I’m writing to you because you’ve been a part of our work, as a customer, facilitator, friend, or circle participant. Apologies if facilitated small groups inside communities or companies aren’t as interesting to you anymore – just unsubscribe, and we won’t bug you again.
We’ve had some twists, turns and learnings.
There are many circles in the world, as I like to joke. Our challenge has been finding focus. And I’m happy to say we have. I’d describe it as “Guided, Hybrid, Forum.” Forum has high customer satisfaction, renewal rates, and good economics – and it is transformative.
“Forum” is the practice pioneered by YPO and TEC (now Vistage) in the 1970s and has grown to be the heart of many CEO communities. Forums generally meet monthly, and give participants a space to untangle whole-person topics that often cross professional and personal lines. They are facilitated by a volunteer or an outside professional. We have found consistent success with professionals. And while I’d love to scale virtually, one in-person session a year makes a huge difference. This bundle plays to all our strengths – technology, guide community, program design, and concierge service.
Forums are popular with CEOs but work well for all leaders: a huge market. We’ve discovered that CEOs in Forums themselves want to “pay-it-forward,” which is why our YPO partnership has been so strong. YPO members sponsor their direct reports or even family members, giving a needed nudge. YPO calls their work with us the “Key Associate” Forum program.
We’re not the only ones onto this growing opportunity. Other businesses we admire:
- Sidebar, started by a Facebook exec to create advisory boards for career development
- Peoplehood, a consumer play by the SoulCycle founders, with actual retail locations
- Chief, a YPO-competitor for women, which hit a Unicorn valuation soon after launch
- Forum, a marketplace for freelance Forum coaches, just got a nice seed round
Plus, Group Coaching is the fastest growing part of the growing coaching market. Coaching companies like BetterUp (another Unicorn) and Torch are leading the way. We’re all early to this, and will build the movement together.
Our vision remains the same. I’ve written before about David Brook’s piece where he said if he picked one thing to invest $500million in, it would be spreading “Fellowship” in the world. And, David’s Weave project is still a great customer. Loneliness is epidemic, polarization deepens. Too many business friends of mine run their organizations as brittle hierarchies instead of gardens of agile teams. Too many communities are still spending their money on speakers to entertain audiences instead of facilitating connections between members.
Many markets and applications are possible for us. But it feels good to be digging in as a team on one application. And profitability gives us control over our mission and allows us to prioritize quality over taking risks for growth. An example of this is that we just took the last two years to rewrite our software instead of adding glamor and features, eliminating tech debt, improving reliability, and setting us up for years to come. We took a step back to go forward faster. In an early market, profitability gives us stamina.
We are still delivering peer learning programs inside companies like Aetna, Activision/Blizzard and Hubspot. And our Team Table product keeps getting better and better as we run it for standing teams. These are awesome, also transformative products, and we’re set to deliver them — we just aren’t efficiently selling them. So as the Forum offering grows, the technology matures, and the guide community gains structure and scale, we’ll choose our moment to return to marketing these other products more intentionally.
By the way, if you are a wholehearted, tech-savvy, business professional with experience facilitating hybrid small groups and get excited at the thought of joining a learning community of mission-aligned facilitators doing transformational work, please apply to be certified as a Circles guide.
Finally, I’m happy and sad to give you a sneak peek of our new website and name. I hope you’ll find some typos and send feedback. Sad? “Circl.es” makes me smile but messes up the search engines and confounds lawyers. It served us well. CircleSpace.io will be our new brand, findable on a search, trademarked. We’ll be formally launching later in the year.
Virtual hugs,
Dan Hoffman
CEO
