Founders Club: Why Join a Club or How to Start Your Own – Episode 4

 

🐼 PAUL: (HTTPS://TWITTER.COM/PAUL_TIRBAN)

It’s Paul.

 

🐿 FLORIN: (HTTPS://TWITTER.COM/FLORIN_MURESAN)

It’s Florin. What are we grinding today? Today, we’re going to talk about the types of events that entrepreneurs should go to. And then we are going to move on to founders clubs.

 

🐼

Founders club? Well, how are they different by conferences?

 

🐿

Well, they’re actually very different. They’re different from conferences. They are different from meetups. They’re different from drinkabouts and other stuff like that.

 

🐼

Let’s start by how would you define them?

 

🐿

How would I define a founder’s club?

 

🐿

Well, it’s a club.

 

🐼

I.

 

🐿

Guess that part was obvious. Founders go to it, but real founders, people who actually have a startup or are in the process of actually starting a startup, and not just people who are currently only discussing, evaluating their options or the other side of it, like just consultants, people who offer services to startups. They aren’t allowed in the founders clubs. So it’s exclusively for founders.

 

🐼

Not the events that everybody wants to go because they want to sell something to somebody else.

 

🐿

No. I wouldn’t even get the guys from Square Mile into my founder’s club, even though they make this great coffee that we’re drinking today.

 

🐼

Interesting. So if I’m a Haltech founder, I should join only a founder club that is focused on health tech?

 

🐿

No, not really. Because there’s a lot that you have in common just due to the fact that you’re a founder. You have a lot in common with other people who have started the process of founding companies.

 

🐼

You mentioned here a lot like founders. Should we all have two, three years of experience as founders or when I qualify, let’s say like that. If I’m at the beginning, I have just the idea and I know that I want to commit to a startup.

 

🐿

That depends on the club and that depends on how you want to structure the club. Because you can have, for example, a very pretentious club that’s like, you’re only allowed here after your third startup and we want to see that you’re first… That at least one of the previous startups was an exit and that’s the only way you can join us.

 

🐼

And this is due to the fact of the topics because in order for all of us to gain something, we need to be on the same level, or it is just because there are…

 

🐿

No, people need to be at the same level in order to gain value from the Founders’ Club. Because otherwise, if you want a general mixer and you want to mix with the general population, with the other founders, you can just go to the other types of events. As I’ve said, networking events, open coffees. We used to do an event called Open Connect, which had the same idea. We were meeting for breakfast, sometimes lunch. Other stuff of those types of events were Wednesdays, where people gather Wednesday for a founder’s launch and they just discuss stuff. But those events are open, anybody can join. If they see the event somewhere, they can just come in, introduce themselves, network with the startup people, and there you can have everyone or a conference where you have a lot of people who join, even employees from different companies. And it’s not really very exclusive. But if you would go to an exclusive event, you would need to get some value from it. And in order to get that real value, you would need to have people who are on the same level as you are.

 

🐼

Let’s say you convinced me and I want to join this a club. I should Google it? Healthtech Experience F ounder Club? Or how should I found it?

 

🐿

I know. I guess people should invite you to it. So you have to be invited, so people have to first know about you?

 

🐼

Okay. So the first clue to not join one if I found it on Google.

 

🐿

Well, yeah, maybe that’s for the best. Maybe that’s for the best because some of those clubs, you don’t really know what’s up with them. They’re basically marketing the club to everybody. What are they trying to get out of it? Is it some club where you go and they start selling you stuff, pitching you a couple of weird schemes? A lot of weird things could happen that way. For example, if you go to a real club like Toastmasters, you could find stuff written about it in books. It’s a public speaking club and you can find stuff about written in books. You can Google it and you can join. And that’s always a really great club. I’ve seen clubs from all over the country. I’ve even seen clubs from the United Kingdom and they were all super okay. Even some clubs from the United States, I’ve networked with a couple of people who were there. And those clubs are really good. But that’s like those masters and they have really clear policies. You can study their policies and gain trust, but otherwise you don’t really know what to expect if you go to another club where people might just be into selling stuff, not value based networking, let’s say.

