Rae here, founder of River (now DNNR). If you’ve been here since the River days, thank you. Truly. You hosted or showed up in person.
And if you joined somewhere along the way, welcome! I’m glad you’re here!
This newsletter used to be called The Current. It lived under River. It covered meetups, hosts, and the people who bring us together.
Our mission hasn’t changed, but the business has. And now the name of this newsletter reflects that.
Welcome to our new newsletter IRL > URL.
The Pivot
2025 is the year I stopped pretending River was going to work.
(If you’re new here, on River, brands initiated events and the audience stepped up to host. The value prop was more events, less work, and centralized data.)
Bryan Johnson launched Don’t Die with 110 simultaneous meetups.
Tim Ferriss celebrated 10 years of his podcast with 154 meetups worldwide.
Solana hosted thousands of events in 1 year
The product proved something important: People are hungry to gather. But we just couldn’t get revenue to grow.
So instead of building more features, we stepped back and asked: What’s the simplest, clearest way to help people gather sustainably?
The answer was hiding in plain sight: dinner.
Enter DNNR
We noticed social dining exploding in big cities. But companies are building their own app for their own audience.
What if creators could launch a branded dinner club without building software?
That’s DNNR.
Pick a city and date
Audience takes a quiz and pays
We match groups of six
We book the restaurant & reveal a secret after-party
Since October:
50+ communities have launched branded dinner clubs
7,000+ strangers have met for dinner
Restaurants love the mid-week bookings
Creators earn meaningful revenue (avg is $728/mo)
River relied on volunteer hosts. DNNR is hostless.River had RSVPs that didn’t always show up. DNNR is paid — and paid means present.
Same mission, but the business model changed. And now, so has this newsletter.
Know someone who could launch a dinner club? Refer them to earn 5%
Have an audience you want to send to dinner? Book a demo
Why IRL > URL
The internet helps us find each other.But it can’t replace sitting across from someone.
AI is about to make everything online more efficient.Which means presence becomes rare. And rare things become valuable.
The future won’t belong to the most online. It will belong to the most connected.
The IRL > URL ethos isn’t anti-tech. It’s pro-human.
This is where I’ll write about:
In the air → conversations and cultural moments shaping the offline future.
Under the skin → the biology of community, the most underrated longevity protocol.
On the ground → the execution layer; how belonging gets built in the real world, from community builders everywhere to the experiments I’m personally running (DNNR, Freedom Village).
In the air
Ben Horowitz (a16z) and Balaji Srinivasan (an early angel investor in DNNR/River) are framing in-person community as the third wave of the internet — after browsers and Bitcoin.
The thesis: all the tools exist (Discord, WhatsApp, Luma). What’s missing is integration. The magic happens when digital communities “materialize the cloud into land.”
Example: AngelList’s CEO read The Network State and opened the AngelList Founders Café in SF where their online community drops in for coffee and product feedback.
And then there’s Special Founder Zones: pro-growth territories where builders are free to actually build (aka Freedom Village!). When SaaS VCs start talking about physical real estate, you know something is shifting.
🎧 Listen to the full episode: Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube
Under the skin
Tech culture is health maxing.No alcohol. Statins by 40.Peptides. Cold plunges. Red light panels in the garage.
Here’s what biohackers miss:
Strong social ties reduce mortality risk
Loneliness increases risk of early death comparably to smoking
Eating with others improves mental health markers
You can optimize your mitochondria. But if you’re lonely, your nervous system knows.
The most underrated health protocol? Join a club and eat meals with friends.
On the ground
Here’s what IRL > URL looks like in practice right now:
René Pinnell launched the Terminus Fund for Network States on Artizen, a crowd-funding platform investing in the frontier of art, science, and technology. The creator fund focusses on supporting sovereign communities that form online, experiment in the real world, and materialize new societies. $60k in capital left to deploy.
Startup founders talking seriously about what it would mean to build new a city in California (California Forever in Solano County) and a new neighborhood New Hampshire (Freedom Village).
How One Man is Bringing People Together in Central Texas — Sam Harper got on the news for sending strangers out to dinner to make new friends in Waco, TX (Waco Buzz Dinner Club is powered by DNNR).
If you’re still here, thank you. There are 20,000+ of you on this list.
If IRL > URL still feels true to you, I’d be honored to have you stay for the next post.
If not, no hard feelings—you can unsubscribe. I’ll be forever grateful you were part of the early days of River!
Excited to build the offline future with you. ✌🏻 Rae
Send this to the group chat.
P.S. Know someone who could launch a dinner club? Refer them to earn 5%Have an audience you want to send to dinner? Book a demo