About Us
The accomplishments of Dojians are wide reaching and impactful. This includes building unicorn private and public companies, deploying capital, talent and resources into impactful projects across the globe and conceiving and building key aspects of the global technology infrastructure. Some of the largest and well known technology companies and categories were fostered in and around the Dojo. Today hundreds of great entrepreneurs and leaders in all corners of the world consider themselves Dojans.
The Dojo works with companies in a broad range of roles primarily capital deployment, advisory and project management.
Below is a selection of incubated & advised Dojo Companies.
Native Co
Revolutionized DTC and personal care subscription. Sold to Procter & Gamble PG (NYSE) $100M.
Scout Monitoring
Leading distributed computer monitoring system sold to SolarWinds SWI (NYSE) for undisclosed amount.
Linjer
A leading global fashion brand, Linjer and its subsidiaries are among the largest DTC brands in their respective categories in the Pacific Rim.
The Hustle
Leading business and technology media company sold to Hubspot HUBS (NYSE).
Quantstamp
Innovative blockchain security software provider leading way towards a decentralized internet.
Talkdoc
Committed to equal access to mental health services, Talkdoc is the fasting growing mental tele-healthcare provider for Medicare + Medi Cal.
Product Hunt
While not founded in the Dojo, the Dojo was early subscribers and supports of Ryan Hoover’s innovative product discovery platform. .
History
The Dojo started as a too big office for an ad network. The ad network is gone but the Dojo grows. The space started as a traditional rent a desk space back in 2008. My buddy (since Coolboard days in web 1.0) Andre Lewis, of Scout Monitoring built a lead management system for my CPA network. While celebrating the completion of the project at the Anchor Brewing tour we started talking about getting a place were we could both work. As it turned out the Looksmart building where Andre had rented a desk was kicking everybody out for Myspace. After looking at a few spaces Andre and I agreed on spot near South Park at 480 2nd st #201. At the time, the building was pretty empty. We rented desks to other Looksmart refugees including Richard White of Uservoice, Christian Perry of SFBETA and an engineer who went on to build Kickstarter. Mike Simon of Flexible Informatics and Derrick Hayneswho co-founded Scout Monitoring joined soon after. Barry Willingham and my brother who were both partners in the CPA network but located in other parts of the country immediately we saw the value of the community both to give me sounding boards and also to be close to talent and skills.
I felt that I had to charge rent to justify the large size of the office so we offered desks at $250 per month, internet included. Over the next year or so people came and went including David Park and Eric Bahn of Beat the GMAT. After Eric and David left to go to San Mateo, it did not take long to realize that I did not want to lose talent unnecessarily and I wasn’t interested in the traditional rent a desk business. Ironically mega projects like WeWork and Techspace would soon raise billions on that idea. We thought about moving to a smaller office but Barry Willingham and Michael Grossblatt were against losing our hard won San Francisco footprint. Also Mike Simon had become a great mentor and I started to feel like I did not want to charge rent in mindshare. We all agreed to keep the space and not charge anyone. Soon great people started coming through the office. his was also about the time that the Facebook platform for developers opened up so Web2.0 was underway. I could never afford the talent that came to the dojo, but if I gave them a desk they worked with me for free. Over the next decade hundreds of amazing founders, technologists, leaders and makers came through the Founders Dojo. Amazing adventures and accomplishments happened as well.
Now the Dojo is a community of hundreds of business and cultural leaders around the world. We get together ad hoc and come together for projects and experiences. Opportunity never sets on the Dojo
David Grossblatt, Founder