 

🐼

I think in the end, these are on a certain team. For example, if I want to learn to talk better in public, I go to Toastmasters. I know clearly from the beginning that I will develop my public speaking skills on that part.

 

🐿

Did.

 

🐼

You have experience? Was your participant in some of these clubs? Did you join or did you started the founder’s club? Can you tell us?

 

🐿

I’ve actually started two Founders’ Clubs. I had a really great experience at those Masters. I was super happy about it. I met a lot of smart people there, a lot of people who became friends or really great business acquaintances and a lot of cool people. Then I said, Okay, so if this is something that brings together people who are connected by the fact that they want to speak to a lot of people, to speak to all the entire audiences, I’m trying to do this startup thing. I was trying to get my first startup off the ground and I was like, Okay, then why don’t I do this with a couple of like minded people who they want to get their own startup off the ground and let’s see what happens. I did and it was really cool. And then by the time I had the second startup, I’ve had an investment. So once you have an investment, you really need to make sure that you grow fast enough. You have good metrics to show. It’s a lot more pressure than when you’re just the guy who wants to just start something for the gist of it.

 

🐿

And basically I started the other club with other people who got funding in the same period. So we were on a very similar trajectory of growth from multiple points of view. That’s why I think that we really had a lot to learn from one another, even though each of us activated in completely different industries.

 

🐼

Basically, in this second club, the criteria was that each member had a funding. B asically, when you started the second one, you looked for people who got funded because that was the struggle that each of you had or were having similar struggles in that period.

 

🐿

Because one of us had an angel investment. Most of them had investments from accelerators, startup accelerators. T here was also one that had the funding from a research grant, a university grant, that thing. But basically, the same things were in common. All of them were somehow related to tax, so all of them could be labeled as tax startups, and all of them had outside funding.

 

🐼

The first one, how did you found the members? Was close to you or friends?

 

🐿

We actually met at an entrepreneurial event where they taught you a lot of things about business, integrity in business, how to develop your networking skills, how to pitch to investors, and a lot of things. And I think it was a very hands on experience. It was filled with workshops. We got to meet a lot of local entrepreneurs, which was a really great thing for us to see because I was at university, some of them were still in high school, the other were in the first years at the university, and we all got together and for two weeks we’ve seen a lot of things about business that we wouldn’t have known otherwise. So me and a couple of them were very united during this time. We got along very well. And then we said, we’re having different discussions between us. When I just use our time more efficiently, all of us get together because we all like each other and just start discussing about stuff, making this very exclusive club, just the four of us at the beginning. And then we’ve let other people in. We knew who were also trying to create online projects or businesses based around online projects, and we got them into our club.

 

🐿

So at one point, I think there were seven or eight people.

 

🐼

You started like four, then seven, eight. Is there a certain size or should the group decide based on their needs?

 

🐿

They should decide, but once you have more people, it becomes a lot harder to really manage the discussions and what each individual member needs from the club.

 

🐼

I think what you don’t want to or you don’t want to be in the position in which to start think for president and things like that, like hire here or something like that.

 

🐿

Yeah.

 

🐼

Definitely. Because the idea would be that each of us comes with advice and the problems that he or she has. So basically sharing ideas and learning and helping each others.

 

🐿

Yeah, exactly. Also, the other interesting was that the things that were similar in both clubs that I started was the fact that we let club members decide what they would like to learn more about. And then one of the members was supposed to hold the presentation about that topic that the others wanted to learn about. And there was also a moderator. And each week, we got to exchange roles. So we wouldn’t have the same person doing the same roles every single week. And that made things a lot more fun. And we had even secretary, this was an idea from Toastmasters that we borrowed. We had the secretary to just write down the things that were discussed. We also had an email after that with, Look, we met today. This is what we discussed. This is these are the resources we shared. And we were also doing so with presentation, resource sharing, and then Q&A’s and general networking between the founders.

