An All-In Founder Forum
“I can’t keep this up,” confided the founder to a group of supportive peers who had become close friends. “I burned out months ago, and now I’m at the point where… I can’t even find the words.” With their head in their hands, a heavy silence filled the air as the fellow founders on the call nodded in understanding and empathy.
“I know I need to slow down, but whenever I try, I feel like I’m losing control,” the founder continued. “My fear of failure, or really, my fear of proving my parent’s doubts about me, is just overwhelming.”
Although the above conversation is a fictional blend of real experiences, it captures the deep self-reflection many startup founders may need to face. Coping with such intense emotions can be debilitating, but founders don’t have to confront these challenges alone.
One year into COVID-19, First Round organized a series of remote Founder Forums. They assembled groups of early-stage founders and led them in six virtual sessions to share best practices, build community, and, perhaps most importantly, provide support as the world changed rapidly.
Founders are busy people. We have employees to hire, products to build, prospects to pitch, and investors to update. Devoting two hours every month was a daunting prospect. But we each chose First Round as our seed investor partly because of the strength and diversity of their community. So we committed and dove in.
Those early forums were great. But they were temporary by design, participation was inconsistent, and the subjects were mostly tactical. Over time, they would fade into the background noise of our early-stage journeys.
But Dan Siroker had a plan. He had previously participated in forums organized by YPO while he was the co-founder and CEO of Optimizely. He wanted to take the best of what he had experienced in prior forums, optimize it for early-stage founders, and execute it virtually.
So Dan joined two of the First Round forums. After they concluded, he invited the most open and committed participants with varied backgrounds into a new forum that could live on indefinitely. We call this group the All-In Founder Forum, and our shared goal is to become the best versions of ourselves.
This post aims to inspire other founders to create similar forums. In addition to our story, we will share some of how we organize and sustain the forum. And in the end, we invite you to join us by applying for our one open spot.
The members include, from left to right in the header photo above, taken at our 2023 annual retreat in Tahoe:
- Dan Siroker at Rewind, access perfect memory
- Kaitlyn Knopp at Pequity, compensate with confidence
- Laura Del Beccaro at Sora, seamless HR workflows
- Jeremy Stanley at Anomalo, automate data quality
- Abigail Holtz at The Lobby, scale influencer marketing
- Colin Morelli at Source, improve patient outcomes
- Celine Halioua at Loyal, dog lifespan extension
- Mitch Gordon at Verto, begin college abroad
- Jeffrey Dietrich at Rarebird, mental wellness coffee
The All-In Founder Forum meets virtually for two hours every month on the fourth Wednesday from 2–4 pm PT. We also meet in person for a three-day yearly retreat in the first week of February.
During these meetings, we discuss topics that span our work, personal, and family lives. We discuss wins, losses, challenges, and everything in between. Nothing is off-limits. Everything is confidential. We go deep and are vulnerable with one another because we believe that is critical to becoming the best versions of ourselves.
When communicating with each other, we observe various depths of meaning:
- The first 20% are the cliff notes, which are cursory, sanitized, and generic
- The next 60% are the meat of the story, the intellectually interesting details and logic
- The next 15% are the feelings, both positive and negative, and how they affect us
- The final 5% is the layer behind those feelings, the deeper narratives and emotions we are often unaware of in ourselves
We always encourage each other to find and explore that final 5%. We demonstrate by example, never judge one another, and share our support and love for one another through thick and thin.
This has led us through topics such as:
- Depression and anxiety and the struggle for happiness
- Love and empathy and the beauty of relationships
- Narcissism and selfishness and the guilt they leave behind
- Glory and satisfaction in achieving the perceived impossible
- Childhood trauma and challenges and the reverberations that echo
- Intelligence and creativity and the wonder of creation
Sharing this 5% may seem dramatic, scary, or indulgent. But every time someone goes there (and it happens often), we discover something new about ourselves. And our bond strengthens.
We want the All-In Founder Forum to last forever. But that takes a great deal of thoughtfulness and commitment. So we set high expectations for when and how we participate in these sessions and meetings.
Every member attends the in-person retreat and keeps work to the barest possible minimum during those days. We began our last retreat by sharing what we had each given up to participate. They included:
- Missing time with family, children, and beloved pets
- Delegating or delaying mission-critical customer or development activity
- Stepping away from a fundraising process
- Navigating layoffs or restructuring
This reinforced how important the retreat was to each of us and highlighted what, if anything, might still be distracting us.
We also hold ourselves accountable. We have a written charter to which we have all committed, outlining our norms and responsibilities. We have defined roles for moderation, logistics, and recruiting, which rotate annually.
In addition, every member is expected to attend every monthly virtual session, arrive on time, and remain through the end.
This may sound extreme, but the temptation to de-prioritize this forum is high in any given week. It is important to us, but it is never urgent. If we succumb, then the group dynamics suffer. We don’t share the same journey, we don’t benefit from each other’s wisdom, and resentment can build.
In the last year, members attended the sessions fully 84% of the time, arrived late or left early 9%, and missed only 7% of the time (vacations). We take attendance seriously and enforce it strictly.
We organize each session roughly as follows:
- [3 min] Transition
- [2 min] Short meditation to clear our minds
- [1 min] Confidentiality reminder
- [5 min] Check-in: on a scale from 0 to 100%, how present are you, and what, if any, urgent items might distract you today
- [45 min] Updates — what’s the ONE business, family, or personal update since our last forum you want to share with the group and the 5% feeling associated with it?
- [5 min] Break
- [60 min] Four-Step Forum Exploration, where one member who is stuck on something goes deep into their challenge, and we help explore their circumstances and feelings, what they need from the forum, how our own experiences resonate with their challenge, and how we can support them going forward
Combined with our devoted attention, these ingredients lead to meaningful and valuable sessions and a tightly bonded group of friends. When individuals need urgent support on specific topics, we organize infrequent and optional ad-hoc meetings, usually on the weekend.
Our paths as founders can be lonely, harrowing, and deeply gratifying experiences. We are often isolated from our teams, co-founders, friends, and loved ones. Most of us will fail, and our journeys are rollercoasters of extreme highs and lows.
But we chose this path, and we are privileged to have the opportunity to dedicate ourselves to creating new businesses. The struggles we encounter create lives that are more worth living. The All-In Founder Forum has amplified our experiences.
We hope this post inspires others to create new founder forums that can have the same impact as ours. But we are also recruiting a tenth member to join us. We seek candidates who:
- Are founders of venture-backed startups that are varied and non-competitive
- Are individuals who will embrace vulnerability and commitment
- Will enhance the diversity of ethnicity, gender, identity, experience, and personality in our forum
If you are interested in joining us, please tell us more about yourself and your startup here.
