Before we get into it, one quick thing. A short survey, four questions, about a minute, to tell us more about who you are and how we can help you inside this ecosystem.
Seven things we heard at the founder jam panel
Traction beats attention. Colin, talking about his work helping SaaS companies with retention: a thousand visitors converting two is not automatically better than a hundred converting five. Traction is when someone can explain your business better than you can.
Revenue is the best source of funding. Liz, on her own startup 24-Hour PR. When someone pays you for the problem, you know you built something real.
Speed to validation, not speed to market. Colin again, answering Drew’s question about shipping fast versus getting it right. Speed only matters if you know what you’re trying to learn.
The fifteen grand test. Drew, retelling something he heard from founder Harold Hughes on a podcast. Instead of asking friends and family if they’d buy your thing, ask if they’d personally invest fifteen grand in it.
Finding a co-founder is basically dating. Liz’s answer to an audience question. Get clear on working style and communication before you sign anything together.
Vision matters less than conviction. Drew’s answer late in the panel. Nobody’s original vision survives contact with the real world. What gets you through is caring enough to keep adjusting.
Nobody talks about the middle. Chris James, almost in passing, and maybe the truest line of the day. Everyone talks about the start and the exit. Nobody
talks about the years in between where you actually live.
Drew, Colin (Torta Studios), Liz (Hurt Hub), Chris (Pet Screening) hosting the panel
The mix doing what a mix does
There's a documentary we keep coming back to called The Biggest Little Farm, about a couple who bought dead, worn out land and turned it into a working farm. The advice they got before anything else wasn't about the biggest orchard, it was diversify, diversify, diversify. Different plants and different animals, all of it rubbing up against each other on purpose, until the soil fed the plants, the plants fed the animals, and the animals fed the soil back.
That's closer to what this house is than a list of tips. A week or two ago, two members ended up talking about a documentation and quoting tool for home service contractors. In a completely separate conversation that same week, someone else's federal contracting compliance work turned out to circle the exact same problem from another angle, and nobody had scheduled either meeting. It was the mix doing what a mix does, the same way it works on a farm, different pieces feeding each other without anyone managing it from above.
We don't think a place like this can be measured by counting members or counting events. Those numbers tell you the desks are full, but they don't tell you anything about what's actually happening between the people sitting in them. What we actually pay attention to is closer to what a farmer pays attention to, not how many seeds went in the ground, but whether the soil underneath them is alive. On a farm, rich soil means a thousand small things breaking down and feeding each other at once, most of it invisible, happening underground where nobody's looking. Here, rich soil looks like founders getting to just be founders, in the room, in proximity with other founders who actually get it, people who can't stop generating ideas, who see a solution before anyone else has finished describing the problem, who are curious enough to ask the question nobody else thought to ask and go looking for ways to solve things for other people, not just themselves.
Put enough of those people in the same physical space on purpose, across different industries and different ways of thinking, and you get something that behaves less like a schedule and more like an ecosystem, where most of what one person offers only becomes useful once it runs into someone else's problem.
We don't measure success by headcount. We measure it by whether the soil is rich enough that a breakthrough is always somewhere in the room, waiting on the right two people to bump into each other. That's the bet, not an outcome we can point to on day one, but an environment we trust will keep producing them, quietly, on its own schedule, the same way a farm does.
Miguel and Darcie colliding
Bryce and Miguel sharing ideas
If this is you, or you feel it coming
If you’ve ever built something, you’ve most likely already experienced the quiet part nobody puts on a slide. That feeling a few months in where doubt shows up. It gets quiet around month six. Somewhere around month ten or twelve it can feel like you’re the only person who has ever felt this specific kind of alone. Grit gets you partway. Discipline gets you further. But the thing that actually gets people through it is having someone else in it with you.
If that sounds like where you are, or somewhere you can feel yourself heading, come find out what this place is. Plug into an event, come to a house jam, or just come tour the house and meet me. I’d love to get you connected into this ecosystem.
What’s been happening
House Jam. Founders and builders spread out across the house, working on real projects, no agenda beyond showing up and getting to work.
People in their groups jamming
Founder Jam — A full day of founder workshops, a panel on traction and the messy middle, and open jam time to build and connect.
Members dinner. A full house around the table, the kind of night where half the value is just who ends up sitting next to who.
11 members out for dinner
Whats Coming Up
House Jam, August 6. Same deal, bring your idea or your curiosity.
Dont know what a House Jam is? Watch this:
Opening up the back of the house. More space, more room for events, and we’re welcoming new members now.
Wrapping up
Good advice matters. So does putting enough different builders in the same rooms and trusting what grows.
Onward & upward 🤘
Drew
P.S. Drew built something that helped him run StealthX on easy mode. He's since turned it into FounderArmory.com, worth a look if you want to see it, and you can grab time with him for a demo if it's useful.
