Forum Select is the private invitation-only tier of Open Future Forum. Quarterly off-the-record dinners in San Francisco and Palo Alto for C-suite executives and board directors. 8 to 30 guests per dinner. No membership fee. Membership is by invitation from Murray Newlands or by referral from an existing member.
Everything below is a longer answer to the same question.
A Forum Select dinner is 8 to 30 guests around a long table at a private venue in San Francisco or Palo Alto. Drinks first, dinner served by the venue, conversation throughout. No name badges. No presentation. No agenda printed on a card.
Murray opens the room with a single question or theme. Sometimes a member leads off with a five-minute thought. Then the room talks. No one moderates beyond the lightest touch needed to keep one person from holding the floor too long.
Dinners typically run 2.5 to 3 hours. People leave when they need to. The conversations that started at the table often continue in smaller groups afterward.
Forum Select runs strict off-the-record norms. Not Chatham House Rule (where you can repeat what was said without attribution). Not Vegas Rule (where the norm is informal). Strict off the record: nothing said in the room is repeated, attributed or paraphrased outside it.
The reason is functional. The most useful conversations for senior leaders right now are about decisions that have not been announced yet: AI org restructures, Chief AI Officer hires, contested board calls, model evaluations that did not go as planned, regulator conversations that have not been written down. None of that gets said in a room with a weaker norm.
The norm is enforced socially. People who break it do not get invited back. People who hold it tightly become part of the long-term core of the community.
Forum Select members are CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CTOs, CISOs, CMOs and board directors. Most are at companies with $100M+ in revenue or post-Series B with significant AI exposure. Some are board directors at public companies. Some are senior investors.
The common thread is not industry. It is how members behave in a room. The unspoken rule is to lead with what you can give: share what you know, make the introductions that matter, leave the room better than you found it. Members who behave that way get invited to more dinners. Members who do not behave that way quietly stop being invited.
Specifically, members tend to be:
Forum Select is convened by Murray Newlands, founder of Open Future Forum and Partner at IASV Seed Ventures. Murray attends every dinner. He decides who is invited, what the theme will be, and who speaks first.
This is not a delegated operation. There is no event team running it independently. The selection of who is in the room is the central act of community-building, and Murray does it himself. The trade-off is real: Forum Select grows more slowly than a community run by a larger team. The compensating advantage is that the room remains worth being in.
The framework is Adam Grant's Give and Take. Givers create more long-term value than takers or matchers. A room full of them compounds. Forum Select is built to attract that kind of leader and to keep the conversations they have with each other private enough to be useful.
The informal selection question is always: would this person make the room better? Would they share what they know, make introductions without being asked, behave generously even when no one is watching? If yes, the invitation comes. If no, it does not.
Forum Events are open and public. Murray attends most of them. The best guests receive a quiet personal invitation to something more private. This is the most common path in.
See upcoming events →Existing Forum Select members can recommend others. A referral from someone already in the room is the highest-signal path in. Members refer people they know will hold the off-the-record norm and contribute generously.
Reach out via the apply page. Murray reviews every inquiry personally. Selection is based on seniority, generosity and how the candidate would contribute to the room.
Apply for Forum Select →Nothing. There is no membership fee. The selection criterion is generosity, not ability to pay.
Quarterly. Specific dinners may be themed (Public Board Member Dinner, CISO dinner, CFO dinner) and held more frequently.
8 to 30 guests, depending on the theme and venue. Smaller dinners (8 to 12) tend to be more thematic. Larger dinners (20 to 30) tend to be broader.
Sometimes, with prior approval. Forum Select is invitation-only by guest, not by company. A guest who is welcome at one dinner is not automatically welcome at another.
YPO and Vistage are large peer-learning organisations with dues, structured Forum processes, and global membership. Forum Select is smaller, AI-specific, Silicon Valley-based and free. For a full comparison, see the guide to the best AI executive communities.
If Forum Select sounds like the right room, the next step is simple. Attend a Forum Event or apply directly.