Crafting Community Over Cuisine with Zack Oliver and Founder's Table

This episode discusses how Zack Oliver cultivates a community of founders in LA through curated dinner gatherings, focusing on shared experiences and mutual support.

1. Founder's Table was born out of Zack Oliver's desire to create a supportive community for entrepreneurs in LA.
2. The dinners focus on small, intimate gatherings, allowing for meaningful connections and discussions.
3. These events provide a platform for both new and experienced founders to exchange ideas, advice, and personal experiences.
4. Oliver emphasizes the importance of community and peer support in the often isolating journey of entrepreneurship.
5. The project aims to expand by incorporating sponsors, enhancing the value provided to participants without losing the organic feel of the gatherings.

1. Introduction to Founder's Table

Zack Oliver introduces Founder's Table, a project aimed at creating a community of founders in LA through dinner gatherings. He explains the motivation and mechanics behind these dinners.

• Zack Oliver: "Moved to LA and started putting together these small format dinners of other founders in Los Angeles."

2. The Impact of Founder's Table

Oliver discusses the positive impact these dinners have had on participants, fostering a sense of community and enabling resource sharing among founders.

• Zack Oliver: "It's brought together by different founders...a brotherhood and sisterhood of people who are putting themselves out there."

3. Future Plans for Founder's Table

Discussion on the future directions and potential growth of Founder's Table, including possible sponsorship and maintaining its core values.

• Zack Oliver: "My goal is just to kind of keep growing it and maybe get to a point where I can layer in some sponsors."

1. Start Small: Begin building your community with small, focused groups to maintain quality interactions.
2. Curate Participants: Consider backgrounds and industries of participants to enhance the relevance and value of discussions.
3. Regular Gatherings: Establish a regular schedule to maintain engagement and continuously nurture the community.
4. Incorporate Feedback: Regularly gather feedback to adapt and improve the format and impact of your community events.
5. Leverage Local Spaces: Utilize local venues to support other small businesses and integrate your community within the broader local ecosystem.

"I've talked to founders who have been in LA for years and never felt like they had a sense of community within like a group of other founders who were doing the same things."

In this episode, we sit down with Zack Oliver, the innovator behind Founders Table, a community initiative that connects LA founders over intimate dinner settings. Zack shares his journey from finance in New York to creating a network in LA through curated gatherings, aiming to foster relationships and exchange knowledge among local entrepreneurs.

As Zack details the evolution of Founders Table from casual meetups to structured, meaningful interactions, listeners will gain insights into the significance of community in the entrepreneurial landscape. This episode of Founders In LA explores how personal connections can amplify professional journeys and the role of shared experiences in overcoming business challenges.

People

Zack Oliver, Ethan Cole

Companies

Nearshare, Unida, Prodhub AI

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Zack Oliver

Content Warnings:

None

Zach Oliver

I've talked to founders who have been in LA for years and never felt like they had a sense of community within like a group of other founders who are doing the same things.

Ethan Cole

Hey everybody, thank you for joining us and welcome to founders in LA Podcast. I'm your host, Ethan Cole, and this is an opportunity to shine the spotlight through a product lens on some of the exceptional founders we have as part of the LA community in an unedited one. Take organic conversation. With us today in the studio is Zach Oliver. Hey Zach, thank you so much for coming down.

Zach Oliver

Yeah, thanks for being here. Excited to chat through this stuff. Oh, me too. This is, this is good. I want to talk more about what.

Ethan Cole

You'Re building, but first, a word from our sponsors. Founders and only is brought to you by near sure, near sure is a trailblazer. Nearshore outsourcing and staff augmentation with over 15 years of experience offering exceptional latin american software development, data, product and design talent for us projects, near share has revolutionized the way companies scale their teams. They stand apart with 50% female leadership, are trusted by companies large and small, and have been hiring in the US and helping customers grow since before nearsharing was cool. Discover how nearshare can power your tech goals and help you stay lean while scaling fast.

Learn more at www.nearshure.com that's www.neisure.com. We're also brought to you by United Club. United Club is a co working space that sets itself apart with locations in El Segundo, Manhattan beach and Hermosa. United is where creativity flourishes. Unlike traditional offices, they provide an inspiring environment where ideas can thrive and businesses can grow.

