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Founders Card Review
FoundersCard is a paid membership service geared towards business owners and entrepreneurs that offers access to exclusive benefits and a variety of discounts. A majority of the benefits available as part of FoundersCard membership are travel focused. In this Founders Card review I’ll cover all of the benefits and I’ll give you details on my own experiences using FC. People always ask me whether FoundersCard is worth the membership fee, hopefully this guide will give you all the information you need to decide whether it’s a good value for you. I’ve also updated the guide to include all of the newly added benefits for 2021.
One thing I should mention is that Founders Card is not a credit card, it’s simply a membership with credit card like benefits.
If you decide to sign up and use my referral link, it is much appreciated. 🙂
2021 FoundersCard Membership Details
FoundersCard has two membership levels, Standard and Elite.
FoundersCard Membership Cost
Standard Membership $395 (with referral offer) $595 + $95 Application Fee (without referral or other promo offer) (DO NOT PAY THIS)
A standard membership is generally available through referrals for $295- $395 with a waived application fee.
This year there was even a link for a $99 Founders membership (that’s a crazy deal.)
FoundersCard Elite Membership Cost
Founderscard Elite Cost: $995 (Without any type of offer)
As a standard member there is an option to upgrade to an Elite membership all for a low low fee of $595 (eye roll) (although as of August 10, 2021 it seems to be a $595 upgrade fee). Or you can just get an Elite membership for $995 per year.
Check out my Founderscard Review and Benefits Video on YouTube and while you’re there please subscribe 🙂
FoundersCard Benefits 2021 (as of October 2021)
Frequent travelers seem to be a large focus of the suite of benefits to Founders Card membership. Benefits are broken down into the following categories. Hotel, Travel, Business, retail and Lifestyle.
Newly Added Benefits
- Two years free of Fiverr Business and discounts on your first project.
- 20% Discount on every Molton Brown order
- Several new hotels
- Dropbox discounts
- Amazon Web Services
- IHG and Kimpton Hotel Discounts
Travel Benefits Overview
The Founderscard travel benefits are numerous and varied. There are hotel discounts and perks for stays. Hotel and airline loyalty status matches and challenges. As well as free travel tools and member only access programs.
FoundersCard 2021: Hotel Benefits
Member-only hotel rates
The FC Hotel program is comprised of over 300 hotels around the world. Your membership includes members only rates.
New Founderscard Benefit: Best Deals on IHG Luxury Hotels (August 2021)
Hotel Benefits: My Personal Experience
The negotiated rates I’ve found for members has been lower than any other public or private rate I’ve been able to find for all of the hotels I’ve looked into. (This excludes my casino comp offers that are based on my unique gambling habits 😉 and of course my favorite Mastercard Discovery. I have stayed at hotels I booked with Founderscard twice and both times I did receive an upgrade to a higher category room, once it was a better view and at the Four Seasons it was a basic room to a suite.
Complimentary upgrades
FC Hotels are often able to provide room upgrades, and other VIP perks and amenities for FC Members. Each FC Hotel page will explain any available perks during your stay.
Flexible cancellation
FoundersCard rates often include flexible cancellation.
Hotel Partner List includes:
Mandarin Oriental
Park Hyatt
Rosewood
Ritz-Carlton
Peninsula
Four Seasons
W Hotels
Caesars Entertainment
Graduate Hotels
Kempinski Hotels
Omni Hotels & Resorts
Free Hotel Elite Status and Status challenge Offers
Hilton Honors
Gold Status comes with membership (this is the same benefit that comes with the Amex Platinum Card.)
Marriott Bonvoy
Additionally, FC is currently offering one of the best Marriott Bonvoy challenges I’ve ever seen. You can earn Bonvoy Platinum Status after only 15 paid nights within 3 months of enrollment, and get Platinum Elite status for up to one year.
Caesars Rewards Diamond Status
Caesars Diamond Status is one of the more popular benefits of Founderscard because it offers huge savings for anyone who can utilize the benefits. Everything you need to know about Caesars Rewards can be found here in the “Bougie Miles 2021 Caesars Rewards Guide (Plus Earning and Redeeming Tier Credits, Rewards Credits and Benefits)”
For complete details and how to redeem this benefit: UPDATE: FoundersCard Renews Caesars Rewards Diamond Benefit Through 2022.
Benefits of Diamond Caesars Rewards® include:
• No resort fees on any hotel stay
• $100 Celebration Dinner to enjoy at one of many acclaimed restaurants
• Complimentary valet and self-parking at most destinations, including Las Vegas & Atlantic City
• Priority lines
• Match your status with Wyndham Rewards to enjoy their Diamond perks
• For a complete list of 2021 Caesars Rewards benefits, click here.
Related: GUIDE: Casino Status Matching
Airline Benefits
This is where Founders Card really shines for me. I can’t think of any other program that offers flight discounts, free airline status and status challenges for the top airlines like United and American.
- Cathay Pacific Airways Marco Polo Club Silver status (Lounge access on Cathay, priority check-in & boarding and more)
Free Airline Status Offers and Challenges
This year alone there have been offers for AA Gold and Platinum status as well as United Gold and Platinum Status and free Cathay Silver status which is still ongoing.
