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Open Core Ventures Handbook/⛸️Office Hours

Office Hours

Office hours are weekly meetings you will have with OCV partners to track weekly progress and growth. The goal of these meetings is to address your most pressing concerns/blockers and help you accelerate growth. It’s critical you are operating on a weekly cadence at this stage.
Office hours with OCV partners should be highly leveraged. Think of your meeting time as a force multiplier: 25 minutes of face time, amplified by preparation, yields maximum value. This is your chance to get answers you can't get anywhere else. Make every minute count by being highly prepared and highly specific.
When meeting with Sid, share your draft agenda with the OCV team at least a day before the meeting. We will review and help prep to ensure you get the most out of your time. If there are common questions that have already been addressed in the handbook or a blog post, the OCV team will share reference links ahead of the call. Please read the provided material before the meeting and adjust your questions to address any follow-up questions or company-specific nuances you’d like to cover.
OCV Founders regularly attend group meetings with other founders, and confidential information may be shared. This information is not to be shared.

Individual Office Hours

Individual office hours are 1:1 meetings you have with OCV partners. They are typically 25 minutes and time-constrained to help you focus on the most important topics. OCV will schedule a recurring, biweekly individual office hour and ad hoc 1:1s with Sid Sijbrandij. You can request additional ad hoc office hours as needed. This is your meeting, and you are responsible for ensuring it is productive. Prepare your agenda in advance and take notes during the meeting.

Group Office Hours

Group Office Hours are meetings you have with OCV partners and other OCV company founders. Group Office Hours are focused on growth and goal setting, and developing good hygiene around communicating goals and measuring results.
The meeting will include 3-4 companies at a time to encourage peer learning. Group pairings are loosely based on the company’s stage of development and/or industry focus. Additional topics can be discussed during Individual Office Hours. OCV schedules Group Office Hours. Company CTOs and CEOs are invited to join; please refrain from adding additional team members to the group bi-weekly call.
Post-Seed Stage companies are invited to join monthly Group Office Hours with OCV’s General Partners and other Post-Seed stage companies. Monthly Group Office Hours are scheduled through the General Partner’s office. Any change requests regarding time, meeting format, or agendas should be made through the General Partner’s team. Post-seed stage companies are still welcome to book office hours on an ad-hoc basis, as needed.

Meeting Prep

Every meeting must have an agenda attached to the meeting invitation. No agenda = no meeting. Agendas should be prepared before the meeting begins. You will use your individual office hours doc for most meetings.

Meeting etiquette

  1. Always have an agenda prepared ahead of the meeting.
  1. Ensure all meeting attendees have access.
  1. Add a header for each new meeting that includes the meeting date and lists attendees.
  1. Use a numbered list for agenda items. A numbered list makes it easy to reference where you are in the agenda.
  1. Founders and any additional meeting attendees are expected to take notes in the doc during the meeting. This helps clarify understanding in real time.
  1. Founders should confirm takeaways, action items, and timelines before the end of the call.

Agenda

Individual OH and GOH agendas are tracked in the same running agenda document. GOH is just another entry in the main agenda doc, so we have a single place for all historical meetings. Each week, the agenda for both Individual and Group Office Hours should start with:
  • Previous week’s goal
  • Previous week performance
  • Next week goal: For example, $10K MRR (10% WoW) / 5K WAUs (10% WoW)

Reporting dashboard

Every company has a reporting dashboard at the top of its office hours agenda. Update your dashboard at the start of the month.
Category
Number
Last update date
Cash on Hand
Cash balance (round to nearest 10K)
$950K
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Cash Burn
Last month burn (round to nearest 5K)
Next month projection (round to nearest 5K)
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Runway
8 months
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Team
Adam - CEO
Sarah - CTO
Jorge - SWE
Johnny - Part-time Contractor
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KPIs
MRR / WAUs
Month 1: $10K / 5,000 
Month 2: $20K / 10,000
Month 3: $40K / 20,000
Next Month Goal: $80K / 40,000 
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  1. Cash on hand: Utilize the month-end Accounting financial statements via the Bank Recon tab for the latest “Total Bank” statement balance.
  1. Cash Burn: Utilize the month-end financial report via the Month CF tab for the latest “Net cash provided by operating activities.” Use this as the last month’s “Burn”. Provide a projection for next month’s burn by accounting for changes in hiring or spending (e.g. new full-time contractor or new ad campaign launch).
  1. Runway: Current runway is calculated as (Cash on Hand - $200K) / Cash Burn. We include assumed dissolution costs of $200K.
  1. Team: Team members full name and job title/function (e.g., SWE, designer, writer, etc.) and link to LinkedIn profile. Include contractors and link to contract document in shared Drive.
  1. KPIs: Latest North Star metric for growth, and any secondary metrics that may be helpful. Include the last three months' official numbers once books are closed and projection/goal for next month.

Group Office Hours meeting format

Group Office Hours agendas are tracked in the same document as individual office hour agendas. Prepare your agenda ahead of time. You and will have ~10 minutes to cover agenda items, starting with your two-sentence description.
Use the Group Office Hours Agenda template to prepare your update.
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Group Office Hours Agenda Template

Prepare your group office hours agenda in your office hours doc ahead of the meeting. Use the following template.

