🚀 Slate

The private room for Southeast Asia’s top 1% founders

If you’re building a serious company, you already know this:

Your bottleneck isn’t effort.
It’s decision quality.

Better decisions come from being in the right room.

Slate is that room.

A private founder community for high-growth operators across Southeast Asia.

Low-ego. High-trust. Extremely curated.

Why most founder communities stop working once you scale

(and waste your time)

Let’s call it out:

• ⚠️ You’re the “biggest” founder in the room
  Everyone’s still figuring out product–market fit. You’re making 6-7 figure decisions alone, dealing with funding rounds, runway, churn, and executive hires. Different problems.

• ⚠️ Too much noise, not enough signal
  Random “growth hacks”, motivational quotes, and pitch spam. No one’s actually shipping at your level.

• ⚠️ No one you can be fully honest with
  You can’t talk about existential problems (co-founder tension, down rounds, layoffs) on LinkedIn or with your team. So you shoulder it alone.

• ⚠️ Generic events, generic advice
  Panels that feel like TED talks. Masterclasses that sound good, but don’t change your P&L.

If you’re doing $1M+ a year, have raised >$1M, or already sold a company (>$2M), you don’t have a “motivation” problem.

You have a room problem.

Slate fixes that by putting you in the right room.

Why I Started Slate

I quit my job in 2021 to build my first startup. It flopped. Hard.

What kept me going wasn’t a book, a podcast, or a course. It was conversations with other founders who:

• Had burned millions — and knew how to bounce back

• Shared what they’d do differently if they had to start over

• Opened doors that would’ve taken me years to unlock alone

My second startup got acquired. That exit changed my life — but what changed my trajectory was having access to the right founders at the right time.

When I looked around Southeast Asia, I saw:

• Plenty of early-stage communities

• Plenty of generic “networking” events

• Almost no curated space for serious founders doing meaningful revenue who want depth, not more WhatsApp groups.

So I built Slate.

A private, vetted room for high-growth founders in Southeast Asia who want:

• Candid conversations about the hard stuff

• Real operator playbooks (not theory)

• A trusted circle they can lean on for the next decade

What Slate is (and how it helps you grow)

Slate is a curated, private founder community for high-growth operators in Southeast Asia.

Inside, you will:

• Join a Slate Circle: Meet monthly in a curated group of 8 non-competing founders at similar stages (your Personal Board of Advisors).

• Get unstuck fast: Ask one question, get 5 operator‑grade answers from founders 1–2 steps ahead.

• Borrow proven playbooks: Sales scripts, fundraising tips, GTM moves, hiring frameworks — what’s working now, shared candidly.

• Make the right intros happen: Warm, contextual introductions to founders, operators, and investors.

• Belong: A high-trust space for honest conversations about the hard stuff — leadership, burnout, relationships, and the weight of building.

What you get inside Slate

Slate is built on 3 pillars:

1. Slate Circle

Slate Circle is the core of Slate — your Monthly Personal Board of Advisors.

Each month, you meet with a curated group of 8 non-competing founders for focused, off-the-record problem solving — across business and life.

Every session centers on real problems with real stakes. The group goes deep, pressure-tests assumptions, and helps you leave with clarity and concrete next actions.

Each Circle is carefully balanced. You:

• Sit alongside founders at a similar stage

• Learn from founders a few steps ahead

• Sharpen your own thinking by mentoring others nearby

You’re never the smartest person in the room.
You’re never the most lost either.

This balance is what keeps conversations honest, practical, and useful.

Trust is non-negotiable.

What’s shared inside Slate Circle stays inside Slate Circle.

2. Private Slate Community on Slack

3. Private Dinner with Slate founders

Plus, member-only leverage…

+

+

Real founders. Real outcomes.

Why founders join Slate

High-growth founders join Slate for one reason:

Better Room = Better Decisions

Members get:

• Faster answers

• Higher-quality connections

• Real operator support

• Lessons without the tuition fees

• A room where vulnerability isn’t punished, but respected

Because at this stage, Slate becomes your “Edge” — the unfair advantage that helps you move faster, avoid costly mistakes, and make better decisions.

Membership Requirements

Slate is not for everyone. By design.

We exist to serve founders who are already operating at a high level — and who make the room sharper by being in it.

To keep the room high-trust and high-calibre, we only admit founders who meet strict quantitative and qualitative criteria.

Minimum Criteria (meet one):

• $1M+ annual revenue, or

• $1M+ funding raised, or

• Previously sold a company for $2M+

Non-Negotiable Criteria (must meet all):

• You operate with integrity
  We vet hard for character. No questionable behaviour, no ego-driven drama.

• You are curious to learn
  You have a “beginner’s mind” despite your success.

• You share openly
  Slate is a low-ego room. Members talk about the real stuff — wins, losses, numbers, and mistakes.

