Diversify risks along your
entrepreneurial journey
and access
the tools
required
to succeed
Pool a fraction of your equity with
a community of founders and use the funds
to invest in top entrepreneurs in the same way,
investors do
startups fail
Cold statistics are not intended to discourage entrepreneurs but encourage them to make smarter decisions.
We Protect founders while VCs
bury their dead very quietly
startups fail
An optimistic entrepreneur needs a dose of reality.
The Venture Capital Secret:
3 Out of 4 Start-Ups Fail
How it works
O2Founder is where top founders from your industry
or adjacent verticals match with you, surrounded
by a world-class community
Select founders
Great founders recognize other great founders.
You get to select founders and rate their companies.
Pools are formed on a peer-selection process based on mutual ratings.
Join a pool
Founders contribute up to 5% of their vested common stock they would fully own into the pool, consisting of equity contributed by other mutually selected founders, and get a proportionate amount of pool ownership in return
Build a community,
share the success
You could consider the other members of the pool as an extension of your advisory board. When you join the Founder-Driven Community, you share in the economic success of our fund, alongside a network of like-minded Founders across industries and stages. O2founder helps you land investors, talent, and customers. We all do well by helping each other do well.
- Capital and Expertise
- Introductions to Investors
- Liquidity to Members
- Strategic Partnerships
What founders are saying
What VC community thinks
about Founder risk
Steve Jurvetson
Founder DFJ, Futures Ventures
Investors say ‘Don’t take the early M&A offer. Build the business.’ But sometimes it’s so tempting to take the security. …..partial founder liquidity can relieve that and get investors and founders on the same page to say let's go for the dream. Let's go for the big opportunity and not worry that it’ll be ruinous.
Harry Hurst
CEO @Pipe & Angel Investor
If VCs can raise new funds off the back of paper markups and stack new mgmt fees, why is it taboo for founders and team to do similar via secondary if they're all in & need to spend 10 yrs building one thing while potentially getting married, having kids, etc. along the way.
Erik Torenberg
VC @ VillageGlobal
Big misalignment between founders & VCs: VCs take dozens and dozens of shots on goal, founders only take one. Founders should band together & share upside. VCs should facilitate this.
Paul Graham
Founder @ YCombinator
If such pooled-risk company management companies existed, signing up with one would seem the ideal plan…
Being a founder is the ultimate risk
Every startup is an experiment with a very low probability of success. By definition, each individual experiment will very likely fail. VCs spread the risk.
Reduce your career risk
Startups take 2-3 times longer to validate their market than most founders expect. Unlock the value of your equity and diversify in the same way investors can.
Join a community of founders
vested in your success
Building a company is lonely. Being part of the pool not only diversifies your financial risk, but also instantly upgrades your network.
Liquidity is king
Access Fund backed by a community. Introduce your company to hundreds of investors and founders in our network, whenever you’re ready
Access a community of top CEOs invested
in your success
It doesn’t have to be lonely at the top. Meet regularly with other high-caliber Founders of venture-scale companies to learn, work through decisions, and grow as leaders in a closed environment.
- Capital and Expertise
- Liquidity to Members
- Support Network
- Strategic Partnerships
Frequently Asked Questions
Resources on founder risk and pooling...
Venture Capital Funnel Shows Odds Of Becoming A Unicorn Are About 1%
by CBinsights.com
Of the 1,098 tech companies we tracked that raised seed rounds in the US in 2008-2010, less than half, or 46%, managed to raise a second round of funding. Every round sees fewer companies advance toward new infusions of capital and (hopefully) larger outcomes. Only 14% of our companies went on to raise a fourth round of funding, which typically corresponds to a Series C round.
Startup Failure Rate: How Many Startups Fail and Why?
by Kyril Kotashev, Founder of DotaHaven
So, a startup is in essence a business experiment with potential. This means that real startups are prone to failure by definition. They are testing assumptions, and it’s very likely these assumptions are wrong. The more innovative the startup, the riskier the assumptions it’s testing, the more likely it is to fail. When you put this new kind of risk on top of the traditional risks of starting a business (finance/cash flow risks, operational risks, team risks, marketing risks, etc.), it’s no surprise most startups fail.
Fixing Founder Scarcity
by Burak Yenigun, Founder at Stylus Capital
TL;DR: The world appears to be suffering from a shortage of entrepreneurs. The main reason is the very risky nature of entrepreneurship: Society pays average founder millions of dollars but pays nothing to the median founder. We could build a financial fix (a founders’ mutual) to ever so slightly reduce this risk. This would move hordes of talent from their safer BigCo jobs into entrepreneurship. It could also give society more innovation per venture dollar risked.
About US
We are on a mission to create the world’s best support ecosystem around founders and diversify the risk of entrepreneurship
Just like VCs, you need an opportunity to diversify your risk and use the power of a
founder-driven community
built by founders for founders