At the highest point of the hill.

Cairn is the most exclusive event in the world for investors and 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 principals and a smaller group of founders, and it is this room that Cairn exists to produce.

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.

The morning of a retreat is 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 at Cairn, which the room spends together inside a set of arrangements that Cairn has designed and that no member of it could have made alone.

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.

The day is what Cairn is worth attending for, even before the founders present at it are taken into account.

Cairn is arranged to produce two outcomes at each retreat: the retreat itself, and the investment that follows from the room having contained the founders Cairn has chosen for that purpose. For a principal who attends Cairn as an investor, this arrangement means arriving prepared to commit capital to the founders in the room during the retreat itself.

The legal partners Cairn works with provide the frameworks that allow those commitments to close before the retreat has ended, so that the outcomes of the fireside settle inside the retreat itself. What follows the conversations belongs to the people who had them, and Cairn's role in the matter ends when the retreat itself does.

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

Thank you. We will write when the room is being assembled.
cairn.ventures