Executive Summary

In short, On Deck is "Stanford for the internet."

A university is far more than its curricula. People discover what and whom they love, develop the skills and EQ to build a career, and make the most meaningful professional and personal relationships of their lives.

Why does that stop at the arbitrary age of twenty-two?

On Deck is building a "modern education institution" where top technology talent and ambitious builders go to start or join a company, develop new skills, build relationships and accelerate through the "step functions" of their careers — a campus for lifelong learning.

Specifically, we are building two things:

• a new approach to continuous online education: delivered through synchronous 'cohorts' of 100 - 200 individuals, with an emphasis on peer-to-peer learning. In 2021, we will launch up to 120 of these cohorts across ~30 subsets, driving substantial upfront cash flow.
• a private, professional social network. Serving as the "campus" to our "college," the On Deck product is a “market network” facilitating matching between talent and opportunity, knowledge, and more. Think: private LinkedIn/AngelList meets Quora — with potential to be as impactful as any of them.

What Twitter did for media, On Deck will do for online education.

When thinking about the future, it's easy to extrapolate existing business models onto new technologies, but very hard to predict emergent behavior.

When the internet first came along, we created PDFs of newspapers online and said, "This will change everything!"

But it didn't. Twitter changed everything. The experimentations of an online community led to the emergence of a new peer-to-peer medium, native to the internet

Similarly, the first generation of "ed-tech" (MOOCs, etc) failed to live up to the hype. Learning from their shortcomings, On Deck "re-bundles" community with curriculum. We build the tools and culture that makes peer to peer education rewarding and personal.

What emerged is a place for continuing education and socialization for every curious human with an IP address. Stanford University, native to the internet.

Here are four key ideas we hope you take from this memo:

1️⃣ On Deck is already a substantial business, and is on track to 10x (again) in the next 2-3 years.

• On Deck existed as a vibrant, volunteer-run community for three years before becoming a business. This "accrued goodwill" establishes both an authentic foundation for our community values and a substantial headstart over would-be competitors.
• On Deck has developed meaningful pricing power. Proudly more expensive than alternatives, yet customers regularly recommend we charge more, and publicly call for annual plans and subscriptions.
• Most communities are chronically undercapitalized. On Deck uses its pricing power/program revenue to hire the best talent, and invest in creating exceptional experiences. This in turn helps build reputation and drives new member demand, enabling further investment in R&D, acquisition, and distribution. A self-reinforcing flywheel:

• Scaling communities is hard, but we think we’ve cracked the code. At On Deck, each fellowship cohort is simultaneously small and intimate (think: "class"), nested within a broader, highly aligned sub-community ("program"), and woven into a larger ecosystem ("campus").
• The secret: each new program contributes a specific "supply" that meets an existing "demand" we identify within our network. For example, our founders, angels, and talent fellowships are tightly interwoven. See the full "flywheels" thesis laid out on Twitter here.

• While the majority of our current revenue comes from consumer-facing programs (where each Fellow pays personally), we now have our first three career programs live — think: “YPO for X.” These sell into the "Learning & Development" budget, and are typically expensed to an employer. The first of these billed $620k revenue in its first cohort.
• In addition to upfront "tuition" fees, On Deck additional revenue streams include:
• Partnerships: $600k ARR across 17 partners (AWS, Carta, AngelList, Mercury Bank, Substack, and more), with a target of $1.5M ARR by EOY 2021;
• Recruiting: prior to Jan ‘21 acquisition, Lean Hire (details below) was turning over $50k+ per month. We expect this to become a major profit centre by Q3 2021.
• Digital subscription "bundle" — Launching Q1 2021, analogous to Peloton’s ongoing media subscription, bundled with upfront capital outlay.

2️⃣ Our customers f*ing LOVE us.

• Nearly one in three of our all-time customers (~700 people) have added On Deck to their Twitter bios and/or Linkedin — choosing to align their core professional identity with their participation in an On Deck program. To our knowledge, this is unprecedented within the tech industry.
• Customers describe On Deck using superlatives like "life-changing," "the best decision I ever made," "It's too good to be true, but it's true," and more. Scroll the quote-retweets of our "2020 Year in Review" here for 50+ such examples.
• Customers gladly pay $2,000-$5,000+ out of their own pockets to join a program—previously inconceivable for consumer-focused personal productivity or community products—and are exhibiting strong "repeat buying" behavior: 25% of our first "Writers" cohort had previously participated in ODF, several have signed up for their third and fourth programs.
• Our NPS consistently polls around 65-70. Even better: customers actually "walk the talk," making over 2,500 referrals in the past twelve months. This constitutes one of our biggest growth channels.
• Of 1,500 people in the Founder Fellowship ("ODF") Slack channel, 81% are active (10+ messages sent per month) up to 1.5 years later (most Slack communities retain 5-10% engagement maximum). Slack's Head of Enterprise Sales recently stated: "On Deck is an absolute anomaly — we’ve never seen a community like it.”
• Participants have achieved very real success against a broad range of goals. Most notably, at least 330 companies have been founded and collectively raised upwards of $250M pre-seed/seed funding during the On Deck Founder Fellowship, in just 18 months.

