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Someone asked me recently what the most challenging part of starting Maxwell was. Was it the grueling construction process? Was it lasting through the pandemic? Operating a hospitality business with its requisite ups and downs?
No. The biggest challenge is that it is hard for most of our generation to comprehend what we are doing because if you are a millennial +/-10-20 years, you haven’t experienced a truly positive community model — most of us didn’t grow up in a small town, rituals around churches and synagogues were not as core to our generation’s upbringing, we didn’t have our prom after party at the local American Legion or Kiwanis club and our fathers weren’t part of a bowling league or the local Italian American Mens Club.
But our mind operates on schemas, X for Y, Uber for Groceries, and it’s hard to paint a picture using analogies without capturing many of the negative stereotypes attached to our formal community models as well.
If I say Maxwell is kind of like a secular synagogue someone might go “ew is he starting a cult?” If I say it is like a Harvard Finals Club, Princeton Eating Club or a college Fraternity/Sorority they might say “ok so he’s an overgrown frat boy.” If I use the words private club, many down to earth people roll their eyes as they have heard the pitches for Zero Bond and Casa Cipriani and tune us out immediately.
It’s a narrative minefield.
The fact that our generation (I’m 36) hasn’t had very many good positive examples of non-douchey, non-misogynistic, non homophobic community structures has proven by FAR the most challenging hurdle to overcome as we build membership.
There is a loneliness crisis, 1 out of 5 millennials say they have no close friends and 3-7 years are taken off the average life span due to loneliness, but how do you get a generation who has never experienced positive community models to realize they need it?
Bundling & Unbundling
There is a famous line by an executive named Jim Barksdale about the only two ways to make money in business is bundling and unbundling.
He was referring to examples like Tower Records 12 song albums unbundling to individual iTunes songs, re-bundling back to an all-inclusive Spotify, but it holds true for community as well.
I think a lot about a friend who approached my cofounder a couple years ago and said she didn’t “get it” — was Maxwell for romance, friendship or career, which one?!
I thought it was the perfect question to illustrate our generation’s misunderstanding around what community actually is — you would never join a Church or the Italian American club and ask that — you could get all three, or none, of those things from your experience, but you joined because you believed the overall experience of belonging to one of these organizations could deliver happiness across a bunch of different spectrums.
I realized we had unbundled our community experience.
We now go to Tinder for sex, Hinge for relationships, Chief/YPO/EO/Hampton/Round for career, Bumble BFF for friendship .
50 years ago when you joined a synagogue you didn’t ask the Rabbi if the purpose of the synagogue was to find you a co-founder. But if you were a member for 10 years you may very well find the love of your life, your business partner AND a bunch of friends as well!
Our generation doesn’t get how communities should work.
Real communities are bundles, and Maxwell is a bet that we can assemble a modern (non-racist, non-homophobic, non-religious, non sexist) community bundle again.
The Loneliness Epidemic
This deserves an entire other post but I’ve been reading the book “The Genius of Israel” recently and there were so many aha moments around community, but in short Israel’s happiness index is regularly in the top 10 despite having rockets launched at it regularly, and their rate of suicides and depression is one of the lowest in the world.
The key? A sense of national identity and community that leads people to see the military draft not as a requirement but a right — people are in despair if they aren’t allowed to serve in the IDF because it is such a core part of the national identity that people feel robbed of being able to belong to a country when they are prevented from participating in one of its core rituals.
One of the most attacked countries in the world has made their othering into a strength — if the world insists on a constant struggle of us vs them, they’ve used it to build a solid sense of “us.”
The key isn’t more technology or better mental health professionals it is a sense of belonging and the purpose people get from it — in short Israelis are simply less lonely than most every other modern democracy and it’s the overriding factor in their happiness.
Both Revolutionary & Derivative
There is a strain of conservative reactionary thought that recognizes a lot of what I’m saying and goes “yes, 100% agree, and this is why we have to bring back Christianity.”
I don’t believe that’s the right way to think about it.
Bundles unbundle because the former bundle doesn’t make sense anymore — why buy the entire Taylor Swift album from Tower Records if you really only want to listen to Shake It Off on repeat.
The bundle of Christianity, with its community yes, but also its problems with the role of women and LGBTQ communities, politicization, outdated social rules and more, have become less and less relevant to younger generations.
The key isn’t to cling to old models and apply a fresh coat of paint, but honor those models, learn from them, and iterate.
I often say Maxwell is both revolutionary and derivative at the same time — if you compare us to Zero Bond and Casa Cipriani what we’re doing seems downright quirky and liberal.
But if you look at how literally every other community was run 50 years ago, you could say we’re deeply conservative, modeling the club off the models that have worked for thousands of years.
Our generation has been searching for the new key to happiness and the answer is simply that it’s what it has always been — a sense of purpose in belonging to a community.
Over the last year I’ve stopped using those analogies as much as I used to — I’ve started speaking more in feelings and aspirations — every person has a community fantasy.
For some of us it’s the urge to buy a bar with your friends. I’ve also heard the “we should all move to the same cul-de-sac” community fantasy, and the “lets all pick the same retirement home” fantasy.
For everyone it’s different but everyone is trying to recapture that sense of belonging and comfort and sense of home that some of us had during college, but all of us desire at our core.
Maxwell is our community fantasy, a spot full of socially functional nerds who like to talk about real things, a spot that hosts both Friday house parties and nuclear risk game nights, is home for dinner discussions on global warming and ice luges, our high-brow/low-brow fantasy clubhouse.
If this intrigues you at all, throw us a membership application, we’re always keen to connect with people who have been searching for what we’re building.
Cheers,
David, Kyle & Joelle