| Praxis | |
| Founder: | Dryden Brown and Charlie Callinan |
| Key People: | David Weinreb |
| Hq Location City: | New York, NY |
| Predecessor: | Bluebook Cities |
| Founded: | 2019 |
Praxis is a company founded by Dryden Brown and Charlie Callinan, with Howard Hughes Corporation founder David Weinreb as Vice Chairman. Praxis describes itself as an "internet-native nation,"[1] and has stated plans to create a 10,000 population city in the Mediterranean.[2] [3] Brown has not determined the location of the city and the company's vision has been called unrealistic.[4]
As of April 2024, Praxis states that it has 2,034 citizens, 124 companies, and that companies founded by Praxis members have an aggregate valuation of $452 billion.
Dryden Brown was raised in Santa Barbara, California and was homeschooled in order to pursue competitive surfing. He stated that as a high schooler, he studied Ayn Rand and Austrian economists, and when he applied for college, he limited his applications to Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge. He was rejected by them all and he attended New York University before dropping out. Before founding Praxis, Brown worked as an analyst for a hedge fund, where he met Praxis co-founder Charlie Callinan, a former Boston College wide receiver. Brown was fired from the hedge fund. In 2019, Brown and Callinan used money Callinan won in a golf tournament to travel to Nigeria and Ghana, where they met with Ghana's vice president and proposed building financial center. In 2019, a conversation while surfing in Puerto Rico inspired Callinan and Brown to establish a company called Bluebook Cities.[5]
The New York Times writes that Praxis founder Dryden Brown "isn’t a charismatic speaker or an accomplished businessman" and that he is "big on promises and light on specifics". In 2022, Brown told a speechwriter that his inspiration for Praxis came when he saw people looting stores in SoHo during the George Floyd protests. Following the protests, he rented a cabin in Alaska. Brown has lamented the organization of modern cities and their perceived lack of shared values.
A December 2023 report in The New York Times revealed that Brown had raised $19.2 million for Praxis. Praxis’ largest backer is Paradigm, which was an investor in FTX, Coinbase, and Citadel. Other investors include Pronomos Capital, backed by Peter Thiel and first led by Patri Friedman grandson of Milton Friedman, as well as venture capitalists Balaji Srinivasan and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, both associates of Peter Thiel. In addition, Praxis received investments from Alameda Research backed by Sam Bankman-Fried, Apollo Ventures, launched by Sam Altman, and Winklevoss Capital Management, the family office of the Winklevoss twins.
In May 2022, Praxis moved into a large, top-floor office in SoHo where Praxis staff members live and work. The loft is the location of some of Praxis's lavish parties, where Brown attempts to "evoke the salon culture of the Parisian Enlightenment."[6] Other parties have occurred in bars and the Yale Club of Manhattan.[7] By 2022, six staff members were living in the Praxis loft.
Brown said the waiting list for the proposed city was 50,000 people long and that 12,000 members already interested in moving starting in 2026. As of April 2024, the group's site states that Praxis has 2,043 members.[1] The Praxis team recruits new members in cities like Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Miami and at conventions such as Coachella, and Cannes. Membership includes many company founders, including of Worldcoin and Soylent.
In a 2021 interview, Brown said the city's style would be “hero futurism” with a “neo-Gilded Age kind of aesthetic.” The Praxis organization is associated with libertarianism and cryptocurrency. In the company's Series A pitch to investors in 2022, it called its proposed city a “cryptostate.”
An internal Praxis branding guide accessed by The New York Times denounced "enemies of vitality," and extolled the “traditional, European/Western beauty standards on which the civilized world, at its best points, has always found success.” The document revealed an interest in attracting "hot girls" and tech talent.[8]