Founders Forum 2026
The Journey Continues

Attention

09:15 – 10:00
Coming Together
Before the work begins, we begin with each other. Coffee, conversations, and the first moments of a community forming — founders, alumni, faculty, and contributors arriving from over fifty countries. This is the room you’ve been looking for.

10:00 – 10:30
Arriving Fully
We don’t ease into this gathering — we begin it intentionally. An opening that centres the room, establishes the principles of our community, and introduces the arc of the two days ahead. You’ll meet the people around you in ways that go beyond a handshake. And you’ll understand, quickly, that this is not a conference.

10:30 – 11:00
Welcome to the Journey
The School of Founders was built on a specific philosophy of learning — one rooted in presence, transformation, and co-creation. In this session we share the map for the two days ahead: the arc from attention, to intention, to agency. And we set the conditions that make honest work possible.

Attention: Customers
Exploring what it really means to listen, and what high-growth companies consistently get wrong about the people they serve.

11:30 – 11:35
Listening to your Stakeholders — Introduction

11:35 – 11:50
Taking Customer Advocacy Seriously
The most dangerous assumption a scaling founder makes is that they still understand their customer. In this session, we challenge that assumption directly — exploring what it really means to listen, and what high-growth companies consistently get wrong about the people they serve.

11:50 – 12:20
The Human Experience of Being Served
A candid conversation that moves beyond data and NPS scores to the emotional reality of what it feels like to be a customer of a company scaling. What do they experience that founders never see — and what does that cost?

12:20 – 13:00
The Letter from a Customer You Never Received
A guided writing exercise. You’ll inhabit the perspective of a real customer — someone you lost, someone you disappointed, someone you wish you understood better — and write the letter they never sent you. Private, honest, and unexpectedly illuminating.

13:00 – 14:30
Networking Lunch
Lunch is not a break from the work — it’s part of it. Conversations that started in the room continue at the table. Founders from fifty countries compare notes.

Attention: Team
Examining how founders shape the conditions for senior leaders to succeed — and the role they play when those partnerships break down.

14:30 – 14:35
Begin with a Breath — Meditation

14:35 – 14:50
Stakeholder Framing: Team Perspective

14:50 – 15:15
The Senior Hire That Didn’t Work
Between 40% and 60% of senior external hires fail within 18 months in high-growth companies. The most cited reason: cultural misalignment. The most frequent actual cause: the founder didn’t create the conditions for them to succeed. In a live, honest interview, a founder and a former senior leader revisit a partnership that broke down — and what both sides learned from it.

15:15 – 15:45
Journaling — The Honest Inventory
A private journaling exercise. Think of a senior hire that didn’t work. What story did you tell yourself about why? What story would someone who watched from outside tell? What would an older, wiser version of you say to do differently? You’ll share insights — not specifics — with two peers.

Attention: Investor
Reflecting on the human experience of investing, the tensions in founder accountability, and the conversations that often remain unsaid.

16:15 – 16:30
Stakeholder Framing: Investor

16:30 – 17:00
The Human Experience of Investing
The investor relationship is one of the most emotionally complex in a founder’s life — and one of the least honestly navigated. In a candid conversation, two investors speak not about returns or portfolio strategy, but about the human experience of believing in a founder and watching that relationship shift. Investors rarely speak this way in public. You’ll hear what it sounds like on the other side of your board meeting.

17:00 – 17:30
The Board Update You Never Sent
Not the one with the revenue chart and the good news. The real one. A private writing exercise: what is really keeping you up at night that you haven’t said? What did you assume when you took their money that you now know was wrong? What do you actually need from them that you’ve never asked for? This document is yours alone.

Intention: Three Leader Archetypes — Am I the leader the company needs at this stage?
Turning the lens inward to ask whether you are the leader your company needs right now — and whether you have the courage to become that person.

17:40 – 18:00
The Leader Your Company Needs Right Now
The final session of Day 1 turns the lens inward. Every founder and every story is different. But there are patterns. Rachel Turner introduces three archetypes of the scaling founder — the Warrior, the Architect, the Monarch — and two founders share, honestly, what it cost them to transition from one to the next. The question this session asks: am I the right leader for what my company needs right now? And do I have the courage to become that person?

18:00 – 19:05
Stories from the Trenches

Intention: Partner Walk — What Needs My Attention?
A structured walk to speak honestly about what is really brewing in your life and work — not what’s on your deck, but what’s on your mind.

