Bringing great people together since 1994

I’m often told that I’m a natural community builder and that one of my “superpowers” is bringing great people together. My affinity for assembling people started in high school with a community service club called SMILE (Students Making Improvements in Lives Everywhere). I started this community and helped hundreds of students see all the ways they could give back to their own communities -- ranging from bringing shelter dogs to visit the elderly, to tutoring children who lived in housing projects on the northside of Pittsburgh, to preparing meals at soup kitchens on the weekends.

For the past couple of years, I’ve organized a curated community of founders, researchers, professors, and engineers in robotics and AI for knowledge sharing among experts and practitioners. This community has created many new friendships, helped several of the members navigate career transitions, and catalyzed valuable professional partnerships across companies.

Separately, I recently launched Renaissance Collective, a community for smart generalists looking to explore careers in startups.

As a result of all this activity, friends often come to me for advice on how to build new communities.

While I don’t have any secrets to share on the topic, I think what’s become reflexive and obvious to me may not be as intuitive to others. Here’s my top advice on building community, in order of importance:

  1. Figure out how to serve people. If you want to build a community, this is the number one thing you should focus on. Why should this community exist? Ask yourself: what is your driving motivation for starting this community? Does it start with your needs as the organizer? It shouldn’t. The best communities come together because people have a compelling reason to spend time with each other. This may seem obvious, but I’ve seen how often people get the starting point wrong. Are you looking to build community as a marketing channel for your product? Are you looking to bring entrepreneurs together to increase your deal flow? These aren’t great starting points for building strong communities. Have a hypothesis about what potential users of your product or entrepreneurs find challenging today and what they need. How do you make their work more delightful, less stressful, and more productive? What processes or events can you set up to serve them?  How can you support people by building relationships and facilitating intros that will be valuable to them? People can tell if they’re being sold to or if you’re genuinely trying to create value. Do the latter. As a side effect, you may end up in the flow of lots of information and activity because you’ve assembled the attention of relevant people -- but people only become active participants and fierce advocates of a community because they appreciate the value you’ve created for them. Build a community you would like to be a member of.

  2. Curate members. People join communities that they’re proud to be associated with. Open meetups are a free-for-all and attract the lowest common denominator. This style of inclusivity isn’t conducive to creating strong communities. As the organizer of community, the most important thing you can do is invest a lot of time into figuring out why certain people should meet. This is the glue that binds your community together. You should get to know people on more than a superficial level, so you understand what they value, the challenges they face, and what they’re looking to get out of the community. Curate a group of people who share a common set of interests, problems, experiences, or purpose. Does this sound like a really high bar? It is. My recommendation is to start small. You’re off to a great start if you have half a dozen hand-picked people in a community and everyone has a compelling reason to meet each other.

  3. Set (and enforce) the guard rails that maintain quality. Now that you’ve curated great people, be explicit in communicating the purpose of the community. Set clear expectations for participation, acceptable behavior, and interactions. Whenever I host a robotics and AI event, I state the purpose of the community for all new members at the beginning of each event. I also reiterate the ground rules (e.g. “this is off the record, no blogging, no tweeting, etc. to encourage open discussion”). In Renaissance Collective, we have written community guidelines and shared values that are communicated as a part of our onboarding process. Setting high standards and expectations for the community enables high quality interactions. I’m often asked by people to share information with our communities, or even worse, I’m asked to share the emails of our community members.  To be clear on this: I will never email our communities with information that isn’t highly relevant or valuable to them, and I will never share personal information that we’ve been entrusted with. If you share the emails of your members without permission or you let people spam each other, your best people will leave. It’s your job to set and enforce standards for respectful communication. This is at the crux of facilitating the highest quality, mutually beneficial connections.

People are at the core of community. The spirit of community is generosity and service. So often in Silicon Valley, I see people create me-focused communities, or conflate community building with inviting folks to a fancy venue to share an expensive meal. I’m not opposed to fancy venues or great food, but the most significant investment you can make in building a community shouldn’t be the resources you pour into finding the perfect space or a Michelin-star chef. It should be the time you spend getting to know people so you can serve their needs better. 

As we grow Renaissance Collective, I am always excited to learn more about the things that have worked for you in building strong communities. If you have lessons of your own to share, or if you fundamentally disagree with what I’ve said here, I would love to hear from you!

PS We had our most recent Renaissance Collective bonfire at Ocean Beach with Chipotle burritos (pic above of the crew who showed up early to get the fire started). It was a really memorable evening for the dozens of people who attended. Thank you to Chipotle for the easy catering and to Karl the Fog for frequenting other haunts that evening! And as always, I am grateful to be a part of this community.