Hampton

Hampton is a vetted community for founders and chief executives, built around monthly in-person peer groups. Members describe it as a personal board of advisers, and the structure supports that: small groups, professional facilitation, and a screening process that rejects most applicants.

Who joins

Applicants must be actively operating a business as founder, chief executive or owner, and meet one of three thresholds: US$3 million or more in annual revenue, US$3 million or more raised in funding, or a prior exit of US$10 million or more.

There is also a geographic requirement that catches people out. You must live in one of Hampton's eighteen chapter cities, which span the United States along with London, Toronto and Vancouver. Because Core Groups meet in person only, remote membership is not offered.

How access works

Five steps: application review, an interview, an opportunity for existing members to veto, a founder review, and a final invitation. Hampton states that only about 2% of applicants are accepted.

Publishing an acceptance rate is unusual and cuts both ways. It signals genuine selectivity, and it is also a marketing claim that cannot be independently verified. The member veto is the more substantive element: letting current members block an admission is how a group protects its own character rather than leaving it to a sales team.

Hampton describes membership as an annual investment deductible as a business expense, but no longer shows the figure publicly, so the price comes at application. A 45-day money-back guarantee applies, which materially lowers the risk of trying it.

What members get

Core Groups are the product. About eight vetted founders meet monthly, in person, led by a trained facilitator. Everything else is secondary to that.

Around them sit local chapter events and dinners, a private digital community of more than a thousand members, retreats and special events, and a city lead who acts as a concierge for the local chapter.

For this directory, Hampton's relevance is timing rather than wealth management. Its members are founders at or just past the point where a business becomes personally significant money, which is when families start thinking about structuring it. The community is not built to answer those questions, but the people in it are facing them at the same time, and that peer conversation is often more candid than the one with advisers.

Weigh it against the Entrepreneurs' Organization, which has a similar shape at global scale, and against YPO for larger companies.