Building a community between a fund and the founders it backs
Fonds LucaneInvented name
A venture fund wanted its founders to find with it what they find nowhere else: their peers. Over two days, the fund’s team and its portfolio’s co-founders invented their own mutual-help rituals, played them out for real, and kept them. The community now works between long-standing and new founders.
- Sector
- Impact and deeptech venture capital
- Size
- The fund’s team and the co-founders of some fifteen start-ups
- Format
- Two days
- In the room
- The fund’s team and the co-founders of some fifteen portfolio start-ups: a few dozen people.
Context
- Founders absorbed by growth, fundraising and hiring, often alone with questions others have already faced.
- A felt gap between their ambitions and their day-to-day reality.
- A fund that wanted to bring more than money: links between the start-ups it supports.
The challenge
Turn a portfolio into a community. Have founders leave with contacts, and above all with ways of helping each other that they will keep alive without the fund.
The design
Key ideas
Give and give back
Each group invents an exchange protocol between start-ups: mentoring, job shadowing, peer review. The next day, it plays it out for real, writes a second version or invents a new one. The community’s rituals are designed by the people who will live them.
A space to prototype
A corner full of cardboard is used to prototype a place of their own for founders: what they would need to get together. People build with their hands what is hard to put into words.
Masterclasses à la carte
Several masterclasses to choose from, on what keeps founders busy: building an ambitious yet realistic roadmap, scaling with your team, industrialising, becoming a purpose-driven company, negotiating with key accounts. Everyone builds their own path.
Peers as a resource
Peer coaching in threes, a fundraising workshop and feedback sessions. Some people’s skills answer others’ questions.
More intimate formats
“Calling an old friend”, a field of haikus, a letter to those absent. More personal moments to say what you are really going through and what you would like next year.
How the time was used
- Open
- Explore
- Decide
- Celebrate
Day 1
Open
Welcome
A personal card and a team card, per table.
Open
What I find here
What I can find here, and nowhere else.
Explore
The value proposition
Putting into words what the community wants to be.
Explore
Masterclasses
By choice, in several rotation rounds.
Explore
Give and give back
Each group invents an exchange protocol.
Explore
The founders’ space
Prototyped in cardboard.
Day 2
Decide
Protocols, for real
Played out, rewritten or reinvented.
Explore
Peer coaching in threes
One founder presents, two peers question and suggest.
Explore
Fundraising and feedback
Peer workshops.
Celebrate
Intimate formats
Calling an old friend, the field of haikus, the letter to those absent.
Decide
Reflection
Next year, what I would like to live and do.
The seminar in miniature
One table per team
Each start-up sits at its own table, with an individual card and a team card. On them, people write what they can find here and nowhere else. These answers are then used to put into words what the community wants to be.
Masterclasses à la carte
One masterclass per room, over several rotations: an ambitious yet realistic roadmap, scaling with your team, industrialising, becoming a purpose-driven company, negotiating with key accounts. Each founder builds their own path around what is on their mind.
Give and give back
Each group invents an exchange protocol between start-ups: mentoring, a “walk in my shoes”, a peer review. The next day, they play it for real, write a second version or invent a new one. The rituals are designed by the people who will live them.
The founders’ space
In a corner full of cardboard, the founders prototype a place of their own by hand: what they would need in order to meet up. You build what is hard to put into words, and the model gets people talking.
Peer coaching in threes
Facing the sea, one founder shares an issue on their mind, two peers question them, then suggest. A fundraising workshop and feedback sessions round it out: one person’s experience answers another’s questions.
Intimate formats
More intimate formats take over: a call to an old friend, a letter to those who are absent, and a field of haikus planted in the grass. More personal moments, to say what you are really going through.
Reflection
In a circle, each person says what they would like to experience and do next year. The protocols invented over these two days still link the portfolio’s first founders with newcomers, without going through the fund. The fund set the conditions; the founders wrote the rules.
The materials, redrawn
Giving and giving back
Our protocol
What I give
What I get back
How often
How we remember it
- 1Day 1Invent
- 2Day 2Play it for real
- 3Day 2V2, or a new one
Formats à la carte
- Masterclasses
- Peer formats
- More personal
- One possible path
Round 1
- Roadmap
- Scaling up
- Industrialising
- Peer coaching in threes
Round 2
- Fundraising
- Purpose-driven company
- Key accounts
- Feedback
Round 3
- Calling an old friend
- Haiku field
- Letter to those absent
- Cardboard workshop
Deliverables and follow-up
- Mutual-help protocols designed and tested by the founders themselves.
- A community that works after the event: mentoring and peer exchanges now link the portfolio’s long-standing founders and the newcomers.
- Start-ups that help each other directly, without going through the fund.
What we take away
- A community holds when its rituals are invented by those who live them. The fund set the conditions, the founders wrote the rules.
- Inventing a protocol one day and playing it out the next turns a good idea into a habit.
- Among founders, the most valuable resource is other people’s experience. The design is about making it accessible.
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