Why the desert
Most founder support today is a stream of events, networking nights, and accelerator demo days. It is useful, but it is not where the hardest questions get answered. Founders rarely run out of meetings — they run out of attention. The work that decides a company’s trajectory keeps getting postponed.
Desert Rose Workation was Rabbit Ventures’ answer to that. We took our portfolio founders into the Arizona desert for two weeks. No fixed agenda. No demo day at the end. Just enough isolation that the surface noise falls away and the real problems become impossible to avoid.
“Our goal was to help founders focus on the essential problems and the vision, in an isolated environment.” — Aviram Jenik, General Partner, Rabbit Ventures
One rule: there are no rules
The program’s philosophy is simple. There is no formal schedule, no mandatory mentoring blocks, no compulsory sessions. Founders move through the two weeks on their own goals: seeking out the mentor they need that day, sitting down with an investor over coffee, working shoulder-to-shoulder with another founder on a hard problem.
The format is intentionally bare so that the unplanned moments — the late-night kitchen conversation, the half-hour walk between cabins, the campfire question that nobody expected — can happen.
“Startups grow inside isolation and uncertainty. Desert Rose Workation gives founders a way to turn that isolation into creative inspiration.” — SK Lee, COO, Rabbit Ventures
Who is in the room
The first edition gathered roughly twenty people: the Rabbit Ventures team, founders from our portfolio, a marketing and storytelling coach, a cybersecurity specialist, and founder-turned-investors. Each cohort is intentionally small so that everyone is in the same room, eating the same meals, and arguing about the same problems.
What founders take away
Founders do not just work at Desert Rose — they find, sharpen, and start to execute their own story. Product decisions clarify. Positioning gets honest. Fundraising narratives get tested by people who have raised before. And investors stop looking like capital providers and start looking like partners on a long walk.
“The founders I met at Desert Rose were not just talking about the business. They were discovering their own story and starting to act on it.” — Jonghee Hong, Mentor & Storytelling Coach (MyStoryDoer)
How it helps Rabbit founders
For us, Desert Rose is the highest-leverage two weeks of the year. A founder leaves with a clearer thesis, a sharper go-to-market motion, a peer group of other founders who will pick up the phone for years afterward, and direct access to the LPs and mentors who have already faced the problems they are about to face. That compounding is what we are investing in.
