YPO elite secret club helps younger CEOs prepare battle to conquer the world as Rana el Kaliouby, founder of the startup Affectiva, says she was desperate the day she had to tell her employees that some of them were going to be fired due to the economic consequences of the pandemic. But I had no one to trust.

"It's a very lonely experience," says El Kaliouby about being CEO. "You can talk to your mentors, but sometimes they are somewhere else. You can talk to your investors, but you have to be careful."

Instead, he turned to the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), a global network of executives whose members meet monthly in small regional groups known as forums.

Founded in 1950, the YPO is reputed to be a fraternity for ultra-rich white men who have inherited a family business, and indeed, for a time, it was. But over the years, it has recruited more entrepreneurs, who, this exclusive club deserves the price of admission. The start-up fee for the first year is approximately $ 4,000 (approximately Euro3, 300) and annual assessments start at $ 6,000 (approximately EURO5, 000), depending on headquarters.

YPO elite secret club helps younger CEOs prepare battle

When Rana el Kaliouby sat down at his computer to attend his first meeting of the business leaders ' forum from across the northeast, he remembers thinking it was going to be "a colossal waste of time."

Then, the meeting began with the members sharing the most important thing that was happening in their lives. El Kaliouby recounted his experience of having to lay off his workers. She heard other leaders speak openly and so did she.

Since then, your forum has become an important source of information.

"A lot of my friends aren't CEOs," he says. "I am the first entrepreneur in my family. I can't go to get my father's advice on how to manage my board of directors or how to get the next round of funding."

YPO elite secret club helps younger CEOs prepare battle

The code of conduct requires confidentiality. That atmosphere of secrecy is, according to the members, part of its appeal. Executives can talk loosely about work and their personal lives, trusting that colleagues from the same company never place themselves in a forum together, and neither do their competitors in the sector.

In 2015, when TaskRabbit founder Leah Solivan was CEO, fundraising was taking longer than I expected and the company was running out of money. Solivan panicked.

One night he had to ask for an Uber to go to the hospital because of a severe stomach pain. As soon as he left the hospital after a few days, he went straight to an important meeting. Solivan felt that otherwise, his company would fail.

"There are many reasons why an investor says no to a deal. I didn't want to raise any doubts about my health, so I kept it a secret," says Solivan. However, he then shared this incident with his forum.

YPO elite secret club helps younger CEOs prepare battle

"Nothing leaves the forum," says Solivan, who is now a founding partner of Fuel Capital.

She trusted her small group of San Francisco executives when she considered resigning as CEO of TaskRabbit, and did so again as president during the 9 months it took to close the sale of her company to Ikea.

In fact, the group's code of conduct has a line that is often repeated: "Nothing, no one, never" that serves as an unofficial slogan. It is "instilled" in the initiation to the club, according to a member. "Outside the forum, do not tell Anything that is said in the forum to Anyone under any circumstances. It never means forever, " says the code.

The membership list is also very well protected. The organization says it has more than 30,000 people, half of them in the United States. To be eligible to join this select group, candidates must have become president, CEO or CEO of a company valued at at least $ 20 million (16.5 million euros) by the age of 45. They can also be chosen if the company has a lower value, but meets certain revenue goals.

YPO elite secret club helps younger CEOs prepare battle

Currently, approximately one third of the members are people who have inherited a family business, and the rest are entrepreneurs and executives. In the field of startups and venture capital, among the most prominent members are:

• Steven Galanis, co-founder and CEO of Cameo.
• Adena Hefets, co-founder and CEO of Divvy Homes.
• Spencer Rascoff, general partner at 75 & Sunny Ventures.
• Michele Romanow, co-founder and president of Clearco.
• Keith Wasserman, general partner of Gelt VC.
• Heidi Zak, co-founder and co-CEO of ThirdLove.

The organization has become increasingly visible, recruiting more people as older members have grown older, increasing diversity. The challenge for the group is that many people have never heard of YPO and, if they have, have the idea that it is "an organization of old whites," says Allison Long Pettine, investor and head of the YPO chapter on the San Diego coast.

Quotas are high, and lately there is a wave of rival networking groups with less stringent entry requirements, and some aimed directly at women.

Kaliouby will remain in the club even though they have just sold their company for 73.5 million dollars (almost 62 million euros) in cash and shares, a happy ending for the company they founded 12 years ago. She says her forum advised her on everything from structuring the agreement to announcing it to her employees.

As a new member of your chapter's board of directors, you now have the ability to return everything you have received.