I’m starting a Single Founder mastermind group

A couple other founders and I do something we call the "Bootstrappers Scrum". It's every week on Monday and we cover what we are working on, what we have gotten done, and then talk about any tough decisions or ask for advice. We have been doing it almost a year now and it has worked out great, I would highly recommend it to other people getting started who need more feedback and motivation.

I think the key to making something like this work is to limit the size of the group. It's five of us right now and that is about perfect, we tried adding another and the calls started getting too long and it didn't feel right. (he quit anyway)

It also helps if you know each other in some capacity, talking about your business in an honest way and sharing information requires a good amount of trust. We all knew each other before starting the call.

The other thing that helped was to create an IRC room for chatting and asking ad-hoc questions (although it tends to just be five friends hanging out some days too, which is cool too)

My initial comment was, "Oh, like the Brain Trust on Scrubs" (http://scrubs.wikia.com/wiki/Brain_Trust). Then I noticed that was actually the name of his startup.

"I haven’t diagnosed why"

There's nothing to diagnose; for many people it's best to be a single founder.

PG's strong emphasis on having more than one founder has made may people insecure of founding a startup all on their own. I think this belief of PG was influenced by his experience with Viaweb and the great symbiotic relationship he had with RTM.

But what's good for one person, is not necessarily good for others. Many people are the most productive when they work by themselves and when they are in full control of what they are doing.

I've been doing something since October that was initially just two of us, but is now three.

The criteria for joining was the person had to be of sound character, open-minded and ambitious. They dont necessarily have to be part of a start-up.

I initially did something on Skype, but i didnt feel it worked as well as it could have, so moved it offline.

We meet once a week, and we congratulate each other on our achievements on the week, then we 'reflect' on our challengers from the previous week, and then we discuss our challenges for the next week. the whole thing lasts about 3 or 4 hours.

I took some inspiration from another mastermind group i attended online last january, and then built upon it further in the way that i felt it worked for me.

I'm really glad i took the step. Initially it was really hard to come up with a working structure, but the guy that joined the group was me was very flexible and open-minded, so got the thing refined in just a few weeks, and now i feel it works great. Has really helped me think differently about things, and learn more than i could have done on my own, and with assurity i can say, its had the same result for the other 2 guys now.

We just felt it works much better face to face. We've all been very dedicated to it, and we dont just discuss professional achievements and challenges , but personal ones too (within reason).

Just thought i'd share (not bragging ;-) )

Best of luck, although I can't help a smile at the irony of creating a group for loners.

It sounds like a good idea, but with that name I just couldn't help but think of this: http://scrubs.wikia.com/wiki/Brain_Trust

I believe that single founders need a commercial-use only "open source" software license:

http://www.google.com/buzz/amichail/XyY72JZhjYJ/Open-source-...

I was expecting this to be a group to play mastermind with other like-minded single founders. Oh shucks.

Ha I've been developing this same idea on the side - good to see someone else has it covered already.

After mastermind you should have added "Bwahahahahaha" (maniacal mastermind laughter)

This sounds great. Where is it located?

Which city is this happening in?

I have a Da Vinci action figure: http://www.shakespearesden.com/11520.html

I'm not saying he's better than Charlie, but I find it easier anthropomorphizing a (brilliant!) action figure. (Not only is he great at debugging code, he's also pretty darn creative).