With Unida, there's no hidden fees, flexible terms, options for dedicated offices and unlimited access to conference rooms. A photo studio, this podcast studio plus standard 3d printers and 24/7 access in any of their locations. Their local champions who support neighborhood businesses open their event spaces to nonprofits and celebrate art, music and culture. Join United Club and experience co working like never before. Learn more at www.

United Club that's www. Unita dot cl u b. Our guest today is Zach Oliver. He is the he has started the founders table. Zach, can you just give us a 32nd description of founders table?

Zach Oliver

Yeah, absolutely. So started moved to LA about a year ago and started putting together these small format dinners of other founders in Los Angeles. Really just as a way to meet new people and try new restaurants. That's awesome. And so it sounds like it started just kind of as a nice little dinner, but it's brought together by different founders.

And the experiences I've been having with founders, there's really kind of a, I don't want to say it's like a brotherhood and sisterhood of people who are putting themselves out there, and there's been quite a bit amount of folks willing to lend a hand and share information. Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of like what spurred the whole movement to begin with. So I was living in New York, like I said, moved here about a year ago. There was a girl who was a member of this vintage studio, and she basically would pay for founders to do workout classes.

Zach Oliver

Obviously, it was sponsored by this third party, and they had all of these funds and they could distribute it, really for her. It was a way to meet new founders and help her business. I was like, how do I bring a concept like that to LA and also make it cost effective for myself and for the other founders, where they still felt like they maybe having to invest a little bit of time and money, but everyone has to eat dinner. It just felt like an easy way or something that everyone could kind of be a part of and do and the same thing they're doing with their friends anyway. So why not layer in another level of like a value add of meeting other founders and, you know, sharing experiences and resources and stories and, you know, there are a lot of the things that I found as a founder, you know, that I went through, other people are going through now, and there's things that I learned that I could pass along that maybe they don't have to share that struggle and vice versa, like, so I've learned a lot from other people, and it seems like the other people who have joined have also come away learning something and having some sort of positive experience.

Yeah. Because it takes a certain type of person, types of personality to go out and start a company, to actually put themselves out there and go all in at the same time. They have such varied backgrounds that sometimes they lend themselves really well to starting a business. And sometimes it's like, I had a really good idea, I had some of a market, I was able to put this thing together. And now.

Now what? And now I'm like figuring out my way through it. And from what I've experienced, the sense of community is very strong among founders. Although sometimes it's hard to find each other. Yeah, exactly.

Zach Oliver

And I found never having lived on the west coast before, from a community standpoint, I feel like everything's so focused around entertainment, and there was all these communities out there, whether it's like a Soho house or some of these other clubs that are all focused around creatives, entertainers or influencers, things like that. And, I mean, Los Angeles is just like a bustling community of founders as well. And it felt like they didn't really have a space that they could kind of all come to in a smaller format and, like, actually have dialogue with other people who are doing the same things that they're doing. Of course, you can go out and find, like, larger networking events or LA Tech week where you, you know, you're going into, you know, a mansion party in Venice or whatever, and you don't know anyone there. You're just like, kind of standing like a bump on the log unless you came with other people, which is a real life experience.

That happened to me, which was like a pain point for me. I was like, I'm sure there's value in this room. There's money in this room. There's stuff to be, you know, to be gained. But, like, I view myself as, like, an extroverted introvert.

Like, if I'm in a room with you, I'd be able to have a conversation. You probably wouldn't think I'd be very passive. But if you put me in a room where I don't know a single person, it's 80 different people, I'm much less likely to go out and meet new people and shake hands and just introduce myself for the purpose of doing it. But in these smaller groups, it's much easier to confide in people, and you're kind of stuck at that table, which stuck is the wrong word. You get to be at the table and you get to interact and ask questions and be heard over sharing a meal, which is the longest form of the longest standing form of communication and trust building that there is to date.

Just sharing a meal, breaking bread, gaining that trust, and that's kind of what's brought us here today. And how do the dinners work? Like, how big are these dinners? Is it. Do you curate the people?

Do you try to keep people, keep it non competitive so that you can really open up and share? Yeah. So it started out really just as, like, some of my friends who were founders in town, just as a way to get together. So starting it was maybe four to six to eight. I tried dukes, and I've done some dinners that were larger, like, 20 people.

