It was just a few years ago that the four of us started out on our journey of building a business, a journey, also, of learning everything first-hand. Everything. We were toddlers in a school. Learning about shapes, colors, and alphabets of the startup world. The teachers? Well, there were many.

One who influenced us the most was Joel Spolsky. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that if it wasn’t for him, Chargebee wouldn’t have existed. Yep.

Whether it was learning the nuances of building a team or understanding the powerful difference between creating a business and creating a product, the journal of his journey helped us navigate through this new, uncharted world like nothing else. Even as we sat in a different corner of the world, his advice found us and brought in a sense of calm to those early days of overwhelm.

Tracing Joel’s footsteps in our small ways, we have attempted to share whatever it is we’ve learned with fellow founders — over coffee chats, at meetups, and in 2 AM HN threads. We have enjoyed being a part of these conversations, learned from them, and with each one of them, witnessed the one big relay race that the startup journey is.

A relay you run with a team of people. Not alone.

People whom you train with day in and day out, people who mentor and coach you, people who cheer you on, and people who take the baton of passion and wisdom and carry it forward.

So, with the intent of paying it forward and helping fellow founders, we’re excited to share Relay with you. It’s a founders-only community for the all-defining days 0 to 1M, where you can connect with fellow founders from around the world, learn from their journeys, share your stories, and root for each other.

A place where, hopefully, you can find a Joel for yourself. And be a Joel for someone else, too.

We have built Relay as a community. But honestly, it will be what you make of it. We hope you find a space here that pushes you to grow, people who root for you, and more reasons to keep running.