When reflecting on startup founder social hangouts which hit-the-spot, private communities consistently deliver. There’s no insights on community-building here. Just observations, if helpful to someone seeking connections.

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First — to give massive respect to every community organizer out there — connecting and wrangling a group of people is such a labor of love, and cities never appreciate them enough.

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Let’s highlight some common patterns and best-practice examples across the categories:

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• Private (invite-only and free)
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• Public (open and free)
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• Paid (recurring or one-off fees)
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Private communities have been the most enjoyable to participate within. Their characteristics are a) better noise-to-signal thanks to a cozier headcount, b) new member vetting, c) community organizers who are grizzled veterans of a particular craft, and d) in-person hangouts with a shipping culture.

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The best private communities seem to have a low tolerance for mediocrity. Community members disproportionally engage in bar-raising. [1]

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To get invited into a private community, one consistent method has been to “build in public” locally — showoff passion project’s progress in public meetups (or to community partners such as maker space owners, angel investors, professors) — to increase serendipity of a warm introduction.

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Outlier public communities share the characteristics: a) community leaders putting in a disproportionate amount of time into engaging with members / starting discussions / hosting events, b) high frequency of async online messages with pruning of posts that don’t create conversation, and c) frequent micro events around niche topics. [2]

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My guess is that frequent (lite and niche) events allow for a handful of passionate people to collide and become peers, which then results in higher engagement online.

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Paid communities have unfortunately been disappointing. I suspect two misaligned incentives.

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The first incentive — community organizers inevitably optimizing for revenue — degrades the membership and conversation quality, as leadership spends the majority of their time replenishing membership churn.

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The second incentive — paid members subconsciously optimizing for a return on investment — seeds a transactional culture.

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Strangely when looking at non-startup communities, the best spaces don’t even market themselves as paid communities. [3]

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To assess a community, preview their async communication. Be wary of places where transactional communication makes up 80% of interactions.

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Takeaway

Build in public locally to find a private community.

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Anecdotes

[1] Two outlier private communities encountered:

• Cloud Zero: Seattle-based startup founder support group, which meets weekly for accountability and demo’ing prototypes. Also commiserating with fellow founders in the thick of product / sales / fundraising development. Larger mission to become a space for technical people to collide towards new ambitious projects.
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• Hackerhouse dinner parties: A common phenomenon in San Francisco, where random (early stage) startup founders become roommates and sporadically invite connections to hang out. Conversations share themes of scrappiness, ambition, growth hacks, and news at the edge of some field.
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[2] One best-practice public community comes to mind:

• Seattle Indies: Seattle-based online (Discord) community for (AAA and indie) game developers and 4k+ members. Hyper-active conversations (around art, audio, code, producing, industry), and frequent events across online and IRL (feedback playtests, large-scale conferences, gamejams, indie support group, multiplayer gaming).
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[3] Judo martial art gyms and improv comedy schools are a few exemplary paid communities. Would love to hear a perspective on why their connection outperforms business communities eg coworking spaces / bootcamps / masterclasses / curated networks, and have a higher hit-rate for long term friendships.