Date | Group Office Hours

  1. Goal Progress
    1. Previous weeks goal (what you said you would do at the last meeting)
    2. Previous week performance (if missed, include % achieved)
    3. Next goal (singular, binary, measurable)
  1. Growth Plan (how will you achieve your next goal)
  1. Open Discussion
  1. Questions for OCV

Example

Nov 2, 2025 | Group Office hours
  1. Goal Progress
    1. Planned: Increase DAUs from 6,700 to 8,070 (10% WoW growth)
    2. Missed: Added 900 DAUs (67% of goal)
      1. 1,200 new sign-ups, 1,000 DAUs
      2. 100 DAU churn
    3. Next goal: Increase DAUs from 7,600 to 9,120 (10% WoW growth)
  1. Growth Plan (how will you achieve your next goals
    1. Launch a new reactivation email campaign
    2. Launch “invite your team” functionality
    3. 2 influencer videos and a guest blog post scheduled
  1. Open Discussion
    1. Google Ads continues to be our biggest source of traffic and new signups.
    2. We’re testing removing the signup wall and letting users try out the product before creating an account. Users will be prompted to sign in to save or share.
    3. Started discussions with the first enterprise plan customer.
      1. SSO requirement; scheduled to ship in 2 weeks

Post-Seed Companies

Post-seed companies follow the same agenda and format, but meet with partners monthly rather than bi-weekly for group office hours. Given the monthly cadence, post-seed companies should structure their goals as follows:
  1. Goal for the year, current performance, and projections
    1. Example: Goal $5M ARR, Currently $3M ARR, Projecting $4.7M
  1. Previous month goal and performance
    1. Example: Goal +$200K ARR, Result +$150K ARR, MISS
  1. WoW growth rate last month
    1. Example: 10% average WoW growth in ARR

Goal progress

Goal progress should focus on a single, measurable goal. Include any additional goals/metrics in a separate section titled “Secondary metrics” when relevant. Evaluate progress as either achieved or missed, and avoid classifying progress as yellow. If it’s unclear whether the goal was achieved or missed, you may need to reframe your goal. OCV will pressure test your next goal during office hours (i.e., is it the right goal, is it ambitious enough).

Growth plan

Share how you plan to achieve your next goal.
Prompts (only share what’s most relevant)
  1. What worked last week, and how are you doubling down on that?
  1. What was the biggest challenge, and how are you addressing that?
  1. Your primary growth channel and how you are leveraging it
  1. Any big bets you're placing on a new hypothesis, channel, or tactic.

Open discussion

Share any additional wins, learnings, blockers, and add any specific questions you want to address with OCV.
Prompts (only include what’s most relevant)
  1. Big wins that weren’t already covered
  1. Any material changes to strategy, burn, etc.
  1. Any concerns about the runway, updates on fundraising, etc.
  1. Learnings or insights that can benefit other founders in the group
  1. Challenges that this group can help unpack

Preparing for your first individual office hour

At your first individual office hour, OCV partners make introductions and will briefly cover the format and cadence of individual office hours. Expect to spend most of the call discussing business-related matters. Founders should be prepared to discuss:
  1. Founder background (consider practicing your introduction ahead of the call)
  1. Project background (who owns the repo, telemetry, existing users)
  1. Growth story (what’s the north star goal that will drive the fundraising story in 12-18 months)
  1. Two-week goal (typically a growth metric, often “get first user”)
  1. Two-sentence description
By your second individual office hour, be prepared to discuss
  1. Website and company “launch” status (pricing page, signup funnel/UX, top-of-funnel metric)
  1. Product roadmap (often “MVP commercial version” and adding telemetry)
  1. Hiring and CEO sourcing strategy
To make the most of your time with OCV partners, review administrative information before your first individual office hour. Share administrative questions in your designated company channel.

Open Core Roundtable with Sid Sijbrandij

The Open Core Roundtable is a monthly question-and-answer forum for Pre-Seed companies to ask OCV’s founder and general partner, Sid Sijbrandij, questions about their product and GTM. The Open Core AMA is your opportunity to dig deep on a topic with Sid and get direct and specific feedback and perspective related to your company.
Submit your question at least one week before the meeting, and plan to review and workshop it during individual office hours. We workshop questions to ensure they prompt a high-quality, high-fidelity, and fruitful discussion. Founders are encouraged to ask follow-up questions and participate in discussions throughout the session. For common questions with a documented answer, OCV will share existing guidance from the handbook, blog posts, and video recordings. Please review the provided documentation and rephrase your question to address any remaining uncertainties or ask a different question.
Questions should focus on open core topics like product development, community engagement, pricing, and GTM. You are welcome to propose a question outside of these themes, and the OCV team will help assess if it’s a good question for this forum. Future-focused, abstract, or trending topics are welcome. The OCV team will assist in crafting these questions to make them tactically applicable to our companies.
The forum is curated for Pre-Seed companies, but Post-Seed companies are welcome to join. New founders joining for the first time are invited to review previous roundtable notes/recordings and observe during their first live discussion. If you’d like to ask a question when joining for the first time, please work with the OCV team to workshop your question ahead of the call.

Meeting format

The Open Core AMA is a 50-minute question-and-answer session with OCV partners.
The OCV team will curate the agenda, and we may not get to each company every time. We will post the agenda a day ahead of time and ensure that companies that didn’t get a chance to ask a question are at the top of the agenda for the next session. Founders are encouraged the attend the sessions even if they don’t have a question on the agenda.
The meeting is recorded and distributed internally in the #ocvfounders channel. OCV will publish a recap blog post covering the high-level takeaways. The blog post will not include any company-specific information. OCV may use clips of the video for other marketing purposes, but will not share any company-specific information publicly.
Agenda format
  1. Name, Company, Title
    1. Company overview (two-sentence description, two-sentence GTM)
    2. Question, including any relevant context