Ladies and gentlemen welcome back to another SLG meetup your host Alvaranunya to bring you another interesting and successful guest today We're gonna have with us the CEO of our house club His name is Sam Pei Ravi and for those of you that are not familiar with our house I gotta say that I live here in Miami and I've seen all sorts of crazy things when he comes to luxury living But this one in particular takes the top is the first luxury private members club on the water So if you've come to Miami Beach You've seen probably those floating houses and this is pretty much putting them all together and creating something that is beyond luxury experience So he's gonna bring us all the stories behind this vision and how they're redefining luxury living I am actually I'm actually on the first of our many many of these vessels that are arriving We actually have six of these on order and we do a variety of things with them Right so four of them become the actual our Cal social club and we have two other vessels that are intended for our members And for non-members as well to activate on private events corporate events etc And so I'm sitting on the very very first one right super exciting Yeah, and then the second one arrives next week and we start to receive the other ones in a few months And then the whole club is up and running altogether. This is so exciting and congratulations I mean I gotta say that I've seen the progress on how you guys have been evolving over the years for those that come to South Beach It's very iconic to go to the Macartan Bridge and see that floating house of the castle that everybody was like Oh my god, how come it is a house floating around Miami Beach water? How this possible right? So it captivated a lot of the attention on the early stages and then you guys reshaped it into turning into a members club So tell me a little bit about the vision behind this concept Yes, so you know so our house prior to our house my co-founder and wife Natalie We were actually running a business together called custom house.
It was a venue in New York City I'm co-working by day private events by night After we launched that we came down We opened up a second location in Miami at the Fina Hotel So we took over the rooftop of the Fina Bazaar building and turned it into a pop-up social club So probably about like a five-month social club Which ended up going six months and that was super cool But we knew it was short-term and we started to look for what our permanent home base was going to be and I This is kind of where the story took the funny turn I've had a very long love of electric boats and I would tell Natalie I think instead of building a club on land we should actually build one on the water I was like well There's like new type of like yachts that are solar and electric and they don't use fuel very forward thinking she was like This is crazy. Get this out of your mind and as we Continue to think about it, you know, I kind of moved off that idea and then one day I showed her the vote that you're talking about the one that is docked off of Star Island on the car the causeway and when she saw that She said what is that? It's a solar electric boat, but you've already told me you don't like these and she looked at it She's like oh, no, that's that's a game changer. That is not a yacht That's something else and we started to see hey, how can we make this work?
So we reached out to the manufacturer we tried to actually buy that boat And unfortunately on two fronts one it had already been sold to the person who was there and the second piece of It didn't have the commercial capacity so we went back and worked with the manufacturer to Design and engineer these vessels that are a little bit smaller and each one of these by itself would not be sufficient for a club But then we said what happens when you put four of these together and when we saw what that looks like on paper, you know It's like our mind blew over like oh god. We got to go do this right? Yes, it's Kind of like a sci-fi movie. It's like some floating thing in the middle of the water, but it's just for it's for y'all Literally, but you know what time it's very exciting to see how it's evolving and how the city is becoming more innovative right?
I see just recently they were doing a little paddle match Floating on the water and then we also have these floating vessels where people can land the helicopters And now you guys are literally putting together a whole community on water by putting this member club on so my question to you is How do you see this redefining the way that people look at luxury living? Well, I'll give that to you from two angles right because these vessels the way they are designed by The manufacturer are actually designed for a hybrid residential slash Boating you try these are best. They're not homes are classified as vessels But you can live on a boat and a lot of people do right and so the ideal use for this is basically what you see happening on Silent that guy is building his property. He's gonna live in his house his boat is gonna be sitting off front He can go hang out on it.
He can go barbeque on it or he can take it out and Enjoy it for the day, right? So it's a very different use case and anytime you have something new, you know People kind of walk at it. They look at it. They say no no no not here not here People get scared of things that are new so I think there was a good sector of people who really looks this said we see how this is the new wave, right?
