Off the record. On your side.

The conversation every founder needs and almost nobody has.

The conversation every founder needs and almost nobody has.

The Collective is coaching and a peer community for the parts of building a company that never make it into the pitch deck. It is confidential, it is candid, and it is built by people who have sat in your chair.

“I told my investors we were crushing it. Then I sat in my car for forty minutes because I couldn’t make myself walk into my own office.”

Mateo R., 3 years as a founder

Why this exists.

The company gets all the care. You get the leftovers.

You are holding up the company, the team, the investors, and probably a few people at home. Everyone around you depends on you being fine, so you have gotten very good at being fine. You give the confident update, you absorb the hard news, and you carry the rest wherever founders carry things.


Meanwhile, everything in your world gets more attention than you do. The product has a roadmap. The finances have a model. The team has one on ones. The person at the center of all of it usually has nothing, because every room you sit in is a room where you are performing for someone.


That arrangement works until it doesn’t. The cost compounds quietly, in your sleep, your relationships, your judgment, and eventually your company. We built the Collective because founders deserve one room where none of that performance is required.

It doesn’t have to work that way.

It doesn’t have to work that way.

What you get.

Three ways in. One honest room.

Coaching

Work one on one with a coach who knows what the founder's seat actually costs. Sessions are confidential, practical, and built around whatever you are carrying right now.

Coaching

Work one on one with a coach who knows what the founder's seat actually costs. Sessions are confidential, practical, and built around whatever you are carrying right now.

Peer groups

Join a small, confidential circle of founders who meet monthly and tell each other the truth. It is the room where you don't have to perform.

Peer groups

Join a small, confidential circle of founders who meet monthly and tell each other the truth. It is the room where you don't have to perform.

Summits

Come to in person gatherings where the Collective meets face to face. Real conversations, real rest, and the kind of connection a video call can't produce.

Summits

Come to in person gatherings where the Collective meets face to face. Real conversations, real rest, and the kind of connection a video call can't produce.

The evidence.

72%

of entrepreneurs report a lifetime history of at least one mental health concern, compared to 48% of a matched comparison group.

UCSF, Freeman et al.

72%

of entrepreneurs report a lifetime history of at least one mental health concern, compared to 48% of a matched comparison group.

UCSF, Freeman et al.

81%

of founders say they do not openly share their stress, fears, and challenges.

Startup Snapshot, The Untold Toll.

81%

of founders say they do not openly share their stress, fears, and challenges.

Startup Snapshot, The Untold Toll.

10%

of founders talk to their investors about what they are actually carrying.

Startup Snapshot, The Untold Toll.

10%

of founders talk to their investors about what they are actually carrying.

Startup Snapshot, The Untold Toll.

Everyone asks how the company is doing. My coach is the only person who asks how I'm doing and actually waits for the answer.

Amara O., 5 years as a founder

How it works.

Three steps, and the first one is just a conversation.

01

Book a first conversation.

It is free, it is thirty minutes, and there is no pitch on either side.

02

We match you with a coach, a peer group, or both.

The match is based on what you actually need, not on what costs the most.

03

You join the Collective.

It grows with you through every stage of the company, and it is still there after this company too.

An initiative of the Global Venture Network.

We have been doing this work since 2017.

The Collective was built by the Global Venture Network, or GVN, the network behind more than 350 accelerators, venture studios, and innovation hubs across six continents. We have spent more than fifteen years supporting the organizations that support founders, and along the way one thing kept surfacing. The founders themselves had nowhere to take the weight.


This work started in 2017 with the GVN Founder Wellness Pact, continued through the Founder Support Fund, and now has a permanent home in the Collective. It is the program we always wanted to hand the founders themselves.

Work with a GVN member accelerator or studio? Your membership in the Collective is discounted. Ask us when you book your first conversation and we will check for you.

Start with a conversation.

Thirty minutes, free, completely confidential. Come as you are.