I have spent a lot of time the last several years floating around tech, startup, and coworking communities. I have organized events, I have spoke at events, and I have just hung out at many others. I have built a startup that crashed and burned. I have coded, and I have consulted. I am convinced a strong community can work to the benefit of all involved. These communities should always be growing, strengthening and evolving. These are the maxims if implemented, pondered, and explored that I believe can lead to a strong community that is enriching and beneficial to all those in it.
Maxim 1. Everyone that is willing should be allowed to participate.
2. This is a team. You must make the team stronger. If you do not make the team stronger you must leave.
3. Every single person in the community must help every other single person become better.
4. We exist in each other’s lives for mutual benefit. Great profits are to be gained elsewhere. The team is not for profits.
5. Failure is not failure. Failures are data points and practice.
6. To be included you must create. You can’t wait years to be in the game. This is not a place for waiting.
7. Limitations are to be left at the door. Someone far stupider and lazier than you has made it work.
8. What works for one person doesn’t work for everyone.
9. Only one project at a time that isn’t making you any damn money. You are not Elon Musk. One fight at a time is enough.
10. You are what you create. You are not your race. You are not your gender. You are not rich or poor. You are not ugly or sexy. You are not your age.
11. People that don’t need help still need help. Society likes to help people. It seems rather logical and meaningful to us to help people that are disadvantaged in some way. Even people that “don’t need help” need help, and we can’t forget that.
12. The community will reflect the leadership of the community, leaders should be chosen wisely.
13. Entrepreneurship at times is about breaking the rules. If we all followed the rules we would all be working at Purdue University and no one would be building companies. We have to allow people to break rules.
14. If we are not competitors we should be helping each other a lot.
15. Wizards, Jedi, rockstars, and ninjas are rare. Even the ones you find likely suck at most things in their life.
16. There must be events that bring all parts of the community together.
17. You only have to be good at a few things to get success.
18. There must be a cultural expectation to produce. Floating around isn’t good. The term production will vary from person to person.
19. Everything looks different for everyone. You don’t know people’s stories.
20. New leaders must be groomed and sought out, almost immediately.
21. Leaders cannot be overextended. There is a tendency for this to happen. Community leadership carries more weight than it appears to from the outside.
22. Leadership must be distributed. The community cannot collapse because of the removal of someone or even a few someones.
23. Fewer, better events are usually better. Resist the urge to expand too fast with meetups and events.
24. Leadership must play matchmaker, and ensure people meet each other. There is an art to this, and it must be done proactively.
25. The community must be grown to stay alive.
26. You need true believers.
27. False prophets and unbelievers need to be ostracized.
28. A community is a garden, and must constantly be groomed, weeded and watered. There is no rest to this and no relenting.
29. A vibe of energy must constantly be cultivated. Success requires much effort and long hours. An energetic community helps one through the long hours.
30. The individual needs to be supported more than the company.
31. Many entrepreneurs are lonely, and grinding hard alone. This is not the most mentally sound of positions. The social aspects of the community should not be discounted for such reasons.
32. A cultural expectation to go to and support book launches, product releases, etc. We should be more excited about a book launch than someone having a baby in our community.
33. The community is a living vibrant thing, it does not stop. Weekends are just days. Holidays are just days. We cannot stop. Taking summers off is for school teachers.
34. If you run with the lame you will develop a limp, most limps can be fixed.
35. Weakness must be purged, but the weak must be allowed to enter.
36. Community members should have a voice, and representation. Leadership should consist of people active in the community.
37. “Normal”, “work life balance”, and “reasonable” are the enemy.
38. Speaker fatigue must be limited. A speaker cannot speak too often.
39. Steel sharpens steel. There must be steel.
40. You cannot tell people to stop. The community must enable. Even to the detriment of the entrepreneur. Success is often found only after all semblance of reasonableness has been left behind. There are costs and sacrifices to be paid. If someone wants to run face first into a brick wall, we must help them. Then when they break their face, we help them put the pieces back together. Their process, their journey doesn’t have to make sense to us.
41. We keep trying and swing that bat, until we win, or we’re broken.
42. Impossible is a four letter word. We figure things out, that’s what we do. Culture must facilitate that.
43. We must create places for failures to land. Otherwise they may not be able to try again.
44. It is good to have a clubhouse where the community can do whatever it needs to do. Multiple clubhouses are best.
45. Once you’re in, you’re in for life.
46. We must avoid people that have accomplished very little being exalted as luminaries in fields and competencies they know little about. The blind far too often lead the blind.
47. We must learn how to be truly helpful. Offering help once is polite, offering help numerous times shows you care.
48. We all need lots of help.
49. This is a safe place, but since you’re my brother, I will bloody you.
50. We must take care of each other.
51. Going lone wolf makes people crazy. Encourage partnerships, whether formal or simply good friendships.
52. Physical spaces should facilitate work. Chairs need to be comfortable.
53. Quit talking about the coffee so much, it makes you a loser.
54. The building cannot matter, burn it down tomorrow and the community should remain.
55. The community must take pride in itself. It is what it is. This should be celebrated. You shouldn’t try to be bigger and grander than you are.