Founders do not need another place to talk about founding. They need three practical things from a community. A mentor who will give them twenty minutes, honest feedback on a pitch from people who will not leak it, and a way to find the first people to hire. A site that provides those will keep its members. A site that offers a general “startup chat” will watch them leave for the next feed.
This guide builds the three on Eventonomy for mentor office hours, Jetonomy for pitch feedback, and WP Career Board for a jobs board. BuddyNext provides profiles and the member directory around them. Reign is built to work with BuddyNext and every Wbcom plugin, so the whole site shares one design. Each plugin has a free version from the Wbcom store. Pro is an optional paid licence for each, and each section says when a step needs Pro.
A note on scope. This is a software guide. It does not give legal, tax or investment advice, and nothing here says what a founder may share, raise or promise. Where the rules matter, such as fundraising or confidentiality, the community should send members to a qualified professional.
If your community is broader than founders and covers general business networking, the business communities guide is a better fit. This guide stays with early-stage founders.
Office hours are a booking problem
An office hour is a short slot with one mentor. The hard part is not the call, it is who gets which slot. That makes it an Eventonomy problem, and the way Eventonomy handles registration decides the whole design.
Why each slot is its own event
Eventonomy has recurring events, but a recurring event shares one RSVP across every date in the series. There is no way to book a single date. A member who says Going is signed up for the whole series, and editing the series changes every date. For office hours, where each slot has one person in it, that is the wrong tool. Create a separate event for each slot or each mentor session, and set a capacity.
| Format | Eventonomy setup | What registration means |
|---|---|---|
| One-to-one slot | A separate event with capacity of one | The first person to register takes the slot |
| Small group hour | A separate event with a small capacity and a waitlist | Fixed seats, with the oldest waitlisted person promoted when someone cancels |
| Standing drop-in | A weekly recurring event, or one set to No registration needed | One RSVP covers the series, or nobody registers at all |
| Pitch day | A separate event with several speakers in the description | Registration for the day |
A standing drop-in is the one place a recurring event helps, and Free Eventonomy repeats daily, weekly and monthly. Remember that an online event set to No registration needed gives every visitor the same join link, so use your meeting tool’s waiting room.
Let mentors create their own slots
You should not be typing every slot. Eventonomy lets members create events from the front end, through the My Events dashboard block or a standalone Event Editor block. Under Eventonomy, Settings, Setup you can choose:
- Minimum role to create events. Restrict creation to a role you give to mentors.
- Approval before publishing. Submitted events wait in a Pending queue until you approve them. Your own events are unaffected.
- A limit per member. Cap how many events one member can create, so a mentor with enthusiasm does not fill the calendar. Administrators are never capped.
A mentor can use the Duplicate action in My Events to copy last week’s slot.
What the founder is asked at booking
The RSVP form can ask custom questions. You write a shared bank once in Settings, Registration, and each event ticks the ones it needs. For office hours, three questions do real work: what stage the company is at, what the founder wants feedback on, and a link to a deck or page the mentor should read first. Mark the useful ones Required. The bank holds up to 20 questions, so keep it short. Every answer is personal or commercial information that you store, so ask only what the mentor will use.
Online slots
Mark the event Virtual and add the meeting address. Each registrant gets a personal join link on the event page and in the reminder email. The address itself is never shown, and the link stops working if the registrant cancels. Confirmed attendees are reminded one day and one hour before, with nothing to set up. A mentor can email everyone who is Going from the attendee screen if a slot changes. People who registered as guests with a name and email get a magic link to change or cancel.
Fairness and no-shows
The software cannot stop a founder from booking five slots or from not turning up. Write the rule: one live booking per founder, cancel at least a set time before, repeated no-shows lose booking rights. Enforce it by hand from the attendee screen.
If mentors want to charge for sessions, Eventonomy Pro adds paid tickets and check-in. Free Eventonomy takes free RSVPs only.
Pitch feedback that stays inside the room
Feedback on a pitch is only honest if the founder trusts the room. That is a question of who can see the thread, and Jetonomy gives you precise control.