Obviously we have a lot of water issues here in Miami with you know rising sea levels and what's happening with the flooding etc And people say you know in 10 20 30 50 years maybe having more access to the water Especially if those don't live waterfront or near Marina and keep it at Maria. It's very different right now You have some flexibility to go out on your boat. It's actually stay on it comfortably for two three days five days However long you want that's that's really the first I think people are gonna gravitate more and more towards water and enjoying the water There's a very psychological benefit to being on water But the second piece is you know, I mentioned that I think a lot of people are every now and then afraid of the new And in Miami you live here. You probably know this there's a lot of crazy things happening out on the water Right.
I mean crazy hard is crazy just here's all kinds of stuff And so Miami residents and the government are very careful and trying to be more and more careful of what happens It's only a new concept coming out my god. What is this thing gonna be right? And so you know we we spent some time and we really turn the tide and I think a lot of the local politicians are very excited for the project You know, they look around they say we're trying to stop the crazy on what's happening on Biscayne Bay But they hear you guys are building a very respectable social club with solar electric boats that have holding tanks and don't dump anything into the water And you don't use anchors which make the sea bed so people are really coming around to it Not only the vessels themselves, but the club as well. That's that's really been really exciting to see that happening So let's talk about that.
Let's talk about the social club, right? Because everybody now is oh my god This is exciting. This is innovative. I want to be part of it So how can somebody apply to it?
What kind of experiences do you offer? Tell us a little bit about the concept behind the membership? Sure the membership, you know, well first as the club itself We're obviously very careful on what we do out on the water. We're a maritime operation We're extremely conservative and controlled within our Operations and how we do things safety is of course December one right no questions asked there, but you know the club we are building you know an innovative and active and kind of like a Boundaryless community.
We don't say we're focused on the arts or tech or finance. We're industry agnostic, right? And so our house is a private social club for the world's disruptors And that's anybody who is working to change and improve their industry their community anything around them, right? So if I had to liken it I mean I think it's people who are less nine to five and a little bit more go go go Let's find cool things to do.
Let's improve this. Let's improve that I would actually say you're an ideal member, right? I've seen kind of what you do right? You're an endurance athlete, you know, you've flight helicopters I mean you have like that zest for life, right?
And like that's our member people who do things and the reason we're not industry agnostic is because you're gonna stand to benefit To learn more from somebody who has that same zest for life, but in a different industry. How's he doing it? How's he applying it? What are they doing?
What is she doing to build an industry or her company? Right and in terms of applying, you know, you just literally go on to the website you quick apply. It's a very short questionnaire At $500 deposit, but that just starts the process right from there. What we do is we actually get we really get to know our members Probably better than any other community.
I know of right. Um, we have events all throughout the year Very social very casual events. We're just getting to know people right so our whole team is there other members are there other applicants and they're non-aflicants are there and it's kind of just everybody getting to know okay This is the community that is building here, right? We have a few events on this one people got really excited But she goes to that we really learned who's a great fit and who's really gonna propel this community forward, right?
Because it's not gonna be me and it's not gonna be the rest of our team and people pushing it forward, right? That has to come from the community itself and it really starts with who you see that community with and That's the most important part. So we're really curating that I love that. And when is it officially launching?
When are you envisioning all this? Yeah, yeah, okay So I mentioned that the club is built on four boats, right? We actually have six on order. I mentioned these first two the one I'm sitting on right now and the next one we get are technically not the club However, we do activate on them in a variety of ways so we can chart them out to a private corporate event We can host activations and events for our community just like the community days I was telling you about But these two are classified a little bit differently by then the final four that will arrive, right?
