Why is this a paid program?

The Leaders Program requires a fee for two main reasons:

1) The payment covers 30% of the total administrative costs. This includes maintenance of the meetup groups and our team's time to make the program as beneficial as possible, as we constantly upgrade it. StartupBlink is a bootstrapped project and we can only subsidize a part of the direct costs attributed to the Leaders Program.

2) The program started as an unpaid effort, and once changed to a paid version, the leaders greatly increased their level of engagement. Just like in startups, we have discovered that best filter for active high quality members is the will to have "skin in the game".

Our paid leaders get all of our attention - monthly calls, help managing the meetup groups, quick reply to emails and Facebook posts. Because we know they are committed, we can commit more time to them, and keep on upgrading the program.