(This is our previous landing page. Check out our updated site at FoundersProject.co!)
The Founders Project is a platform that connects companies working on the most important issues, making it so that when one company moves forward it helps every company move forward.
We’re an active group of builders who set goals together, go deep giving each other feedback, and track lessons learned. We aim to be like your additional co-founder.
If you’re building something ambitious and you’d love to regularly get support from and help others who are doing the same, then the Founders Project could be a great fit. Please reach out to Sean (Founders Project Lead) at build@racetosaturn.com.
How it Works
Members have called it “revolutionary,” “fantastic,” and “the best money I’ve ever spent.” Here’s why: We make it easy for you to interact with other smart people to level up your work. Each week, founders can participate in:
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Goals Calls: We each get help identifying our biggest goal for the coming week and how to get it done. Then, the next week, we meet again to track our progress and motivate each other forward.
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Feedback Calls: We get concrete feedback on anything we’re working on - deal structures, pitches, websites, apps, tech questions, customer outreach, etc. - and give feedback to another founder.
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30 Minute Work Sprints: We each set out what we want to do in a focused 30 minutes of work, and then do that work while other founders do the same live. It’s a fast way to connect with others while powering through what we want to get done.
As we go, we track insights that come from our live interactions - so each member gets inspiration and learns more about what works for other founders.
In the Founders Project, a key benefit is that we encourage each other to experiment and do things that are intimidating. We make it a lot easier to have that mindset each week, because whatever happens, the Founders Project will be there for you next week.
Each activity can be scheduled in advance, and can also be flexibly scheduled. For instance, during a lull in a given afternoon you might want a fast pick-me-up by connecting live with another founder for a 20 minute feedback session.
You choose how much you want to interact with the Founders Project. Some founders do activities several times a week, while others get a lot of value by being able to do just one 30 minute work sprint every two weeks.
Are you a founder who is also a parent? We plan to add monthly calls for founder-parents to share the best activities they do with their kids, and support each other being the parents they want to be.
Why We Started It
When we want to do something ambitious, we’re too often on our own. It’s hard to keep momentum and not get bogged down. And it’s hard to know what to do.
So a few of us started regularly helping each other on our most important issues, like reaching out to customers, onboarding new users faster, and simplifying our product development methods. It felt like magic.
The Founders Project grew from there. Here are some of the key benefits we’ve experienced:
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Motivation and accountability to get out into the world and talk to users/customers. We know how important it is to talk to customers, but it’s often tough to implement. The Founders Project makes helping each other do this a priority. Members have finally been able to make talking to customers their main activity.
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Concrete feedback on the things we’re doing - our apps, how we talk to customers, our pitches, our planning, etc.
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An easy way to interact live with other smart people about our work! This has been really energizing.
Who We are
Each founder has been specially invited because they are thoughtful, ambitious, and care about helping other founders. Some are at a university, some are a few years out, and some have decades of experience. Some are solo founders, and some are on a team.
We have members leading software companies, biotech companies, finance companies, robotics companies, marketplaces, nonprofits, and more.
What connects us is that we care about helping each other do ambitious things.
Startup Pricing Per Member
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$150 per month.
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Are you a student or at a nonprofit? Contact us at build@racetosaturn.com for further pricing information.
About Me
Hi! I’m Sean and I coordinate the main activities for the Founders Project. I’m a programmer and the founder of Race to Saturn.
I also built the Navigator, an app that makes it easy to navigate across your apps, files, and Chrome tabs, and the Experimenter, an app that makes it easy to experiment in your work by allowing you to view and enter notes about prior versions of any file.
Before that, I co-founded Fuzionaire, a molecular science company out of Caltech that’s creating breakthroughs in medicine and energy, and I was a partner at a sustainability venture capital fund.
Earlier, I practiced law for over six years, working with aerospace companies, universities, investment funds, and international development banks. I also served at Space Command as a JAG officer in the Air Force Reserve and was the Top Graduate in my Commissioned Officer Training class.
Growing up, I was a professional actor. I graduated from Princeton summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Law School magna cum laude.
I also love making music, releasing my first album in 2019. Here are some of my released songs and songs in the works. And I love sci fi. I’ll talk endlessly about Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars if you let me.
Resources to Get Started
We’ve put together free help for founders and builders: The Big 5 Principles for Founders.
These are the five most important pieces of advice we’ve received. Here’s the big underlying theme: You don’t need permission to create the thing you’re excited to create.
Want to Join?
If you want to join or have any questions, contact Sean at build@racetosaturn.com.