About
Founders Retreat Bhutan launched in 2024 with one simple idea: that the most interesting conversations between founders were not happening at conferences. They were happening in the margins. On walks. Over meals. In the quiet moments between the noise.
We wanted to create the conditions for those conversations. In the one place in the world that has been asking better questions for decades.
Our first cohort had two participants. Jana Ganzmann and Lina Graf, both from Austria, both doing work that matters.
Lina is the co-founder of Doc2Me and a Forbes 30 Under 30. She watched a film about Bhutan on a flight to New York and felt the pull. She came. She said it was confronting in the best way. She left more committed than ever to building with focus, depth, and purpose.
Jana bridges economic theory and entrepreneurial practice. She came to understand GNH and left with something harder to name. She wrote that systems and consciousness are not separate. That without cultural change, transformation stays fragile. That without structural change, it stays marginal.
Two participants. Two perspectives that made us certain we were onto something real.
Founders Retreat Bhutan is an initiative of Impact Hub Thimphu, Bhutan’s leading entrepreneurship hub, operating since 2017 as part of the global Impact Hub network across 100 cities worldwide.
We started this retreat to bridge two worlds: the global founder community asking hard questions about how to build better, and the Bhutanese ecosystem that has been living the answers quietly for decades.
I am Tashi Wangdi. I run Impact Hub Thimphu. I was born and raised in Bhutan. This country is not a backdrop for me. It is home. And I genuinely believe it has something worth sharing with the rest of the world’s builders.
Bhutan does not have all the answers. But it is asking better questions.
What if speed is not progress? What if a business can be designed to last, not just to scale? What if the most important metric is not growth but sustainability, in the fullest sense of that word?
These are not philosophical indulgences. In Bhutan, they are governance principles. And for seven days, they become your working framework.
That is what Founders Retreat is. Not a tour. Not a wellness break. A structured encounter with a different way of thinking, hosted by people who live it every day.
We are small by design. Honest by default. And just getting started.
Tashi Wangdi Founder, Impact Hub Thimphu Host, Founders Retreat Bhutan