The vision has always been about community.
Over 10 years of gathering and forming connections across interests and industries.
Why We Started TGS
In 2013 we were both in Washington, D.C. Ryan was at Georgetown Law. TK was a portfolio manager at Fannie Mae. We'd been friends since college. Like a lot of people that summer, we were closely following the Trayvon Martin verdict, and found ourselves on a long email thread with friends circling a question none of us could answer alone: what are we actually going to do?
We kept landing in the same place. The conversation we needed to have had nowhere to happen. No room. No table. No place where the people who could actually move something were sitting down together. Which meant conversations about our community were happening in rooms that we weren’t in.
So we decided to build our own room.
It took three years and ninety-seven investors telling us no. In 2016 we opened in Atlanta, with 150 founding members who bet on two kids and an idea before there was any proof it would work. We're still grateful to every one of them.
Ten years later there are more than 8,000 of us, connecting at clubs and events across the country. Sixty percent are women. The youngest member is 21 and the oldest is 92.
Our clubs are beautiful, and we believe our community deserves luxury. But we are in the business of community. What we're actually building is proximity: getting people in the same room who wouldn't have met otherwise, and then getting out of the way.
The mission hasn't moved since that email thread. Bring the right people together. Talk about the things that actually matter. Then go do something about them.
We're still just getting started. There's a lot of gathering left to do.
— Ryan Wilson & TK Petersen
Co-Founders of The Gathering Spot
Hear From Our Members
“Thank you to The Gathering Spot for holding space for us so thoughtfully. [It represents] a shared belief in community as something intentional, nurtured, and worth investing in.”
Josh MargolisFounder of DAF
