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🌴 I’m Hosting a Founder Retreat!

Hey! Justin here, and today I wanted to tell you a little more about something I’ve been working on for you the past few weeks: a founder retreat.

I’m hosting a retreat for founders in Santa Barbara August 23-25.

It’s meant for founders looking to:

• Build meaningful connections

• Share valuable insights

• Have some fun

We're renting out an entire boutique hotel for the weekend, located in downtown Santa Barbara, about a mile and a half from the beach.

We also have an amazing guest speaker joining us in Santa Barbara!

He’s a tech founder who bootstrapped his SaaS company to a $600+ million exit and he’s graciously offered to spend time with us sharing his insights.

While he mostly stays under the radar, he was recently interviewed on Sam Parr’s MoneyWise podcast, sharing how he spends his money as someone with a $120 million net worth. It was a fascinating listen.

This is the first founder retreat I’ve ever hosted.

Honestly, I’m a little nervous about it, but the motivation for it is simple: Helping founders build relationships.

There are few things as valuable as meaningful relationships, especially in the business world, and this will be a great opportunity to develop them with other ambitious founders.

Do you know why we have our amazing guest speaker joining us?

We’ve built a rapport after first engaging on Twitter and then through email and multiple Zoom calls.

Of course, there’s nothing like an in-person connection - that’s what I’d like to provide for you.

The retreat costs $999 per person which includes:

• A private room for 2 nights

• 2 dinners, 2 breakfasts, and 1 lunch

You’ll arrive Friday and we’ll all have dinner together, Saturday we’ll have a big interactive session with our guest speaker, and throughout the retreat, there will be time to relax, go for walks, get to know the other founders, and have some fun.

Only 7 spots are available for this retreat. If you’d like to attend as a founder couple, please let me know.

One more thing…

If you apply and pay by July 19th, I’m going to knock $150 off the price to attend!

Why the application? Because I want to curate the best group of founders possible!

Reply to this email if you have any questions.

👋 Community Update

Last week was a busy one on the events front.

I hosted or co-hosted three events, including a co-working day, pitch and run, and hike. They were so much fun!

A picture from our co-working day below co-hosted with Espree from WeAreLATech:

And our hike from yesterday:

More events coming up soon!

Take a look at the LA calendar below:

🌴 LA Event Calendar

Also, I want to do another SF event soon and will be adding the next one to the SF calendar below:

🌉 SF Event Calendar 

Want to sponsor these events and also get exposure in this newsletter? Reply to this email.

🤿 Recent Founder Deep Dives

In the past year, I’ve written dozens of deep dives on world-class founders, sharing how they built their companies. These typically take 20-30 hours to research and write. The most recent ones are below:

🧥 The Adventurous Ambition of Yvon Chouinard

👩 The Mission-Driven Ambition of Carolyn Childers

♠️ The Quiet Ambition of Denise Coates

🐭 The Boundless Imagination of Walt Disney

❤️ Kate Ryder’s Ambitious Mission

💰 Raising Money for Your Startup?

I’m a Venture Partner at VITALIZE Venture Capital where we invest in pre-seed and seed-stage WorkTech companies - People-first, data-driven, BIG ideas that transform work outcomes.

Also, I recently became a scout at Headline where we invest in Seed - Series B companies across consumer internet, SaaS, and marketplaces (More examples below).

If you’re raising, reply to this email and let me know what you’re building!

🤝 Want to Join a Vetted Community of Ambitious Founders?

I recently announced the new community I’m building: Village Lane.

Village Lane connects ambitious early-stage startup founders (Pre-seed to Series A), both in-person and online, who have at least $100k in ARR or $250k in funding.

Learn more and apply to join below:

Thanks for reading!

Best,

Justin

Founder of Just Go Grind and Village Lane

P.S. Interested in sponsoring Just Go Grind and reaching 21,000+ founders, investors, and operators? Reply to this email.

P.P.S. Want to work with me 1 on 1?

P.P.P.S. Hiring? Check out the team at Athyna.