3️⃣ Why this team?

• We have assembled an all-star, rapidly growing team of 56 to scale into this opportunity, including many former founders, experienced entrepreneurial leaders. Upcoming hires include COO and CRO.
• The On Deck communities offer a true unfair advantage when it comes to recruiting — allowing us to see talent and build relationships with hundreds of candidates before they get close to our internal team pipeline. Nearly a third of our current team were hired from the On Deck community.
• Our founding team and leadership were made for the job:
• On Deck Founder & Chairman Erik Torenberg is a renowned community builder, founding team at Product Hunt and founder at Village Global;
• Co-founder & CEO David Booth is an experienced 3x former founder, deep "systems thinker" with experience in finance and law, product & operations at AngelList, Carta, CoinList;
• CTO Andreas Klinger was founding CTO at Product Hunt, VP Engineering at CoinList, and Head of Remote at AngelList.
• COO (Interim) Eric Friedman was previously COO at Company, Head of Expa Labs, and Global Director Sales & Revenue at Foursquare.

4️⃣ Why now?

• On Deck is riding a series of (at least) four "macro" waves / tailwinds:
• The decline of traditional higher education and rise of "ed-tech 2.0" — which will anchor around the "re-bundling" of virtual curriculum and community.
• The shift into the "deployment age" of the internet. Software has eaten/infiltrated the world. The half-life of professional skills has fallen to five years. Most people haven't yet learned to thrive in this new economy.
• A shift to distributed living/working as the new norm — as accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. On Deck is "Silicon Valley in the Cloud";
• The decline of organized religion, and an ongoing search for meaning, identity, and community in modern life (see: Peloton).

• We are raising up to $12.5M on a $250M post-money valuation[2].
• We are looking for ~3/4 (up to ~$15M) from strategic VCs and angels, and reserving the final 1/4 for our community — including a private Reg CF "crowd sale" and "share drop" which will be offered exclusively to our ~2,500 current Fellows and alumni.
• Why raise? On Deck is profitable MoM with $2.7M cash and equivalents on hand. Though we don't "need" the capital, the goal of this raise is four-fold:
• (1) Further accelerate our engineering and product hiring. The On Deck product is an invaluable part of the experience, but also has break-out potential as a potential LinkedIn competitor. We're in full blitzscaling mode, and want to prioritize talent acquisition.
• (2) Build a "war chest" (cash + equity value) to deploy an M&A growth strategy. Communities are valuable intangible assets — but most are extremely undercapitalized, make for easy acqui-hire targets, and offer high ROI once we plug in On Deck’s “distribution.” We have 10-15 possible targets in our pipeline, and two recent completed examples in "Performative Speaking" and "Lean Hire."
• (3) With IRL returning, we have identified a unique opportunity to own the space between virtual education and physical connection — and want to accelerate into this opportunity.
• (4) Give our early supporters and community the opportunity to participate in the value they've helped to create, building an army of advocates in the process.

[back to top]

Founded by Erik Torenberg in 2016, On Deck first emerged as an under-the-radar community and dinner series for repeat founders, experienced engineering, product, and operating talent to explore their next move — to be “on deck” in confidence, among a highly curated community of their peers.

In the first three years, over 5,000 people attended small, intimate On Deck dinners in 23 cities around the world, coordinated by a rolling cast of volunteers. On Deck CEO David Booth was one — joining to launch and lead our European chapters while living in London in 2017.

Early On Deckers at these dinners connected with co-founders, investors, and first hires —— and helped countless others by making introductions, brainstorming ideas, and being a sounding board through the process of starting up. The seeds were planted for many impactful friendships, investments, and companies.

Early retreats, first Fellowships:

Momentum in the community built throughout 2018, culminating in a series of highly successful "founder retreats" in early 2019.

In June of that year, we launched the first On Deck Fellowship, pitched to the community:

an intensive 8-week program for experienced engineering, product, and operating talent in the earliest stages of starting new startups.

