In 1985, Karlgaard and Anthony B. Perkins created the Churchill Club, which quickly became known as an organization dedicated to producing programs where "important people say important things." The first speaker was Robert Noyce, the inventor of the integrated circuit and cofounder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. Other speakers have included then Arkansas governor and future United States President Bill Clinton, former CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer, and founder of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington. The Churchill Club now has over 7,500 members. For this effort, he was named a Northern California winner of the 1997 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.