Blackbird

Blackbird Pay is a no-brainer. Lowering payment processing fees from 3-4% to 2% improves profitability in both the short-term and long-term. Faster turnover improves profitability in both the short-term and long-term. Restaurants will adopt Blackbird for Blackbird Pay, in order to get back 1-2% of margin, which in some cases, might mean doubling ma... See more

Late last year, I wrote that more great entrepreneurs would build products onchain as the trade-offs for doing so shrunk. Blackbird is the best example of that thesis that I’ve seen. It’s an app I’d use whether it was onchain or off, and a tool that restaurants use even if they’ve never heard of crypto, even if they don’t particularly like crypto, ... See more

Blackbird is the first app I’ve used that’s onchain but doesn’t feel like it is. It feels like a restaurant app. I use it to discover places to eat, and to earn loyalty for eating there. Starting today, I’ll be able to use it to pay my tab — automatically, without getting the check — using credit card, debit card, or Blackbird’s $FLY token.

Fred Wilson pointed out that being onchain opens up the opportunity to build an AmEx-like loyalty program where all the loyalty points are onchain.

“$FLY is like a stablecoin. It’s not something like Bitcoin where you buy it and hope it goes to $100k,” he said. “But the idea of taking loyalty points onchain is a big deal.”

Specifically, it will all... See more

That’s one of the things that’s newly possible because Blackbird uses crypto, but Blackbird works because it’s not a crypto app. It’s a restaurant platform and consumer app, built by restaurant people, that only uses crypto and whatever other tools it needs to use to make restaurants more profitable, help them understand their customers better, and... See more

The key insight here is that the "regular" experience is a form of capital – social capital , to be precise. It's valuable to both the restaurant (which benefits from repeat business and word-of-mouth marketing) and the customer (who enjoys better service and status). However, this capital has traditionally been illiquid and non-transferable. You c... See more

We’ve talked about crypto very little thus far. Blackbird’s membership cards are NFTs, its loyalty token is $FLY, and network participants can earn ownership in the network with $F2, but we’ve focused on what those different products do for restaurants and their customers, not on the nitty gritty of the tokens themselves.

That is a great thing.

Blac... See more

While $FLY is meant to maintain a stable value or a set exchange rate, usage of $FLY earns both diners and restaurants ownership in the network, via Blackbird’s second token: $F2 . The more $FLY you hold and spend (as a diner) or hold and receive (as a restaurant), the more ownership you earn.

I did ask Ben what he thinks the experience will be like in a couple years as the network scales. Here’s what he described:

You open the Blackbird app. Based on what it knows about you, where you are, and any specific queries you make, it will suggest two or three places nearby. That will be the last experience you have with the tech. You’ll just w... See more