Updates for Friends: Week of 10/9
We released an Annual Memberships feature!
Members can buy yearly memberships now! Within hours of releasing the tool, we immediately sold a membership to our first annual supporter on Friends! Powerful.
Other updates:
- Changed our domain name to https://withfriends.co!
- Created a new simple, powerful memberships page — A large campaign image or campaign video, your campaign goals descriptiopn, and one click-buttons to become a member now. This will be awesome for tabling, and sharing online.
- Alongside our annual memberships feature, we offer new discount pricing tools to promote the annual version of any membership level
- You can set images for a membership levels to express a mood, not just to show off a reward
- Our event features are improving — refunds, better reward lists, and a guest list export feature in the works
- Various bugfixes
Check the full details here:
10/11 — Toolshop Updates for Friends
Over $10K raised for our venues, over 200 supporters, and almost 100 active members!
We were afraid our meter would break when we hit $10K in funds raised for our partner organizations since this pilot began, but the wheels have not fallen off.
We’ll work tremendously hard to keep it that way, so that you can feel confident in joining us on this adventure into strengthening our power to create the cities we want to live in.
Past and Upcoming Talks
10/26 — CVC Demo Night
Friends is presenting at CVC Demo Day on October 26th, alongside Brooklyn Cookie Company, Artery, Lorals, Profillic, Project Playdate, Stratyfy, and ZephVR. Drop by!
SLCeeds at Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a liberal arts college that runs a program called SLCeeds to foster entrepreneurship in its students. I joined an SLCeeds kickoff panel alongside other entrpreneurs to encourage entrepreneurship. The panelists believed that it is important for people with strong historical & ethical backgrounds, like liberal arts students, to be involved in business decisions. I encouraged students to engage in activism and community organizing right now, because to me, it’s the same thing as entrepreneurship.
Great to get to be part of this important work at Sarah Lawrence College!
Pizza Party with Jason
Jason Calacanis (@jason)had a pizza party, where we had the chance to pitch our ideas cold to room full of investors and founders who look to Jason for advice. We come from different backgrounds — arts and activism organizing in NYC — and we’ve rarely been in this kind of company. So, we’re feeling a little nervous and out of place.
But the response was incredible! Jason effectively lauded us as great startup to invest in, sharing lessons with his investor audience on how his investment philosophy leads him to be curious about our potential. “You’re saying people who go to CBGB’s (etc) will become monthly paying members to support the space? I’ve never heard of that. ”
Yes, of course! Memberships fill a real need — event organizers need involvement from their enthusiasts but are also very, very busy; and their enthusiasts not only need venues to continue to be part of the cities that they love, but they also want a more meaningful service to purchase. Enthusiasts have already bought as many tickets and beers as they can stomach. Mmemberships are a powerful tool for something more.
Sharing ideas with people from a different backgrounds is thrilling. It reminds you of how subjective our human experiences are, and how important all of our ideas are, and that we have a responsibility to share them, build them, and make them tangible — whether as an artist or entrepreneur.
Next for Friends — Honorary memberships!
Our final feature for this year helps venues import their members from off-platform, share their Friends benefits with them, and guide them to renew their memberships for 2018.
Honorary memberships are also a great tool for compensating board members or volunteers.
Finally, some cool new venues recently launched on Friends
Detective Squad is a boutique synth shop that organizes workshops and performances:
Blank Forms has a phenomonal lineup, check it out:
Outpost Artists Resources is a long-time art space in Ridgewood, recently getting a lot of love in local press. It’s also home of the legendary End Tymes Festival.
And some really exciting ones to share next week, too. It’s so cool the amazing membership programs that small arts organizations come up when we make it easy for them. Each membership program highlights just how unique these small businesses are.
Would you like to pilot with us? Reach out at: team@withfriends.co