 

🐼

And I think from each meeting to meeting, you are switching these roles, probably. Today I would meet tomorrow you and so on.

 

🐿

And one of the coolest things that we’ve done at the second club, this was a suggestion from one of the members, but then it became the core rule of the club, was to meet once every two weeks. And each time we meet, to be in someone else’s office. And it was so interesting.

 

🐼

Interesting about it. So let’s take it one by one. So first, you said that you decided to meet every two weeks.

 

🐿

Yeah.

 

🐼

So if I’m doing my own founder club, I should decide to meet regularly, even if I don’t have a topic to discuss about, or I should meet only when I have a topic to discuss or one of the members has a problem?

 

🐿

That’s an excellent question, Paul. That’s an excellent question. Actually, we had a rule that if you didn’t show up for a couple of meetings, you would get kicked out.

 

🐼

Interesting. So basically each member needs to be an active member.

 

🐿

Yeah. And that was super important. For example, you had a really tough period because we were all founders, we all go through very stressful periods, periods where… I can say this nicely, but shit hits the fan and you have to solve problems with your investment, solve problems with the cash flow, make crazy offers just to make cash flow, or I don’t know what, something can happen. But that’s basically three meetings. I know it’s six weeks, right?

 

🐼

Yeah. In your situation, it was every two weeks. Yeah.

 

🐿

So if you don’t join for six weeks, okay, because you need to fix those problems. But then we expect you to be present. If you’re not present after that, you’re kicked out and we let room for other people that in case you leave, we’re going to try to fill.

 

🐼

Your spot. Yeah, because if I don’t manage to come at least one to came at this, it means that it doesn’t bring value to me. So probably I should let somebody else on that part. Let’s say on a certain week you didn’t have a topic to discuss, how did you do that meeting? Was only a Q&A? Was let’s meet for a drink and that’s all? Or you try to talk about something meaningful?

 

🐿

We never met for drinks. Even though we made a lot of fun during the meetings and, oh boy, the laughs that we’ve shared, it was phenomenal. But we never actually met to drink. That was something that we completely took out of the equation because we wanted to make sure that we don’t get off topic because once you start drinking, at least somebody from the group is going to go completely off topic and talk about nonsense or just share jokes and not pay attention to anything else. We didn’t really want that. I guess that the best things that maybe share food sometimes or something like that, but never alcohol.

 

🐼

Yeah. I think this is an important thing to take out this part because when you bring alcohol to the table, it’s okay for me to have fun or something like that. But if you want to learn something and to do something meaningful, probably we should leave it out of the table. Yeah. Like us, for example, we were drinking coffee while doing the podcast.

 

🐿

Exactly. There was this really interesting TED Talk that said that the elimination period, I don’t really recall how it’s actually called in history, but the thing with Jean Jacques Roussaut and the other guys who became very smart and then we got out of the Middle Ages and started doing some really important things with our human lives, that period came to be only after people discovered that instead of meeting for beer, we can actually meet for coffee. And then people were like, Damn, we can drink coffee. Hey, man, we’re smart now that we’re drinking coffee. There was a TED Talk about it. I totally loved it. And it was true because they only used to drink beer and they never had productive conversations or anything. And then they switched to coffee. Their brain started to actually work. They became creative and then they found solutions to a lot of world problems. And I think this is important.

 

🐼

I don’t know this talk, to be honest, but maybe you share us on our Facebook page these days. So startup Express on Facebook and probably Florin will share the link there.

 

🐿

Yeah, definitely go to Startup Espresso on Facebook and I will share the link to the Ted Talk.

 

🐼

It’s revolutionary. So basically you didn’t meet just to brag about that you’re cool founders and our meeting and things like that. So basically you work.

