Two Years of Build IRL: A Love Letter, A Video, and What’s Next 💛
We’re dissolving Build IRL and open-sourcing everything we learned
Hi IRL Builders 👋,
We have big news. We’re dissolving Build IRL as a for-profit company and open-sourcing everything we learned. Here’s the what, why, and what’s next.
What’s Changing
The Build IRL Accelerator was an experiment. A beautiful, messy, generative experiment. And now it’s time to let it go and give it to you; to everyone, everywhere.
Here’s what’s happening:
📖 Open-Sourcing Everything
We are open-sourcing the frameworks, tactics, stories, and coursework from our Build IRL accelerator. So anyone, anywhere can build a club.
🚀 Starting next week: We’re launching a short visual primer on
12 Hot Takes on Building a Club 🔥
Our counter-intuitive lessons from working with hundreds of clubs.
Then over the coming months, Saum will slowly expand this into a free and open How to Build a Club online hub. Built in public, with your input ✨
More on this next week 👀
🏠 Our Tech Has a New Home
We’re transferring the Build IRL tech platform to the Relational Tech Project (RTP), a tech non-profit founded by Josh Nesbit and Deb Tien.
Over the past year, our crowdfunding tools helped clubs unlock member support and experiment with ways to be financially sustainable.
Now, with RTP, that work will continue.
RTP will support existing Bay Area clubs, open-source the code for others to remix and improve, and continue exploring how IRL organizations can become more financially sustainable.
We’re deeply grateful our tech has found a new home.
Learn more at relationaltechproject.org
No Longer a For-Profit Company
We’re dissolving Build IRL as a for-profit entity. We still believe this is one of the most important problems - and one of the the biggest opportunities - of our time.
But maybe we were a little early. Maybe we were too unwilling to compromise on the mission for the sake of business. Or maybe the best part comes next, when we stop trying to ‘own’ it.
The mission isn’t going anywhere. Saum & Colt will continue contributing to this work in our own different ways. Because this was never really about building a company. It was always about taking one step forward in this movement.
Let’s Rewind: Two Wild Years 🎉
Two years ago, we had a wild idea:
Could we make it dramatically easier for people to build IRL clubs?
Here’s what happened 👇
We launched the first IRL Club Accelerator in SF. 3 cohorts. 100+ alumni.
We threw SF’s biggest club fair.
The city’s first Joiner Week.
50+ events. 2,000+ locals.
We offered $50K in microgrants to amazing clubs (with Hinge OMH).
We built tools for club funding, membership drives, and crowdfunding campaigns.
We built a community of hundreds of club builders, wrote 50+ newsletters and …
Most importantly: We celebrated our real heroes every day - the club builders. People cooking together. Playing together. Meditating together. Moms supporting each other. Hackers building things. Neighbors having dinner every week.
It was magic. And it taught us something important.
What We Learned
Here’s the truth: building IRL clubs is still hard.
Most builders feel under-valued, under-resourced, and uncared for. They pour invisible hours into this: without recognition, without resources, without knowing who will show up. They bring people together… and ironically, they feel lonely.
But we also learned that something is changing, quietly but surely.
✨ Club builders are stepping up. New clubs are popping up everywhere.
✨ Joiners are ready. Everyone is looking for places to belong.
✨ Contributors are ready. People are eager to support clubs, if builders ask.
✨And most importantly: It’s easier together. When builders lift each other up, magic happens.
We also discovered something else:
There’s a method to this magic. Patterns that work. Landmines to avoid. A surprising playbook for building clubs that actually last.
This can’t stay locked inside one org in one city. That’s why we’re opening it all up.
It has to spread. With you.
Now… Go Build a Club 🛠️
You don’t need permission. Just a few people and the willingness to start.
Watch the video. Share it with someone who you know.
Stay tuned next week for our “How to Build a Club” Hot Takes Primer: our core beliefs on what it takes to build a great club.
Seriously.
If you’ve been thinking about it, start.
If you’ve already started, keep going.
And if you need help, we’ll share what we’ve seen work for others.
And if you already know how to do this well, share it. Help others. Teach us too.
We want to hear from you. Your feedback, your experiments, your wins, your mess.
Then over the coming months, we’ll slowly build the How to Build a Club online hub with you, piece by piece.
Build IRL was never just us anyways.🙏
It was the club builders who trusted us with their stories, their sweat, their vulnerability.
It was everyone who showed up. Who built. Who joined. Who supported.
It was the people who sent us beautiful notes and messages throughout this journey. Reading them has been one of the best parts of this whole thing.
It was you and this community. It was your energy, generosity, and willingness to show up for each other. And that lives on.
This Is Not an Ending
It’s a step in a much longer journey toward a more connected world.
Imagine thousands of clubs.
Millions of friendships.
A culture that celebrates the people who bring people together.
We sparked this magic in San Francisco.
Now we ask you to help make it happen everywhere 🌍
This is the beginning of the next chapter. And we’re passing the baton to you.
Keep building 🛠️
Best,
Saum & Colt
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