Is this the hottest young founder network globally right now?

0:00Mike Butcher:Welcome to Path Founders with me, Mike Butcher, where we cover the code, the capital and the consequences behind the tech startup ecosystem.

0:10Mike Butcher:Today, I'm joined by Julia Zhou, president of Sigma Squared Society, a global invite only community for, as it describes itself, some of the world's most ambitious entrepreneurs under 26. Sigma Squared has brought together over 1 ,000 young founders across local chapters spread around the world and its members have collectively raised more than$2.5 billion in venture capital. But the organization is not simply a talent network or investor pipeline. It describes itself as a volunteer-led community built around friendship, ambition, personal growth and solving some of the world's hardest problems.

0:48Mike Butcher:But what is Sigma Squared Society really trying to build? And how can it avoid becoming just another elite network in a world where there are so many elite networks these days? Julia, thanks very much for joining us on Path Founders. Awesome. Thank you so much, Mike, for inviting me. Let's get straight into it. Julia, now I know that Sigma Squared originally grew, or at least the founders originally came out of something called the Kairos Society, which is another network of entrepreneurs and founders originally founded in the US, I think. So what's the history behind that? Yes. So it was about 15 years ago that Kairos emerged in the U.S.

1:29really with a mission still that is the same mission today to bring together the world's most ambitious founders under the age of 26. And throughout the years, it's really grown and expanded across not only the U.S., but Europe and other parts of the world. And we, especially in Europe, saw a lot of growth and a lot of founders coming together, not only for, of course, what you mentioned, the success and the ambition, but especially the friendship that came out of it. And so in a way, because it grew in the community, it took such an important place. We eventually decided to double down on that community.

2:14and Kairos, there's still a fund in the US that's running. And we just decided to focus on the community. And really the tagline of Sigma Squared is, and that's remained over the last 15 plus years, is what if the world's most influential leaders were friends 20 years ago? And I think that tagline just explains everything that we do so well, because it's really about that blend between insane ambition and reaching for the stars. but at the same time knowing that we can't do it alone and actually because of the community and because of the friendship the founders are more successful and you actually just mentioned the numbers and we just onboarded another cohort of founders it's almost 100 new founders that we onboarded so now we have over a thousand three hundred fellows and actually collectively more than three billion dollars of capital raised and also the great thing is that over 90 of that capital has been raised after founders joined Sigma.

3:17And so that not only speaks to, of course, the success of the founders, but then also the value that the community brings to the founders. Right.

3:26Mike Butcher:Well, that sounds quite a lot of success, Julia, but you also focus on founders under 26 and it's invite only. So how does that all work and why did you decide to focus in that way? Yeah, thank you. That's a great question. And we really are building this community because there's no other community that serves particularly this purpose of bringing together and supporting these young founders. Because if you're 18 or 19, if you either just finished high school or you dropped out of university, there barely is anybody doing the same thing. And so it can feel like a very lonely path. And so a lot of people actually, a lot of founders tell us that, that for the first time, they feel like they found a place where they belong and they find others who are actually doing the same really hard thing.

4:14And we have quite a few founders who actually are just turning 18 or even below 18. And that just comes with a whole, you know, host of challenges that normally regular founders who are a bit older just wouldn't encounter. And so that's really what makes it special. And it also allows us to handpick the highest potential, because if you're 20 and you already decide to go on this path, then you already have to have a specific mindset that's a little bit crazy, right, to already start that early. Okay.

4:53Mike Butcher:How do you avoid it becoming a bit insular or simply a network for people who are already well connected? Yeah. And so we actually have over 35 chapters across the world, pretty much every continent. And we have a team of chapter executives and directors that is almost 70 people. So it's a lot of people. And so, for example, Berlin is led by a Berlin executive or Ecuador is led by an Ecuador executive. So those people, they should have the network, the local network to then identify who those potential fellows could be. And they don't necessarily have to be well connected themselves, but they could be in a university and they could be part of some other groups, networks, even research groups.

5:44And then because of that great team that we have, we make sure that we really find this talent that's sometimes quite hidden. And also the other part is that people can't just apply. So they have to be nominated by either existing members or by those executives and directors. And that way it also stays very fair and the quality also stays high.

6:10Mike Butcher:And I noticed just one note. I'm sorry, carry on. The selection process is quite in-depth. And so once they get nominated, they have to fill out an application form. And if the application form meets the criteria, they are invited to three face-to-face interviews. And then during these three face-to-face interviews, we screen for different criteria and then we make the decision of whether they're a fit or not. Right. Well, it sounds like quite a big involved issue. um now you also have a lot of um partners and sponsors and some of those sponsors are venture capital firms um you know do they get privileged access to the fellows how do you protect uh the independence of the community yeah and so as you said at the very beginning it's primarily of um an organization run by volunteers so we always say we're pretty much a community run by founders for founders right because in the early days that was our own need to have a community of like-minded people and so also the funds ultimately it's more of a contribution a support to the ecosystem and yes we do share deal flow we do share interesting founders with investors but there's not necessarily one vc that gets primary access to founders over another one so we try to be fair with everyone.

