I joined X a few weeks ago, and I have 8 followers. I've built and sold a software company, I ran a premium expedition vehicle company (RREV) with 37 vehicles out in the world, and I'm now building Delegus, which gives AI agents, robots and other autonomous systems verifiable authority to act on behalf of a company. In the middle of the night, I'm researcher in residence at Graviton Research, a nonprofit studying quantum gravity and the physics of consciousness. And in Silicon Valley, I still can't get a coffee with most of the people I'd like to meet.
Some of that is on me. I've always bootstrapped what I built, so I never needed the network. I've also never liked crowded rooms. OpenChair is my way to meet some awesome humans, six at a time, around one table with a clear purpose. I only started thinking about it recently, and once I did, I noticed how many other builders are standing outside the same door.
The idea is simple: founders, operators and investors should meet based on what they build and back, not who they already know. OpenChair isn't a company or a business. It's a side project: a dinner table, a simple sign-up, and a little matchmaking. Here's why it matters to me and how it works.
The people at the top aren't the villains
Let's be fair to them first. A good investor or a senior operator gets hundreds of cold emails a week. Every "quick coffee?" costs them an hour they won't get back, and most of those hours go nowhere.
So they filter. They take meetings from warm intros, from people with big followings, from names they recognize. That's not snobbery. It's the only cheap filter they have when they're drowning.
The problem is what that filter does to everyone else. If you're new, you have no warm intro, no audience and no recognizable name. You can be building something great and still look exactly like the hundred people who aren't.
Why the hierarchy holds itself in place
Once you look at it as a system, the pattern is easy to see.
- Attention is the scarce thing. Information is everywhere. An hour of a busy person's time isn't.
- Asking is free, answering isn't. Anyone can send a DM, so the people worth meeting get flooded, and they fall back on status to cope.
- Good and unknown looks the same as bad and unknown. A great new founder has no cheap way to stand apart from a weak one.
- It feeds itself. People who already get meetings build reputation, which gets them more meetings. People who don't, never get the chance to prove anything.
So the hierarchy isn't a moral failure. It's what happens in a crowded market with bad information. Asking everyone to be nicer won't change it. Giving them better information and better incentives will.
Others see it too
I'm not the only one thinking about this. In late September, a16z launched Cosign, a curated network for founders, operators and investors. On Cosign you vouch for people and companies with your reputation, and profiles are built from those endorsements, fundraises and career moves. It takes the way the Valley already works, where one person's visible belief in you tells everyone else to pay attention, and makes it explicit.
I think that's a smart model, and I signed up to see how it works. I'm still on the waitlist. I'd been thinking about OpenChair for a few weeks when Cosign launched, and it confirmed the problem is real. Cosign makes visible who already believes in you. I kept coming back to the people nobody has met yet.
OpenChair starts one step earlier. It's for the people who don't have anyone vouching for them yet, because nobody has met them. It begins with the work itself and a seat at a real table, so you can earn that first vouch. I see the two fitting together: OpenChair helps you get noticed, and an endorsement from someone at the table can be one more piece of your proof.
How OpenChair breaks it
The trick is to give busy people a better filter than status, so they don't need status anymore. Here's how OpenChair tries to do that, at the scale of one table.
Proof of work, not pedigree. Your profile will be built from what you've actually made: code, a live product, a demo, writing, units shipped. AI will check that the work is real and recent. It won't decide whether your idea is good; people do that. A founder with a working product and 8 followers should show up stronger than someone with 50,000 followers and a deck.
One ask, one offer. Nobody writes "would love to pick your brain." You write one specific ask ("15 minutes on pricing a security API") and one thing you can offer ("I've built hardware and know manufacturing"). Matching will run on substance, and it will only score a match high when both sides get something.
The open chair. Every gathering seats tables of six around a host. Two chairs at every table are kept for people outside the host's network. That's the name, and it's a rule, not a gesture. It's how good people get found: someone nobody has met yet gets a chance to be seen.
How it works
- Take a seatOne ask, one offer, and a link to your work.
- Get checkedAI confirms the work is real and recent.
- Get matchedValue to both sides, plus new faces.
- MeetAt a table of six with two open chairs.
- Rate itBoth say whether it was worth the hour.
- Earn and learnHelpers get recognized; matching gets sharper.
For now, I do most of this by hand, with a little help from AI. You write one ask, one offer and a link to your work. AI checks that the work is real, matching pairs you with people where both sides gain, and you meet at a table or one-on-one. Afterward, both of you say whether it was worth the hour. That feedback makes the next round of matches sharper.
Who it's for
OpenChair only works if every kind of person in the room gets something real. Here's who it's for and why they'd show up.
| Who | What they bring | What they get |
|---|---|---|
| Builders nobody has heard of yet | Real work and a sharp ask | A seat next to people who can help, judged on the work |
| Founders a year or two ahead | Hard-won lessons | Peers working on the same problems, and future hires and partners |
| Senior operators | Experience in sales, security, engineering, design | A table to host on a topic they care about, and a first look at strong people |
| Angels and fund associates | Capital and introductions | Founders with proof of work, before everyone else finds them |
Some people at the top will join too, and they're welcome. But OpenChair doesn't depend on them. It starts with people who have the most to gain, and the room earns its reputation from there.
The first gathering
I'm hosting the first OpenChair gathering in San Mateo.
It's six people at one table, and I'm the host. I don't know any of the other five yet, and that's the point: every seat is an open chair, filled by someone picked only on what they're building. There's no theme. The evening is built around one goal: everyone leaves with something they came for.
At any given moment, a founder usually needs one of a handful of things:
- a first customer or design partner
- an introduction to the right investor
- a co-founder or a key early hire
- an answer from someone who has done it before, on pricing, hiring, manufacturing or fundraising
- honest feedback on what they're building
So the evening runs like this:
- Before: everyone sends their one ask and one offer. I share them with the table a few days ahead, so people arrive having already thought about how they can help.
- At the table: each person gets about 20 minutes. They state their ask, and the other five work on it with an intro, an answer, a lead or a straight opinion.
- Before leaving: everyone names one concrete thing they'll do for someone else at the table.
- Within 24 hours: I check in with everyone so the promises made at the table actually happen. If others who signed up would be a good fit, I pass along a name or two.
There are two rules. No pitching: bring a demo, not a deck. And no "let's keep in touch": every promise is specific, or it isn't made.
The application is one question: what are you building, and what's the one thing you need right now? Seats go to the clearest, most specific answers, not to résumés. The table is put together as a mix, so the six people can actually help each other.
If you're early, with few followers and something real to show, you're exactly who the open chairs are for. And if you're one of the busy people at the top, take a seat too. It'll be a better use of your evening than your inbox.