And when the first of those four commercial vessels arrives and that's gonna be in q2 The club is technically open The club is actually 360 members in Miami at least that it's opening and when vessel number one gets here the first commercial vessel We open up to our first 90 members when the second vessel comes we go to 180 third vessel 270 fourth vessel 360 Right so the people who have applied and have been accepted as members They're gonna be the first ones to get access right away products those vessels each come about one month later So, you know, let's say may june july august or might be major august september But people are gonna get access in may and june and to the extent we can open up access We will right so if we can we see we have the ability to open up to 180 members on the first vessel Sure, we will why not right get everybody in there get the juices flowing and uh and turn it on So is the idea to make it bigger you're gonna keep it for vessels and then do another for vessels or expand into other areas What's the vision? Yeah, you know that um so Miami will be a four vessel club And then we have a goal that within five years of Miami opening we open up seven more clubs or six more clubs for a total of seven I should say um that is new york city is next San francisco and new port beach and then uh Internationally we're looking at can is some will and do but we might do assemble or boat go drum. We're not really sure we're looking at those two That's the first five years and then the subsequent five years We think we can open up another 20 to 25 and be close to that 30 club range And so you look at this and you go this is crazy. How do you think you're gonna open up 30 clubs in 10 years?
well first of 10 years is a very long time but These clubs are actually easier to open than a land-based club. We don't actually go Find real estate Negotiate it buy it purchase it design it build it out etc etc. That's a two-year process Right we can actually build these vessels in a shipyard before we even know where the vessel is going And then once Miami is up and running we pre-sell memberships in all the cities we have interest in and as we see each city getting to a certain threshold Maybe 60% so let's say 180 members Boom we'll send two vessels out there get the food and beverage setup permitting setup marina partnership setup And then turn it on and then when we get 360 we send the next vessel So we can whip these out pretty quickly once the ball is rolling and the great thing is all our members get access to all clubs Well, we got you now as a member. What's the cost?
You said 500 initial deposit But what's the actual yearly cost or is that a monthly cost how does it work? Yeah, so the annual premium the annual Rate is 10,000 We have no initiation which I think is something I really really love A lot of clubs will build their club off the backs of the initiation fees they collect and pre-sells we're not doing that So we take a 500 deposit and then 10,000 is the annual price now If you apply prior to the club opening and prior to q2 of this year You come in as a pre-sell member and the pre-sell rate right now is 7500 The second is that is that is that locked up for always or just for one year? Exactly you get grandfathered into that 7500 rate. So you are effectively 25% off for as long as you remember, right?
That's that's a pretty substantial benefit. Yeah, what's going to happen is in the last Two three four months as we're receiving the commercial vessels and now that we have these two we're starting to see membership activity build up quite a bit and so all these applicants these applications are rolling in at a much much faster clip than they were a year ago before we had a vessel, right? And so everybody that comes in now gets benefit to that Pre-sell membership and you become an anchor member which is what we call our founding membership, right? And then having an anchor membership will actually have its benefits not only in terms of the pre-sell rate But you'll have some other benefits as you travel to other clubs You know Prefer grades etc.
We're gonna we're gonna see that more once we open up number two I love that. I mean it's a very exciting concept. In fact, I was this morning flying the helicopter right above you and I took a video. Oh, yeah Yeah, I was nice and I always love to see things from the air and see how expensive my name is How much water there is and to be able to have something like the arch house club in the water is such a unique add-on to the city Now my question will be like are you gonna be providing both transportation to the club or also you're gonna be implementing?
Well, we have those vessels to land a helicopter like what people swimming there Whatever what's the what's the main way of transportation? So this is uh, this is actually a Really interesting piece because this question has spawned a second business for us So, you know our vessels the club vessels. These are solar electric and here I'm gonna turn on my camera I'm just gonna show you just a quick bit, right? So I'm just sitting on one though.
That's the helm station. These are kind of loungers Um, this is the hatch that goes down to the lower level and you see they're gonna but this above me Is a 12 kilowatt solar roof and so this powers everything we do if I take you over to control station real quick and I know I'm Coming off what you asked about but look at this Running fully on solar right now. Oh wow That's so our solar charges up to 98% You know and then we go out and we do what we want for the day and then we come back So, you know from an innovation perspective, this is very different But then we started to think about how are we getting people out to the club and back and forth and when you think about fuel boats They are notoriously horrible for running large Moths, right and when you do the math in a given day our tenders need to run about 200 miles per day or two boats times 100 Right, right regular fuel boats your fuel costs will kill you And it's will kill you time out of service for that maintenance. You're right.
