Introduction

Joining a startup community is about more than just attending mixers and exchanging business cards. 

You can gain many benefits by networking with other startup founders, whether first-time entrepreneurs or veteran founders of unicorns. The perks can include finding mentors, navigating startup challenges, learning about helpful tools to improve your business, connecting with potential investors, and more.

But for new founders, even just finding out where these networking opportunities are taking place or learning how to get involved in a startup community can be another challenge to overcome.

With the following advice from a startup community expert, founders of all experience levels can uncover new ways to connect with other entrepreneurs.

A conversation with James Gee of Startup Grind

James Gee, the global partnerships manager at Startup Grind and a former startup founder in his own right, spends much of his week attending and hosting events for people in the startup space. Startup Grind, a startup community that has been operating for 15 years, is active in 300 cities globally and has impacted over 5M people along the way. 

Gee continues this tradition with his own passion for community and networking, hosting a Startup Grind event about once per month and attending startup-focused events at least two to three times per week.

Before Startup Grind, Gee worked as an auditor and in equity trading. In 2015, he started a company focused on connecting groups of people. 

With this background, Gee has built an impressive skillset in not just the financial side of business, but also the communication and networking side. He sat down with HubSpot to share his journey and advise fellow founders looking to find their own community.

HSFS: How accessible is a founders' community for those new to startups?

James Gee: From my experience so far, it's very accessible. I mean, there are some exclusive events where there is a particular ideal customer profile (ICP) that I'm looking for, and I'm vetting every single person who applies to come to that event. 

But other than that, every other event I've been to or hosted is open to anybody. You could be someone who works for Google, but you have your own idea. You could be funded $10M, and you could be at the same event. 

It's still all about opening the doors to anybody, and that's Silicon Valley, but also other hubs: Austin, New York, Boston. There are so many different hubs and people running communities, even in Silicon Valley itself. I know off the top of my head, I could name 10 people I'm now friends with who are running their own communities, not in competition with Startup Grind, but just because there's so much action out there that there's enough people to go around. If you can't go to one event in Palo Alto, it's because you’re up in San Francisco at another event.

There are enough people and founders, or want-to-be founders, out there that it's very accessible just to go to any event that's in your local area on a particular night. I know guys that go to two or three a day because they're trying to meet as many founders as possible.

HSFS: How can new founders find startup-focused events and get involved?

JG: I'm aware of a few different channels. We at Startup Grind obviously have quite a big following globally, but in Silicon Valley alone, we have about 60K members who are part of the mailing list. 

For example, if I'm hosting an event, I can send out an email to all our existing members. They don't have to pay anything to be a member; it's free. They get the benefits of being notified of stuff like events and our partner offers. If we work with a particular partner like HubSpot and they have an offer for startups, they are part of our outreach, what we promote, and how we bring call-to-actions on their offers on our landing page or their own page. So, number one, that's just being a member through social media. 

I do post some stuff on my LinkedIn, and my LinkedIn network has grown quite significantly in the last six months. During the first three months, I wasn't really sure what I was doing in terms of the landscape, but I think the biggest thing was just the network effect itself. 

As I said, I've met the same people at events. You've become friends with these people; you see them all the time, and if you post something, they end up reposting it, or they share it with their WhatsApp group. I'm on a founders’ WhatsApp group with 500 people. I'm on a Slack group with 300 partnership directors, and they're all doing the same thing. They're all trying to help each other. 

I'm in a British expat community over here for founders and investors. So whenever I have an event, I just post it on a WhatsApp group or Slack group, and the amount of people that reshare it or say, “I heard about your event at another event; somebody is talking about it.” It's almost this FOMO effect of people hearing about, “Oh, what's the next cool event I need to be at?” That spirals out of control, and it's a good snowball effect in that sense. 

For most of these events, it might be $10 to $20 to attend it. Most successful people that I see start charging for events just because you get so many people who are kind of flaky. For a free event with food and drink, people just arrive for that, so they come to get some food and then leave, or they just don't turn up at all. 

I think there's a fine line between a good event and one that seems good because it's posted on another Eventbrite, or we have our own system through a company called Bevy, which is our founders of the company. We promote through that, and that does all the back end; we can charge, track all the data, and see who's attending, and that then helps us with our partners and who wants to opt-in for offers. So it's very easy to manage all that and bring success.

