Have a Community Strategy That Keeps It Between the Lines

Your mission will evolve as you do, but all communities get started because they have a mission in mind.

You should get started by looking deeply at your current role and figuring out where you have problems. Chances are that other people in similar roles are struggling with the same thing.

At my first job, I was brought in as the lone analyst at a seed-stage venture capital firm in a city where there was no other venture capital firms. Both general partners were busy, I had nobody else that I could bounce ideas off in person, and I was being overwhelmed with new information.

I knew nothing, so I spent my first six months simply observing.

I took note of everything – how I was spending my day, who I was talking to, what types of questions I was asking during meetings, what types of questions I was being asked, what software tools I was using, etc. I thought that the more conscious I was during the process, the more knowledge I could document. Before I knew it, I had started to put together an operating system for other people in similar roles as myself.

If you are in a similar position as I was, I would recommend you start doing something similar. After running this process for long enough, you should be able to do two things:

1. List the key functions of your job
2. Share best practices for each of the key functions of your job

This is step one to building something that can help you attract likeminded people.