The founders worth knowing
tend to know each other.
A closed network of investors, platform leaders, founders, and operators who refer the founders worth knowing — and get something properly useful back: free OffDeck for portfolio, a quarterly portfolio-health digest, and a seat at the closed-room dinners we run twice a year.
You know the founders we should know.
To the people who back operators —
If you're reading this, there's a good chance you've watched a great founder walk into a Series A with the wrong skills map and try to talk their way out of it. You've watched a team safety score quietly fall four pulses in a row before anyone said it out loud. You've watched a co-founder partnership crack at month eleven for reasons that, in hindsight, were on the assessment all along.
We built OffDeck because the senior operating partner that used to sit next to those founders has, somewhere along the line, become a luxury. We're trying to give it back — calibrated, structured, on every founder's desk, week one.
The hard part isn't the product. The hard part is which founders we work with first. And on that question, you are dramatically better positioned than we are.
So here's the offer. Refer the founders you'd want this for — one a year, or one a week, your call — and we'll give you something properly useful in return. Free OffDeck for any portfolio company you'd like us to work with. A quarterly portfolio-health digest, anonymised, that reads like notes from your best non-executive director. A seat at the closed-room dinners we host in Brooklyn and Lisbon. And, when you ask, a senior founder partner in the room with one of your companies the same week.
We can do this because we run a small, deliberate practice. We can't do it for everyone. We'd very much like to do it for you.
Properly useful. Not points, not perks.
Four things we'd want if we were on the other side of this conversation. Quiet to use. Embarrassingly easy to claim.
Free OffDeck for any portfolio company you'd like us to work with.
The full Operating plan — assessments, skills map, configured rituals, reflections, founder partner — on us for the first year. No seat caps. No friction. Cancel any time — though no one has.
Quarterly portfolio-health digest.
An anonymised read across the companies you've referred — strategy clarity, team safety, skills coverage, cadence health. Reads like a non-exec's notes, not a dashboard.
Inner-circle dinners.
Twice a year, in Brooklyn and Lisbon. Twelve seats. No demos, no decks — one question, four hours. The conversation you keep wanting to have.
Founder-partner privileges.
When something is actually on fire, your founders skip the queue. A senior founder partner in the room within 48 hours — without you having to make the ask.
Research, before publication.
Our research drops — "240 companies, one year on" and the like — arrive in your inbox a week before they go public. Embargoed, citable, yours to share with your partnership.
Three sentences, three minutes, zero awkwardness.
No double opt-in dance, no warm intro thread you have to babysit. You point us at a founder you'd want this for; we take it from there — and write back when we've talked.
You point us at a founder.
A domain, an email, or a sentence about who they are — whichever is in front of you. Drop it in the form to the right.
We reach out, in your name.
Within 24 hours, with a quiet email that mentions you as a Scout. They book a 40-minute conversation with a senior founder partner. Free.
You stay in the loop — or don't.
You get a one-paragraph note after the call: what we heard, what we'd consider. Reply if you want. Silence is fine.
One field. We handle the rest.
Paste their domain. We'll pull who the founders are and reach out in your name.
Three fields. Forty-five seconds.
If their domain isn't obvious, do it the old-fashioned way.
Just tell us about them.
Write the email you'd send a friend. We'll parse it, extract the right fields, and reach out.
Got it. We'll be in touch with them by tomorrow.
You'll get a confirmation email at your address in a moment, and a one-paragraph note from us after the conversation. Thank you — this is the work.
What you'd get in your inbox, every quarter.
An anonymised, written-by-a-senior-operator read across the companies you've referred. Twelve minutes of reading. Three minutes of "I had no idea, thank you."
- Movement, not noise. Only the trends worth a partner-meeting mention.
- Always anonymised. Aggregates and patterns — never an individual's score.
- One takeaway, one ask. A single sentence we'd raise if you were our boss.
- Yours to share. Forward it to your partnership. Cite it in your annual letter.
Slow Capital · 8 referred
The Onwards List.
Once a year we publish the hundred platform leaders, investors, and angel operators who quietly do more for founders than anyone gives them credit for. By Scouts, for Scouts.
It's not a leaderboard — it's an annual acknowledgement, written long-form, with portraits, with names. The kind of thing you frame.
Next edition · December 2026 · 100 namesThe Hundred, last year.
Anyone who knows a founder worth knowing.
The network is intentionally mixed. The thing it has in common: a track record of pointing the right founders at the right help.
Apply to be a Scout.
Four fields, plus one paragraph if you'd like. We respond to every application personally within 72 hours. The bar is simple: a track record of helping founders pick up the phone for the right reasons.