One hundred and twenty Fellows joined the first cohort in person in San Francisco, attending a series of thematic dinners and co-working days, and founding a series of notable startups. Participants in that first group included Sean Linehan and Katie Kent of Placement, Maksim Stepanenko of Primer, Andrew Connor and Sam Corcos of Levels; Brandon Hill of Vori, Noor Siddiqui of Orchid, and many more.

The second Fellowship launched in October 2019 with ~120 Fellows in San Francisco and ~80 in NYC. For the first time, the signs of a powerful online community started to emerge, as Fellows connected cross-country to share knowledge, and create early online programming.

COVID-19, and the unexpected virtual "product-market fit"

In March 2020, everything changed. One week out from the third On Deck Fellowship, we made the difficult (and at the time controversial) decision to cancel the physical ODF3 kick-off retreat — and delay programming a month until the threat had "passed." Battening down the hatches, we prepared for the worst — we didn't know if the community would survive.

But from that all-time low, sprung a new high. The "virtual kick-off retreat” struck a chord, creating an instant bond among our group of ~170 Fellows. As the COVID crisis started to unfold, the On Deck community rallied: fellows sprung into action, launching 50+ projects to support those in need — sourcing PPE, developing and distributing tests, and so much more.

To its participants, ODF became a lifeline: a source of "serendipity" and supportive community for many, otherwise isolated during this most vulnerable stage of company building.

Uncertainty is a catalyst for opportunity. New norms create new needs.

Fellows were now busier than ever... forming teams and raising solid rounds, setting out to build impactful startups — when the world needed them most.

We rode the momentum into the announcement of another, totally virtual cohort: ODF4 doubled down on the global, distributed audience, and introduced a dedicated curriculum for the first time.

It's time to BUILD new institutions:

In a post-COVID world, the cracks were starting to show in the institutions we grew up with.

On Deck set out on a mission to 10x the number of founders building world-changing companies. And we weren't stopping there...

If we plan to 10x the number of founders in the world—we reasoned—we should also build the ecosystem in which they can thrive. Seeing latent demand among our community, and with a desire to help more experienced operators get started investing in the next generation, we launched our second Fellowship: On Deck Angels. A new narrative was emerging:

...ODF is for experienced talent in the earliest stages of starting companies.

...ODA is for experienced operators getting started as angels.

But ambition manifests in many forms.

If you want to build a career in technology, it's hard to know where to start. Authors, bloggers, newsletter writers, podcasters are entrepreneurs too. No matter what you want to build, a great way to start is by building an audience.

The On Deck Writers Fellowship marked an entry into a new category of programs, and a model for growth which is core to our business to this day.

We start by analysing the original Founder Fellowship — our most established community. We asked our Fellows: "why did you join ODF?"

They said:

• meet co-founders, early hires.
• obtain new knowledge.
• make deep, lasting connections.
• help others.
• build MVP.
• raise funding.
• meet early customers.
• expand network.
• narrow in on specific idea.

There's a "flywheel" spinning inside each community — simple on the surface, yet extraordinarily powerful:

1. People pay a material amount to join a program: $2k-$10k. They then have "skin in the game" — and feel motivated to get their money's worth.
2. We use that revenue to hire exceptional talent and dedicate them 100% to...
3. Creating and curating incredible experiences, in particular through the facilitation of peer-to-peer interactions and user-generated content...
4. This helps our members realize a lot of value — knowing the best way to benefit from the network is to first contribute to it.
5. As the community’s reputation grows, so does new member demand.
6. More demand allows us to better curate an ever stronger community — accelerating the flywheel further.
7. Repeat.

The resulting community can uniquely help Fellows progress or exceed many of their goals, expectations — e.g. making deep, lasting connections, obtaining new knowledge, helping others, etc.

But for other goals — things like meeting co-founders, making early hires, raising capital, getting distribution — a small, intimate community will only get you so far.

The first three things early-stage founders need most of all are:

• Capital 💵
• Talent 👩‍💻
• Distribution 📢

The optimal state of these three is a marketplace.

The larger, more liquid, and "data-rich" this market, the more utility it creates for any given individual participating in it.

in the long run, the ideal is to offer utility to your userbase... it's the most stable, long-term competitive advantage that you can have. However, it's also true that a lot of network-based utility is only realized at some level of scale. And so the question is, how do you get to that scale? — @eugenewei, on the @NFX Podcast

• Founders:
• ODA (Angels), ODVC - capital
• OD50 (First 50), ODNC (No-Code) - talent
• ODW (writers), ODP (podcasters), ODYT (YouTubers - coming soon) - Distribution
• ODCT (climate tech), ODH (healthcare) - specialized knowledge, talent

• Angels
• ODF, ODNC, ODCT, ODH - dealflow
• OD50 - recruit talent for your portfolio
• ODW, ODP - distribution, develop your thesis
• ODVC - jobs, scout capital, relationsips
• ODLPs (coming soon) - LP capital

Technology is a powerful force for good.