You fly helicopters, you know, you know how this goes, right? Yeah So we really started to look at are there electric boats we can use to transport people because electric engines can run 100,000 hours without a Single maintenance which is mind-blowing, right? It's crazy. Yes, absolutely So, uh, where is a output boat?
It runs 10,000 miles and you have to service it every hundred hours, which is crazy So we started to look at what does it take to build an electric boat that is the correct transporter for our members back in And as we started we realized nobody else is doing this we said, okay We'll have to go design an engineer our own boat and we called this project code name elixir at the time It's kind of quiet. We weren't telling people where we're doing people knew it was we let it's electric boats somehow And then as I was working on that project we started to see that the European Union and the state of California have mandated it all commercial Harbor traffic becomes zero emission at certain dates. California's mandate is January 2025 right now And they now are going to give waivers and pushback and so we realized oh my god We're building a boat for ourselves, which is the only boat that can support The world's transition to marine electrification as it relates to passenger transport at least in the us This company is in Europe doing this they can't bring those boats here because it's supposed to go in the Jones Act So we said we're going to spend this thing out and build a transportation system And so now this thing that started as part of just our house is transport is now in the process of becoming a zero emission And waterborne transportation system called elixir working with the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County City Miami-Dade and West Bay Village and in the next year or two years You're going to see a bunch of zero emission all electric boats gorgeous gorgeous Slow cruising and transporting people all around because the cities you look at that road behind me. Oh my god.
Yes, you need You need it right? You can't build Yeah, you can't build five 10 bridges and tunnels to get more and more people across right and the city's growing but their infrastructure isn't right The only way to do it is waterborne transportation and the reason it hasn't happened is fuel-based vessels are so bad for running large Mission fuel is expensive boats are inefficient. It's bad combo, but you like special solstice and we just said god We're gonna go build that so we're actually running through projects at the same time So let me ask you this out because I love this. I mean this is exciting I see how you are passionate about what you're doing you're making it happen before any entrepreneur out there Right that is trying to build their dreams There's always gonna be a lot of pushback especially with what you're doing being the first being innovative in this type of concept How are you able to overcome all that resistance from a government standpoint from all the different laws and regulations?
Well, you know, I think when you when you decide to take on a project Right the first thing is you got to do a little bit of diligence upward and figure out can this be done? Can the main nuts and bolts get done and there's no way at the very beginning of a project You can foresee everything that's going to happen, right? You're not gonna see uh, well, what if this vessel behaves a little bit differently than this? What if this what if we have this other logistical challenge?
What if we have this permitting issue? You can't right when you start you got to knock out the big things right? Does this work within the legal framework? Can we get the financing?
Will people buy it can we pre-sell it and we went through that process and then as we got past those and said All right, I think we're gonna take a crack at this thing Starting with forward then we dig into the mid-level things and granular things. How was our transport going to work? How was food and beverage going to work and now that we're receiving vessels where it does very granular items, right? Um, how do you line up two vessels so that they're close enough to each other where people can seamlessly walk from one to the other, right?
You can't foresee those things two to three years out at the very beginning of your entrepreneurship journey and so You know a lot of people ask I've been an entrepreneur for about 10 years Um, a lot of people ask me for advice and the first thing I told me is I have no advice And the reason is as an entrepreneur A lot of people like to say they made a hundred million dollars they exited a company and all of a sudden they have something to pontificate about right? They have this glorious wisdom and they talk as if they're like the magnates of industry We're all just people right we're entrepreneurs, right? We're just all trying to build a business and build something but there's two things that I tell people first is Well, I'll make it three one is I hear a lot of people saying I want to pick up a project and I want to be a founder do not do that, right? Unless you have a problem that is squarely in your sights And you believe that you are the right person to build it it won't work and it won't work because the challenges you will face will be 50x What you think they will be and you have to be able to weather those tough times, right?
