Membership · Applications open in 5 chapters
Recess is a small, curated membership for freelancers and solo founders who are tired of trading business cards and want an actual bench of people to call.
352 members · 5 cities · 1 kickball injury
est. cohort size
Why this exists
Working for yourself is supposed to feel like freedom. Mostly it feels like a Tuesday with no coworkers, no watercooler, and a calendar full of calls with people who want something from you.
Every "community" we tried was a Slack full of self-promotion or a conference badge with a QR code on it. So we built the opposite: a standing table, the same faces every month, and a hard rule against pitching anyone anything.
How it works
A short application — what you work on, what city you're in, what "recess" would even mean to you. No portfolio review, no LinkedIn scraping.
Eight to eleven people, matched by chapter and a little bit of chaos. Not by industry. We've found that a florist and a Rust developer get along fine.
A standing monthly gathering — sometimes a dinner, sometimes a hike, once a very disorganized kickball game in Oakland. Attendance is the whole membership.
"I moved to Austin for a contract and knew nobody. Six months of Recess dinners later I have a group chat that argues about tacos every single day. That's the whole review."
Delphine Okafor — Freelance motion designer, Austin chapter
Chapters
We open a new chapter when a waitlist crosses about 60 names and we can find someone local stubborn enough to run it. If your city isn't listed, tell us on the form below.
Questions
We hope not. Nobody wears a name tag that says what they do. You can go four dinners without knowing what half the table does for money, and that seems to be the point.
$42 a month, billed after you're accepted, not before. It covers venue deposits and the absurd amount of text-message coordination this requires.
Recess is built around the specific loneliness of not having coworkers — freelancers, solo founders, and independent consultants. If that's not your situation, it probably won't click.
You can request a reshuffle once, no questions asked. After that we'll ask you a question, gently.
Apply
We read every application ourselves. Expect a reply from an actual person within a couple of weeks, not an autoresponder.