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People ask me this question a lot, How do I start building a community?

Me:  Borrow Inspiration from Existing Communities to Find Your First Members
Don’t reinvent the wheel — your first community members are already hanging out somewhere else.

Back in early 2020, during the peak of the COVID pandemic, I wanted to create a space for founders who often felt invisible because they were not in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Singapore, London, or San Francisco, but were building startups from Nashik, Kochi, Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, and even Milpitas.

My goal was to enable founders from 2nd/3rd-tier cities building Startups to get support in their journey to overcome challenges.

I looked at communities I admired (eChai, TiE global chapters, SaaSBoomi, Super Morpheus, Headstart and a few more) and realized my first members were already out there — I just had to find them.

By the end of 2020, Grittiest had served 170+ founders from underserved cities.

Founders loved it! Grittiest's focus was to serve unserved founders in 2nd/3rd-tier cities and magic happened.

Here’s the hack for How do I start building a community👇
1. Identify 3–5 communities where your ideal members already gather
2. Observe what people love & what frustrates them
3. Engage authentically before inviting anyone over
4. Reach out personally, not with a broadcast message

The most loyal members often come from the margins, not the mainstream. Start by borrowing energy from the communities your people already love. Just focus on what they get from your community initiative.

Built /building a community? Where did you find your first members? #CommunityGrowth101

A productive weekend in London.

We had some wonderful meetings to shape the startup ecosystem globally. Discussing plans for next year on bringing big tech giants closer to the startup #ecosystem, dining with a few investors, exploring the ecosystem, and attending the refreshing eChai Ventures event, thanks to Abhishek Singh for organising.

Had a fascinating conversation with Roop Bhadury about #AI's transformational impact worldwide and how it will reshape industries in the next decade. The kind of conversation that reminds you why we're building what we're building.

This week, we're opening applications for Platvix Build Studios for those who pre-registered (link in the comments).

Next year is going to be big. Democratising the creation of startups and raising capital for early stage founders. We're doing the hard work so you don't have to.
Stay tuned.

#BuildStudio #Startups #London #AIStartups #VentureCapital

One of the most beautiful things about startups has nothing to do with funding rounds, valuations, or exits.

It’s community.

Over the last decade, I’ve been fortunate to be part of founder ecosystems across London, San Francisco, Boston, Nagpur, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, and many places in between.

And the pattern is always the same.

A founder needs help.

Before investors show up, before customers sign, before the media writes about them, someone from the community steps in.

An introduction is made.

A deck gets reviewed.

A candidate is referred.

A customer call is arranged.

A founder who has already walked the path spends an hour helping someone they’ve just met.

No invoice.

No equity.

No expectations.

I’ve experienced this repeatedly through eChai Ventures.

Over the years, I’ve hosted and spoken at eChai Ventures events across multiple cities. What has always stood out to me isn’t the event itself, it’s the culture that follows.

Founders helping founders.

Operators helping founders.

Investors helping students.

People making introductions simply because they believe it might help.

A lot of that culture comes from Jatin Chaudhary.

For years, he has quietly connected thousands of people across India’s startup ecosystem. Most of those introductions never become LinkedIn posts. Most of the support never gets announced.

Yet opportunities are created because of it every single day.

I’ve seen the same spirit in communities like NSRCEL, in Boston startup circles, in San Francisco founder networks, and increasingly in India’s venture ecosystem.

The older I get, the more I realise that careers are rarely built alone.

They’re built because someone opened a door.

Someone took a call.

Someone made an introduction.

Someone helped when there was no immediate benefit to them.

In a world obsessed with transactions, communities like these remind us that generosity still compounds.

And often, the most valuable people in the room are not the richest.

They’re the ones willing to help without keeping score.

Capital builds companies.

But community builds everything else.

What do founders discuss when the pitch decks are closed?

Today, eChai Ventures brought together founders, investors and operators in Ahmedabad for a candid conversation with Hari Balasubramanian.

It wasn't a rehearsed keynote when we met. The discussion moved from his early investment journeys involving Wow! Momo, Mukunda Foods Pvt. Ltd., Spinny, Rapido and Brevistay to some of the harder questions founders are confronting today:

▶️ Where is capital really going?
▶️ What has AI changed about building and selling software?
▶️ Is conventional SaaS becoming harder to fund?
▶️ How do founders and investors actually achieve liquidity?

Recalling the conversations, I found a few ideas that stayed with me.

▫️Capital is no longer India’s biggest constraint. The constraint is whether a team has a bold enough idea and the operating capacity to deploy that capital intelligently.
▫️AI has made building faster. It has not made distribution easier. Product creation is getting cheaper, while customer access, domain expertise, trust, and monetisation are getting more valuable.
▫️SaaS is not dead. But the comfortable middle is being squeezed. Either reach enormous user scale or own a workflow so deeply that a smaller number of customers will pay serious money.
▫️Paper valuation is not a return. Liquidity is. Many meaningful companies take 10 to 15 years to build, while the structures funding them often expect answers much earlier.

Perhaps the most important lesson was this:

A strong ecosystem is not built through speeches. It is built through rooms where people speak honestly, challenge each other and make the right introductions.

Thank you, Hari Balasubramanian, for sharing decades of experience without trying to make the journey sound neat.

Thank you, Jatin Chaudhary, Umesh Uttamchandani, eChai Ventures and DevX for creating the room.

Amish Trivedi Anil Motwani Anuj Dalal Bhavesh Patel Jash Gor Jayesh Kadivar Koumal Kalantry Nikita Lalwani Rahul Kumar Vikas Mundhra Viraj Rajani Balkrishna Agarwal Chirag Panchal Amit Gupta Dr. Isha Goswami Dr. Saiful Khan Ekta Shah Harsh Joshi Ishani Dave Mitesh Shethwala Murtuza Badami Er. Nandan Shukla Sagar Thakker Satya Mehta Shyam Parmar Sweety Patel Twinkle Barot

The carousel here distils the entire conversation.