19:15 – 19:20
Instructions Partner Walks

19:20 – 20:00
Partner Walks: What Needs Your Attention?
As the day closes, you take it outside — literally. A structured walk with a partner from the School of Founders community, to speak honestly about what’s really brewing: not what’s on your deck, but what’s on your mind. Twenty minutes of walking, ten minutes each. The kind of conversation that rarely happens in an office.

20:00 – 20:15
Group Sensemaking

20:15 onwards
Dinner Soirée: Eight Toasts to Courage
A dinner designed around a single theme: courage. Eight tables. Eight toasts. Eight stories that begin with honesty and end with a raised glass. One song. Faculty and founders seated together in a setting that makes the conversations that matter feel natural and necessary.

Intention & Agency

08:45 – 09:30
Breakfast, Body, and Breath
Day two begins in the body before it begins in the mind. A somatic practice and meditation connect you to yesterday’s insights and prepare you for the work ahead. The transition from Attention to Intention is not just intellectual — it requires arriving fully, again.

09:30 – 09:40
Begin with a Breath — Meditation

09:40 – 09:55
Activation: Connecting the Two Days
Before we move forward, we integrate what surfaced yesterday. An activation sequence reconnects the room — surfacing patterns, naming what’s emerging, and setting the intention for the day ahead. The arc of the journey becomes clear: from sensing, to presencing, to crystallising.

09:55 – 10:05
Explanation 3D Mapping

Intention: 3D Mapping & Journaling
Making your current reality tangible and distilling the priorities that could make a disproportionate difference in the next 90 days.

10:05 – 11:20
Making Your World Tangible
Using physical materials — not a whiteboard, not a slide — you build a three-dimensional map of your company’s current reality and the future you want to create. Working with your hands changes what you see. The School of Founders framework guides the process, but what you discover is entirely your own.

11:30 – 11:40
Bridging from Intention to Agency: Key Thrust

11:40 – 12:00
Journaling: Finding Your Key Thrust
From everything that has surfaced across the two days — the letters you wrote, the conversations you had, the map you built — you now distill. A structured journaling sequence moves you through three movements: sensing where you are honestly, presencing what truly matters, and crystallising the two or three priorities that will make a disproportionate difference in the next 90 days.

12:00 – 12:10
Explanation of Prototyping Clinics

The Prototype Clinic is the action engine of the two days. Based on what emerged in your journaling, you will choose three patterns — specific, recognisable challenges that founders face as they scale — and spend 50 minutes in each session with an expert.

Each session combines a content framework, real stories, and time to apply what you hear directly to your own situation. Each rotation helps you learn and reflect on potential solutions and next steps.

7 rooms · 3 rounds · 21 patterns · 50 minutes per session

12:10 – 13:00
Networking Lunch
A standing lunch to keep the energy of agency alive. The work continues informally between founders.

Agency: Prototype Clinic (Breakout Rooms)
Turning your key thrust into concrete action through pattern recognition, peer reflection, expert input, and practical next steps.

13:00 – 13:50

Round 1

13:50 – 14:00

Transition Time

14:00 – 14:50

Round 2

14:50 – 15:00

Transition Time

15:00 – 15:50

Round 3

15:50 – 16:05

Coffee Break

A pause before the closing. Step outside, compare prototypes, decompress with a peer.

Closing
Bringing the journey to a close through reflection, manifesto, shared commitments, and a final ritual of legacy.

16:05 – 16:25
The Beautiful Business
Tim Leberecht — author, founder of the House of Beautiful Business, and one of the most compelling voices on purpose-driven entrepreneurship — delivers the closing keynote. A reflection on why building a company with beauty, humanity, and conscience is not just a philosophy. It is a competitive advantage. It is the only kind of company worth building.

16:25 – 16:45
This Is What We Believe: Our Manifesto
Sebastian Ross and James Allen share the School of Founders Manifesto: the living document of what this community stands for, what it refuses to compromise on, and what it commits to. Not a mission statement. A declaration. Read aloud, together, by the people who built it and the people who will carry it forward.

16:45 – 17:00
Exit Ritual: Our Legacy in Humanity
We close as we began — together, and with intention. A final ritual asks each participant to leave something behind: a note to the future, a record of what matters most about what we are building together. Something permanent, in a gathering that earned it.

17:00 onwards
Beers & Conversations
The programme ends. The community does not.