FoundersCard American Airlines Benefit Details
- FoundersCard American Airlines Benefit Offers Double Points (2020)
- 2021 FoundersCard Offers Free AA Status and Challenge Plus Option to Choose Challenge Dates!
Ground Transportation Benefits
Other Types of Travel Benefits include elite status with rental car companies, discounts on car sharing services and even private get membership access perks and discounts.
- Hertz Gold Plus Rewards Five Star status
- Avis Preferred Plus status
- Sixt Rent a Car Platinum status
- Silvercar– Discount
- Groundlink– Credit and discounts
- Empire CLS- discount
- Carey- discount
Founders Card Review: Travel Discounts
In addition to elite status, FoundersCard has negotiated discounts with a number of travel providers. Among the FoundersCard member travel discounts are:
Airfare discounts on the following airlines
- United Airlines,
- Cathay Pacific,
- Emirates,
- Etihad,
- Qantas,
- Singapore Airlines,
- British Airways (My personal favorite) I’ll cover in detail in a separate post.
In this post you can see the Qantas discount in action! Earn Alaska MVP Status with One Trip
Two Travel Related Benefits I will Definitely Use
A couple benefits related to travel that can definitely save you money are the Free Year of Tripit Pro (which most of us pay for anyhow) and discounts on Medjet plans which after a cursory review look very reasonable.
Founders Card Review: Business Discounts
Business owners and professionals can get a lot of value from the business benefits if they’re applicable to their type of business. Most of the perks are great and useful to business owners of all types, but some way more than others so it completely depends on the individual.
The business benefits of FoundersCard are broken down into segments:
Founders Card Review Business Benefits: My Experience
Another big value benefit is the First Republic $800 Bank Bonus upon opening a new Business Checking account and depositing $50,000 in new money. (Official benefit page here.)
- 15% off AT&T Wireless- Popular benefit
- Tech Discounts:
- Lenovo, Dell, Apple, Office Depot, Rackspace, etc
- Miscellaneous Web Services:
- ZenDesk
- Zoom
- Microsoft Office 365
- Constant Contact
- MOO Inc
- 99Designs
- DocuSign,
Business Benefits Co-working Program and Shared Office Spaces
These benefits are concentrated in larger cities but there are plenty of locations as you can see from the list below (I took the time to list the locations for each company). What’s really cool is that most of them offer a free first visit which is perfect for getting business done on the road.
- PeerSpace– Locations in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Silicon Valley, Seattle, Austin, London, Paris, and Berlin.
- Breather– New York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, London, Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa
- TechSpace– NYC (NoMad and Union Square)
- Pipeline– Miami, Ft Lauderdale, or Philadelphia
- Weld- Nashville
- Blank Spaces- Santa Monica and Mid-Wilshire
- St. Oberholz- (you gussed it located in St. Oberholz)
- Parisoma- San Francisco
- eOffice London- London
- Business District- Boston
Founderscard Review: The Full List of Business benefits
- 1Password
- 99designs
- Adobe
- Agorapulse
- AT&T Wireless
- Backblaze
- BizFilings
- BLANKSPACES
- Breather
- BUSINESS DISTRICT
- Constant Contact
- crowdspring
- Delighted
- Dell
- Design Within Reach
- DocuSign
- eOffice London
- Fancy Hands
- First Republic Bank
- General Assembly
- GoSquared
- Grasshopper
- Harvest
- Help Scout
- Hive
- Hover
- HubSpot
- Lenovo
- Microsoft Office
- MOO Inc.
- Namecheap
- Office Depot
- pariSoma
- Peerspace
- Phone.com
- Pipeline
- Rackspace
- RingCentral
- Salesforce
- Shopify
- Skillshare
- St. Oberholz
- Stripe
- Swag.com
- TechSpace
- TriNet
- Typeform
- UPS
- Vettery – Online Hiring Marketplace
- WELD
- Zendesk
- Zirtual
- Zoom
Founderscard Retail Discounts and Lifestyle Benefits
My Experience with the Lifestyle and Retail Benefits
FoundersCard also has so many lifestyle type benefits it would be silly to cover each one but I’ve included some of the more popular and or valuable perks below.
- Car Purchase Discounts: Audi, BMW, Land Rover, Jaguar
- Clothing Discounts: Adidas, Cole Haan, Reebok, Rent the Runway, Kendra Scott, Indochino
- Fitness/Health Discounts: Soul Cycle, Equinox Spafinder Wellness Discounts, obé fitness, Pure Yoga, Bliss Spa and Sanctifly, Waived Initiation on Chelsea Piers memberships
- Food/Wine Discounts: Cipriani (20% off YEAYYY) Link to page
- Wine Access, Vosges Haut-Chocolate, Stock Yards, Mouth.com, Lorenza Rosé, Harry & David, FIJI Water Delivery
Is FoundersCard Worth it?
It all boils down to whether you can make use of a few of the perks and come out ahead on the annual fee. I’ve saved well over $500 this year between Tripit Pro, Phone.com, British Airways Discounts, stays at Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Caesars Diamond status, Mr. Porter and Wine Access. If you decide to sign up and use my referral link, it is much appreciated. 🙂
Can Caesars diamond status earned through FoundersCard tier match to mLife gold?
Yes, they have no way of knowing how you earned it.
Another question…thanks for all your help! Do I need to go to an mLife desk for the tier match before 1/31? Or can I just do it next time I go to Vegas?