 

🐿

No. And sometimes, I mean, what would happen if you don’t have a topic to discuss in a week? In those weeks where we really didn’t have anything to say, it was just like, Okay, man, where are you at? How’s it going? What’s been stressful lately? And then it was like group therapy, which sounds stupid if you’re not a startup founder, but then if you’re a startup founder, you really need other people to discuss things with, to see that you’re not alone in this. Because you can’t really discuss these things with your wife, with your girlfriend. You can discuss them with your friends who have never started a startup because they just don’t get it. But if you talk to other people who have been through the same problems, you can really get a ton of problems out there and sometimes you even find creative solutions from your peers and next actions and all these goals, of ool ideas that you can do to get to the next level in the startup.

 

🐼

Actually, you mentioned two really nice points here. So the first that it became a support group. So we all know that in these startups world, there are struggles and sometimes it’s hard. But on the other hand, you said that… And yeah, I agree with you. So if you’re a startup and you’re actually working at that startup, not just bragging about that you are a founder, probably in those two weeks, you have some problems that you can discuss about. But you said that if not, there is the questions, where are you at? And what I think here, and it’s important that the members of the club trust each other because otherwise, if you ask me, Where are you at? I would just brag about and probably don’t want to help me. So telling you that I’m doing so well, but probably I’m not, it would be more helpful probably to tell you that I’m struggling now to get customers and maybe I get some advice on how to do this.

 

🐿

That’s true. And that’s why the meetings and the club itself should be exclusive. Because I will tell you, in the first meetings, we didn’t really brag about stuff, but we weren’t very transparent with one another because we didn’t really know each other. I mean, we knew each other from events, but we didn’t really know each other and really know a lot of stuff about the other people in the room.

 

🐼

And how did you create this trust between you?

 

🐿

Well, since we talked about different subjects and that’s where it helped that we had speakers and topics, we’ve realized that… I guess we just started becoming friends. I know. I don’t think there’s a better way to put this, but we thought that we could genuinely speak to the other people. There were no stupid people among us, no people who were horrible people. None of them seemed shady or untrustworthy. None of them seemed the people that you would try to run away from. So basically, we’ve got to a point where we were like, Yeah, I could definitely start a company.

 

🐼

With you. None of them came to the first meeting and shared their business card?

 

🐿

No, especially because most of us at least knew each other somehow. But no, that didn’t happen. We had certain events, I mean, certain meetings where we brought people from the outside. Of course, when we brought people from the outside, we didn’t really share a lot of internal details, but after a few meetings when it was only the members of the club, we share the most private metrics regarding the startup, even stuff regarding cash flow, how the cash is doing, how much money we pay employees, a lot of things that you wouldn’t really discuss with anybody else.

 

🐼

I was actually making these jokes with the business card because in my first startup, due to some bad advice, I thought that it was a good idea to have business card from the first day. So it was really funny. So it was written CEO on my business card and I actually was doing a lot of the work together with Alex. He was the CTO, I was the CIO. And actually, we were still working on the product. So that’s the funny part with a business card.

 

🐿

But I guess it’s only natural, right? Because it’s like doing that, it’s like showing yourself that you’re actually committed to being in business. T hat’s a way, even though it’s stupid and vanity, it’s a real way that you can show yourself that you are in business and you really want to do this thing and you want to see it through.

 

🐼

Yeah, on this part also. Actually, I would like to ask you also, you said that you started two clubs. When did you decide to end the first one? Or how do you feel at some point that you need.

 

🐿

To.

 

🐼

Retire from it?

 

🐿

Every single time, there was not one particular person or two particular persons who said, Okay, guys, I’m out. The club just died on itself. So there was a point where the club just said, Yeah, we can’t do this anymore because this, this and that. And everybody came to the same conclusion at the same time. So he was never like, Okay, now we’re not Back Street Boys anymore. I’m quitting this band and I’m going to join another band or stuff like that. So it wasn’t that much of a boy band anyway.