A private space with approval
Create a space called Pitch feedback and set its visibility to Private. A Private space is listed for signed-in people with a Private badge, but its posts are gated. Jetonomy excludes posts in a private space from search results, link previews, tag pages and trending lists. Set the join policy to Requires Approval, which a Private space needs anyway, and you decide who gets in.
For a founder who needs a more discreet exchange, a topic can also be marked private, visible only to its author and the space moderators.
A pitch template
Pin a template so every post carries the same facts. Pinned topics stay at the top of the space whichever sort tab is chosen, and a space allows up to three by default.
One line: what the company does and for whom
Stage: idea, building, launched, or growing
What I need feedback on: the deck, the landing page, the pricing, the one line
What I have already changed
Anything I cannot share
The last line matters. It lets a founder tell reviewers where the edges are, and it tells reviewers not to ask.
A format that makes feedback usable
Ask reviewers to answer in a fixed order, in the same spirit as the template. What was clear, what was confusing, and the single change they would make first. Keep that guidance as a pinned reply and not as a rule you police.
Prefixes and a time limit
Topic prefixes are coloured labels defined per space, up to 50 characters. A founder picks at most one when posting. Useful labels are “Deck”, “Landing page”, “One-liner” and “Pricing”, so reviewers can pick what they know. Prefixes are labels only, and clicking one does not filter the list.
Give each request a window. A moderator closes the topic after a week. A closed topic stays readable but takes no new replies from regular members, and moderators can still reply. A deadline concentrates feedback and gives a quiet thread an end.
Sharing decks
You can share a deck by link. A link on its own line becomes a preview card, and up to three render per post. Jetonomy Pro’s File Attachments extension adds a button to attach files, with default types that include PDF, and with a default limit of 10 MB per file and five per post. Free Jetonomy shows existing attachments but cannot add new ones. Remind members that a deck shared in any online space can be copied, whatever the software does, so they should not share what they cannot afford to lose.
Anonymous questions (Pro)
Some founders will not ask a question under their own name, such as how to handle a cofounder dispute. Jetonomy Pro’s Anonymous Posting hides the name and avatar from other members. It needs a site-wide switch on the Extensions screen and a per-space tick. The real author is still tracked, and only an administrator can reveal them, with every reveal logged. Tell members that anonymity is from other members and not from you.
Rules to write before the first member joins
A founder community touches money, ideas and sometimes legal matters. The software cannot set the culture. Write rules like these and pin them.
| Topic | A rule you might adopt |
|---|---|
| Confidentiality | What is shared in Pitch feedback stays there. The site cannot enforce this, so say it plainly |
| Fundraising | No public requests for investment in open spaces. Take it to a message or an event |
| Advice | Mentors share experience, not legal, tax or investment advice. Members are pointed to professionals |
| Conflicts | A mentor who is also an investor or supplier says so before giving feedback |
| Promotion | Self-promotion has one place, a weekly thread |
| Respect | Criticise the work, not the person |
Where you collect money or hold sensitive information, check the rules that apply to you. The plugins do not provide compliance. For a template to adapt, see the community guidelines template, and for tools such as reports and strikes, the community moderation guide.
A jobs board that costs nothing to start
Founders are always hiring and rarely have a place to say so. WP Career Board gives the community one, and its free plugin covers more than people expect.
What is free
The employer dashboard, company profiles, the job form and applications are in the free plugin. A founder registers as an employer, gets the Employer role and sees a dashboard to post jobs, edit, close and reopen them, and review applications in a List or a Board view. Applicants move through fixed stages, which are Submitted, Reviewing, Shortlisted, Hired and Rejected. A founder creates a public company profile first. It shows name, logo, tagline, about section, industry, size, type, year founded, headquarters, links and open positions. A founder needs a company profile before posting a new job.
The job form is a four-step wizard. It asks for a title and description, an optional salary range with currency and period, a remote flag, a deadline, an optional apply link or apply email, then category, type, experience level, location and skills. The docs do not describe a separate equity field, so describe equity in the job description.
What needs Pro
| Need | Plugin | Free or Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Employer dashboard, company profile, job form, applications | WP Career Board | Free |
| List and Board views, fixed hiring stages | WP Career Board | Free |
| Custom hiring stages on a Kanban pipeline | WP Career Board | Pro |
| Resumes and resume search | WP Career Board | Pro |
| Job alerts for candidates | WP Career Board | Pro |
| Paid listings with credits | WP Career Board | Pro |
| Job maps | WP Career Board | Pro |
For a community that wants to charge for listings, credits are the Pro path. You can keep the board free while it fills with roles, and switch on credits later if you decide to charge.
