How a single Austin founder community became a national organization spanning seventeen markets in under twelve months — and why the playbook got built before the expansion did.
Overview
When I stepped in as CEO in March 2024, the concept worked. Founders, CEOs and investors were showing up in Austin and the energy was real. What did not exist was everything that would let it happen anywhere else — systems, team, tech stack, sponsorship model, expansion playbook.
The work was to build something that could take what worked in one room and make it work in seventeen cities simultaneously, run by decentralized leadership, without losing what made it worth showing up for.
The challenge
Community organizations are hard to scale because what works in one room does not automatically work in seventeen. The real problem was not logistics — it was holding quality, selectivity and member experience while growing fast enough to matter.
The read
Membership criteria, regional leader selection, onboarding SOPs, CRM, event frameworks and financial modeling all got built before a single new market opened — so each launch met the Austin standard rather than a diluted version of it.
The outcome
A genuine national organization inside twelve months, with national and local sponsorships secured, financial modeling built to support twenty-two leagues, and seventeen regional leaders running their own markets.
What got built
Spanning three of the four buckets — Ops, Growth and Stakeholder. Which came first was decided by what the organization could not do yet.
The website, registration flows, CRM architecture and sales automation, built from zero. Every touchpoint a founder had with the organization ran through systems designed and implemented in-house.
Hiring criteria, onboarding and operational SOPs that let seventeen regional leaders run their markets independently — without constant oversight and without quality drift.
National and local sponsorships secured on the back of a pitch-ready framework and financial model that showed sponsors exactly what they were buying and why it was worth the number.
Modeling to support expansion from four to twenty-two leagues across twelve months — unit economics per market, breakeven analysis and projections that held up in front of investors.
“The hardest part of scaling a community isn't the logistics. It's making sure the seventeenth city feels exactly like the first one.”
Andrew Kaluza · CEO, 2024–2026
The next step
Thirty minutes, no deck, no pitch. Tell me where the company actually is, and I'll tell you what I would look at first — whether or not you hire me.
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