By Andreas Pettersson, Founder, Leaders ADAPT
A founder in her second year opens a laptop at a coworking space, creates a group, and waits. Three other founders ask to join, she accepts two, and they meet on a Tuesday for two hours. Nobody vetted anyone, nobody is paid, and nobody will chase them if they skip March.
That is Founder Groups, as far as the public record shows, and it is honest about being exactly that.
At Leaders ADAPT I run a CEO mastermind of at most 14 members, virtual, with no revenue gate, so I am not a neutral party. This is the Founder Groups entry in the CEO Peer Group Index, every field sourced, every blank written as a blank.
Quick answer: Founder Groups is a platform for founders to create and join local, member led accountability groups, where the creator admits members, sets the venue and runs the meeting. The company publishes no price, no gate, no group size, no contract terms and no member reviews. The blog suggests 4 to 10 founders meeting monthly for two hours or more. It is self run scaffolding, not a facilitated CEO peer group.
What Founder Groups is, in 12 fields
Founder Groups is a platform where a founder creates a local accountability group, other founders request to join, and the creator accepts or declines them, with no facilitator, no published fee and no published gate. One note on method first. The main site and the join page block automated reading, so every value below comes from the company blog and from Crunchbase, both of which resolve, read in October 2026.
| Field | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A platform for "Local Accountability Groups for Founders": you create a group, other founders request to join, you accept or decline | FounderGroups blog, Choosing members |
| Cost and year one | Not published. The readable pages state no price, no joining fee and no term | FounderGroups blog |
| Gates | Founders and entrepreneurs. No revenue, age, employee or title gate published | FounderGroups blog |
| Group size | Not published for the platform. The blog describes typical accountability groups as 4 to 10 entrepreneurs who meet monthly | Six reasons |
| Time commitment | Blog guidance: under a year old, every week or every other week. Mature companies, once a month. Meetings usually two hours or more | Where and when |
| Facilitator model | Member led. The group creator runs the group, with a published guide to running one | Choosing members |
| Contract and cancellation | Not published | FounderGroups blog |
| Format and geography | Local in person groups, with an office, coworking space or coffee shop suggested. Online groups implied. Company based in Portland, Oregon | Where and when, Crunchbase |
| Industry mix | Mixed early stage founders | FounderGroups blog |
| What members say | Not published | FounderGroups blog |
| Founded and size | Founder Pat Cheung. Founding year not published. Member count not published | Crunchbase |
| Best for and not for | For early stage founders who want a free form, self run local accountability group. Not for CEOs who want professional moderation, vetting, or a published fee and term structure | Read of all sources above |
What the platform does well
It lowers the floor. Every established CEO peer group has a gate, a fee or both. Here the only requirement in the public record is that you are a founder. A first time founder at $200,000 in revenue, who no organisation on the Index would admit, can have a room by Friday.
It puts the founder in charge. The creator chooses who gets in, where the group meets and what the meeting is for. The blog's advice on choosing members is sensible and the scheduling guidance is specific: weekly or fortnightly under a year old, monthly once the company is mature, two hours or more per meeting.
It is local by default. Office, coworking space, coffee shop. For a founder in a city with no chapter of anything, a table of four founders who will remember what you said last month is worth more than a stranger's webinar. The founder coaching page covers the one on one alternative when there is no table at all.
What the public record leaves out
Almost everything a buyer would normally check. The price is not published, so a search for the founder groups cost or the terms of a founder groups membership goes unanswered by the company itself. There is no group size for the platform, only the blog's general description of 4 to 10 entrepreneurs.
There is no contract, no cancellation policy and no confidentiality rule published, because there is no contract between you and the other members at all. There is no founding year and no member count on the readable pages or on Crunchbase. And there are no member quotes, so a search for founder groups reviews lands on nothing verifiable.
None of that is a hidden fee. It is the natural shape of a platform that matches people and then steps back. The point is that you cannot compare it on the Index fields the way you can compare EO or Vistage, because the thing you would be comparing is the group you have not built yet.
Who Founder Groups is not for
A CEO with 40 employees. The blog, the venue advice and the cadence guidance all speak to early stage founders, and a founder peer group of people a year or two in has little to say about a leadership team that is not performing. The founder vs CEO page is about that exact crossing, and the crossing is usually where this format stops fitting.
Anyone who wants someone else to hold the room. There is no chair, no moderator and no operator. If one member dominates, the creator deals with it or nobody does. If two members stop showing up, the group is two people.
Anyone who needs confidentiality to be a rule rather than a hope. With no contract and no organisation behind the group, the only confidentiality is the one the members keep.
Anyone outside a city. Local in person is the default, and the online option is implied rather than described. A virtual CEO peer group solves the geography problem differently, by choosing members on fit rather than on who is within twenty minutes of the coffee shop.
The structural gap: scaffolding without an engineer
Scaffolding holds the wall up while you build it. An accountability group is scaffolding you put up yourself, with whoever is standing nearby. That is better than no scaffolding. It is not the same as scaffolding designed by someone who has built this wall before.