• You give as much as you take
  Slate works because members show up to help, not to siphon value.

• You think and move like an operator
  Practical, grounded, and allergic to fluff.

The Slate Vetting Process

Slate stays valuable because we protect the room relentlessly. Every applicant goes through a full review — background, traction, conversation, and community approval.

Here is exactly how to get in:

💰 WHY NOW MATTERS ⏳

(THE COST OF WAITING)

Now, you might be asking yourself, “Why should I join Slate instead of waiting?”

Well, there's never a "perfect" time for anything. But there is a cost to waiting. 

Right now, while you're figuring things out, you might be making costly mistakes without even knowing them.

And that’s exactly where the danger lies. Every founder pays what I call the “trial-and-error tax.”

• Maybe you’re burning months testing a strategy another founder could fix for you in 10 minutes.

• Or missing an intro that could have landed your next investor, customer, or hire.

• Or scaling the wrong way — and only realising it when it’s too late to undo.

And that tax compounds.

The longer you wait, the more runway you burn.

Meanwhile, the founders who plug into the right room today — who ask, share, and execute with others who’ve been there — skip the tax and move faster.

The Slate Guarantee

Attend your first 3 Slate Circle meetings and engage in the private Slate community on Slack.

If, after that, you genuinely don’t feel Slate is worth it, email me.

I’ll refund your full annual membership — no hoops, no friction.

Worst case: You spend 3 months with the best founders in SEA and get your money back.

Best case: Slate becomes the room you rely on when decisions matter most — helping you avoid expensive mistakes, shorten learning curves, and make better calls as the stakes rise.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's Slate?

Slate is a highly-vetted, private founder community for high-growth operators in Southeast Asia.

What are the requirements to join Slate?

Minimum criteria (meet one):

• $1M+ annual revenue, or

• $1M+ funding raised, or

• Previously sold a company for $2M+

Non-Negotiable Criteria (must meet all):

• You operate with integrity

• You are curious to learn

• You share openly

• You give as much as you take

• You think and move like an operator

What do I get as a Slate member?

Everything inside Slate is designed to help you make faster, smarter, less expensive decisions.

Your membership includes:

• Slate Circle: Monthly, off-the-record sessions with 8 non-competing founders on problem solving — across business and life.

• Private Slate community on Slack.

• Private dinners with Slate founders

• Concierge intros + 1-1 founder matching

• Priority access to Startup Fxckups offline events

• Direct access to TRV’s network (founders + investors)

What are Slate's core values?

1. Radical Candor: We say the hard thing, respectfully and directly. Truth moves founders forward.

2. Generosity of Ideas: Share wins, frameworks, templates, and war stories. Give more than you take.

3. Respect & Confidentiality: What’s shared here stays here. High trust is non-negotiable.

4. Growth Mindset: We learn fast by studying failure — our own and others.

Is Slate for me?

Slate is designed for high-growth founders with real traction, building companies between early scale and meaningful growth — both bootstrapped and VC-backed.

Most applicants operate in AI, B2B SaaS, fintech, e-commerce, agencies, or tech-enabled services, primarily across Southeast Asia, with some global exposure.

How much does Slate membership cost?

Slate membership is $2,000 per year, billed annually.

No monthly plans — because meaningful relationships, trust, and ROI don’t compound in 30 days.

Most members recover the fee quickly.

One avoided mistake, better decision, or warm intro can easily save (or generate) 5-50x the annual cost.

And yes — for almost every founder, Slate is a 100% business write-off (a legitimate business expense).

But more importantly, it’s a decision-making advantage.

How is Slate different from other founder communities?

• Slate Circle (Monthly Personal Board of Advisors):
  Every member is placed into a small, curated circle of 8 non-competing founders that meets monthly to pressure-test real decisions with real stakes.

• Stage-fit by design:
  Each Circle is deliberately balanced with founders who are 1–2 steps behind, at a similar stage, and 1–2 steps ahead of you — ensuring advice is relevant, grounded, and immediately useful.

• Built for Southeast Asia:
  Slate is deeply rooted in the SEA startup ecosystem, with members who understand regional realities — markets, talent, capital, regulation, and culture.

• Failure-first, operator-led depth:
  Conversations focus on what breaks — mistakes, trade-offs, and hard-earned lessons — shared by founders and operators actively running companies, not theorising from the sidelines.

Can I promote my business or sell to Slate members?

Short answer: No.

Members join to learn, share, and build real relationships — not to be sold to.

If a member genuinely asks for your help or wants to work with you, that’s perfectly fine. But unsolicited selling and promotions are strictly not allowed.

This keeps the room high-trust, high-signal, and actually useful.

You can spend another quarter in noisy rooms…

Or you can join a room built to help you move faster, make better decisions, and avoid expensive mistakes.

If you meet the criteria, apply.

We review every application personally.