Today

When I started my first company, it felt like I was on top of the world. We landed one of the biggest companies on the planet as our client, got our first patent; later, venture capitalists actually pitched to us.

In 2013, our first daughter was born. I looked into her weird little baby eyes and realized I'd been promising so much, to so many, for so long—but none of it was real; it was just paper.

I didn't know what I had, nor what I wanted anymore.

In 2015, I joined the board of the Drucker Institute, founded by Peter Drucker, who many say "invented management." When I arrived at our first board meeting, I was nervous. I sat beside Jim Collins and felt very much like an imposter.

But Jim was warm and vulnerable. He told us all about his first meeting with Peter, which he described as "one of the ten most significant days" of his life. It was at a time of Jim's life when he didn't know what he had, nor what he wanted. Peter listened for 45 minutes, then simply gripped Jim's hands and told him to “just be useful.”

Upon hearing Jim's story, I knew what I had to do.

How could I "just be useful"? I was naturally drawn to support my fellow founders because no one has their back.

I was part of a confidential peer group of 8 experienced founders. I trusted this “team” to surface my blind spots and help me grow—to have my back. We shared experiences and learning that’s impossible to gain any other way. I felt more people needed deeper access to trusted peer support—and that I could help them get it.

I started The Founder City Project with a few loyal supporters. In less than 2 years, through word-of-mouth alone, the initial 8 founders quickly became 500 founders. For them, "just be useful" transformed into "I have your back."

Teams

I was desperate for a system to manage all the founders. I was becoming a bottleneck, but our founders needed something more personal than a standard platform to input their challenges and match them with peers. We had to build our own system. When I eventually slowed down to look at all the data, it was clear that 80-90% of our experienced founders' challenges were about people and teams—not capital, product, or distribution.

Founder-led companies in our network like Shopify, PointClickCare, and Ada were becoming $1B unicorns—and more! Their teams needed help.

I wondered if our system that was so useful for founders could also help teams improve. It did. This became the "Upteaming" system.

Gabe is growing our peer network platform beyond founders, to support all teams and leaders at founder-led companies. Gabe started as a customer, then became a vocal advocate. He's an operator who has helped founders grow their companies from $0 to $100M. He led his last company back from the abyss and grew it 9,900% in under 6 months. He says he couldn't have done any of it without his peer group for support.

I take my toughest challenges to Gabe; he can see my blind spots and has my back.

Our Story