"For a project like this, you just have to start and dive in headfirst. You have to put an initial prototype together — evaluate properly, understand what the baseline is. Then you create an optimization framework, and iteratively work to reduce errors to get to a point where you match and exceed current human judgment. That’s surprisingly within reach."

"co-op is a platform that helps independent brands partner together, acquire customers, and scale. We build tools to support upsells, cross-promotion, audience exposure, and intelligent insights. The idea is that we can facilitate every imaginable brand-to-brand interaction."

We saw an opportunity that we could create a product that connects seamlessly with your calendar and turns on whenever you speak in meetings. It then would give you personalized feedback in real-time and after the meeting where it provides you with tips and lessons, evaluating things like your confidence, clarity and empathy.

“I was like ‘wow’ this is the tribe I belong to. These are the kind of people I want to be surrounded with. This is where I belong. I was talking with a lot of like minded people and fueling that burning desire. It inspired me to go and quit my high paying job at Facebook.”

Time and time again, through chats with other designers, I wished there was a place where designers could come together to learn and level each other up beyond our day jobs. On Deck is precisely that.

"I want to share June’s playbook going from 0 to 1 as a B2B SaaS startup, including: 

• How we got our first user
• Why you should understand your customer before you building a landing page
• How to implement your user-research findings 
• How to launch on Product Hunt and Hacker News"

“I thought, I'm a French person who doesn’t have a college roommate in Stanford who happens to be my co-founder and is passionate about the same things. So I guess... On Deck might be the best serendipity maximizer.”

"The On Deck community was there every step of the way during my recruiting journey, they connected me to their network, coached me through offer negotiations, and attended my dance party social events."

"I believe that the fastest way to grow and improve is to give your ideas, products, and models exposure to smart people. ODFintech allows you to gain this exposure in a 10x way, where one conversation changes the vision of your product and introduces you to a host of other people you should connect with."

"One of my biggest beliefs in investing is that a good investor has a general worldview of how the world operates and their investments fit into that worldview like a Lego block snapping into place. Even though you are allowed to have multiple interest areas as an investor, there should still be one unified belief behind why you are making certain investments."

"The access to people, experts and the expertise has saved us a lot of time in doing research and outreach just by centralizing a lot of knowledge in one place. Given Climate Change is such a broad problem to be tackling, Nestor and I had about 100 areas that we weren’t experts in (grant funding, intellectual property, etc.)."

"ODF created a powerful flywheel for me and my business. Now my mission, and what I want Inward to be, is extremely clear."

‍

"We talked about the On Deck fellowship and thought that it would help us improve our value-adds for our syndicate. We would be able to add more Climate-focused experts to our network, while also improving our own operational understanding of the field."

"When questions came up that fell out of the scope that I or one of the collaborators I was working with could answer, my go-to location became the On Deck Health Asks & Offers channel. It was the best search engine in the niche as the results were driven by people passionate and informed about the space."

‍

“I figured if you could fix the sexual assault and harassment problem, the second-order effects of it would be so huge. It would mean that women could have confidence and profound support entering workplaces they didn't historically populate.”

"At On Deck, I attended intimate sessions with other founders about both their successful and unsuccessful journeys. I got so much energy from writing code for the hackathon (I built OfficeTogether’s MVP in Airtable!) and I also met so many people in 1:1 meetings who had just made the leap. My experience at On Deck gave me the courage to leave my job and start my own company, which was hard given how much I loved Coinbase.”

“What’s most impressive to us is how On Deck has grown without diluting the brand at all. They’ve kept the bar extremely high, and people love the program (including us). They’ve also fully democratized the network, which is extremely important for tech access.”

"The size of the network and the curation of the people in it is so active and dedicated to helping each other. It’s like a living thing."

"They understand that organic and iterative connection is where the magic happens."

"It’s a great place to feel like you’re not alone on what can be the very lonely journey of starting a company."

“We were able to get quick feedback on what we needed to change, or what was going well—some of our initial customers were from the On Deck community who were running into problems that Secureframe could solve. That was super helpful for our progress.”

“It was great to be dropped into this community of people that thought like me, and wanted to do the same things as me, and nerded out over the same things as I did.”

“On Deck was literally the catalyst that allowed me to leave my job. I felt supported, and I met people who were already on the same journey. It’s really allowed me to take that first step and feel comfortable about it.”

"By just putting yourself in an environment with a lot of other interesting people, good things tend to happen."

On Deck is how I met Sam, who is now my co-founder at Levels.

"[Through Lean Hire] I got to meet with the CEO and CTO and learn about what they were building, why they were building it and their future vision."

"I would describe ODNC as the consistent exchange of belief capital. Even the week before the program starts and you first enter the Slack channel, you see a mountain of introductions and enter a buzzing community with the friendliest, most supportive and engaged people."

When I started at SquadCast in August 2020 I had never formally been trained in community building. Harry Duran, one of the advisors of SquadCast who had been participating in the On Deck No Code Fellowship, saw that On Deck had launched the Community Builders fellowship and recommended that I participate. 

One fireside chat in particular comes to mind as far as holding the insights I was looking for. Erik Torenberg spoke about how On Deck went from a physical dinner series and retreat to an online fellowship. He emphasized that you really had no idea what would work unless you went out and tested it. He reflected on how it took 4 years to find the model that worked and how transitioning to a cohort based approach made all the difference. 

“On Deck helped me raise $750k for my startup, 1v1Me, but then we raised an additional $1.25M a month or two later. Now, my foot is on the gas scaling 1v1Me 24/7. However, what I will say is I always make time for On Deck.”

"For any founders out there looking for early stage employees, I would highly recommend OD50 and hedging the risk as they are training folks on how to be outstanding early stage teammates to help get to the next phase of your business."

Everyone in the program genuinely wanted to best serve one another during their time together and most often that took the form of, “Have you had a chance to talk to x yet, I think you would totally bond over [insert topic]. Let me connect you!”

"On Deck has been the perfect place to be in transition. The rare – and precious – spirit of service upheld by those in the community has helped me tackle harder problems than I previously thought possible."