There’s a new way for startup founders to connect and grow in St. Louis. Founders Lounge is a networking and business education project designed to build and boost community within the region’s entrepreneurship scene. After Venture Cafe ended operations late last year, local entrepreneur Christian Johnson launched Founders Lounge as a way to pick up the pieces and bring a fresh approach to supporting self-starters within the St. Louis business ecosystem. “The entrepreneur community is a huge asset to the St. Louis region,” Johnson says. “It needs to be seen as a top priority.” We sat down with Johnson to learn more about Founders Lounge, and how he hopes to impact local entrepreneurs through programming.
How would you describe the origins of Founders Lounge?
Keep up with local business news and trends
Subscribe to the St. Louis Business newsletter to get the latest insights sent to your inbox every morning.
It launched at the beginning of January 2024, right after Venture Cafe ended. For the past eight to 10 years or so, Venture Cafe was at the core of the community, but it sunsetted here in St. Louis. I really wanted to make sure that these connections could still happen, with founders being able to connect with each other and get insights from investors and other people building companies.
When it sunsetted, we started Founders Lounge and went over to the Aloft St. Louis Cortex Hotel (4245 Duncan), which hosted us for free. It’s very much a casual gathering of founders, for founders. The goal is to have programming for founders. We have speakers come out at least twice a month to talk to founders and there’s also networking and technical workshops. We do deep dives into things like CRMs and other ideas that help you move the needle. That is our whole goal with Founders Lounge: supporting each other and getting from ideas to growing and scaling your company.
And we want to have a community. That’s a big part of it. We don’t know everything when we start, but you need a place where you can talk to other founders about what you’re working on and possibly even meet other co-founders.
How is Founders Lounge different from similar programs, like the former Venture Cafe?
It’s not about networking as the key component. It’s really about learning. I think it’s also really different because it’s focused on growth. You come in there one way, but the goal is to keep moving you forward and start pushing you and equipping you.
We’re not running you through an accelerator. We’re giving you more tools and diving deeper into specific topics. We’re asking questions, and founders can talk about things from experience.
Many of these founders are ready to move up a notch. That’s key. That’s what sets us apart from other programs that support founders. We don’t have to justify our programming to anybody—all you have to do is focus on helping each other. That’s what it’s all about.
Tell me about your background. What led you to this point in your career?
I’ve been a part of the Venture Cafe community for the past eight years or so, so I’ve seen its growth and the overall ecosystem. After COVID, I felt like the Venture Cafe leadership didn’t have a strong vision for making this a strong startup ecosystem.
There was also a lot of overhead. People were trying to figure out if in-person events still worked. There were a lot of unknowns. All of these conditions led to it dying, and it didn’t make financial sense for them to do it anymore.
We have so many immigrant founders coming into the ecosystem. It’s a different landscape than it was a few years ago. We are looking for ways to connect and grow. I saw an opportunity, so instead of saying our entrepreneur community is dead, we founded Founders Lounge as a place to gather around each other.
There are all sorts of different kinds of founders. What kinds of entrepreneurs is Founders Lounge programming geared toward?
We serve mostly technical founders or startups like software companies. We don’t turn anyone away but we focus more on scalable companies.
And then there are founders who are more in the ideation or product stages. It helps being able to come in there with an idea and work on it to try and get that idea to scale. We serve more of the early-stage tech companies.
How do these events work? What does a typical meeting look like, and what do members get from the experience?
We have different programming throughout the month. It’s a weekly event, every Thursday without fail—except during major holidays.
Twice a month, we have speakers who come from out of town, investors, and people with great business acumen or specific knowledge in certain areas. Once a month, we have our founders’ roundtable, where we do deep dives into specific topics. We have Pitch Karaoke once a month, where we pitch a product or service based on a picture. It’s a bit more informal.
What’s the long-term vision for a project like Founders Lounge?
The vision is to get more of our local companies involved, and have them share the problems they’ve been working on. That can even inspire the entrepreneur community to work on these problems. Then, of course, scale it out more into different parts of St. Louis or even different cities.
Our vision is to have a physical space, almost like a founders’ house, where events and different programming—like technical workshops—can be held. This can be done here in St. Louis and really boost our ecosystem. It can also help enterprises participate in that type of programming.
Why does St. Louis need this?
This is the most important time—especially with the advances in AI—to build a business or a venture. I think St. Louis is at this perfect moment: our cost of living is still low, we have great universities, and we have many great assets we can leverage. Also, people are willing to learn, and other executives are willing to give their time. These things make a perfect storm for St. Louis to be a leader in the startup community throughout the Midwest. We just have to recognize that and say we are going to build this.
