Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

BE INCLUSIVE

For the leaders of a startup community to be effective, they need to be inclusive. Anyone, regardless of experience, background, education, ethnicity, or perspective should be welcomed into the startup community if they want to engage with it.

Leaders have a special role in this process. People who want to get involved in a startup community approach them first. These people might be moving from another city, working for a large company, graduating from college, or simply be interested in getting more involved in what’s going on in the startup community. The leaders are the gatekeepers and should make sure the gates are always open.

When someone new shows up at the gates of a startup community, the leaders should do a few things. First, they should make sure the person knows what activities exist to quickly get them involved. In Boulder, I point people to a web post I wrote with several of the high-impact, easy-to-access events (http://startuprev.com/l0).

If someone is visiting from out of town, the leader should quickly introduce the person to about 10 people she thinks are relevant so the visitor can quickly get a bunch of meetings set up to explore the local startup community. Although a leader can occasionally chaperone a person around, it’s more powerful to get the community to work by building a culture in which everyone in the community is willing to spend time with someone new in town.

Leaders need to be inclusive of other members of the startup community who ...