I recently came across a whitepaper from build_ a “multiverse collective growing startup cities around the world.” They has some interesting ideas about the future of community building which I found fascinated. Last updated in January 2021, the doc is a great living example of what Web3 businesses that bridge physical gaps may look like.
Problem: “The traditional market approach to coworking involves starting with physical real estate upfront and fostering community second, often with no palpable success for the latter” (build_paper v0.1 (Open-source commenting enabled) - Google Docs). What would it look like to flip this model on its head?
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Solution: A business that creates a digital community first before optimizing for or creating physical experiences. Build_ argues that "by starting with a community-first approach online, build_ seeks to translate this online cohesiveness to offline physical space across a global network of small, self-organized cohorts that make up a “build_ hub”” (build_ whitepaper). Their hypothesis is that this creating of community (which is similar to “Bored Ape Yacht Club - BAYC” or “Friends With Benefits - FWB”) will solve the coworking dilemma through creating highly engage communities both online and offline.
Much of this whitepaper’s inspiration came from Balajis’ May 3, 2021 paper “The Start Of Startup Cities • 1729.” Part analysis of Miami tech week and part description of the “crowdchoice phenomenon,” Balajis describes Miami as a Cloud City and crafts his own definition for a “startup city.” He writes,
Miami demonstrates that startup cities are now starting. There are three definitions of a startup city:
A city where startups happen, what San Francisco used to be prior to the current exodus.
A city that acts like a startup, like Miami or Dubai.
A city that is a startup itself, like Prospera, Culdesac, or Starbase, TX.
These definitions get progressively more ambitious. There's nothing illegal about starting a new city, it's just not thought of as something people do. But it's easier than ever before. All you need is a founding influencer and a bare piece of land. Identify a unique feature (like being vegan or car-free), design the city online, recruit a critical mass of people, then move there and build it de novo. And maybe issue a cryptocurrency to start giving an incentive for early adopters to build up their patch of earth — but do it in the form of a REIT so that they don't get too attached to a specific plot of non-fungible land, and instead have shares in the city as a whole.
Build, Culdesac, and others are all on the forefront of what could be a phenomenally game-changing industry.
Monetization: Membership fees, tokens, staking, etc.
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)