A couple other founders and I do something we call the "Bootstrappers Scrum". It's every week on Monday and we cover what we are working on, what we have gotten done, and then talk about any tough decisions or ask for advice. We have been doing it almost a year now and it has worked out great, I would highly recommend it to other people getting started who need more feedback and motivation.
I think the key to making something like this work is to limit the size of the group. It's five of us right now and that is about perfect, we tried adding another and the calls started getting too long and it didn't feel right. (he quit anyway)
It also helps if you know each other in some capacity, talking about your business in an honest way and sharing information requires a good amount of trust. We all knew each other before starting the call.
The other thing that helped was to create an IRC room for chatting and asking ad-hoc questions (although it tends to just be five friends hanging out some days too, which is cool too)
I agree, I think establishing the trust and credibility and getting everyone comfortable will be the key to this thing. Before that, even more important will be to get the "right" group together.
I think you're lucky that you happened to know 5 people. We'll have to do some upfront work to get the to level of comfort you already had from the onstart.
Sounds like a great idea, do you all meet in person or just set up a group video conference? I like the possibility of doing this locally, ideally to meet up face to face.
We just do Skype, meeting up face to face would be great but I chose people I knew over location (we are currently spread across Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina).
My initial comment was, "Oh, like the Brain Trust on Scrubs" (http://scrubs.wikia.com/wiki/Brain_Trust). Then I noticed that was actually the name of his startup.
There's nothing to diagnose; for many people it's best to be a single founder.
PG's strong emphasis on having more than one founder has made may people insecure of founding a startup all on their own. I think this belief of PG was influenced by his experience with Viaweb and the great symbiotic relationship he had with RTM.
But what's good for one person, is not necessarily good for others. Many people are the most productive when they work by themselves and when they are in full control of what they are doing.
I've been doing something since October that was initially just two of us, but is now three.
The criteria for joining was the person had to be of sound character, open-minded and ambitious. They dont necessarily have to be part of a start-up.
I initially did something on Skype, but i didnt feel it worked as well as it could have, so moved it offline.
We meet once a week, and we congratulate each other on our achievements on the week, then we 'reflect' on our challengers from the previous week, and then we discuss our challenges for the next week. the whole thing lasts about 3 or 4 hours.
I took some inspiration from another mastermind group i attended online last january, and then built upon it further in the way that i felt it worked for me.
I'm really glad i took the step. Initially it was really hard to come up with a working structure, but the guy that joined the group was me was very flexible and open-minded, so got the thing refined in just a few weeks, and now i feel it works great. Has really helped me think differently about things, and learn more than i could have done on my own, and with assurity i can say, its had the same result for the other 2 guys now.
We just felt it works much better face to face. We've all been very dedicated to it, and we dont just discuss professional achievements and challenges , but personal ones too (within reason).
so you are okay with some other guy taking your software for free, packaging it up, and selling it to someone else, but not okay with the same other guy taking your software for free, packaging it up, and giving it away?
I guess there might be a small advantage to it on server software... "you can use my software to run your webapp, but you must charge more than I do for customers to use your webapp." - still, makes it a lot less likely that I'm going to use your software (and any time you step away from the established licenses you incur lawyer costs you don't if you use the standard licenses.)
I'm not saying he's better than Charlie, but I find it easier anthropomorphizing a (brilliant!) action figure. (Not only is he great at debugging code, he's also pretty darn creative).
I think the key to making something like this work is to limit the size of the group. It's five of us right now and that is about perfect, we tried adding another and the calls started getting too long and it didn't feel right. (he quit anyway)
It also helps if you know each other in some capacity, talking about your business in an honest way and sharing information requires a good amount of trust. We all knew each other before starting the call.
The other thing that helped was to create an IRC room for chatting and asking ad-hoc questions (although it tends to just be five friends hanging out some days too, which is cool too)