Why Startup Studios Need To Focus On The Importance Of Community Building

By Brent McCrossen, Managing Director at Revelry Startup Studio

Entrepreneurs and studios must understand the importance of community in company building. As I’ve been writing this article, I’ve been thinking about Greg Isenberg, Co-founder and CEO of Late Checkout, an agency, fund, and product studio focused on internet communities and community-based products. I want to start by sharing this quote from him:

“Community is the new marketing. You don’t build a community to ‘promote your product.’ You build a community, so you don’t HAVE to promote your product. Point: Community is the great growth unlock.”

In this post, I’ll be covering the importance of community, how to attract, engage and maintain it, examples of community building; and traits, characteristics and superpowers that build community.

The importance of community

If you want to start a community, start by genuinely caring about bringing that group of people together.

As many of you know, building a company, whether the intention is for it to be the next Facebook or a small family business, is not an easy task. Any company that wants to be successful is typically advised to leverage their community as a way to reach their goals.

A startup studio is essentially a group of people that come together to build companies, ideally spinning out several companies per year. At Revelry Startup Studio, we build tech and tech-enabled businesses. Many of the methods and tactics we use to do this are similar to those of other top venture studios. However, none of these methods that are part of the startup studio business process would be of any use without the community of people who run them. With that said, this idea of community building becomes even more critical.

An analogy I’ve been thinking of a lot lately is that a startup studio is both a platform and an operating system. By definition, a platform is a group of technologies that are used as a base to develop applications and processes. In a studio, the platform is both the physical and digital spaces where we interact and, most importantly, the people who interact within and across those spaces. The operating system is the methods and processes that we leverage within the platform to identify problems worth solving, ideate solutions, validate business models, spin out, finance and grow companies. The systems are effective, but of little use without a solid platform to run them. Hence, the entire thing requires a robust, engaged and resilient community.

So, how do you attract the community and keep them engaged?

The most important thing when attracting a community is sincerity. It’s also important to define your “why”. Ask yourself, what is your utopian vision of a future world that’s going to be manifested by a group of like-minded individuals? Why should they come together? How will they interact and ultimately benefit one another and the world around them?

When attracting a community, it’s also important that you are continuously giving and sharing knowledge, resources, ideas and struggles without expecting anything in return. These kinds of conversations build relationships, connect you to your community and build lasting bonds between its members.

The concept of giving back is critical in a community. The reason that people want to be a part of your community is because of the value you add, not the value you extract. When I think about our ecosystem, there are many entrepreneurs we may not have been able to directly work with within the studio for a number of reasons. But, the door never closed. We always take the opportunity to connect them deeper into our network and help them in any way we can, even if it has no obvious and direct benefit to the studio itself.

I would also encourage people to think about the concepts of equity and inclusion. Not everyone in the community needs to have the same level of knowledge and expertise. It’s actually better if they don’t so we can all learn from each other. The concept of inclusion is not just when it comes to skillsets but also pertains to sex and race. The greater diversity you have in a community, the greater diversity of perspectives and ideas you will have, and all of those things aid the effort of the company building in a studio.

What’s just as important as attracting a community is keeping them engaged and contributing. To accomplish this, it’s important to come back to your first-line principles of adding value and giving more than you take. How do you continue to contribute to your community’s needs, collaborate to help solve their problems, and ideate alongside them?

For example, Revelry Startup Studio used to bring together entrepreneurs and people with ideas each month by holding pitch competitions where we would give the winner $1,000, all in stacks of one-dollar bills. Many of these “pitches” weren’t even intended to become businesses. They were entrepreneurs, investors, engineers, and product people exploring new ideas and seeking feedback. While it’s not necessary to spend a lot of money to keep your community engaged, this demonstrates how we created a space for people to come together to explore new possibilities which add value by driving individuals to collaborate and stay in touch.

Examples of community building

Engaging across the ecosystem and giving are the best ways to create community. While perhaps not directly relational, there are many outside groups that have specific touchpoints with our community’s main purpose and objectives. It’s important to interact there — to pull closer ideas and people that help expand the value and maximize impact across the entire network.

One way we do this at our studio is by interacting with first-time founders frequently. There are several local accelerators in our community where many on my team serve as advisors and mentors. We meet with founders to help them out by giving feedback on business models, go-to-market strategies, pitch practice and making introductions to potential customers, new hires and investors. All of this in turn forms new connections, helps businesses grow and rejuvenates the spirit of the entire collective.

In addition, we recently partnered with an entrepreneurial class at Tulane University’s Business School here in New Orleans. We provide them with coursework and feedback for a semester related to one of the new companies we were spinning out of the studio. The students worked to contribute to the industry, competitive and market research. Through this, we were able to make great connections, not only with the students but with faculty and alumni — many of which had no idea our studio existed. We even hired one of the students to work in the studio for the summer.

I’m also a part of the Global Startup Studio Network (GSSN), an organization that connects the leading startup studios across the world. They keep us engaged through a slack channel where members are able to ask each other questions, exchange ideas, share best practices, learnings, and resources and generally stay in touch. They also hold monthly meetings where studios will share information on the pathways they have developed for success, challenges and more. A couple of times a year GSSN hosts member summits — bringing in speakers that are relevant to studios whether that is corporate innovation teams, possible founders or investors. At every one of these touchpoints, they are continuing to add value and deepening the bonds between members.

These engagements all have ripple effects. By putting yourself out there to help other people, sharing ideas, listening to their questions and making connections you start to put out the threads that people can latch onto and pull each other in, establishing a larger and tighter community.

Community building superpowers

I’m going to wrap things up by leaving you with what I’m calling my community-building superpowers. I believe that if you put these things into practice, your community will come together and it will thrive.

• Have an unending curiosity about others
• Help them with no expectation of return
• Have an open heart
• Have an open mind
• Be a really, really good listener, make the speaker feel like they are the most important thing in that moment. Because if you are truly listening, they are.
• Be vulnerable and openly explore what you are uncertain about
• Let others actually help you
• Connect the dots. If you are not willing to open your inbox or Rolodex to a person ask yourself why? It’s either you or it’s them. Either way, you need to know the answer.
• Surface your learnings, your setbacks, your success and share knowledge
• Don’t be an asshole! Communities do not thrive with assholes. In fact, they die or can be greatly damaged. Don’t be one. Don’t tolerate one. Be nice, be civil, but show them the door

Prioritizing a community for your business or venture studio is essential on the path to success. Without it, not only will you travel less far, but your experience will be far less rewarding. Life and business are all about connecting with people. We all need each other and a sense of belonging. A robust and engaged community will help accelerate, drive and optimize for success.

About Revelry Startup Studio

Revelry Startup Studio is a multidisciplinary team of entrepreneurs, designers, and makers that know how to build a company from scratch. We work hard to test assumptions, eliminate confirmation bias, and operate with focus and passion. We love solving problems and supporting each other along the path of building great businesses. The Revelry ecosystem also consists of a venture fund and a digital innovation lab providing the product, design, and engineering. We do all of this in New Orleans. Because it’s one of the world’s most creative and entrepreneurial cities. And it’s our home.