What do you do when you can’t find the right entrepreneurial community? Start one of your own.

It can be lonely running a company, even if you are the one who started it. But when entrepreneur Chris Meade set out to find a community of like-minded business owners where they could have fun and get good advice, he found it wasn’t easy.

Meade is a co-founder of CROSSNET, a seven-year-old e-commerce company that generated multi-million revenue from the sale of a game that combines volleyball and Four Square. CROSSNET recently expanded its distribution within Target and also entered Costco. He found some groups constantly trying to sell him something, and others full of wannabes, talking, no action.

So Meade decided to do something about it. He teamed up with his good friend Aaron Spivak, who also founded out Hush Blankets, a weighted blanket business in Toronto, before becoming a private investor.

The two met when they were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and Spivak saw a similar gap in the market. “We found this white space in the market—entrepreneurs who are actually doing it, and not doing smoke and mirrors,” says Meade.

Together, they began hosting community dinners for a group of serious entrepreneurs, generally in their twenties and thirties. The dinners caught on well and held them in 17 cities across North America. Those who eventually turned into a new business, Founders Clubwhich launched in August 2023 with co-founder Clay Lundquist. The Founders Club grew to over 200 members in its first year. Members pay $5,000 per year.

Many entrepreneurs have found that in a career for which there is no official guide, peer groups can be a valuable source of information. Academic research shows that belonging to a business group has real value for entrepreneurs, especially when it comes to learning and growing. When I wrote my book recently Small business, big money, We found in a survey of seven-figure entrepreneurs that 45% belonged to an entrepreneurship group.

In addition to three or four community networking tables in multiple cities each month, the Founders Club offers monthly mentoring through mentors with a business coach and peer support through an organized network that matches members for to solve the specific problems they mentioned as being at the forefront. mind.

“As companies mature, there’s a difference between running a three-person company and a 20-person company,” says Meade. “We’re trying to get entrepreneurs at different stages of their business to feed off each other.”

Meade and Spivak also saw a gap in groups for entrepreneurs between the ages of 25 and 40. Some of the other organizations they tried seemed to target entrepreneurs in their 40s and 50s. “When we went into these button-down, suit-and-tie types of rooms, we didn’t want to build the community,” says Meade.

The group has grown organically so far, both through community meals and word of mouth. “People who join or have a good time tell their founding friends,” says Spivak.

Meade and Spivak are looking to reach 500 members by early 2024 and recently hired a marketing firm and a partner to help scale operations. “We’re excited about this business—it solves so many problems,” says Meade.