Probably Nothing - Ep. 6: Bobby Hundreds

Jan 04 2022 42 mins 6

In Episode 6 of Probably Nothing TZ (@TZhongg) and Alexis Ohanian (@alexisohanian) chat with with Bobby Hundreds (@bobbyhundreds), founder of streetwear brand The Hundreds. Bobby is also the creator of the Adam Bomb Squad, an NFT project consisting of 25,000 pieces each related to the history of the Hundreds company. In this episode you’ll hear about the similarities and differences of building a streetwear company versus an NFT project. You’ll also learn about why community and durability are so important to building a brand, and whether Bobby considers The Hundreds to be a successful brand after 18 years in existence.

- Links and References Mentioned in This Episode -

- Timestamps -

2:00: Who is Bobby Hundreds?
04:50: How did Bobby move a web2 company into the web3 space?
09:09: What is most important for the Hundreds?
12:40: Community and its importance to brand building.
17:00: How did Bobby first get into NFTs and what helped him understand them?
22:00: How does building the Hundreds compare to Adam Bomb Squad?
26:05: Why projects become cash grabs.
32:34: How will The Hundreds maintain a brand quality in a decentralized world?
39:50: Desert Island NFT

- Mentions -

Trevor McFedries (@whatdotcd)
Dee Goens (@dg_goens)

- Highlights -

*Web2 and Community*

“I didn’t want to be in the stage, I wanted to be on the floor, in the mosh pit with everyone else, and the microphone gets passed around.”

Bobby didn’t have the tech knowledge at that point on how everyone could participate and rise up together. So he was doing it from within their brand and other brands trying to establish their community.

“If there is any web2 company that I feel is sympathetic to what is happening in web3 and decentralized, but really embodies that spirit. I think it’s us”

Bobby literally wrote a book on building brands around community.
What really makes The Hundreds function is the community. Their entire company is based on community.

“In telling someone else a story we are telling a little bit of ours”

It was never about The Hundreds being the winner. It was about telling the story, which is why they invested so heavily in collaborations.
Their mindset was that they were all part of this ecosystem together.

“As the tide rises, we lift all the boats together.”

They were doing it in the industry and now they are doing it through the community.
A lot of established brands are looking at web3 and are scared because they have a lot to lose but for Bobby it’s inspiring.

“To think that every single day I might lose this company entirely to the community is electrifying”

Bobby wants to get to a point where he can completely lose himself to the community and everything is entirely decentralized.

“All signs point in that direction. They’ve tried so hard to make it the other way for the last 10-15 years and it caused a lot of distressed and made me unhappy.”

Bobby has lived with this guilt because he has been convincing young people that they aren’t enough unless they have a product.
A simple consumer to business brand never sat right with Bobby even when he was a kid. He felt like he was a walking billboard for someones company.

*Community and Ownership*

“We’ve always endowed upon the community this sense of ownership, they’ve always felt like they own this brand.”

People buy brands for community, identity, and because they have a sense of ownership.

“When young people are getting our logo tattooed on them, it’s not that they are a fan of me, they feel like the brand belongs to them.”

Bobby is constantly promoting the brand as a community. Their consumers support and represent The Hundreds not for Bobby but for themselves because they feel like the brand belongs to them when it really doesn’t.
Bobby wants The Hundreds community to feel like the brand belongs to them and actually have a sense of ownership.

*Becoming Immortal*

“As an entrepreneur if people are alongside you saying ‘I don’t work for you, I am not your fan, we are all in this together we are all equally invested’ I feel invincible.”

No matter how many people have been invited we are all in this together.
In Bobby’s opinion, when Steve Jobs died he thought it was a problem because Apple’s entire brand was centered around one man.
This got Bobby thinking that when he is gone, will his brand also be gone. For some people they want their company to go down with them to show how great they were. But that is not the case for Bobby, he wants his brand to live on forever.

“What the brand is and the community is, is very special and unique in history and I don’t ever want that to die.”

That was a concern of Bobby’s, he worried about what would happen to the brand if something were to happen to him. Now he doesn’t have to worry about that because of the community.

“I feel like the brand is immortal because it’s not just me, it’s not just these community members, it’ll get passed onto generations. The technology lives forever so the brand lives forever.“

*How did Bobby first get into NFTs and what helped him understand them?*

This time last year there was news about Beeple’s sale. Trevor McFedries (@whatdotcd), who has been a part of The Hundreds for a while, tweeted about the Beeple sale.
The Beeple sale didn’t make sense to Bobby, and it scared him. At first he got really mad about it, the number was so big at the time. Then he became curious.

*On brand building*

“Brands require time and discipline, passion and patience, and the ability to maintain that passion long term.”

A lot of projects today are “fast rise fast demise” and that never ends well. Bobby has seen it multiple times in the fashion industry when he sees brands have a lot of hype and take off for a few months but eventually die.

“I’m not interested yet in calling Adam Bomb Squad a brand. I call the Hundreds a brand because we have been around for 18 years and to me, that’s still not nearly enough.”