Life of a Founder: The Story of Collarfree.com

One of the things we have organized to survive this tough market is a CEO/founders lunch. We have invited the CEOs or founders from 4 companies so far with a goal of 6. We get together once a month for 90 minutes to share ideas, network, but mainly to provide very targeted advice for one company each time we meet.

Our goal is to not have a round table each time we meet, but each month one company hosts our lunch and that company is the focus on the meeting. They provide a list of questions prior to the lunch and a key objective or question they want help with. We then brainstorm and offer our advice to that member so that we can help grow their business. We rotate the host company each month with the goal of helping each company twice a year. It is like having a team of consultants without the expense to help us grow our businesses.

I know alot of people have networking groups or business groups they attend, but for anyone running a company at an early or seed stage i recommend putting a group like this together. It will play a big part in making your company successful.

Here are the guidelines we put together and our meeting agenda.

Agenda:

• 12:00 – 12:10 Greetings and Overview
• 12:10-12:40 Introductions and lunch – Each person will give 2-3 minutes on their business so we are all familiar with each others company
• 12:40 – 1:20 30 minute discussion on host company’s questions
• 1:20-1:30 Wrap-up

Guidelines:

• Meetings will be the first Wed of each month 12-1:30
• Host will provide lunch and in exchange will be the company we focus our discussions on that week
• Host will make a list of 8-10 issues/questions for the group and send this out the week prior
• Invitees must be active CEOs or Founders of an internet startup that has gone to market. Business plan stage and service provider companies like web development firms will not be invited
• The group will approve future members. We will try to focus on companies that can provide strategic synergies and exclude direct competitors of any member company
• Members must be able to attend 75% of the meetings and provide value to the other members
• 3rd parties like VC firms, investors may be invited in the future as guest speakers but only with group approval

Here are the member companies who currently attend

1. Steven Cox, founder of Take Lessons
2. Nadav Wilf, founder of Matrix MT, Discover SD, Rank My Tattoos
3. Jay Brown, founder Unifik and launching Lavish Effect TV.
4. Patrick Dillon and myself, co-founders of Collar Free

We will be inviting 2-3 more companies with plans of developing this into a core group of 6 companies that meet on a regular basis.

Feel free to reach out if you have any suggestions or feedback.