Last week, I caught up with an entrepreneur who has a great business. He’s built an incredibly compelling product, is targeting a huge market, and has raised a tremendous amount of money. Within our local startup community, his type of startup is in an underserved segment. We discussed how hard it was to find other like-minded entrepreneurs working in similar areas, how difficult it was to raise money (most of which had to come from outside the region), and how challenging it was to find team members with the specialized skills needed to build and innovate around the product.
Thinking back on the conversation with him, I was reminded of our B2B SaaS community 15+ years ago. At that time, we had a handful of entrepreneurs working on their ideas. It was clear that it was going to be a big opportunity, but it was still very small. Some of the things we tried to jumpstart the community included regular meetups facilitated by Twitter and casual email lists. We also tried a collaborative blog where people cross-posted ideas related to B2B SaaS. We organized different events in the community, including an annual get-together that doubled as a pitch competition. Additionally, we attended various regional and national events together to learn new ideas and bring them back to the community. We also informally got together once a quarter for dinner to share ideas, best practices, and updates on our respective businesses.
Looking back, we now have a strong B2B SaaS community in town after many years of working on it. My hope for this entrepreneur and his community is for a similar outcome: more startups, more success stories, and more people reinvesting in the community. Developing a nascent segment of the startup ecosystem takes many years and lots of trial and error, but the outcome, especially from our own experiences, can be incredible. Start now—it’s worth the effort.
Entrepreneur
via https://www.aiupnow.com
David Cummings, Khareem Sudlow
