Dear founders,
(and founders-to-be)
Startups live or die based on their people. To ideate, sell, fundraise, hire — and even just to stay sane — you need to have supportive peers by your side.
But relationships and support networks in the startup ecosystem remain underutilized. How many times have you seen a “Let me know how I can help” lead to nothing?
You’ve likely accrued a good handful of “believers” in tech — people who want to help you succeed. But getting support from them isn’t always easy.
They’re probably distributed all over the place, making it hard to reliably make the right collision at the right time. And while your believers may have the right skillsets to support, they usually don’t know what challenges you’re facing or how they can help.
This means missed advice, intros, customers, hires, capital, or other 6+ figure decisions.
We’ve seen this happen over and over — and now we’re working on something to fix it.
It’s called Project Crew, and we’re recruiting a supergroup of early supporters to help shape the product alongside us.
With care,
The On Deck Team
Turn your startup network
into a ⚡ superpower.
Project Crew is an experimental product from On Deck that helps you build and leverage your startup network. Increase your odds of success by colliding with the right people at the right time, every time.
Assemble your crew
In building your crew of believers, you won’t have to start from scratch.
We make it easy to bring in your network — within and beyond On Deck — and organize your most important connections into Circles by relationship type, connection strength, or expertise. Or use Smart Circles to create the most relevant groups automatically.
A great network is about quality, not quantity. It only takes a dozen or so of the strongest and most relevant people you know to build your initial crew.
Unlock value from believers and deepen ties
Once you’ve assembled your crew into Circles, you can confidently tap into the incredible people around you.
With Project Crew, targeting asks and updates at relevant Circles or individuals is a collaborative social experience, not a chore.
No more lengthy, generic distribution lists or thousand-person Slack feeds to parse through. Get the right updates to the right people at the right time, every time.
Turn initial collisions into ongoing relationships
The set of people who make critical startup moments happen goes beyond your Circles and existing believers.
Think about all the potential colleagues, customers, friends, mentors, and advisors you’ve met — how many promising “first calls” have fizzled out?
Often the missing piece is nurturing authentic connections with new people that eventually lead to collaboration, and minting net new believers.
Project Crew helps you engineer serendipity and make it last.
Over time, you’ll curate a garden of activity for yourself that helps collisions stay warm and blossom into relationships: Imagine filtering the On Deck Slack, but just for the topics and people you care most about.
Search & filter the community
Easily find the most relevant people for you, and get notified when there are new members who meet the criteria you’re looking for.
Drive collisions by adding value for others
Offering your feedback, network, or time is the most reliable way to build valuable relationships. Others will do the same for you!
Make first impressions last
When you connect with someone new, we'll use context from your journey to present tested live and async formats for first meetings.
More collisions, more momentum
Post-collision, we’ll help you close the loop on follow-up. That might mean additional intros, growing your Circles, or surfacing relevant updates going forward.