’m in New Orleans right now and my favorite night is Gimme a Reason where the resident DJ tends to outshine the guest. There’s The Judy Garlands which is a modern flower studio inside Merchant House - actually Merchant House is great. It’s like 12 different venues and it has an incredible natural wine shop, and martini and pizza place inside. Finally, Haus of Hoodoo for all my candle & ritual needs. 

Anything on the wishlist? I’m a collector of men’s jumpsuits. I’ve always looked for them, and I couldn’t find good ones for a long time. There’s this place in Dumbo called the Front General Store that has really incredible pieces and it’s the only place I go shopping when I go back to New York now. 

If there is anyone out there who wants to start a men’s jumpsuit company - hmu. 

Follow Greg and FWB

Twitter: GregBresnitz
Web: FWB
Taste ID: greg

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