At the highest point of the hill.

Cairn is the most exclusive investor‑and‑founder event in the world for seed‑stage companies.

It holds retreats at private locations across Scotland, each of which has been chosen by Cairn and is opened only for the assembly it will host. Every retreat brings together a small group of investors and a smaller group of founders, and the founders join for the day of each retreat that has been arranged around them.

The composition of the room is settled by Cairn before any invitation is issued, so that the assembly which arrives is the outcome of Cairn's process and of nothing else.

That day begins with a fireside over breakfast, at which the founders describe what they are building to the room and take the questions that follow. What follows the fireside is the rest of the day, which the room spends together inside a set of arrangements Cairn has designed and that no member of it could have made alone.

For a founder, this is a day spent alongside the investors who arrived to hear the work, at the level of access and hospitality Cairn arranges for the whole assembly.

The shape of a day at Cairn THE SHAPE OF THE DAY MORNING Fireside MIDDAY Arrangement AFTERNOON Company EVENING The close The form is shared across every retreat; the arrangements are not.

Cairn's fundamental purpose is getting founders funded.

Every part of the process Cairn runs is arranged to serve that outcome. Toward it, Cairn selects the founders whose companies match the investors attending each retreat, and the bar Cairn applies is high enough that being chosen at all places the company in a strong position, though it does not on its own amount to investment.

The investors present at each retreat have arrived prepared to commit capital during the retreat itself, and the legal partners Cairn works with provide the frameworks that allow those commitments to close before the retreat has ended. What follows the conversations belongs to the people who had them, and founders who have been through a Cairn retreat belong to the Cairn network afterwards.

Applications for the first cohort are not yet open, and the waitlist below is how Cairn writes to founders it means to invite when the first room begins to fill.

Thank you. We will write when we are ready to speak with founders.
cairn.ventures