 

🐼

Is it due to the fact that probably each of you got to a point in which…

 

🐿

Yeah, we got to different points. And I think that our journeys together ended because some of us got to a point that was way too high for the others. The others crashed their startups. Others focused on trying another project together. They then turned it into a very successful startup. But at one point they were like, Yeah, we shouldn’t really be there because we’ve got nothing to share, we’ve got nothing to do. We’re just trying this stupid idea out and we’re going to see if it works or not. But it’s not relevant for us to meet anymore for a given period of time. And the interesting thing was that even after the club closed down, we still got to do a lot of collaboration. You saw people, I became your co founder, or I started working in your startup. I no longer have a startup. You can hire me now. And it was really interesting to see. One of my investors actually called this thing like, we were trying to do the PayPal mafia. That’s what he said to me. He said all of us because we met with him one night and he said, you guys have created a PayPal mafia.

 

🐿

So you’ve done some startups remotely successful, each of them, and now you’re like the PayPal mafia. Everybody works for everybody in your group. You share resources with the others. And even though you go to other companies, you will still be together in this way.

 

🐼

Now, I think this part is quite important to have the trust and to share knowledge and resources. But regarding these topics, what is your opinion regarding…

 

🐿

And by the way, most of them have actually been invited to my wedding and they came and we had a really good time there. That also happened.

 

🐼

You really became good friends.

 

🐿

Yeah, we really became good friends. It was so weird. But while doing that, we realized that we were connected on so many levels and we’ve been together at so many different events and we’ve done so many things together that it was like, yeah, dude, we’re really good friends. Especially after a certain age, you don’t really make a lot of new friends, so this gives you a real opportunity to make great friends.

 

🐼

I think this proves that you had the same values and were with the same belief. Regarding the topics, what’s your opinion regarding a member who just complain and complain at every meeting? It’s like, I have only problem, problem, problem, problem. I’m like.

 

🐿

The Most of us became equally minded, so to say. All of us became jokesters and downright horrible people. The way we were talking to one another was crazy. Some people could have thought that we were just making fun of one another all day long and stuff like that. We were really, really, really bad. Then we had this new member. We were actually trying to make him become a full time member, but then he was only complaining about everything. And we’ve been gentle with him at first, but then we saw that that’s all he does. And we’ve just roasted him on and on and on again during one of the meetings. And then he never came back. We never heard from him again. But he was like, Dude, it’s way too much. It’s either you’re going to take this feedback or you’re going to get out the door. And then he got out the door.

 

🐼

But actually, you try to convince him to change that person before just kicking.

 

🐿

It out. Yeah. And all of us had extremely valid arguments. He didn’t want to hear them. If you don’t want to hear them, you’re wasting our time. You shouldn’t be here. And at least we had fun kicking him out.

 

🐼

I’m also curious, do you have any knowledge of founders’ club that are created by some accelerators or some startup programs? Because I know about founders’ dinner.

 

🐿

I don’t know about that one.

 

🐼

Usually, let’s say accelerators or programs have a night where the founders are coming or an investor gathering all the founders.

 

🐿

That’s a good idea, actually. I think I do have an example. I think that this was one of the first things, a catalyst to my idea of actually starting an entrepreneurial club. The guys from Startup Chili, they were super successful back in the day. I don’t know if they’re still doing that today because I haven’t been that in tune with a lot of news in this industry. But they’ve invested in people, they brought them all together, and they made sure that the founders connect one another, that all of them are very in the know regarding each other’s progress. And I’ve spoken to some of the people who have actually been inside. And once he told me the stories, I was sold. I was like, Yeah, that’s the best way to do an accelerator program. All of those startups collaborated so much. The ones that were successful became successful because they had help even from the founders who then became unsuccessful. So it was really interesting to see. And the fact that they were all brought together, that brought each of them a lot more value than if they would have just gotten some money and some mentors and stuff like that because they were doing a lot of learning together and that was super important for each of them.

