Then Y-Combinator came along and it all became clear. Founders get the most value from and really only listen to other founders. Just look at the success of the YC alumni community, the MIT alumni community, and the Singularity alumni community. It’s all based on founders helping founders. That is the secret sauce to tech success. But YC doesn’t help MIT and MIT doesn’t help Singularity.

They don’t talk to each other. They don’t know-how.

And then there’s the problem of raising capital front-end and finding an exit back-end. It’s hard and if startups don’t succeed on both they fail. End of story. Investors can’t bank on finding the best companies to invest in, founders don’t know if investors even want to speak with them and Covid has completely upended the business model for accelerators everywhere. Add to this the challenges of bringing the best tech companies from emerging economies into mainstream markets and opening up emerging markets to startups from established economies. Solving this would do a lot to address global inequality and unrest. There hasn’t been a solution to these challenges in 30 years.

Then Mark, David, Steve, Mike & Ivette started talking.

Mark White has worked in global tech for 30-years as a deal lawyer and the first lawyer for Tesla, Webex, Hotmail, Prezi (you get the picture) – and he concludes that up to now luck, timing and investor support is the key to virtually all startup success. The problem is that there is no clear process or predictability to any of this. David Smith knows this only too well. A former Apple World Marketing manager and the founder of more than a dozen startups, David is convinced that all startups go through the same hurdles to achieve growth and a return. David has even written a book on the topic titled “From Zero to IPO” and he started “Silicon Valley Business School” as an online business school to fix this very problem of capital, resources, and exits for tech companies.

Steve Hanney, Mike Smith (no relation to David), and Ivette L. Galaviz come at this a bit differently. As the founders of Aspenify and Sequoia Worldwide LLC Steve and Mike have focused on creating tools enabling startups and larger enterprise companies to share, reuse, and develop their own knowledgebases. Basically streamlining innovation creation and re-invention so that companies are more efficient, build value, and have a better likelihood of an exit. Ivette’s career mission has been to promote international expansion and connections between global regions. That was easier in the pre-Covid days. Not so much anymore.

So we all got together and talked and talked and talked.

Then we talked some more with companies, investors, and accelerators in our networks. At first, we had too many ideas, it was hard to find a single solution to the core problem of sharing, money, and exits for scaling companies in global markets. Then it dawned on us. Why not create a Club? And why not with the best, battle-tested startups as our members? And why not match these great companies with investors that actually want to meet? And why not set up a process that guarantees exits? And while we’re at it, why not share the investment returns among our very best members? And why not partner with the world’s best accelerators to share revenue, share returns, and monetize for accelerators the value that they have already created in their communities. Why not set up a network where all accelerators cooperate and don’t compete?

Why not indeed!

And so WSX Club was born.