Step 2 - Join or Create Relevant MTP Communities

The collaborative power of communities is critical to any ExO. Your MTP is the starting point for galvanizing a community—better yet, building your own community around your MTP.

If you do not have the resources to build a community, then, whatever your passion (let’s say you dream of curing cancer), there already are communities out there filled with other passionate, purpose-driven people devoted to the same crusade. For example, some of the many communities devoted to cancer or heart disease research include TEDMED, Health Foo, DIYbio, GET (Genes/Environments/Traits), WIRED Health, Sensored, Stream Health, Life Itself, and NextMed.

The rise of the Quantified Self (QS) movement is a great example of a community with an MTP. Beginning with just a handful of cities with a few thousand members, today, there are thousands of QS meetup groups worldwide with more than 100,000 members. Or consider Livekindly.com. It is a plant-based food community that aims to change the global food system.

If you think your problem space doesn’t have community support, take a look at www.meetup.com. Meetup’s mission is to revitalize local communities and help people around the world organize. The company believes that people can change the world by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference. Founded by Scott Heiferman, Meetup helps convene more than 150,000 interest-based groups—made up of about ten million members—in 197 countries around the world. Given those numbers, the odds are pretty good that a passionate and purpose-driven community concerned with your problem space already exists in your own country.

Note, however, in any community-driven startup, there will be tension between the good of the community and the good of the company. For Chris Anderson, the choice is easy: “Are you primarily a community, or are you primarily a company? The reason you must ask yourself this is because, sooner or later, the two will come in conflict. We [DIY Drones] are primarily a community. Every day, we make decisions that disadvantage the company to bring advantage to the community.”

Anderson says that his choice to opt for the good of the community came from Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of WordPress. According to Mullenweg, “Whenever this moment comes up, always bet on the community because that’s the difference between long-term thinking and short-term thinking.”

The lesson is: If you get the community right, opportunities will arise. If you get the community wrong, the engine of innovation dissolves, and you won’t even have a company anymore.