The Best Alternatives to Hampton for UK Founders

Hampton is a US-founded peer community for founders, and London is its only UK city. It screens for tech, internet "or a related space", was founded in 2023 and publishes no price.

If you're outside London, outside tech, or you want a group with a longer track record, the alternatives that matter are Helm, Vistage UK, EO, TAB and Business Leader.

There are usually three reasons a UK founder ends up searching for this, and they lead to different answers. Work out which one is yours before you read any further, because the right alternative for a Birmingham manufacturer is not the right alternative for a London SaaS founder who just wants a bigger room.

Reason one: you're not in London

Hampton's UK presence is London. No criticism of the product intended there. It's simply where a young US organisation has got to after three years. The core Hampton experience is a group of roughly eight to ten meeting monthly and in person. If you're in Leeds or Bristol, in-person monthly in London is a commitment measured in days rather than hours.

The UK options actually built around this are TAB and Helm. TAB (The Alternative Board) has the best regional and non-metropolitan coverage of any peer group in the country, because its facilitators are franchisees who own a territory and live in it. Helm has 400 plus members across the UK, runs 160 plus events a year across London and its regional hubs, and is currently forming a founding-member Forum in Manchester at £395 a month. Vistage UK is genuinely national too, with the longest reach of the international names.

Reason two: you don't run a tech business

Hampton's screening is explicit. Tech, internet, or something adjacent to it. A traditional business, a construction firm or a food producer say, is largely out of scope, and the average member revenue of USD 23m tells you what kind of company it's built around.

Every UK alternative here is sector-agnostic. Helm goes further than agnostic and matches Forums with a deliberate mix of sectors, on the view that the person who spots the flaw in your plan is more often the one who doesn't work in your industry. Business Leader takes any UK-registered business at £3m plus turnover with 15 plus employees. TAB sets no published revenue threshold at all and takes whoever the local facilitator can place.

Reason three: you want something with more mileage on it

Hampton launched in 2023. It has done a lot in a short time, with 1,000 plus members and roughly a 4% acceptance rate, and the growth is real. But if you're about to hand over a meaningful sum for a room you'll be in for years, the age of the organisation is a reasonable thing to weigh.

For context on the rest of the field: YPO dates to 1950, Vistage to 1957, EO has been running for decades, and Helm has been going since 2003 when it started as The Supper Club. Over 15% of Helm's membership have now exited a business, which is a number that only accumulates over time.

Anyone comparing honestly has to concede a fair bit here.

The Slack community is the best always-on layer of any organisation in this set. Most peer groups give you a monthly meeting and then silence. Hampton gives you a place to post a question at 11pm on a Tuesday and get useful answers from operators at similar scale. If your problems arrive faster than once a month, that matters, and none of the UK alternatives replicate it well.

The cohort skews younger. Hampton's entry criteria of USD 3m plus in revenue, USD 3m plus raised, or a prior exit over USD 10m let in venture-backed founders early. A 31-year-old who raised a Series A last year fits in a Hampton room in a way they might not in a room where the median member has been trading for fifteen years.

And the vetting is strict. Roughly 4% acceptance is a hard filter by any measure.

Helm

Helm is the closest UK analogue in terms of who's in the room. Founder or CEO, UK business, roughly £3m plus turnover or £3m plus raised, 20 or more full-time staff. Average member turnover is £21m, so the scale is comparable to Hampton's USD 23m average, but the businesses are ordinary UK companies rather than tech-weighted ones.

The structural difference is the Forum. Six to eight members plus a Chair, ten meetings a year at three hours each, plus a retreat. The Chair is a Helm member further along, usually an exited founder, often with NED experience. Stuart Miles of Pocket-lint, Stephen Sacks of Muubaa and Funding Nav, and Rob Hamilton of The Instant Group all chair. Where Hampton uses paid trained moderators, Helm puts someone in the chair who has run and sold a company. Price is published at £495 to join then £495 a month, on one calendar month's notice.

Vistage UK

Vistage UK is the option if you want more contact time and don't mind a bigger room. The Chief Executive Programme runs twelve full-day meetings a year plus twelve one-to-one coaching sessions. Group size is twelve to eighteen on Vistage's own published figure for that programme. Chairs are paid professional facilitators with twelve to fifteen plus years of C-level experience, trained through the Chair Academy. Typical members are £5m to £50m. Note that Vistage also serves salaried executives through separate programmes, so ask which group you'd be in. No UK pricing is published.

