Ben Leventhal

two of the best payments and marketplace founders of all time unknowingly pitching @blackbird and scaling the experience of being a "regular" at restaurants

@arunchaudhuri_ @usvlibrarian @yourpalate_ How so

@usvlibrarian @benleventhal We’re streamlining this with @yourpalate_

Three friends, three agents, three different platforms. One says "find dinner before the game." The agents negotiate, pick a restaurant, and book it. Social coordination is becoming an agent-to-agent protocol.

.@benleventhal (prev co-founded @Eater & @resy) is hiring a product manager right now in NYC for his latest startup, @blackbird. 🐦‍⬛ Blackbird is building a loyalty platform that aims to help restaurants guests feel like a VIP everywhere they dine. You'll be in a high-ownership role on a small, fast-moving team. where your decisions will directly shape what the startup builds, how fast they ship, and how restaurants and guests interact. Target salary is $170K - $200K annually. Apply here: jobs.ashbyhq.com/blackbird-labs…

@aling2000520 You will be able to convert all of that to SuperFLY very soon. The FLY > SuperFLY conversion is going to be 10:1.

@benleventhal You misunderstood me, great founder. Because my country does not support your restaurants, I can only purchase FLY through the app. I want to exchange SuperFLY tokens

Blackbird's 2026 Benefits Drop is here. 🪩 blackbird.xyz/news/blackbird…

@aling2000520 Yes, of course. This isn’t some back alley rug shop, big dog.

@benleventhal The FLY purchased in the app is still $1=100, right?

@aling2000520 @blackbird wtf are you talking about

@benleventhal @blackbird Why do we have to lock in the second season for one year? It's not fair at all. You took the chips from the first season and wanted to sell them early, so we can use them as free labor after the second season

👋🚨 In March we will be releasing the next phase of @blackbird's Flynet. Some details: —F2 will now be known as SuperFLY! —Free conversion of FLY to SuperFLY will be at a fixed rate of 10:1 —The full Season Two allocation of SuperFLY will be available first come first serve, one year lock will apply —For Season One SuperFLY holders, tokens will be unlocked —All SuperFLY holders who have 10K tokens (locked or unlocked) and hold their SuperFLY on Flynet will be awarded a Flynet License, which comes with ongoing Fly rewards based on network activity —If you are loading your account with new FLY to convert it into SuperFLY, you're automatically qualified for Blackbird Club membership, too. (>$1000) Flynet is a network that rewards its users for their participation. Restaurant lovers unite. 🖤

@dwr @vmny The closest to this is probably Dorsia. But for pure auction, only bootleg sites.

@benleventhal @vmny Is there any reservation platform that let's a consumer bid on a reservation for a given date? e.g. if I want 7pm next Friday and I'm willing to pay $200 for just the reservation (not including the meal)

Early adopters using agents are going to have a brief golden age of snagging hard to get restaurant reservations as soon as they drop. And then Apple will ship it as part of iOS and you'll never get a reservation again.

@vmny @dwr That's the way it kinda works now.

@dwr cc: @benleventhal

@u2sashko @matthewjtucker @nickkokonas We all know without @nickkokonas there wouldn’t even be restaurants.

@matthewjtucker @benleventhal @nickkokonas Thanks for confirming that Tock is upgrading Resy and that Tock was a category creator that changed the industry

Bye, Tock: Amex is upgrading Resy to win the restaurant reservation wars once and for all fastcompany.com/91496951/amex-…

@kh @nickkokonas Me

@nickkokonas @AlanV_ They will always be happy to pay for genuine incremental covers, but the rest is going away.

@AlanV_ @benleventhal nope.... I think they won't have to do so. Consumer behavior / aggregation / discovery will change significantly though. And the pricing to the SMBs will be a race to zero. Ideally, a restaurant will pay for neither BOH software nor customer discovery.

@nickkokonas Lolz. You’re still a world class troll.

@benleventhal Well, it's upgrading Resy with Tock :-)... it's just a name change. But really, I think Resy / Tock + OT and 7rooms are all going to be outdated fairly soon if someone does their job right.

@CoughdropPeter @blackbird We will not be issuing any SuperFLY ‘for free’ to Season 2 holders. The mechanism is shifting to an exchange. We believe this is a more suitable framework, and purposefully aligns all participant incentives.

Interesting, nothing yet on the issuance formula for season 2 superFLY allo? Right now what I’m reading is we have: - existing FLY currently in wallet -> able to redeem at 10:1 ratio for unlocked SuperFLY - existing F2 in inaccessible flynet wallet linked to account that will be renamed SuperFLY and become accessible + unlocked due to being season 1 allo - season 2 F2 (SuperFLY) claim FCFS at later date which will be locked for 1 year

We will have more to say about this in the next few weeks. For blockchain companies with real users and real traction, there is no time like the present. 🚀

.@benleventhal says we’re living in a golden age of restaurants. He breaks down why in this convo, and covers: – Lessons from a decade+ in hospitality (Eater → Resy → @blackbird)
– Why most restaurant tech misses the point
– How Blackbird uses crypto without making restaurants think about crypto Plus, his favorite spots in NYC.