On Deck

ODF is the surviving founder programme of On Deck, the venture-backed community company launched in June 2019 by Erik Torenberg and David Booth. In its original form On Deck sold a wide range of paid year-long fellowships and vertical communities alongside an equity accelerator, ODX. After cutting a quarter of its staff in May 2022 and a further third that August, the company narrowed to founder programmes. By 2026 the beondeck.com domain redirects to joinodf.com, where the programme is run by nZero Labs, Inc. and has been reshaped into a one-week in-person sprint in San Francisco for 80 to 100 people, followed by ongoing access to an online member community. It takes no equity and charges on a pay-what-you-can basis with a suggested US$1,000 contribution, a substantial change from the US$2,990 ODF fee reported in 2022. Admission runs through an application and one or two interviews. Two related programmes, a three-month Solo Founders residency and Solo Grants, are listed alongside ODF.

Cách thức hoạt động

Applicants complete a form, optionally submit an async video, and take one or two interviews, with a decision stated at roughly 36 hours. Admitted founders attend a full five-business-day sprint in San Francisco built around meeting potential collaborators, testing ideas and building conviction. After the week, alumni retain access to an online community platform and to a set of vendor perks the organization values at more than US$800,000, covering services such as Mercury, AWS and Stripe Atlas.

Thành viên điển hình

ODF states that cohorts run 80 to 100 people and that more than half have technical backgrounds. The published eligibility screen excludes founders who have raised beyond pre-seed, who already have a team, whose business cannot reach venture scale, or whose target customers are outside the United States. Named alumni companies include Cal.com, Luma and Partiful.

On Deck is a useful cautionary case for anyone assessing paid founder communities. It scaled to a US$650 million valuation on a subscription-community model, then contracted sharply in 2022 and now operates a far smaller programme under a different corporate name. Prospective applicants should treat pre-2023 coverage of On Deck's fellowships, prices and breadth as historical. The current ODF is best understood as a short, cheap, non-dilutive co-founder-matching and idea-validation sprint rather than a standing membership organization, and its pay-what-you-can pricing means the selection filter, not the fee, is what gates the room. The geographic and stage constraints are unusually explicit and narrow: San Francisco in person, United States customers, pre-seed or earlier, no existing team.

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