So unless you know what it is you're trying to solve don't just go try to find a problem to solve Um, that's the first thing I say the second thing I say is um, you're gonna have a lot of ups and downs And you have to recognize that these ups and downs balance themselves out, right? You get a good contract You can't go blow it on a trip to central pay you got to keep grinding because next week you're gonna have something very hard That's gonna hit you your finances gonna fall out now. You got to focus on that, right? So yes celebrate the good deal with the bad, but you can't let your life be like this is an entrepreneur It's gotta be like that's right and that's how you got to build it, right?
So those are the two big pieces I really tell people um, but you know You guys say hello? You said hi I'm like, I'm with the third one. I said uh balancing act don't take on a project I'm sorry. I don't know Creative Regular brain right while like you're doing because honestly it takes a lot of courage to dream big and to be creative I think yeah, when I see what you're building I get excited I get excited to how creative can I also be with what I'm doing right because it is a sort of inspiration to see someone that is Disrupting something and making it happen and a lot of people talk But they don't want to talk and you're doing it.
Yeah, I'm glad to see that happening So look we're always here to support. I know that there's a lot of incredible things happening in Miami So I know that is a diverse and very uplifted city that is pro creativity pro innovation So I'm sure that we'll see this up and running very soon. Um, yeah, I mean I always ask this question to all of our guests And I'm curious to know your answer. What does luxury mean to you?
Yeah, so um the first thing is I say I have evolved over time and what that means to me right? Um back in the day I you know, I came from 15 years of Wall Street Right when you're on Wall Street, you are you are kind of told what luxury is right the environment around you, you know having a big house nice car Uh, many of those things um over time, you know, for me It's really about experiences and being around, you know, the people that I think are very valuable to me Um, which is part of what I love in the community. We're buildings. Um, you know, it's funny.
You know, Natalie and I talk about what do we want to do? Like, you know, we're successful. We hit a big like what is it? We're actually doing are we flying around on jets?
Or are we just hanging out on a couch, right? And for us, you know, we just want to kind of travel and experience things and literally I think my favorite thing when I think of what I want to do as a successful founder in the future when I exit one day is I just want to be able to like go to really good dinners, not expensive But just nice dinners and enjoy my time with my wife and my family and my kids and all of that And then the other time I want to kind of just hang out and be able to cook at home and have like the flexibility Just enjoy my environment whether it's at home or out enjoy the people around me And that's it, right? So for me, it's not a it's not attached to dollars. It's really attached to the experiences and the people around me I would have maybe said that 20 years ago.
I don't know if I would have believed it as much as I do Right. Well, you got to go through the journey to really like Exactly But I love that as well said my friend. Look, it's been a pleasure. I know you have a great office right there So yeah, I think we're very lucky.
We're very lucky we live. Definitely you have done it well So I wish you all the best. I know that we're gonna be doing things together I'm excited to see how these keep on evolving And also keep expanding your mind and go up in the air. I can take you up on the helicopter and then you'll take There we go.
Let's do it. I'm down for both of us Amazing. All right, I'm going to go up. Hey, listen.
Thank you for Yes, your question more for the audience and for those that will be turning in on this video later on for those that are interested to become members What's the best place where they can go? Yeah, just want to go to the website. It's just our house dot club. There's nothing else on it just a RK H a us dot CLUB Uh, go to the apply page You know, we poke around learn about the membership our plans are timing and then go click on the apply page The application process takes 10 minutes and max 500 deposit and you do it if you got any questions, you know, just message the arthouse club instagram Uh, we respond very quickly and that's it.
We're very easy to reach. We're very casual You know, this club is not a velvet rope club the fact that it's 360 members and sitting out in the middle of the water It's going to draw all the velvet rope. We need Bring your a game bring your best face bring your smile bring your friendliness. That's the stuff you care about Um, and it's not let us know what you need.
We're happy to answer questions Sweet. So you heard it from the man himself sam. Thank you so much. I appreciate you and I look forward to continuing this conversation But that is in the arthouse or up in here.
Let's do it. Thank you. I'll provide pleasure. All right.
Take care And thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it I remember embrace it's beautiful success in life. My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time