In the first three months at Arcules I hired 30 people. By the time we passed 150 I had hired more than 80 of them personally. Here is what I would have asked a founder room during that stretch: how do I tell a good hire from a fast one, how many managers do I need before the next 20 people, and when do I stop interviewing everyone myself. Those are questions with answers, and the answers come from people who have done it, not from people who are also doing it for the first time.
A room of four founders in their second year would have been kind, and would have had none of those answers. The members are all on the first floor of the same building. Nobody has seen the roof.
A self run group does not signal low quality. It signals that quality is your job. You pick the members, you set the standard, you enforce it, and you do that on top of running the company.
Some founders do it well. Most, in my experience of masterminds that stayed too pleasant to be useful, let the standard drift because nobody is paid to hold it. That is the structural gap, and no amount of scheduling advice closes it.
The Leaders ADAPT room, graded on the same 12 fields
My room is graded by the same rules as every organisation on the Index. Not better across the board. Different in structure, and the difference is the engineer.
| Field | Leaders ADAPT CEO Mastermind | Source |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A virtual peer group of founders and CEOs, run as a mastermind by an operator | CEO Mastermind |
| Cost and year one | Not published on blog pages. Given on a fit call | This page |
| Gates | No revenue gate. You must have built something before and want the room to push you | This page |
| Group size | At most 14 members | This page |
| Time commitment | A monthly virtual session plus weekly office hours | This page |
| Facilitator model | An operator who scaled an AI company to more than 150 people and exited it to Canon. I run every session myself | This page |
| Contract and cancellation | No multi year contract | This page |
| Format and geography | Virtual. Members are chosen by fit, not by city | This page |
| Industry mix | Home care, flooring, title services, aviation services, wellness, logistics, lending | This page |
| What members say | Members are never named here, so there are no quotes to publish | This page |
| Founded and size | Leaders ADAPT, founded by Andreas Pettersson. One room, capped at 14 | This page |
| Best for and not for | For owners of $1M to $20M+ companies and builders between companies who do not fit revenue gated groups. Not for first time founders under a year in, who are better served by a free local group, and not for anyone who wants a quiet room | This page |
The honest comparison: both rooms have no revenue gate. One is free form and self run, the other is run hot by someone who has made the mistakes the members are about to make.
Scaffolding designed by someone who built the wall
The Leaders ADAPT CEO Mastermind is for the founder who has outgrown a self run accountability group and still does not fit the gated ones. Virtual, at most 14 members, no revenue gate, with an operator who scaled a company to 150+ people and exited to Canon running every session.
The structure is the point. A check in score tracked across sessions so a member trending down gets caught early, then a company hot seat against a ten slide template covering goals, unit economics, competition, leadership and asks. Five fixed feedback prompts, the fourth being what the presenter is not seeing. One committed action per member, with an owner and a date, and weekly office hours between sessions.
It is not for a founder in year one. Build the free group first. Come back when the questions are about managers, not about customers.
Founder Groups FAQ
What is Founder Groups?
Founder Groups, written FounderGroups by the company, is a platform where founders create and join local accountability groups. A founder creates a group, other founders request to join, and the creator accepts or declines them. The groups are member led, meet in person or online, and follow guidance published on the company blog rather than a fixed curriculum. The company is based in Portland, Oregon.
How much does Founder Groups cost?
Founder Groups does not publish a price. The main site and its join page block automated reading, and the public blog states no fee, no joining cost and no term. Anyone comparing it against a paid peer group should ask the platform directly for the current cost, what it includes, and whether there is any commitment period before relying on a figure.
Who runs a Founder Groups group?
The founder who created the group runs it. There is no assigned facilitator, chair or moderator. The platform publishes a guide to running a group and advice on choosing members, and the group creator decides who is accepted, how often the group meets, where it meets and what the agenda is. Quality therefore depends on that person and the members they admit.
How often do founder accountability groups meet?
Guidance on the Founder Groups blog suggests companies under a year old meet every week or every other week, while mature companies meet once a month. Meetings usually run two hours or more. The blog describes typical accountability groups as 4 to 10 entrepreneurs meeting monthly, and suggests an office, a coworking space or a coffee shop as the venue.
Is Founder Groups a CEO peer group?
It is closer to a matching tool for self run accountability groups than to a CEO peer group. A classic CEO peer group has vetting, a facilitator or trained moderator, a fixed cadence, confidentiality rules and a published fee. Founder Groups publishes none of those for the platform itself, and leaves each of them to the group creator to decide.
What do Founder Groups reviews say?
No independent member reviews of Founder Groups were found that could be verified for this profile, and the company does not publish member quotes on the pages that can be read. Founded by Pat Cheung, with no founding year or membership size published, it has a smaller public record than the established peer organisations it is often compared against.
Build the scaffolding, or join a room that has it?
If you are under a year in and your city has founders, use Founder Groups or something like it. Create the group, pick members on the blog's advice, meet fortnightly, and hold the standard yourself. The platform is free form, the gaps in its record are the gaps of a tool rather than of a programme, and the cost of trying it appears to be low.
If you are past the point where your problems are about customers and into the point where they are about people, a self built group will be kind to you and short on answers. CEO founder groups at that stage need someone in the room who has already hired the 80.
Who in your current room has built the floor you are trying to reach?
If the answer is nobody, see the room with an operator in the chair.
