Community

There are so many great resources, organizations and people who take the time to help.

Menu

Resource Hub

There are so many great resources, organizations and people who take the time to help, but it sometimes feels like an innumerable universe of single points of failure. It’s difficult to scale, with both people and knowledge changing in real time.

So we’ve set up an initial start of an open source resource hub.

Consumer Product Resource Hub

In that drive folder you will see the following:

1

Three Google Sheets

These sheets - one for Food and Beverage, one for Apparel, Outdoor and Footwear, and one for Health, Beauty & Wellness - have some pre-populated tabs for topics and areas. The idea is simple, to continuously add in information as conversations happen. The community can then search these sheets for information around everything from co-packers to manufacturers. If there is another industry vertical that needs a sheet, let us know and we are happy to set that up down the road as well.
2

Folders

From pitch deck examples to sales sheets it’s always nice to share what you can with the rest of the community. I have a feeling it will take some time to get these folders populated, but we felt the first step was needed.

Since this will be a community accessible/editable hub, there are some baseline rules around using and adding to it.

Be Respectful

– I hope this goes without saying, but we will monitor the hub for people who are being disrespectful in any way.

No Selling

– We have tabs for service providers and resources such as co-packers, but we don’t want this to be a hub where people come on and try and tout how great they are and why you should use them. Founders and leaders should be adding to the list so if you are a service provider, your clients/customers should be the ones adding your information. New to the community, feel free to reach out to us at hello@builtoregon.com and we can help get you looped in.

The community will have edit access because this information should not live behind a paywall or membership commitment. Our hope is that this will be an ever changing set of documents that founders can access.

Peer to Peer Groups

Our goal is to hold the space for founder-led collaboration, not lead the sessions. However when a concrete need bubbles up through these sessions, Built can do the research, seek solutions, and bring them back to the group. Be it a topic-area expert or catalyzing collaborative project.

We believe that these sessions should, and truly need to be run by the founders. We are seeing how it works to have one for Food & Beverage (Shelf Life), one for Apparel, Outdoor & Footwear (Work in Progress) and one for Health, Beauty & Wellness (Personal Care). As with everything we do at Built, having three separate groups may ultimately fall under one. We’ll just listen to all of you and make adjustments as needed.

If you are interested you can sign up here.

Built Peer to Peer Groups

Final Note: There is no cost to participate. Helping to create relationships that may help – even a little bit – with the stress and mental health toll being a founder has to be barrier free.

Built Community Pillars

The Meaning & Use of the Built Together Logo

Community Mindset

Oregon based consumer brands have always been connected through an amazing network. But many times as founders and leaders it feels that you are all alone on that journey.

  • Open source resources and share your knowledge via mentoring or the online resource hubs.
  • Look for, and be open to collaborative ideas.
  • Build trust through engaging in peer to peer and offline interactions. Be present.
  • Be a willing partner that lends your voice and perspectives to discussions.
  • Create a volunteer program that allows you to give back in the ways that make the most sense for you and your company, and look to engage others to do the same. Partner on projects with your peers.

Mental Health & Wellness

Founders are: 2X more likely to suffer from depression, 6X more likely to suffer from ADHD, 3X more likely to suffer from substance abuse, 10X more likely to suffer from bi-polar disorder, 2X more likely to have psychiatric hospitalization, & 2X more likely to have suicidal thoughts. These are real and important issues to discuss and address. And to focus on one without the other is futile.

  • You commit to supporting your own mental health and the mental health of other founders and employees. 
  • Be open to building trusting and vulnerable relationships with peers so that you do not feel alone on this journey. 
  • Commit to ‘picking your head up’ on a regular basis and connecting to the community outside of email, slack conversations, and twitter threads.

Built with Purpose

Too often we see that the normal startup experience people tend to talk about any more is directly associated with raising funds that are many times tied to unrealistic returns and expectations. Go fast. Win big. Or fail silently. And while this path can be inherently true for a select number of companies, it many times exacerbates the mental stress and toll that is put onto founders and drives short term, miopic thinking. So what if we commit to doing our best – all of us – to supporting, building and recognizing companies and founders that have an eye toward building a better, more sustainable future for all stakeholders and our planet? Companies that are committed to creating  long term positive benefits to the communities within which they reside.

  • Create pathways that help support and guide company leaders to learn about options like benefit companies, B Corp, perpetual purpose trusts, and other ways to structure your business. 
  • Work within and outside the ecosystem to create financial models and capital options that favor building for the long term. 
  • Connect founders to leaders who have built or are in the process of building long term sustainable businesses. 
  • Amplify and recognize a company’s social and environmental impact as much as we do a funding round.