Moderation and listing length
Moderation is on by default. A founder who submits a job sees that it is waiting for review, and gets an email when a moderator approves or rejects it. A job runs until its deadline, which defaults to the site’s listing length of 30 days, and the founder can pick an earlier date. After that it leaves the listings, its page says it has expired, and the founder can reopen it. Guests can apply with a name, email and resume unless you turn on Require login to apply.
The board works with Reign without extra setup. It uses Reign’s colours and dark mode and adds Browse jobs and Employer Dashboard links to the navigation. For a worked example of a members-only board, read the alumni or association job board guide.
Showing jobs inside the community
With BuddyNext Pro active, WP Career Board jobs appear in the BuddyNext feed, in community search and in a Portfolio tab on the member’s profile. Without BuddyNext Pro, the board still works as its own set of pages. Resumes and the “open to work” card need WP Career Board Pro as well.
Profiles that show stage and sector
The mentor you want is the one who has built something in your sector. The member directory should make that findable.
BuddyNext member types let you define categories such as Founder, Mentor and Operator. A type shows as a coloured badge on the profile and the directory card, and works as a directory filter. You assign the Mentor type. If you make a type self-selectable, anyone can choose it, so do not make Mentor one.
Add profile fields such as sector, stage and what the member is looking for. A field marked Include in search is searchable in the directory and the site search, so typing “payments” can find the members who filled it in. Each member picks who sees each value, up to the ceiling you set, so a founder can keep a field narrow. Ask only for what members will use, and let them leave the rest blank.
Free and Pro for a founder site
| Job | Plugin | Free or Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Office hour events, RSVPs, waitlist, reminders, custom questions | Eventonomy | Free |
| Member-created events with approval | Eventonomy | Free |
| Paid tickets and check-in | Eventonomy | Pro |
| Private space, templates, prefixes, private topics, closing, pinning | Jetonomy | Free |
| File attachments and anonymous posting | Jetonomy | Pro |
| Member types, profile fields, directory | BuddyNext | Free |
| Events and jobs shown in the BuddyNext feed and search | BuddyNext with Eventonomy and WP Career Board | BuddyNext Pro |
Direct messages in BuddyNext run through WPMediaVerse, installed with Messages on. The plugins overview lists every tier, and the startup founders page shows how Reign fits this niche. For the job board stack, the job board build guide goes through the pieces.
A first six weeks
| Week | Do this |
|---|---|
| 1 | Write the rules, create the Private pitch space and pin the template |
| 2 | Recruit three or four mentors; set the Mentor member type |
| 3 | Set the question bank; let mentors publish their first slots with approval on |
| 4 | Open the jobs board with a few real roles and moderation on |
| 5 | Run the first pitch day; close the pitch threads a week later |
| 6 | Review no-shows and rules; decide whether any paid tier is worth adding |
Frequently asked questions
Can a founder book one specific time with a mentor?
Yes, by making each slot its own Eventonomy event with a capacity. A recurring event shares one RSVP across every date, so it cannot book a single date.
Is the employer dashboard a Pro feature?
No. WP Career Board free includes the employer dashboard, company profiles, the job form and applications. Resumes, job alerts, custom hiring pipelines, paid listings and maps are Pro.
Can pitch feedback stay private?
A Jetonomy Private space gates its posts and keeps them out of search, link previews, tag pages and trending lists, and Requires Approval lets you vet who joins. The software cannot stop a member copying what they see, so also state a confidentiality rule.
Can founders ask questions anonymously?
Anonymous posting is a Jetonomy Pro feature. It hides the name from other members, while an administrator can still reveal the author, and each reveal is logged.
Can the community charge for job listings?
Yes, with WP Career Board Pro, which adds credits for paid listings. The free plugin posts jobs without charge.
Do I need BuddyNext?
No. The three plugins work together without it. BuddyNext adds profiles, member types and the directory, and BuddyNext Pro surfaces events and jobs in the feed.