Hi PH! Hats off to you tech startup founders willing to sacrifice an insane amount of time, money, and social & family life. You dare to defy extreme uncertainty to pursue startup success. Society's progress depends on you! De-risking Founders My co-founders and I have been through the startup grind many times. We’ve experienced the journey filled with extreme uncertainty. We know that there are black swans always stalking you, waiting to destroy years of sacrifice and effort. Pandemics, market crashes, political upheavals, you name it. Unfortunately, when startups fail, most founders can’t just start over. Responsibilities grow, opportunity costs mount, and your risk tolerance goes down fast. Many founders are forced to give up their dream and get back to a 9-5 job. There should be a better way. We believe there is. @george_burke, @manoj_duggirala, and I built FounderPool to minimize the opportunity cost of being a founder. More importantly, it is a community built on incentive alignment, which supports founders and increases the odds of success. FounderPool is a community of founders invested in each other, using an equity swap. You put a percentage of your equity into a pool alongside other founders you respect. All founders in a pool are invested in each other and are incentivized to help each other succeed. The most interesting thing about this is that you get exposure to a bunch of startups not by forking over cold, post-tax cash, but your common stock. Being part of the pool not only diversifies your financial risk, but also instantly upgrades your network. Imagine an army of friends who inspire you, teach you best practices, ready to fight for you, and are strongly incentivized to see you succeed. This is your go-to for investor intros, growth tactics, hiring help, partnerships, advice, psychotherapy :) and more! Since June, we went from concept to 100 companies that have collectively raised ~$1 BILLION, from Pre-Seed to Series D, with many backed by YC, Sequoia, a16z, Founders Fund, Khosla, First Round, etc. The interest we have received humbled us. In July we were on the front page of HackerNews for the entire day with over 200 comments. https://go.founderpool.co/hacker... Our mission is to help entrepreneurs grow together. We’d love PH feedback. If any of you are going through the founder journey, check out https://founderpool.co Thanks a Billion.

Very cool! This seems pretty useful! I have some questions: 1. Do you plan to have a demo day and help connect startups in pools to investors? 2. What is the minimum amount a company needs to raise to be considered? 3. How many companies per pool? 4. How much equity do companies typically give into a pool?

Interesting idea. Reminds me of: https://twitter.com/BurakYngn/st... Similar to what I said there..it's not unlike how the insurance industry was born, where the risks of few who went to sea (literally) were shared with the many who didn't. I have a (printed) copy of the Titanic's underwriting 1-pager somewhere :L Venture capital isn't unlike the insurance, except VCs love outliers, while insurance underwriters and actuaries don't. FounderPool is a fascinating concept; in of itself I think it's predicated more on VC portfolio theory rather than insurance. How do the pools get matched? Edit: just watched your video. You've pretty much answered that—awesome approach to start with.

Was fun talking with George and Chandra today about a real deal project

Great idea and an impressive team. How do you plan to monetize? Percentage of the pool?

So the lessons learned from the pandemic, market crashes, and political upheavals is to repackage the same casino capital scheme that causes market crashes and political upheavals via the concentration of wealth and toxic assets (startup equity)? Let's take 2008 for example: A privileged cohort: Startup Founders // Wall Street Pooling private equity: Startup Equity // Mortgage Backed Security Derivatives Targeted predatory behavior towards: New Founders with Profitable Ideas // Low-Income Homeowners Anticipating turnover with Insider Knowledge of Portfolio: FounderPool-backed metrics // Housing/Construction Inventory Exploitation of Non-Privileged Cohort via Pump and Dump: Non-Founder (non-equity workers) layoffs via low profitability // Millions of (preventable) foreclosures, evictions, homeless "Wash the Hands" Exit Plan: Utilize Private Network to concentrate new market entries otherwise not afforded to non-Founders // Utilize Public Infrastructure to concentrate new market entries otherwise not afforded to non-bailout recipients Society's progress depends on you ... to organize labor against venture capital.

1)congrats 2) i thought of this idea 10 years ago and so this means george and chandra are doing something genius here and will succeed 3) Ive done insurance litigation in the 'reinsurance' sphere. The key to success here is that in any reinsurance pool, the participants must be sure to screen out weak players and bad eggs (strong players who participate to take advantage). FOUNDERS POOL is genius. And im CERTAIN of the success of founders pool so long as its executed with diligence. Keep swimming!

Amazing product concept, who's your largest established competitor? What separates your product from theirs?

It's awesome!!!!

Super cool idea. I look forward to using this for my next startup.

Many people have talked about exploring this but it hasn't taken off (yet!). I'm curious if something's changed that makes this more likely to succeed now, @george_burke, @chandraduggirala, @manoj_duggirala?

I'm so glad this exists and that it's run by such great people. First-time founders should be able to diversify just as serial founders always have. The psychological benefits of belonging to a cohort with aligned interests, and the economic benefits of being able to survive one failure are both significant.

Great idea! Will try to join the community 😃

Looks awesome!

Love this idea. Cant wait to see how big you take this! You have my full support ?makers

Excited to see the execution guys, congrats on launch!

Huge fan. Congrats team!

Guys, what stage startups can participate in this? how does selection work?

Bringing the Kindred ventures model to a far larger scale. Awsome.

Congrats on launching a new type of launchpad for founders! Diversification and derisking are important parts of investing + entrepreneurship, I’m glad FounderPool creates this superset PLUS the potential social outlet for those who lack it from being overworked. Some pondering questions: - What are the plans for scaling when there are hundreds of applicants? - How would founders be matched? - Who will lead the cohort pools and how are the numbers/terms determined for each cohort? - Is there a governance structure for each cohort?