I keep a running list of the communities people ask me about, because the question comes up in almost every dinner conversation. Here is my honest read, the version I would give a friend rather than the polite one.

A disclosure first: I run one of these, Open Future Forum, so I have a horse in the race. I have tried to be fair about where the others are stronger.

Cerebral Valley. The room AI founders and investors want to be in. If you are building or funding at the frontier, this is the scene. If you are an enterprise CFO trying to work out AI governance, it is not your room.

YPO and Vistage. The long-standing CEO peer organizations. Decades of structure, local chapters, facilitated groups. AI is a topic, not the point. Good if you want a general leadership network for the long haul.

Hampton. Sam Parr’s founder and CEO club. Tight peer groups, a strong private network, founder-weighted. Good if you are a high-growth founder who wants a personal board. Less suited to enterprise C-suite.

Pavilion. Built for revenue and go-to-market leaders, with a CEO tier and a heavy events calendar. If you are a CRO, CMO or GTM leader, this is a serious option.

Chief. A network for senior women executives, with strong programming and a coaching layer. Defined by audience rather than role or industry.

Evanta and the Conference Board councils. Role-based, confidential, often free to qualifying executives because sponsors pay. If you want a single-role council, a CISO room or a CFO room, with research behind it, these are the institutional standard.

Open Future Forum. Mine, so judge accordingly. The thing I built it to do that the others mostly do not: put the full C-suite, finance, security, technology, marketing, CEOs and public board members, in the same room, in Silicon Valley, with both panels and private dinners. If you want a single-title room or national scale, others do that better. If you want the cross-functional conversation, that is the gap we fill.

If you want the full side-by-side, with formats, access models, cost and who each is best for, I keep a longer reference here: the best AI executive communities. This post is my opinion. That page is the map.

One last thing. The best community for you is not the most prestigious one. It is the one where the people in the room are working on the same problem you are, and where you would be glad to give before you take. Start there.

Murray Newlands is the founder of Open Future Forum, a Silicon Valley executive community, and a Partner at IA Seed Ventures.