# Building a community between a fund and the founders it backs

> 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.

*Real case, anonymised: the company name is invented.*

- Company (invented name) : Fonds Lucane
- Sector : Impact and deeptech venture capital
- Size : The fund’s team and the co-founders of some fifteen start-ups
- Format : Two days
- Audience : The fund’s team and the co-founders of some fifteen portfolio start-ups: a few dozen people.
- URL : https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/cas-clients/fonds-communaute-fondateurs

## 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.

## Design 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.

## Run of show

### Day 1

- **Welcome** : A personal card and a team card, per table.
- **What I find here** : What I can find here, and nowhere else.
- **The value proposition** : Putting into words what the community wants to be.
- **Masterclasses** : By choice, in several rotation rounds.
- **Give and give back** : Each group invents an exchange protocol.
- **The founders’ space** : Prototyped in cardboard.

### Day 2

- **Protocols, for real** : Played out, rewritten or reinvented.
- **Peer coaching in threes** : One founder presents, two peers question and suggest.
- **Fundraising and feedback** : Peer workshops.
- **Intimate formats** : Calling an old friend, the field of haikus, the letter to those absent.
- **Reflection** : Next year, what I would like to live and do.

## Deliverables

- 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.

## Key takeaways

- 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.

Related expertise : [Collective intelligence](https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/intelligence-collective), [Seminar design](https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/design-de-seminaire), [Seminar facilitation](https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/facilitation-de-seminaire)

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Source: Flow Design, https://www.getflowdesign.com
Contact: victoire@getflowdesign.com, marie-violaine@getflowdesign.com, +33 6 72 15 94 77. Request a quote: https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/nous-contacter. Draft a run of show online: https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/concevoir-mon-seminaire.