THE SUMMARY

<aside> 👉 We used to have 2nd homes, not 3rd spaces — the Italian American clubs, Romanian Men’s associations, the Rotarians, Kiwanis, Elks, Moose, American Legion and Churches, Synagogues & Mosques. These were places for “your people,” spots you could go to make new friends, meet your romantic partner or business partner or simply belong. They all had rituals (Shabbat Dinners, The Italian American Festival, Sunday Service) and forced participation (members taught Sunday school or planned the annual gala). Why did they fade? Because they were all either religious, racist or sexist, and in an increasingly multicultural and secular society their organizing principals have become stale. So what comes next? Not private clubs in their current form — Soho House, Zero Bond and Casa Cipriani are glorified co-working spaces or gated restaurants that have no interest in building real community, and have a business model built around services that ensures they can never be long term sustainable communities. We need a new model, one that recognizes we don’t just want to hang out with people who look like us anymore but honors traditional operating principals of participation & and belonging and redefines what it means to be a “member.” Maxwell is that model, and Maxwell Tribeca is our first location, committed to building New York’s center of high culture and intellectual discussion, a true home for the entrepreneurial curious, socially functional nerds we consider our friends.

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WHAT IS MAXWELL TRIBECA?

Maxwell Tribeca is the first Maxwell.

A Maxwell is based on several core principals.

1. Member Contribution Required: Just like you were expected to contribute to your synagogue, Maxwell expects all our members to be invested in the growth of the community and either serve on councils, help plan events or simply participate and engage with other members.

2. A Specific Definition of “Our People”: Maxwell Tribeca’s version of “our people” are socially functional nerds, or the entrepreneurially curious. Our mission at this specific Maxwell is to build the center of high culture and intellectual discussion in New York City. Other Maxwell’s may have different motivations, missions and definitions of how they think about their people.

3. Built Like A Campus: Every Maxwell space should be built as a 2nd home, not a 3rd space. That means . . .

• A Space Designed for Participation: Kitchen Islands to cook at, spots to camp out and watch the game, built for entertaining first, entertainment second, Maxwell has 3 kitchens, two members bars where they can pour drinks for their friends, and lockers for them to store their belongings.

• F&B Built For Habit Forming: Members get half off at the bar. They have their own liquor locker so they can drink for free if they want to pour their own drink, just like home. And there is no standard restaurant — Maxwell is building (but doesn’t yet have) towards a simple dinner service on Fridays and Saturday evenings and brunch on Sundays. But every meal and drink service is built with long term community incentives in mind to motivate members to either make it their regular de-facto spot, create regular weekly, monthly and yearly rituals or to help members meet each other and stay in touch.

4. Community Aligned & Driven Programming: Maxwell Tribeca hosts a lot of founders dinners (as we have a lot of entrepreneurs as members), our First Fridays Shabbat + afterparty, lots of Premier League soccer watch parties and tons of Geopolitics, AI and Philosophy lectures and dinner discussions, all driven by and often organized with members who work or identify with those fields, ethnicities or interests.

5. Community Aligned Business Incentives

• Incentive Structure: With no restaurant Maxwell has drastically lower operating costs. Maxwell is also not open during the day. These lower costs allow us to pick and choose members because we like them, not because we need to pay the costs of a restaurant or being open 18 hours a day.
• Scaling: As Maxwell scales there will NEVER be reciprocal membership. You are not a member of the Upper East Side Maxwell because you joined the Tribeca location — random people in you home reduce the value proposition. Removing costly services, tables that need to be filled, removes much of the incentive for reciprocal memberships.
• Choosing Our Customers/Doing One Thing Well: Not being open during the day, and only choosing members who join because they ACTUALLY want to meet other members means that we are not trying to serve too many masters — we can do a corporate offsite and not piss off members who want to use it during the day for meetings. We don’t have to include private use of the kitchen in our fee if members actually WANT to cook together. We don’t have to have 5x the staff and a fully functional restaurant if members are joining for social reasons first, services reasons second.