Raihan Anwar is co-founder and community developer at Friends with Benefits, and Colby Holliday was an early member of the community.
We'd love to hear the story about how FWB got started, how you got involved with the project, and a little bit of background for folks who may not be familiar. Raihan: It's almost a year this week. I spend way too much time on Twitter. I always tell people the same thing: "I am so sorry if you follow me on Twitter. It's not my fault I get to write whatever I want. I did that professionally many years ago, and so that's how I know Trevor, who's at Brud and runs Lil Miquela. I got something for you.
I thought, "Okay, cool. Who cares? Big whoop. You have my interest. How do you do that? Then I got into all the Collab. Land connections into Discord, and I figured out that crypto is a viable signalling mechanism for people who want to token gate experiences.
We first built it out as the community and chat room of our dreams. We went from interest-based rooms in Discord to thinking about all of our artist friends who had a really hard time because of COVID. They had no touring income and had to figure out how to make money. We thought this crypto stuff might help. My mandate initially in growing the community and how I became a contributor was literally thinking, "Who are the funniest, smartest people I know, and how can I get them in on this internet house party?
Colby: A lot of you all know I'm not the biggest crypto maximus in the world. It's stuff I find interesting. I was talking with some friends who were musicians and not touring, similarly having a hard time because of the pandemic.