But while its use has become ubiquitous, the ability to participate in its development- and the wealth creation that results is severely limited.

The tech industry has an “access” problem, and it’s never been more obvious than in 2020.

We think a lot about how to “unlock” talent at On Deck.

We are on a mission to multiply the number of founders building world-changing startups, and create the world’s best support ecosystem around them: angels, early hires, distribution, and more.

For every person founding or working on an impactful company/cause today, there are hundreds who should be but can't.

In September 2020 we announced the On Deck Access Fund, a donor advised fund dedicated to supporting underserved talent in tech.

On Deck committed up to $1M in “matching” donations, and sponsored ~$170k worth of scholarships in Q4 ‘20, alone.

A "Market Network" combines the main elements of

• Marketplaces (think: eBay, Lending Club) and
• Networks (think: Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter);

and often provides a SaaS layer to facilitate transactions, aligning long-term interests with its users over quick, one-off transactions.

Market networks are also unique from a monetization and defensibility standpoint. They feature the strong network effects, defensibility and scalability of direct networks like LinkedIn, together with the lucrative revenue models of a SaaS—or in our case—education business.

The "Campus" to On Deck’s "College"

At On Deck, every Fellow is simultaneously:

• matched and placed into a small, intimate group: a "squad", or "accountability group",
• part of a larger, but still close-knit cohort (think: "class"), which is
• nested within a broader, highly aligned sub-community ("program"), which is
• woven into a larger ecosystem ("campus").

This "campus" is the On Deck Directory — a unique combination of custom-built private social network — think: AngelList/LinkedIn meets "Quora" — and innovative usage of Slack, which provides the integrated communication layer, or the "common areas."

From the standpoint of this product, the education business serves as an incredibly effective, well-aligned revenue and engagement driver.

each cohort is like an 8-10 week-long product onboarding, to create loyal users for life.

Users populate their On Deck profiles with far more detail than they do LinkedIn, AngelList, Twitter, or any other professional networking product.

On Deck is a "full stack" community

The old approach startups took was to sell or license their new technology to incumbents. The new, “full stack” approach is to build a complete, end-to-end product or service that bypasses incumbents and other competitors. - Chris Dixon, a16z

At On Deck, we are obsessed with Fellow experience.

To deliver the best experience, we need to own the experience end to end — and most importantly, use that ownership to understand how people interact with our product, and how these interactions correlate with success.

This dedication has led to the Directory becoming an increasingly key part of the On Deck experience.

Between the nodes: the Lean Hire marketplace

At its core, On Deck is successful when we accelerate the rate at which talent connects with opportunity. Many join On Deck communities explicitly, or opportunistically searching for a new role or project to work on.

We believe that traditional hiring is broken. Interview processes can stretch for months, biasing on credentials and first impressions ahead of actual ability to build/perform on the job. The wrong hire can significantly impact teams — especially for senior roles.

On the other side: there’s substantial career risk for senior talent joining an early-stage co. Establishing cultural and mission/vision fit is vital before going full time.

Lean Hire is your opportunity to “try before you buy"

The platform is free for any participants in any On Deck Fellowship, and charges a 20% "rake" for non-On Deck community members, simultaneously creating a valuable cashflow stream, and powerful incentive to join, and remain a member of the On Deck ecosystem.

Lean Hire CEO Peer Richelsen joins On Deck as Head of Product.

Even before the COVID pandemic, the College "institution" was in trouble.

The top U.S. colleges were all founded 200+ years ago, established to train citizens to be productive members of industrial-era society. Coasting on institutional momentum and credentialism — most have long since detached from reality.

Over the years, these learning communities began bundling education, community, and credentialing along with an ever-expanding list of functions in society. As “cost disease” set in, bloated administration forced endless tuition hikes, and a disconnect from the realities of the job market started to cause a painful lack of career outcomes.

Over the last decade, many have tried to unbundle the university. Massive open online courses (“MOOCs”) unbundled the education component, accelerators and fellowships unbundled the network for certain careers, and companies like Github and Behance unbundled the credential for specific expertise areas.

But on the education front at least, MOOCs failed to live up to the hype. These programs failed to grasp a critical component of the learning process:

Learning is defined by who you learn with – the respect and perspective you develop among the camaraderie of the “classroom.”

