Community-First Entrepreneurship

One thing all wannabe entrepreneurs need to understand first and foremost: you need a community. You can’t do anything alone, success is team work.

You need to join communities and start new ones. That’s how you can build your first products. That’s how you gather your first 1000 true fans. That’s how you make your first dollar online.

The reason is quite simple: growing a business is about addressing people’s needs - talking with them and execute on what they say to you till you reach what is known as product/market fit.

A community is simply a group of people sharing common interests. You already belong to some: your family, your groups of friends, your school, your city… but few are qualified to guide you throughout your entrepreneurial journey, because not everyone is representative of the market you are targeting.

Addressing a market is addressing a niche. A niche is just a tiny bunch of people sharing similar interests - it’s a community. You join the right communities, you start to understand their needs. Once you find the needs, you can address the issues by creating products. Focus on the community, their problems, and the product―in that order.

Creating a community is easy, which is why it’s so empowering for first-time entrepreneurs. All you need is an email address. It remains difficult to develop, but it will teach you the basics of marketing, or more generally, the basics  of entrepreneurship.

Joining communities for the sake of it won’t work. You have to share your focus between a few ones. Interacting with a community is not asking for things, it’s about giving things. You must contribute without expecting nothing in return. Only then can you rip off the benefits of karma, so pay it forward!