Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

CHAPTER FOUR

PARTICIPANTS IN A STARTUP COMMUNITY

Leaders of startup communities have to be entrepreneurs. Everyone else is a feeder into the startup community. Both leaders and feeders are important, but their roles are different.

Leaders of a startup community must have a long-term commitment, welcome everyone to the startup community, and help create things that engage the entire entrepreneurial stack. Over 20 years, it’s likely that each entrepreneur will go through different phases in his company, have success and failure, start new companies, and work with many different people. Although many things in the entrepreneurs’ lives will change, they have to stay focused on providing leadership to their startup community or else they shouldn’t commit to this leadership role in the first place.

There are many different leadership roles within the startup community. Some leaders take on a specific role, like Tim Enwall, the founder of Tendril, as one of the leaders of Colorado Startup Summer. Others have broad influence through their actual business, as David Cohen does as CEO of TechStars. And others, like Robert Reich, the co-founder of OpenSpace, engage a broad cross-section by creating and hosting the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup.

Leaders set an example. They are tireless in their evangelism for their startup community, put their community and geography ahead of their self-interest, and just do stuff. By taking action, they provide authority for others to become leaders.

There ...