Role Alert: Head of Sharehouses & Wine Trips

Or: Head of captive audience bonding

The TL;DR: We’re hiring for a Head of Sharehouses & Wine Trips to build out our member retreats. Get in touch if you have anyone in mind or APPLY HERE. Read on for more background . . .

One of my armchair diagnoses of why a generation of community building orgs hasn’t quite succeeded in building truly long term sustainable communities was because many of them were SOLELY retreat based — you’d pay 1.5k-5k for a weekend or week full of highly curated people, programming and experiences. I went on a bunch of these “entrepreneurial boondoggles” when I started my entrepreneurial journey 12 years ago and I had great experiences.

But they had their flaws — it was something you’d only do once a year, and once you made a ton of new friends there often wasn’t as much incentive to go back, and if you were financially strapped, 3k was a lot to blow on one weekend.

The Maxwell thesis is built on going hyper local on the assumption that true community requires regular interaction and a building of a core campus into one’s daily or weekly life.

That said, I STILL have friends I met on those trips 10 years ago — people whose weddings I attended, investors who helped me get Maxwell off the ground, and I owe these organizations a huge debt of thanks for helping jumpstart my career and the close personal friends within tech/startups that I still have.

There is something about holding a curated group of people captive for a weekend that tends to form strong bonds — if you have 100 people at an event for a couple hours, even with a very curated event, you will most likely not form any strong bonds as conversations stick to surface level small talk.

But stuck for a weekend? If the curation is done correctly, you almost ALWAYS end up finding a few new friends — you have 6 meals, tons of activities and ice breakers and reasons to meet new people and no ability to opt-out.

You simply have more at-bats to hit a relationship home-run, and you inevitably create memories, important shared experiences that form the core of any community.

As obsessed with our physical club in Tribeca as we are, we recognize there is huge value to ski trips, Hampton’s houseshares, wine trips, summer camps and even external sports teams — 10-15 members playing soccer together every week is an amazing group bonding activity.

So we’re hiring for a person to work on this FULL TIME. As our membership grows rapidly we want to make sure it’s a real community, and creating those shared experiences outside of the space is just as important as creating them in Maxwell Tribeca.

Tell us if you know anyone, APPLY HERE, and as always, throw us a membership application if you think what we’re building is for you.

Cheers,

David, Kyle & Joelle