According to The Rise of Universities, the term ‘university’ simply refers to any group of people who came together for the purpose of learning. Curious individuals, learning together.

The core innovation at On Deck is not necessarily better education — our programming features world-class guests, a growing content library, knowledge base, and thriving community, but we’re no MIT (yet).

On Deck is special because it re-bundles community with learning, and a commitment to outcomes.

The internet is a technological revolution, which is entering what Carlota Perez calls its "deployment phase".

The past ~250 years have seen four such great technological revolutions and the first half of a fifth. Each is characterized by a critical factor of production suddenly becoming very cheap; new infrastructure being built; and widespread gains in productivity from the new tech.

In the “deployment phase”, what was new is now the “new normal” — Technology infiltrates every aspect of the economy but becomes invisible.

Software eats the world, and everybody stops noticing it.

Where do you go, to learn to thrive in this world? Probably not college (see above).

Meanwhile, the half-life of a professional skill has fallen to 5 years. The only constant throughout your career will be change.

Today, most people finish school at 18 - 22, and never go back. Does that make sense?

Some say accelerators like YC are already quasi-education institutions. But VC is ultimately a feature of the past "installation" cycle. Many will continue to create immense value, but their best years are behind them.

In the 70s, the U.S. was a God-fearing nation. People were religious, with strong associations with their church or synagogue or mosque or whatever you grew up with.

Today, and 50 years later, there's been a dramatic slide in people's association with organized religion.

That's not to say that people do not still want that guidance and ritual and identification and community and music and ceremony and spirituality, reflection. The stuff that happened on Sunday morning at church or synagogue is still important to human beings — we believe it's still something humans want. So they're now looking elsewhere — and finding that fulfillment in (particularly online) communities.

In the 70s and 80s, everyone would have have a cross on their neck or a Star of David — increasingly, we're seeing people identify with others as part of secular communities — they wear SoulCycle tank-top, a Warriors jersey, an HBS hoodie, or a Barry's hat.

The On Deck communities offer a truly unfair advantage when it comes to recruiting.

We have a birds-eye view over thousands of monthly applications from individuals of all different backgrounds, from the most junior engineers—to senior technology executives with illustrious careers scaling top tech companies.

By inviting such talent to join our Fellowship programs, we have the opportunity to see them in action — observe their trajectory, gratitudes recieved, and alignment with On Deck values. We build relationships and trust, and identify "hidden gems" before the market.

For the talent, they have an opportunity to experience our product first hand, and by extension—much of how On Deck works as a company, before making the decision to join.

Over a third of our current team were hired from the On Deck community in this way — including two-thirds of our program directors.

Leadership team:

David Booth // Co-founder & CEO (New Zealand, SF)

David is an experienced 3x former founder, deep "systems thinker" with experience in law/finance, product & operations at AngelList and Carta.

Erik Torenberg // Founder & Chairman (SF, Miami, Arizona)

Erik is a renowned community builder and thinker, founding teams at Product Hunt and Village Global.

Andreas Klinger // CTO (Berlin)

Andreas was founding CTO at Product Hunt, VP Engineering at CoinList, and Head of Remote at AngelList.

Eric Friedman // Interim COO and Exec Coach in Residence (New York)

Eric helps evolve our leaders as Coach in Residence and was previously a Venture Partner and COO at Company. Former USV, ODF2 and an On Deck investor.

Erika Batista // Head of International (Paris)

Erika leads our EMEA presence and was previously employee #1 at European accelerator The Family, where she worked for seven years before coming On Deck.

Julian Weisser // Founding Team and Head of Candidates (New Zealand, SF)

Julian brings growth and product expertise from Virta Health, and was one of On Deck's earliest community members, having led the Boulder group since 2017.

Brandon Taleisnik // VP Operations (Los Angeles, Utah)

Brandon is On Deck's employee #1 and ran the first three ODF cohorts near single-handedly. He brings operational experience from SpaceX and Delta.

Jenny Kaehms // Head of Talent (SF, Tahoe)

Jenny joins us after serving as the Head of Revenue Ops at Forethought AI, and formerly was an investor at Canvas Ventures.

Peer Richelsen // Head of Product (Canary Islands, Berlin)

Peer is an On Deck Fellow and YC Founder (ODF6, W19) — we acquired his company, Lean Hire, to accelerate our talent network.

Trish Kennelly // Head of Experience (Portugal, US)

Trish designs the experience that keep our fellows happy and coming back for more. She was previously employee #1 at Remote Year and is dedicated to superior service.

❤️ Highlights from the On Deck Wall of Love ❤️