Pavilion's CEO membership costs $7,400 a year.
And you can't just buy it. The CEO tier is invite-only, built for founders running $5M to $500M ARR, and it helps if you live in (or fly often to) a hub city like New York, San Francisco, or London.
I interview bootstrapped SaaS founders every week on my podcast, and the question hiding behind half of those conversations is the same one: where do I find peers who actually get it?
Pavilion is one answer. But it was built for VPs of Sales and CROs at venture-backed companies, not for a founder at $20K MRR deciding whether to hire or stay solo. I wrote a full breakdown in my Is Pavilion worth it review, and the short version is: great room, wrong room for most bootstrappers.
So here are 7 Pavilion alternatives with real prices and the entry bar for each.
Quick bias warning: I ranked my own community first. I flag it the moment we get there, and the other six are rooms I would genuinely point you to at the right stage.
What Pavilion gives you (and what it doesn't)
To replace something, you need to know what it does. Pavilion, founded by Sam Jacobs in 2016, has 10,000+ members and runs on three things: a busy Slack, Pavilion University courses on sales and leadership, and curated peer groups by role.
That mix is excellent if you're a VP of Sales who wants a promotion, a benchmark, or a new job. It's mediocre if you're a founder who wants someone to look at your pricing page and tell you the truth.
Every option below beats Pavilion on at least one of three axes: price, founder density, or stage fit. None of them beats it on GTM course content. If courses are what you want, keep Pavilion and skip this list.
| Community | Price | Entry bar |
|---|---|---|
| Profitable Founder Club | Apply to see | SaaS founders, $5K to $50K MRR |
| Hampton | $8,500/yr | $3M+ revenue founders |
| RevGenius | Free | Anyone in GTM |
| Vistage | $10K to $17K+/yr | CEOs, usually $1M+ revenue |
| EO | ~$3K to $5K/yr all-in | $1M+ revenue |
| Dynamite Circle | $697/yr | Location-independent founders |
| MicroConf Connect | $49/mo or $499/yr | SaaS founders, any stage |
1. Profitable Founder Club
Full disclosure: this one's mine.
I built it because I once paid $13,000 for a mastermind when I was making $15K to $20K a month. Stupid decision, right? Six months later I was at $75K a month. The room worked. The price and the entry bar almost kept me out.
Profitable Founder Club is for SaaS founders between $5K and $50K MRR pushing to $100K MRR. No GTM execs, no comp-plan talk, just founders at your stage and slightly ahead.
What you get:
- → Bi-weekly calls where we solve 3 member problems live, hot-seat style
- → A monthly Q&A with a founder already past $100K MRR
- → A small batch, capped at 20, so nobody hides in the back
Pavilion's Slack has 10,000+ members, and most rooms are sales leaders comparing comp plans and board decks. The Club is 20 bootstrappers comparing churn numbers.
The batch model is deliberate. Everyone starts together, everyone knows everyone's numbers by week two, and the calls stay small enough that your problem actually gets picked. In a 10,000-person Slack you are a username. In a batch of 20 you are the guy whose trial-to-paid conversion everyone has opinions about.
Apply to Profitable Founder Club
2. Hampton
Hampton is what you graduate into. $8,500 a year, founder-only, and you need $3M+ in annual revenue (they raised the bar from $1M in 2025), $3M+ raised, or a $10M+ exit to get in.
Sam Parr (The Hustle) and Joe Speiser started it in 2023, and it's past 1,000 members with roughly an 8% acceptance rate. The core product is a vetted group of 8 founders that meets monthly with a facilitator.
It costs more than Pavilion's CEO tier, but every person in your group is a founder, not an exec. If you're shopping at this level, I compared the options in my Hampton alternatives post.
3. RevGenius
The free one, and the closest match to Pavilion's actual audience.
RevGenius has 50,000+ members across sales, marketing, RevOps, and customer success. If what you wanted from Pavilion was GTM peers, job leads, and tactical channels, this gets you 70% of that for $0.
The trade is noise. A free room with 50,000 people is a network, not a mastermind. Nobody there is accountable to you, and nobody follows up on your numbers next month.
4. Vistage
The old guard. Vistage has been running CEO peer groups since 1957 and has 45,000+ members worldwide.
