a piece of cake (not!)

leap.club turns two 🎈

it seems like yesterday when we were sitting at khan chacha at one horizon centre in gurgaon and discussing the pros and cons of starting leap.club (it was called ‘konflake’ back then, but we’ll save that for another day).  

to be honest, we don’t exactly remember how we went from there to quitting our jobs at zomato and taking the plunge to start leap.club. all we remember is that it all happened very fast - no surprises here though, given both of us are extremely impatient people. 

today marks 2 years of our first 30 founding members officially ‘taking the leap’ in 2020. we like to call this our ‘official birthday’, because what better day to mark the beginning of our journey?

confession, we are overall very confused about birthdays. on one hand, it’s a time to feel proud of everything we have built but on the other hand, it's a reminder that there is so much left to do. we usually get consumed by the latter, but since journey > destination et al, we’ll take a moment to share all the feels on the journey so far and our thoughts on the road ahead. 

we want to start by saying a big thank you to our team at leap.club - past & present teams, founding members, cheerleaders on the internet, and well-wishers and critics across the board - there is no way we would have been here without you. 

investors & founders get all the glory but the real unsung heroes of the start-up world are the team members who jump into this hustle and build like founders. we’re proud to say we have quite a few of those on our team. 

while we started with our set of beliefs, leap.club has evolved into a strong social-professional community of women (that’s right, the social bit is a recent addition) in the past 2 years. 

today, our members discover and connect with other members for their professional needs (partnerships, services, jobs++); they also make new friends, cheerleaders and confidants along the way. as we speak, a member from ahmedabad and another one from singapore are off to ladakh for a trip, and this is the first time they’re meeting each other. while we have our eyes on the prize when it comes to the business goals, it’s these stories that warm our hearts :)

we have enabled 100,000+ 1:1 connections in the last two years, have 150+ micro-communities brimming with conversations ranging from product to wellness to pet moms sharing pictures to gin & wine clubs. offline has kicked off and how in the last quarter across all major cities in india, singapore, dubai, london++, but as we always say - we’re only getting started. 

we wish we had cracked a better way of presenting all the member love that comes our way, for now, we have put it all here.  

over the years, massive businesses have been built exclusively for women.

nykaa helped women shop better, sugar made them look great, bumble helped them make the first move. at leap.club, we want to help them live their best social-professional life. 

we have repeatedly learnt that women interact differently compared to men and we want to make them win. 6000 paying members and more than 10,000 conversations later, we have learned that our members (read: women) are looking for 3 things from a growth standpoint:

1. discovering and connecting with other solid women 

2. the ability to learn and grow/ upskill - some prefer doing this by themselves; and some with solid peers

3. having access to top job opportunities - whether they are actively looking/ not; 5 years into their careers or 25 years into it

in the next one year, we aim to unlock 2 and 3 for women, globally. since we’re suckers for spoilers, here’s how we plan to do it:

redefining l&d and unlocking exec-ed

women face unique challenges professionally and personally, and leap.club will now enable the community to learn and grow together. we believe we are building a platform that will be a win for our members, the creator economy in general and women overall. leap.club will focus on cohort-based courses, workshops and masterclasses (online and offline), small learning circles, 1:1 exec + wellness coaching and a lot more.

we have great teams and companies rethinking learning for india (growth school, growthx, newton school - we love what you do!) and we feel that leap.club is equally here to win because:

• we focus on a curated community of women; along with the best creators 

• it’s a highly engaged and trusted community of the top 1% that pays for their professional growth - great peers and right intent is where the magic happens

we have already done 100+ workshops (free), 10+ courses (paid), 1000+ 1:1 coaching sessions (paid) and will use these learnings to build our l&d platform over the coming quarter. 

we will also be opening some slots for non-members (only women, but more curated). if you are a member reading this, you’ll hear more from us next month.

unlocking top jobs at the world’s best workplaces

what's common between bcg, google, airtel, d.e. shaw and 50 other companies? they have all reached out to us in the last 8 months to hire from our community.

fun fact, half the hires within the leap team were members first :’)

our members have rated all the companies they represent on the basis of their experience and we will use that data to curate our jobs platform. companies will have to buy licences to access dashboards and assess our members - we plan to launch this feature in early 2023.  

our approach and everything we do today seems long and hard - but in the years to come, the leap.club community will be our biggest moat. the member love that we get tells us that we are heading in the right direction. and while we will of course change lanes a few times, as ted lasso would have said - believe :’)

we’ll be back to business as usual tomorrow morning, but for now, for all the hands that have built and continue to build leap.club - here’s a trip down the memory lane. we will never be able to thank you enough! *insert sappy music*

- ragini and anand