Zach Oliver

I've done some as small as, like, two or three. I found that that sweet spot is like that four to six range where people still feel like they're in the conversation and no one person's like, you know, being excluded from, like, a three person conversation or the table split in half where you feel like you're not really getting the benefit of, like, you know, talking to or not being able to talk to someone across the table? So, like, that, that four to six, maybe, with an upside of eight, seems to be like a sweet spot in regards to the types of founders. And I've tried to make it a first come, first serve to date. Now what I will do is now that I've started to build a little bit of rapport and getting a little bit more momentum, trying to keep a Rolodex in my mind of who does what.

For example, last night, we actually had a dinner last night in Koreatown. We did korean barbecue, and there was a founder there who has a company in the hardware robotics space. I'm like, okay, how do I think about other people who maybe have either some sort of collaboration with robotics or they have a food angle to their business? How can I bring in someone, maybe who I met in the past who had some sort of food and beverage overlap just so they have some overlap to talk about? I haven't had to deal with knock on wood competitors, really, but I found that even if there was, it'd probably be more collaborative than competitive, because, I mean, everyone's trying to start something nowadays.

Like, there's always going to be overlap for collaboration in one way or the other. Yeah. How are you seeing, I mean, you've only been around with founders table for about a year, but your time in this space, do you feel like you're seeing more people take the leap in the last, you know, let's call it six months than the previous. So we, like, formally, I decided to name it probably at the end of last year. So it really has only been, like, four ish months of a formal way of doing these things.

Prior to that, it was me maintaining an expel spreadsheet and sending out individual texts to people. And that probably started around October. So between October and where we are now, we're up to 350 founders in the group, and I've started to reach out to people cold and be like, hey, I'm putting these dinners together. There's no cost to be in the group. Put together a newsletter of the upcoming dinners, and over the next month, and then just first come, first serve RSVP.

There's, like I said, no cost to join. You just got to pay for your own meal the same way that you would if you were having dinner with friends. And I mean, outside of maybe one fringe case where someone didn't pay, everyone's been more than happy to pay their own way. What are some of the takeaways you've received from these dinners? And not so much from the building of the founders table, but just kind of like an insight that you said, oh, wow, that was kind of mind blowing, eye opening.

Yeah. A couple instances where we've had situations where early first time founders who were kind of going through it, of trying to figure out how to fundraise and how to position themselves and how to frame conversations with investors, really getting connected with more veteran founders who have, like, maybe they're on their second or third company and they've been through this before, and getting text messages or an email after the fact to say, hey, that was awesome. I got to meet an XYZ person who was a tremendous value add, and I could see them. Being an advisor in my business is self validating in a lot of ways. Be like, okay, people are getting value from it.

And that's just on the professional side, on the personal side. Like I said, I've talked to founders who have been in LA for years and never felt like they had a sense of community within, like, a group of other founders who are doing the same things. So being able to kind of add that social component to it as well, where they can unplug and, you know, really give experiences about being a founder that they may not want to share with VC's or on podcasts because for some reason, it might make them seem like they're less of an investable business, which is fears that I'm sure everyone has as a founder. So it kind of creates a little bit of a safe space for people to have real conversations around being a founder without the judgment of maybe not getting an investment from a VC fund or an angel or whatever. Yeah.

And then kind of a like minded person who really gets it. So in ways that maybe even your own partner wouldn't understand. Totally. You could talk to the founder like, oh, yeah, no, I'm there right now. Or I was there.

Here's how you get through it. Or you, what do they say? Like, first time founders worry about products, second time and third time founders worry about distribution. Right, right. Like just kind of those types of hints.

And there was even just a talk yesterday, I think, at UCLA about, you know, exit strategy from this guy who's exited six times. So, yeah, all that stuff that you. Really need the experience to go through to even, you know, begin to think about those conversations, it's like it's it's not an easy thing to go through alone. So giving them people an opportunity to find other people who are going through it, it's just, you know, selfishly, it's great for me, but they seem like, you know, they've, they've enjoyed it as well. That's awesome.

And what's, what's next for founders table? Yeah, my goal is just to kind of keep growing it and, you know, maybe get to a point where I can layer in some sponsors to either the newsletter or, you know, maybe some sort of in person sponsors to. Not to monetize it myself, but to also, or just to get the dinners potentially partially paid for, which I think would then spur another level of interest among other founders, similar to in what I experienced in New York, where these workout classes were paid for. And if I'm going to Barry's class, it's $45. And as a founder, you're not paying yourself much anyway.