Expect $10K to $17K+ a year depending on the program. You get a monthly full-day meeting with a local group of CEOs plus 1:1 sessions with your chair, usually a retired executive.
The catch for us: members skew toward traditional businesses. Manufacturing, services, agencies. You might be the only person in the room who knows what MRR means. Some founders love that outside perspective. I'd rather talk churn with people who have churn.
5. EO (Entrepreneurs' Organization)
EO needs $1M+ in revenue to join. Global dues run about $2,470 a year, then chapter fees land on top, so budget $3K to $5K all-in.
The core is Forum: 8 to 10 founders in your city meeting monthly under strict confidentiality. Local, in-person, industry-agnostic, with chapters in most major cities worldwide.
EO is strongest if the in-person part matters to you. It's the one on this list where your group might include a gym chain owner and a logistics founder, which can be a feature or a bug depending on the week.
6. Dynamite Circle
$697 a year, running since 2011, built for location-independent bootstrapped founders.
Dynamite Circle came out of the Tropical MBA podcast. You get the online community plus live events in places like Bangkok and Austin, full of people running lean 6 and 7-figure internet businesses from wherever they want.
There's also DC Black at $5,500 a year for founders past $1M, which works like a mastermind layer on top of the community.
The vibe is different from every other room here: less "scale my SaaS", more "build a calm business that funds the life I want". If that sentence made you exhale, DC is probably your room. If it made you impatient, skip it.
7. MicroConf Connect
$49 a month or $499 a year, from Rob Walling's MicroConf orbit.
This is the default online home for bootstrapped SaaS. Pitch-free by design, SaaS-specific by default, and the member base actually matches the label: people building $1K to $50K MRR products, plus a layer of founders who already exited.
If the Club's batch model isn't your thing and you want an always-on community at a lower price, this is my honest second pick for bootstrappers.
MicroConf also feeds the in-person events (MicroConf US, Europe, and the local meetups), so the online community doubles as the hallway track before and after. A $499 membership that leads to three operational conversations a year with founders ahead of you is cheap.
How to pick the right room
- → Under $5K MRR: stay free for now. RevGenius for GTM energy, or just build and ship.
- → $5K to $50K MRR: Profitable Founder Club or MicroConf Connect.
- → $1M+ revenue: EO if you want local and in-person, Hampton if you want tech founders only.
- → You're a VP Sales or CRO, not a founder: stay with Pavilion. It's genuinely built for you.
The wrong room costs more than the membership fee. It costs you a year of advice tuned for someone else's business. I learned that the expensive way, and it's the whole reason the Club gates by MRR range instead of prestige.
FAQ
How much does Pavilion cost in 2026?
Associate membership is $1,375 a year, Executive is $2,700, and CEO Pavilion is $7,400. Pavilion no longer shows flat prices on its pricing page; you pick your seniority and location from dropdowns to see your number.
Is there a free Pavilion alternative?
RevGenius is the closest free option, with 50,000+ members across sales, marketing, and RevOps. For founders specifically, Indie Hackers and r/SaaS are free too. You trade money for noise: free rooms give you reach, paid rooms give you accountability.
What is the best Pavilion alternative for bootstrapped SaaS founders?
Depends on your stage. Between $5K and $50K MRR, Profitable Founder Club (mine, so weigh that) or MicroConf Connect at $499 a year. Past $3M in revenue, Hampton at $8,500 a year is the strongest founder-only room.
Is Pavilion worth it if I'm already a member?
If you use Pavilion University and the job board, probably yes, the $2,700 pays for itself in one comp negotiation. If you joined for peer support as a founder and mostly lurk in Slack, that same $2,700 buys you five years of Dynamite Circle or a year of a founder-specific room where people track your numbers.
Do I need $5M ARR to join Pavilion?
Only for CEO Pavilion. The $2,700 Executive membership needs an active VP or CXO go-to-market role instead. That's exactly the problem for bootstrappers: you can be doing $40K MRR as a founder and still not fit either tier.
If you're a SaaS founder between $5K and $50K MRR, the Club is the room I wish existed when I paid $13K to sit with people 10x my size. Apply to Profitable Founder Club. Batches cap at 20.