EO

EO is the one to look at if you're below Hampton's bar rather than beside it. USD 1m plus revenue and you must be an owner, founder or majority stakeholder. Forums are six to ten, monthly, run by trained peer moderators working to a "share experiences, not advice" method with eight hours of formal training behind it. EO UK-London had 82 members as of July 2026, with chapters in the North and Birmingham as well. It publishes its numbers: roughly USD 2,630 in global dues plus £1,500 London chapter dues, with USD 3,500 and £1,000 one-off initiation fees.

TAB UK

TAB UK is for geography and cadence. Boards of roughly six to eight, a monthly board meeting and a monthly one-to-one, which is the highest scheduled contact frequency in this comparison. No published revenue threshold. There's a 90-day money-back guarantee. The trade-off is that facilitator quality varies by postcode, because each one is a franchisee running their own territory. Pricing is bespoke. Franchise recruitment material mentions around £600 a month, but that's material aimed at prospective franchisees rather than a member quote.

Business Leader

Business Leader is UK-only and curriculum-led. Groups of ten, nine forum sessions a year plus four one-to-one coaching sessions. It's built on Richard Harpin's "9 Steps to a Billion" and includes CliftonStrengths and a written growth plan. Entry is £3m plus turnover, 15 plus employees, founder or CEO of a UK-registered business. It publishes £8,495 plus VAT a year with a £495 deposit, and it's the only organisation in this set that puts an annual headline price on its website. Its ambassadors, including Harpin, Greg Jackson and Jayne-Anne Gadhia, sit on the content and events side. They aren't your forum facilitators.

If you're a venture-backed tech founder in your early thirties in central London who wants daily peer contact in Slack, Hampton is probably still the better fit and you should stay. Helm's rhythm is ten fixed dates a year plus events. It's deliberately slower. Nobody at Helm is going to answer your product pricing question at midnight.

If you need a global network, none of these UK options replace YPO, and Helm doesn't pretend to.

One more thing to be straight about. Helm doesn't do trials, taster sessions or guest passes, and its events are members-only.

Is Hampton available outside London in the UK?

No. London is Hampton's only UK city and the organisation is US-centric, with its core groups of eight to ten meeting monthly and in person. Founders elsewhere in the UK generally look at TAB, which has the strongest regional coverage because its facilitators own local territories, or Helm and Vistage, both of which operate UK-wide.

Does Hampton accept non-tech founders?

Hampton screens for tech, internet "or a related space", so traditional businesses are largely out of scope even when they clear the revenue bar of USD 3m. UK founders running manufacturing, construction, professional services or consumer businesses will find Helm, Vistage, EO, TAB and Business Leader all sector-agnostic by comparison.

How much does Hampton cost?

Hampton doesn't publish its pricing. Inc. reported a figure of USD 15,000 a year in January 2026, which is the only sourced number available and should be treated as reporting rather than an official rate. Of the alternatives, only Helm at £495 a month and Business Leader at £8,495 plus VAT a year publish headline prices.

Which alternative to Hampton has the smallest groups?

Helm runs Forums of six to eight members plus a Chair, and TAB boards are roughly six to eight. Both are smaller than Hampton's eight to ten. Vistage sits at the other end, listing twelve to eighteen for its Chief Executive Programme. Smaller rooms mean more airtime per member across the same number of hours.

Is Helm a direct replacement for Hampton?

Partly. Both take founders at similar scale, with Hampton's average member revenue at USD 23m and Helm's at £21m. The differences are that Helm is UK-only and sector-agnostic, its Forums are chaired by exited founders rather than paid moderators, and it meets ten times a year for three hours rather than running an always-on Slack community.

How long has each of these organisations been running?

Hampton was founded in 2023. Helm dates to 2003, when it started as The Supper Club. Vistage was founded in 1957 and YPO in 1950. EO and TAB are both long-established. Age isn't a quality measure on its own, but it does tell you how many members have been through a full cycle of growth, difficulty and exit.