Why We Invested In A Founders Retreat…
Two years ago we tried an experiment here at Connect Ventures. We hosted a retreat for the founders in our portfolio.
At the time, it was pretty unheard of in Europe that a VC would put on such an event for their portfolio, especially one focusing on leadership development and mental wellbeing. We wanted to do something different — to bring a fresh and unique approach to a concept that’s usually reserved for teams and/or whole companies. We started by considering the question:
“What happens when you invite a bunch of founders from the portfolio to a villa in Europe for three days of leadership and mental well-being coaching?”
TL;DR? Have a watch of the highlights video below…
But why?
We’ve seen first hand what it takes to be a founder of a high-growth startup. It takes incredible levels of determination and sacrifice to move the company from idea stage to seed, Series A and beyond. We’ve seen, and in some cases experienced, the effect of sleepless nights spent thinking about upcoming board meetings, next round fundings, and difficult layoffs.
Much is expected of founders as their startups have to find a way to have maximum impact with limited resources in a short space of time. Finding product market fit, nailing the execution of the go-to-market strategy and scaling the team. It’s no surprise that the vast majority of founders leave themselves little time to think about their own leadership development and mental wellbeing.
We wondered how else we could help them cope as the pressures mount? And how we could do so in a tangible and meaningful way? Leadership development and mental wellbeing are two key pillars of our value-add offering at Connect so we thought it would be impactful and fun to bring the two pillars together as the foundations of a retreat. And the result was…
As the name suggests, the retreat is for founders only. We know that other funds have typically hosted offsites with a mixed audience of founders, investors and operators. We’ve kept ours focused on our founders and curate the attendee list to bring together a great mix of founders from different stage companies and different industries. And because the content focuses primarily on leadership development and mental wellbeing, it’s able to appeal to founders of all backgrounds.
On the content side of things, we work with some of the best executive coaches in the ecosystem who deliver sessions around a range of leadership topics — some examples include Getting Comfortable With Feedback; Aligning A Growing Team; Managing Inclusion; The Dangers of Founder Guilt; Maintaining Brilliance Without Burnout, and many more.
The emphasis is on learning — be it new skills or frameworks — and founders taking time to build stronger relationships with their peers and us as a team.
(dis)connect is now a cornerstone of our network offering. The feedback we’ve received from founders has been overwhelmingly positive and the value they gain from attending is pretty immense.
They come away from the retreat having made long-lasting relationships with their peers — some of whom they wouldn’t ordinarily, cross paths with.
Having now hosted two editions of this retreat, we thought we’d share our learnings in this second blogpost to serve as guidance for anyone else considering a retreat or off-site for their portfolio. Happy planning!
