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The Startup Community Way
Book

The Startup Community Way

Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway
Wiley, 2020
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Innovative entrepreneurs are the engines behind start-up communities, and they have to be in it for the long haul. Thanks to high-speed internet, entrepreneurs can launch new, digitally enabled businesses almost anywhere, and they can do it in localized groups. Authors Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway report that start-up communities – in contrast to hierarchical traditional businesses – follow their own principles and logic within collaborative, inclusive networks. These communities need innovative leaders who become deeply engaged with their community’s entrepreneurs and other start-up communities. This guide can help entrepreneurs launch their own successful start-up communities in the places they love.

Summary

Start-up communities follow basic principles.

Start-up communities are thriving, in part due to the availability of relatively inexpensive, high-speed internet connections. Entrepreneurs empower and lead start-up communities, which support and enable the success of their participating businesses. Such communities no longer need headquarters in familiar business zones like Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, or Boulder, Colorado. While investors still congregate in specific regions, talented individuals and advanced technologies can be located anywhere.

Start-up communities follow these basic principles: Their leaders and members are entrepreneurs with a long-term investment in the project. Start-up communities are inclusive, but all members should continuously involve themselves in activities affecting all aspects of their community. Finally, start-up communities operate best when they build associations with other start-up communities.

Networks and relationships shape start-up communities, which avoid hierarchical structures.

Large institutions such as corporations, universities, and governments tend to organize as top-down hierarchies. Their leaders hold...

About the Authors

Brad Feld, a partner and co-founder at the Foundry Group and a co-founder of Techstars, is an early-stage investor. He writes the Feld Thoughts and Venture Deals blogs, and is also the author of Startup Communities: Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City and Give First: The Power of Mentorship and the co-author of Do More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup and Venture Deals: Be Smarter than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist. Ian Hathaway is an analyst, strategist, investor, and author of the blog Outsider, Inc: Great Entrepreneurs Can Come from Anywhere.

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