Zach Oliver

So any ways that you can to run as lean as possible, personally and professionally, I think that you're going to get a lot more interest. So looking in the future, maybe something like that could make sense, but not pushing it. I still want it to feel, like, organic, and there's this sense of community, as if we're all kind of in the same little club. And that was honestly the reason why I started putting out the newsletters, as a way for people to opt in versus a party full or a luma where people could, it looks like an event, and I feel like those have become a little bit more commoditized and just people sending them out and becoming circulated where there's a little bit less of a focus on this is a small community value add versus this. Okay, let's all network and meet each other and maybe get some benefit or maybe not.

Not to say there's not value in that as well, but it's just different, right? That's awesome. I think people who listen to this podcast, a lot of them are founders or people considering becoming founders. I think there'd be a lot of value. So where could they find founders table?

How do they find you? So we built the, you can find us on LinkedIn if you just search founders table. And then from there, I think it's pretty easy just to, like, subscribe to the newsletter. And then for the newsletter, you know, like I said, I put out maybe weekly or every other week, a list of dinners that were setting up in town. Try to be relatively, like, spread out on east side, west side.

Zach Oliver

It tends to be a little bit more west side focused just because that's where it seems like there's a larger concentration of founders. But like I said, did korean barbecue last night in K Town, so trying to find new places, and like I said, selfishly, I love to eat food and try new things. So if any people have restaurants that they really want to try, I'm always open to recommendations. That's incredible. Don't sleep on Irvine, too.

Happening down there as well, I've heard. Yeah, well, awesome and grounding in LA, you granted pretty firmly, but what is your most la moment? Yeah, it's interesting. I didn't really talk about much of my background, but I worked in the finance world prior to being a founder of Matchpoint. And my mind really is for most of my life, I've been kind of focused around east coast time.

Zach Oliver

So thinking about markets opening and closing, I think the lifestyle and the pace of life here different being that it feels like people don't work the same amount. Not to say they're not passionate and they're not working hard, but my internal theory is that they take the best of both types. Time zones of, of like the west coast time zone. East coast time zone. So they're going to wake up on west coast time zone, but when the market closes, you know, 04:00 Eastern, you know, 01:00 here in my mind, like, they're the perception of, like, the day being over kind of starts.

And so that's why you see people playing pickleball at 02:00 p.m. On a Tuesday or volleyball in Hermosa all the time, or the people lining up outside of Earth Cafe, you know, at every single time of the day. It's just, it seems like there's people are always out and about doing things and maybe there's great weather and everyone's rich and no one needs to work, but I don't know. I mean, it certainly feels like no one has jobs. And you walk around Los Angeles, I mean, it is the second largest city in the country.

So there's just a number, just a lot of people in general. But yeah, I agree with you. It feels like you can go anywhere 02:00 p.m. On a Tuesday and, like, it's oddly packed with people who should be at some sort of day job. So hopefully they're doing the best of both worlds.

They're really working from 10:00 a.m. To 02:00 p.m. But it certainly feels that way. But that to be said, there is also a lot being done in LA, so. Absolutely.

Maybe it's just a number of people. There's just a lot of people in LA. So some people work really late and get to play during the day and other people work during the day and go to bed early, watch sports and then go to bed early at like 10:00 p.m.. Yeah. Well, awesome.

We've been speaking with Zach Oliver. He started founders Table. You can find it on LinkedIn. Thank you so much, Zach, for coming. Down and thank you for building community.

I think I agree, speaking with founders on a regular basis, community is something that it does seem like a lot of folks are looking for. So thank you for helping build that within Los Angeles. Yeah, thanks for having me and for spreading the word and hopefully see some more people listen some more, some more listeners at future tables in the future. Yeah. And we'll talk about maybe collaboration between founders in LA and founders Table.

I think some natural stuff there. Thanks again to our sponsors nearshare and Unida as well as Prodhub AI. You can build better products with Prodhub AI where innovation meets efficiency, automate your prds, fast track your story creation and speed up your product team with a single platform. It's your co pilot for product management. Discover how at Prodhub AI.

Ethan Cole

Like to thank you all for listening to us and if you like what you hear, please smash that subscribe button. Thanks again for joining us and we'll catch you next time on founders in LA.