HSFS: How important is building a community to the investment side of running a startup?

JG: This is a prime example of putting yourself out there. I hadn't been to an in-person event in Silicon Valley since moving here. We had our main conference, which is our global conference, with 3.5K attendees, mostly founders and investors. So, I was trying to drum up some kind of awareness and excitement around that. I started going at the end of January. I went to 45 different events before the start of April. I was interviewed on this Silicon Valley impact show on the radio, and they'd seen that I'd done all these events that I was detailing. Then, on LinkedIn, I was doing this countdown to our conference, and it was all about putting yourself out there.

My thesis is: what's the worst thing that can happen? You end up meeting someone, and you chat with them for five minutes. They might not be able to do anything with you or help you, you might get pitched their idea, or it just might not align. Then you say, “Nice to meet you,” and you move on to the next person. You build up this confidence of just speaking to anybody because the reason why it's so easy is everybody is in the same boat. Everybody is trying to grind their way, pardon the pun, to somewhere, whether they're a founder, whether they're trying to sell something, whether they're an investor, and they're trying to find deal flow. Everybody's in the same boat. 

What I have noticed, especially in the U.S., is if you're speaking to somebody and they can't help you, they might know somebody who can. Invariably, I've been introduced, and I know founders have been introduced, and I do it myself now. People are very friendly and very helpful in saying, “I can't help you, but this person over here can.”

I now do a lot of warm introductions because I've met so many founders and so many investors in this kind of bubble. If I know someone's got a great hardware startup and I know an investor that invests in hardware, then I'm more than happy to do an email introduction and say, “Hey, this is such-and-such, this is what they do, love for you guys to meet.” I've done that a number of times in the last week or so, which has apparently been quite fruitful.

I think the idea of community is very much helping each other. Don't burn bridges with anybody because you never know when that person's going to come back around into your life or your circles. If you say yes to a lot of things, I think that it comes back to you, and you might land on your feet somewhere else. 

I've had a lot of doors open, and I know that other individuals have had doors open as well, and I always thank that to other people in my circles. But someone said to me the other day, “No, it's you putting yourself out there that has allowed you to have these opportunities.” 

I think that's very much the case. People are putting themselves out there. It might be quite daunting, and not everyone has the social skills, the business skills, and the technical skills, but if you just have the technical skills, then maybe you find a co-founder who's got the business skills. 

You might not know because you've got this idea of what my startup's going to be. But then suddenly, someone gives you a bit of advice and says, “That pitch wasn't great.” Maybe you need to find a co-founder who can be that front person. You almost be the brains. I've seen it so many times. I know so many companies now that have a very different co-founding couple that run the business, and I think it pays so much more dividends. 

In the U.S., you have what’s called Shark Tank. We have it in the U.K., called Dragons’ Den. I remember growing up as a teenager watching that and thinking that a lot of the dragons, or the sharks, would see a business pitch and so many times would invest or make a proposal based on the people, the actual founder. I now see it, and I pull my hair out about it because you have startups that sometimes get an opportunity to pitch a good event, and you would think, okay, you need to utilize this as much as possible. How do you best portray yourself by showing passion and drive and that this startup that you are trying to showcase is your life, right? And why will someone back you with VC or investor money if they don't believe in you rather than the product? You might have the best product in the world, but if you can't sell it by just being energetic and passionate about it … I think that the people aspect, as well as the actual product aspect, is near 50-50.

Conclusion

Establishing a startup can feel like an overwhelming, all-consuming, and lonely endeavor. Not to mention, it comes with many hurdles that can be difficult to overcome, especially for founders who have never run a business before. 

That’s where community can come into play. By seeking out networking and industry events in the startup space, founders can connect with other entrepreneurs of various experience levels. In turn, their fellow startup founders can provide mentorship, guidance, advice, and even connections to partners and investors.

The value of community for founders can’t be overstated, and Gee made clear the many ways that these networks can help entrepreneurs. From honing a pitch to tapping new AI tools to meeting potential investors and co-founders, community should be a top focus for startup founders who want to succeed.