About
About Network of Directors
A free business networking room in Austin, Texas, for entrepreneurs who want a personal board of directors. Two hours, once a month, no ticket and no pitch. This is where it came from, who it is for, and where it is going.
Meets
Once a month
Two hours, always free
Where
North Kollective
9185 Research Blvd, Austin
Who
Founders and owners
Every size of business, on purpose
The short version: Network of Directors is a free networking event for business owners in Austin that meets once a month for two hours. A founder gets interviewed on stage about how they built their company, nobody sells anything, and the room is deliberately built from every size of business at once. Connor Cullip hosts it, and the whole idea fits in one sentence he says at the start of every event.
Where the name comes from
Every large company has a board of directors. Every entrepreneur and founder should have a network of directors they can pull experience from as they need.
That is the whole premise. A public company gets a board: people who have done it before, who take the call, who tell the truth. A founder running a two million dollar company in Austin usually has nobody like that. This room exists so they do. You come, you meet people a step ahead of you and a step behind you, and over a few months you end up with a board of your own. Not on paper. In your phone.
Connor describes it as the opposite of any networking group a founder has been to. Curiosity first, real value second, and nothing for sale.
Why it is free
The main event will always be free. That is a decision, not a budget problem, and it has a cost of its own. As Connor puts it, if you do not pay, you do not pay attention, so the room has to earn attention with what happens on stage rather than with a ticket.
The other reason is who a ticket keeps out. Somebody who started a company six months ago learns as much from a founder who has exited as somebody running ten million a year does, and Connor did not want a room that discriminates by size. The moment there is a ticket, an event has to sell tickets, chase sponsors and turn the stage into a sales floor to cover it. He has been to those. This is built to be the other thing: all of the value at none of the cost, and as big as it can get without charging for a seat.
Who is in the room
The room is built from three groups, on purpose, in roughly equal thirds.
Hungry entrepreneurs
New businesses, often still alongside a day job. They are here to learn and to be a sponge, and the room gives them a platform they could not get anywhere else.
Two to ten million a year
Owners of real companies with real payroll. Connor calls them the meat of the networking: the director-level people everyone else in the room needs to know.
Masters of their craft
Ten million and above, and founders who have exited. They can be called on from the crowd for expert advice on the spot, and they come to find businesses, ideas and people worth building with.
Every third needs the other two. The newest owner gets a teacher. The master gets a student, a deal, or a reminder of why they started. That mix is the product, and it is why the roster on the front page is printed with no order and no ranking.
There are two kinds of people the room is not for. One is the person there to sell, business cards out, working the room one pitch at a time. The other is what Connor calls an ask hole: someone who asks great questions and then does nothing with the answers. Both come once and do not come back, and the room is better for it. The people who stay are builders. When two of them meet here, they tend to go build something.
What happens in the two hours
Doors open at three. The first part is a meet and greet, a drink or a snack in hand, with the Kollective members and the other owners in the room. At quarter past, a founder takes the stage and gets interviewed about how they built the company: what carried it, what nearly broke it, and what they would do differently. Connor runs it like a live podcast, and every talk is filmed and published on the events pages. The last hour moves to the golf simulator bays, a contest or two, and the conversations the talk started.
The full run of an afternoon, and the answers to the questions people send before their first one, are in the FAQ.
The ground rules
No egos. No negativity. No sales. Nobody pitches from the stage, and that includes the sponsors. A sponsor who backs the room gets interviewed about their own founder journey, the ups and the downs, the same as any guest. What they are never allowed to do is stand up and tell the room to buy something.
This is deep communication. Hard work.
That is the difference between this and the loud-music, open-bar version of networking. People come here to think out loud with other owners, and the rules exist to protect that. The companies that back the room, and what they agree to, are on the sponsors page.
Who runs it
Connor Cullip hosts the room and is the reason it exists. He owns 9 Line Companies, a veteran-owned group in Austin built around military lodging and VA lending, and spent eight years in the Alaska Army National Guard before that. He will tell you he is just the host. He also says something truer:
I'm a connector by nature. However, I'm more than a connector. I'm an architect, because we're building something. When I make two connections, they're going to go build something rather than just be connections.
The room is hosted with Performance Golf Klub, The Kollective and 9 Line Connect. This site is built and run by SwarmSystem, an Austin company that works with the room. More about Connor is on his author page.
Where it meets
North Kollective, 9185 Research Blvd, Austin, TX 78758, in North Austin off Research Boulevard. It has a lounge, a stage and golf simulator bays, and it is the same building Connor works out of, which is why the room feels like a home game. Anyone can walk in. The people standing near the drinks at three o'clock are the meet and greet. Open the address in Google Maps.
Where this is going
The goal Connor set on the day this site was commissioned was a hundred people a month with no paid ads and no ticket, then a hundred and fifty to two hundred within a year, with the speakers getting bigger each time. He wants Network of Directors to be the business networking event of Austin, the one people fly in for.
Two things are being built around the free room. The first is a smaller, paid mastermind day he calls the hot seat: ten to fifteen owners, a full day, each one taking a turn in the chair while the rest of the room acts as their board of advisors, with a facilitator pulling the problem apart and the whole room offering what worked in their own company. It is recorded, so everyone leaves with a record of what was said about their business, and it repeats each quarter so the goals get checked. The second is a member app, so that before you walk in you know who is in the room, what they run, and how to reach them afterward.
None of that changes the front door. The monthly room stays free, stays two hours, and stays open to anyone building something in Austin.
Come to the next one
Friday, September 25, three to five in the afternoon, Austin. Free.
Save your seat