Community Charter

You are signing this as a person, not on behalf of your organization. Everyone in the FoundedIn USA network signs the same one, and that includes us.

This network only works if the people in it are people you would want in the room. That is the whole idea behind this charter. It is short, it is not boilerplate, and we mean every line of it.

Where this applies

Everywhere you are here as part of this network. The partner portal and the platform. Events we run, events you run with us, and office hours. Introductions we make and the conversations that follow them. Any channel where you are talking to someone because FoundedIn USA put you in touch.

It does not reach into the rest of your life or your business, and we are not interested in policing either.

What you are agreeing to

1. Be a decent person

Treat everyone here with respect, whatever they are building, however far along they are, and whoever they are. Assume good faith before you assume the worst. Disagree without being unkind about it.

2. Be honest

Say true things. Do not overstate your traction, your funding, your team or your relationships. If you get something wrong, say so and fix it. The people in this network will remember how you handled being wrong far longer than they will remember that you were.

3. Be generous

Make the introduction. Answer the question. Share what you learned the hard way so the next person does not have to. Nobody here is keeping score, and the people who give the most tend to get the most back.

4. Be useful, not extractive

This network is not a lead list. Do not scrape it, do not bulk message it, and do not automate outreach into it. If you use AI to help you write, that is fine, but a message that reads as though you wrote it personally should actually have been written for that person. If someone gives you their time, be worth it.

5. Respect a confidence

Founders will tell you things that are not public yet. Numbers, deals, problems, fears. Keep them. Do not repeat them, do not trade on them, and do not post about them, however anonymized you think you have made it.

6. Be clear about what you are doing here

If you are an investor sitting in a room with founders, they should know that. If a conversation is going to end up in a diligence file, or a pipeline, or a report, say so at the time. Nobody minds what you are here for. People mind finding out afterwards.

7. Stand up for what is right

If you see something wrong, say something. To the person, to us, or to both. Speak up when it costs you something, because that is the only time it counts for anything.

8. Make room

The American innovation economy does not draw from everyone it could. We are asking you to help change that in the ways that are actually in your hands: who you hire, who you fund, who you buy from, who you introduce, and who you put on a stage. That means real effort toward founders who have historically been left out, including women founders, Black founders and other founders of color, Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian founders, LGBTQ+ founders, founders with disabilities, immigrant and refugee founders, veteran founders, and people building outside the major startup hubs.

9. Pull toward the Sustainable Development Goals

We hold the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as the frame for what this economy should be building toward. We are not asking you to solve them. We are asking you not to work against them, and to pull in their direction where your business genuinely can.

10. Look after yourself, and the people around you

Building things is hard and this community has watched a lot of good people run themselves into the ground. Rest is not a betrayal of your company. Ask for help before it is an emergency, and when someone else asks, take it seriously.

11. Leave it better

You are joining something other people built and other people will inherit. Add to it.

At events

A few things that are easier to say up front than to sort out afterwards.

Ask before you record. That covers video, audio, screenshots of a call, and photographs where somebody is identifiable. Some states require every person on a call to consent before it is recorded, so asking is not just good manners. If you are running the event, say at the start what is being recorded and what will happen to it.

If you are hosting, make it possible for people to come. That means meeting your obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and going past them: step free access, captions on anything virtual, dietary needs, and timing that does not assume everyone is free at 7pm. Ask people what they need and believe them.

Do not make drinking the price of admission. Have whatever you like, and make sure the person who is not drinking has an equally good evening.

What we will not accept

Harassment, discrimination or bullying of any kind. Slurs. Sexual harassment, including anything that carries on after somebody has said no. Retaliation against a person for raising a concern, or for supporting someone who did. Misrepresenting who you are, who you work for, or what you have done. Recording or photographing someone who has said no. Scraping the network, bulk messaging it, or running automated outreach into it. Using the network to defraud, mislead or take advantage of anyone in it. Sharing another person's private information without their permission. Anything that is against the law.

If something goes wrong

Tell us. Write to ken@foundedinglobal.com and it comes straight to a person, not a queue.

You can raise something that happened to you, or something you saw happen to somebody else. You do not need their permission to tell us you are worried about them.

Here is what happens next. We will acknowledge you within two business days. We will tell you who is looking into it. We will keep what you tell us to the people who need to know it in order to act, and we will tell you before we share it more widely than that. If you would rather we did not act yet, say so, and we will respect that unless somebody is at risk.

Nobody is penalized for raising a concern in good faith, whether or not we end up agreeing with them. Retaliating against someone for raising one is itself a breach of this charter, and we treat it as seriously as the thing they reported.

Raising something you know to be untrue, in order to damage somebody, is also a breach. Getting it wrong in good faith is not.

How we decide

We will hear from the person the concern is about before we decide anything that affects them, unless doing so would put somebody at risk.

What happens next depends on what happened. It might be a conversation. It might be a warning. It might be removal from the network, and where the person represents a partner organization, it may end that partnership under the termination section of the Partnership Terms.

We aim for the outcome that fits, not the one that is easiest for us. We will tell both people what we decided.

A decision we make here is our own judgment about who belongs in this network. It is not a finding of fact, it is not a legal determination, and it is not a statement about anyone beyond that.

We would rather have a hard conversation than let something quietly rot.

If you think we got it wrong

Say so, within 30 days, to the same address. Someone who was not part of the original decision will look at it again. They can uphold it, change it, or reverse it, and that is the end of it. We would rather be told we were wrong than be wrong quietly.

What we keep, and for how long

We keep a record of what was raised, what we did and why, because a pattern across several reports is often the most important thing in front of us. We keep it for three years, we keep it to the people who need it, and we do not put it on anybody's profile or share it with their employer unless the law requires us to.

Signing this

You sign this as an individual. If your organization is a partner, everyone on your team signs it too, separately, in their own name. Your organization's partnership does not sign it for you, because a charter that an organization agrees to on your behalf is not worth very much.

It follows you rather than your job. If you leave your organization, what you agreed here still stands for the time you were part of this network, and if you come back with a different organization you sign it again.

Us too

We are held to this as well. If we fall short of it, tell us at the same address, and the same process applies to us as to anybody else.