7:39Mike Butcher:Obviously we're living through the era of AI and we've seen Jan LeCun raise for his AMI startup in Paris. Just this week we saw the ineffable intelligence appear with the largest seed round for any AI company or any tech company for a long time, over a billion dollars. What's it like for you and your members living through this era and what kinds of AI companies companies are you seeing at the moment? I know that in particular, we're living through the era where AI native startups are being built often by very young people and that because they have been growing up with AI literally in the last three or four years.

8:24Mike Butcher:So it's a very interesting time, isn't it? What sort of things are you seeing? Yeah, it's very, very interesting. So one of our older fellows, he is the founder of Parloa. They're quite known in Europe and I think they They just raised their Series D at a$3 billion valuation. And I remember having a conversation with him probably six, almost seven years ago when the idea was just in the early days. And of course, we were not anywhere near where we are today when it comes to AI. And then seeing that developing over the years has been quite amazing. And on the other hand, we have really young fellows, actually one, his name is Cameron Fink and he co-founded Aru.

9:04And his co-founder was 15. He was 18. And so the 15 year old, he had to get, I think, confirmation by his father or something crazy. And they just reached billion dollar valuation. And they're building a basically generating thousands of agents to simulate human behavior, replacing market research and basically everything related to surveys. And that just completely, you know, blew up within a very short amount of time. And actually, he himself joined before even starting this company. And so a lot of the ideas I can imagine are also, or I know, are because of founders and fellows within the community talking to each other and supporting each other, whether they are founders who have been in the space for a longer time or founders who just are 15 years old and are 18 and then starting this.

9:54Or there's another really interesting one. I think it's a Cambridge graduate who founded Artificial Societies. So they basically built a network of different AI personas to simulate how an audience would react or how stakeholders would respond to a product. So completely in a simulated environment without actually testing it on the real world. So these are some really incredible examples that are coming out.

10:22Mike Butcher:Well, I mean, with all of that money throwing around right now, it must be tempting for you guys to also think about starting your own fund as well. Or a syndicate or AI, you know, syndicates of angels. Is that something that has occurred to you? It definitely always comes up as an idea. But as of now, we're saying we're committed to the primary mission of serving as a conduit of making sure that the space that we're providing is the best possible for people to come together. But what's happening is actually a lot of investment inside of the community, because at this point, right, there are some fellows who've joined 10 years ago.

11:04So they have exited their possibly even second startup and now they're putting their money back into the community. So that's kind of a full circle moment that's happening very naturally. And who knows what we're going to do in the future. But right now, it's really about being in service to that rather than capitalizing on it.

11:27Mike Butcher:I see. So you still get to be a member even if you're over 26? So obviously, that's a little bit different if you're now 35 compared to someone who's 20 years old. and also people enter different chapters of their lives. But we say, obviously, at the time of joining, you have to be 26 or younger. It doesn't mean that you're going to be kicked out at the time when you turn 28. But we're actually right now very actively thinking of ways to re-engage founders who are entering a different stage in their lives and actually are in a position of giving back to the community in a different way. Right.

12:06Mike Butcher:Right. Well, I suppose we'll see that when you've decided on how that should work. What do you see Sigma Squared becoming over the next five years? Yeah, that's a great question. So I would say still the first or the primary place worldwide that really brings together the highest quality of young founders. and also the place that really supports and nurtures that talent in the best possible way through the opportunities that we bring to them and also through the friendship that we bring to them and in terms of not only capital that is being raised as an outcome of that but also many other you know initiatives that we're doing but I would say really because right now what we're hearing is people hear about Sigma and they know this is a high quality founder.

13:03And there are a lot of funds and a lot of investors who actually say, if somebody is a Sigma Squared fellow, I want to double down on that person because I know that they're high quality. And we want that to be pretty much the household name across every ecosystem, across every fund to know if somebody is a Sigma fellow, then we got to actually really pay attention to them, not only in San Francisco or in Europe, but also more and more so now. We have a lot of founders coming out of Africa, South America, Asia, right? And they're incredibly high talent. And we want to really put that focus on those people.

13:39Mike Butcher:Do you really feel that there's an opportunity for you to spread this wider than, say, the rather sometimes a bit insular networks of Silicon Valley and be more international in your outlook? 100%. So we're putting a lot of effort into that. we're even supporting founders to be able to come attend events, access places that they normally wouldn't be able to access. And so, yeah, there's a lot of effort we put into that. And we have various different chapters running in South America, in Africa, and more and more so also in Asia and Southeast Asia. And what we then also see is when we do our annual event, right, Like you've been to our annual flagship summit.

14:25We have founders traveling from all over the world and then they come and meet other people that they normally wouldn't be able to meet. And then the collaborations that emerge from that are, you know, something that really brings us a lot of fulfillment.

14:39Mike Butcher:Well, it would be very interesting to see how Sigma Squared Society develops in the coming years. But for now, we'll leave it there. Julia Jo, president of Sigma Squared Society. Thanks for joining PathFounders. Thank you so much, Mike, for this opportunity.