 

🐼

Regarding this part with being together, what do you think about remote startup founder clubs? Should they physically meet in a place? Because you said that in your case, you’re meeting at each one offices. So if I want to do a remote one, what do you think? Can it work?

 

🐿

It can work. But? It can work. But you need people to be super, super filled with integrity because otherwise, if I know you and I know a lot of other people who are in the same club, I’m going to have social pressure to show up because I really know you guys. We can meet. We happen to meet at the same event. I don’t want to be the guy who was like, Just look at that, Jackass. He never showed up. He said he would. He never showed up. I hate that guy. And you don’t want to be that guy. But if it’s online, it’s very easy to ignore your emails, ignore your Facebook messages, ignore your WhatsApp messages, ignore your Telegram, ignore your Twitter. You can ignore your Google Plus, especially now that it’s dead. You can ignore your Instagram. You can ignore everything. But you can’t really ignore people in real life because that’s not polite and that’s not what you want to do in business. So you can definitely try and make this remote. It could work. There are many Masterminds, they’re called Mastermind clubs that are indeed happening online and some of them work, but I don’t think they work as well because at some point people will be too busy with something or too stressed or filled with anxiety.

 

🐿

And then it’s very easy for them not to show up once and they start not showing up and they’ve got no social pressure. There’s nothing to switch back their behavior and they will continue doing the easy thing, which is not showing up and the whole club will die because of that. It’s going to be much harder for you to gain, like, to have retention. Quote marks again.

 

🐼

Founders’.

 

🐿

Retention. Yeah, founders’ retention.

 

🐼

We didn’t talk about metrics until now, so probably when we will start to talk about metrics, also we…

 

🐿

Yeah, we should take a founder’s retention into account, definitely. All right, Paul.

 

🐼

I think we are almost at the end, but before closing this, if we would be in one minute to give a tutorial to a founder beginner who wants to join a founder club, what he or she should be looking at?

 

🐿

This is a tough one. The same values as far as business goes. So they should expect that the other members have the same values, not exactly that they behave in similar ways, but that they value the same things in similar ways. Their relation to money, to how they treat customers, to how they treat employees, to how they treat their investors, to how they act when things go bad, to how they act when things go good, if they are braggers, if they brag about their metrics and who they are all day long. The things that make up the personality of the people involved, I think that’s the most important element because if the values of the group are okay and you’re satisfied with that, then you will have a really great experience. But otherwise, even though you might get some value out of the group, out of the club, you will never be satisfied with it.

 

🐼

What I would add to this is that if I’m in a startup program, I don’t know, some pre accelerator accelerator, probably I should start to look at the people from that.

 

🐿

Program initially. Yeah. And you can try to start the club with them and see where that leads you. Or if you’ve had a really great experience at a startup weekend or another type of event where people get together, you can start saying, Hey, we’ve had a great time playing with building startups. Why don’t we create a club together and see what it takes us? Do you agree to meet? These are going to be the meetings. This is like a mini schedule that we can make. Let’s meet and see if this works out. And most of the times it will work out.

 

🐼

I think this is a great advice. But again, don’t forget, we are not your consultants.

 

🐿

We are not.

 

🐼

Your lawyers. And drop us on our Facebook or Twitter your experience with clubs or founders clubs or any meet up that you experience, even bad or good ones, and let us know what you believe about this.

 

🐿

Yeah, do that. And also say, if you were to join a founder’s club, what are your fears regarding these sorts of clubs? And maybe you need a lot more information on a founder’s club versus a normal event and me and Paul can discuss them with you.

 

🐼

And if you want some topics that we should talk about, just let us know. Drop us a message on our Facebook page. But also don’t forget to buy us a coffee.

 

🐿

Yeah, buy us a coffee. Definitely do that.

 

🐼

See you next.