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).
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)