Terms & Conditions
Conditions of Membership and
Website Terms & Conditions

Boardwave: Conditions of Acceptance of Membership

 

Published: 13.2.2024

 

These conditions of acceptance are used by our Membership Managers, following internal briefings & training when they arrived in the business. 

 

Boardwave was created and set up as a Membership organization, designed to provide support for European software Founders and CEOs, in building and scaling their businesses. To provide the best practices, advice, guidance, and mentoring support from other like minded members, to enable them to be more successful, more quickly, than they could alone.

 

Membership to the group is free. Enabling us to help all our members to gain benefit, including those who have ‘boot strapped’ a business, and are early in their development, ensuring there is no financial impediment to participate. And that they can participate alongside others with the depth of experience to be helpful to them.

 

We are able to do this, due to our consortium of international partners, listed at the bottom of the page. Through this approach we now have a large number of Boardwave members in Europe who receive benefits from what we do.

 

However, we do set a minimum entry requirement, to the group. To ensure the quality of the group, and we strive to adhere to these standards for each and every application that we receive :

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Boardwave reserves the right to cancel a membership and also decline, or reject member applications at its sole discretion, and to change its rules & guidelines from time to time, as it sees fit. Accepting that no member will be rejected or declined membership due to discrimination of any nature

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 Guiding Principles for all associations and membership bodies.

Part 7 of the Equality Act 2010 states that an association is any group that has at least 25 members and regulates admission using rules and a selection process.

The rules do not have to be written down and it does not matter if the association is run for profit, or if it is legally incorporated or not.

As the regulator of the Equality Act 2010, they have the power to give guidance on how associations such as political parties may best comply with the Act. These principles will support associations, including political parties, in ensuring that they protect members, prospective members, employees and agents from all forms of discrimination.

Their new principles cover:
• What constitutes unlawful discrimination?
• The importance of setting standards of behaviour and creating an inclusive culture
• The role of leadership

They hope that this document supports associations in tackling discrimination and advancing equality and human rights.

You can read the new Equality Act 2010 guiding principles for associations here.

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Minimum Entry Requirements

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The following business characteristics, are how we determine if a prospective member is mature enough to be offered membership:

 

It has to be a real business and the Founder(s) are committed to pursuing it. At the very beginning an entrepreneur might have several business “ideas” and investigate them all, doing their own research into the ideas, until they identify the one that they are passionate about and believe can be successful. 

 

During this early stage, they will most often have a “day job” and a career in another organization. At the very early stages, the business idea will probably be a “side hustle” outside working hours. Boardwave members need to have made the leap and be passionately committed to their ONE business, so that they can focus on it full time. For a while they might borrow money from friends & family, or spend their savings, to get things off the ground.

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The business needs to have emerged from this stage of development with a number of things.

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• Comprehensive Market Research into the market for the product there are considering building, to ensure that there is a market need for the software that they are considering building. This will help them to confirm that the business is worth building, and the product will be able to solve a real pain point or business issue. They should be able to articulate the Target Addressable Market, its size and competition, in some detail

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• Business Plan. Having done some comprehensive market research, they should also build a business plan for their company, so that they can understand the levels of investment that might be needed, and the “time to market” for the solution. They will often turn to others that have done this before in guiding them on the best way to do this.

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• A product prototype, that solves a real problem, informed by the research that’s already been carried out. It doesn’t need to be the finished article, but some form of evidence that they have know-how to build product that meets a market requirement.

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• They have a website. Something that describes the business/consumer problem that the business is focussed on. Having a website, shows that owners are or will soon be ready to bring their first product to market to solve the problem that they aim to tackle. Essentially the business is at a stage where the Founder is ready to tell the world about what they are doing. The business is not in “stealth mode”. Some founders will want to keep their company a secret and not tell anyone about it, considering it to be commercially sensitive. Having a website says, the Founder has past that point and ready to start commercializing the business.

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With these things in place, they are at a stage where they could now consider raising pre-seed, seed investment, or perhaps venture capital to further fund their R&D to build the product and build the business.

 

Evaluating Membership Applications

 

Nomination: This is important, as it says there is someone in Boardwave who can vouch for your business, and believes you and your business fit the minimum requirements for the group. And the nominated member has a singular focus on their business and its success. We rarely admit a member applicant without this (either direct member or partner recommendation)

 

Business Substance: we look for evidence on the applicants form or via desktop research to identify the company of the applicant. This will include a check on eg Companies House in the UK. A further test is to ensure it's trading and has been registered for at least 6 months. The second test is the presence of a website, that articulates the proposition and how it solves a business/consumer problem. The business is not in stealth mode.

 

Commitment: we are looking for Founders that are committed to their business, and it’s their full-time job and future career. Future investors will expect you to pour every ounce of effort in a targeted way into your business, it should be your singular focus. We check Linkedin to ensure that this is the case, that the applicant isn’t doing 2-3 other things at the same time or is employee in a job full or part time job for someone else.

 

Evidence of PoC (Proof of concept) or prototype. This is not always possible, but we like to see a demo, or video of the product in action on a website, or in PLG an early version of the product is live.

 

A business that has this substance can gain value from Boardwave and its members.

 

Prior to this the advice typically given would be:

 

1. Do more market research, to be sure of your opportunity.

 

2. Business Plan; if you are convinced by the opportunity, build an early version of your business plan, so you can see how to build a viable business that makes money and is investable. You will need to iterate this over the coming months as the business gets going.

 

3. Focus, make this the only thing you do. Early business ideas are fine, but once investigated pick the one you are going to pursue.

 

4. Start pulling together an MVP (minimum viable product) or Proof of concept or prototype. So, you know If the software you’re building is likely to solve the specific problem that you want to address, and that it’s feasible to build at a reasonable cost and timeframe

 

5. Build a website, when you’re ready. That clearly tells the world who you are and what your business does. What are the problems that your product solves

 

6. Develop your proposition, and create a compelling “pitch deck” for early customers and investors.