A year of drinking coffee with founders.

Community is a word, the meaning of which has become heavily diluted over the past decade or so. It's become another word for audience, customers, subscribers, followers, newsletter readers, people that like your posts and well… anything but what it actually means.

Community is, and always has been, about a group of people who share common traits, interests and experiences together, not individually. A little over a year ago, we wanted to create a community for early stage founders who also wanted to meet each other early in the day rather than later at night. We wanted it to be a small, informal gathering of peers, who could easily share and learn from each other.

So, I tweeted our intention to do so, and it seemed to strike a chord. In the year since tweeting this, we have gathered 23 times, and the 24th will be tomorrow 19th March.

At Founder Filter, we've met some great people over the past year who contribute ideas and experience to the conversations they're part of, and they also bring other founder friends with them.

We've also been able to make some observations about community and the founder experience.

Community is not a one-and-done

If you want to start a new community or lead a growing one, you have to consistently show up. If you're successful, it'll be a long-term commitment, and it won't be a long-term commitment if you don't show up. Community is the opposite of transactional, and the few times someone has shown up just once, didn't stay long, and weren't seen again, it was obvious they were there for transactions, not developing relationships or being part of something.

Of course, it's totally fine to be transactional, and it has its place. It's just that that place usually isn't in a community.

Solo foundering is lonely

We've met more solo founders through Founder Filter than we ever expected. In a past life I was a solo founder, and I missed the ability share all the burdens and stresses with a co-founder. Even if you have a great team of employees, it's not right to weigh them down with the realities of early stage company building.

So it's been wonderful to see solo founders repeatedly coming along, and supporting each other. We've heard of founders who met at Founder Filter start to regularly meet each other for lunch, or share WhatsApp groups with each other. While this isn't a replacement for having a co-founder, I think it's really important for solo founders to be able to regularly check in with each other. At the very least, knowing you're not the only one is so helpful.

Technologies change, but the founder process remains

I've been building tech and working in early-stage startupland since 2007, through running a dev shop, four startups, hundreds of regular meet-ups, a handful of conferences, and a bunch of angel & syndicate investments. In that time, the process by which tech and software products are conceived, designed, developed, shipped, sold and supported has evolved and become incredibly complex, broad, and… opinionated.

What has largely remained the same, I believe, is the process by which founders learn and grow. I mean, there are way more startups now, than 2007, so that means more founders, more funding, more successes and much, much more failures.

But the process of starting is still the same: you decide you're going to do it, then you do it. The process of early traction is still the same: you iterate on how you tell your story to the point where people start to see what you see and they slowly start to jump on board as co-founders, early users (or even customers), early investors or as I've seen through Founder Filter: supporters and advocates.

The point of it all

Founders supporting founders. It's just wonderful to see. I've lost count of the number of times in the past year where one founder talks about a problem they're solving and another founder either says they need that, or knows someone who does, and then they go deep into how it works, and bounce roadmap or go to market ideas around. It's great.

When we started Founder Filter, we probably made an assumption that since Dublin (and Ireland) is small, and there were regular but different kinds of events happening, that all founders knew each other already. We've been surprised by how often people we assumed already knew each other, were meeting for the first time.

And that's kind of the point. That's why we'll keep drinking coffee with people who are giving it a go.

That's why we'll keep showing up, every second Tuesday morning, 8am-10am, in 3fe, IFSC.

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If you'd like to join us, just come along, there's no registration. If you'd like to be reminded, and receive updates about Founder Filter, join the mailing list here.

Founder Filter wouldn't be a thing without the sponsorship of Kota (one of our portfolio companies) who make setting up employee insurance and benefits almost as easy as ordering a coffee.

We also benefit from having the regular use of the upstairs space in 3fe's IFSC shop, thank you to the team there for making consistently great brews.

Finally, to every person that made their way through early morning traffic, rain and sunshine to meet others like them and chat about their experiences, challenges, and learnings over coffee… THANK YOU!