Post by Hans Stier

Most people know these formats as women’s circles or mothers’ meetups — spaces to talk openly about care, pressure and trade-offs. Necessary. Long overdue. What gets less attention: men doing the same. Founding Fathers (yes, like the US Founding Fathers — that’s the joke) is exactly that. All fathers. All founders. It is a WhatsApp group. Nothing more, nothing less. Started by Hans Raffauf and Sebastian Pollak — thank you both for the idea and the spark. A wild mix of founder questions and dad questions. You know the numbers, sometimes the names. Faces? Rarely. Which makes it even nicer when you actually meet. A week ago, I had the pleasure of hosting the Founding Fathers Christmas Party in the KALLE HALLE at KALLE Neukoelln. A WhatsApp group turned into real people. No pitches, no posing. Just smart, generous conversations about companies, family, energy, limits — and everything in between. An "offline Tinder for ideas" -as one of the participants said -, of trust and perspective. My takeaway for everyone reading this: real connection still beats any channel or call. Not for control or efficiency — but for the spark that creates trust and unexpected thinking. Thank you to everyone who came and brought the spirit. Exactly for evenings like this (and much more), Kalle Neukölln was built. Stephan Thiel Jonathan Teklu Feliks Eyser Sascha Maruhn Christof Gerlach Alexander Puschilov Dawa Tarchin Phillips Mathias O. Julian Hourrier Manuel Lachmann Jan Hase Ferdinand Dietrich Ole Spaarmann Ruurd van der Weide Dorian Gorr Dr. Philipp Engelhardt Tobias Brühne Georg Runge Philip Homnack Markus Gilles Konstanty Sliwowski Alexander Krauße Jannis Bandorski Marvin G. Akram Alraai Steffen Manes Julius Bachmann Michael Prinzinger Sebastian Bourmer Daniel Kollmann Dr. Johannes Metzler Tim Ponier Thorge Lindner Ferry Heilemann Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss Dr. Philipp Schlenkhoff, LL.M.