(originally posted on Markd's blog - keep track of people from around the web with one click)
Being a founder or an independent maker is no easy task. You have many different hats to wear and responsibilities (aka worries) from many angles. Having a strong, like-minded community can help you stay motivated and keep calm. Here is a list of my current favourite online communities for founders and makers to keep me inspired and sane:
If you want to learn about businesses that are profitable/online/bootstrapped and/or started as side-projects, Indie Hackers is the go to place. It has a very supportive community, and the new design makes it easy to continuously scroll and see the latest from the community. The founder interviews are great inspiration stories, and the daily stand up and feedback threads are great to start getting involved in the community. I have this tab pinned to my browser at all times.
ProductHunt started out as a place to find the latest and created product launches. It’s where we got our initial users when someone found and submitted markd to ProductHunt and it got featured. On top of discovering new products, it has now a growing sets of features to help makers — including a public task lists to keep me honest, and community chats that you can participate when you have a quick 2 mins to spare.
Twitter has become a great place for discussions. Conversations often start from one key influencer raising a question or stating an opinion, while many people chime in. If you follow the key influencers for your industry, you’ll find these conversations happening on a daily basis. I am enjoying great threads from: @randfish, @eriktorenberg, @rrhoover, @dohertyjf
Reddit is often hit-or-miss. When the community (subreddit) is supportive, it can be the highest of highs. But it can also feel very unsupportive, largely due to how big some of these communities are and how much spam they must be dealing with. I’ve had a better time with smaller subreddits and recommend starting with those if you aren’t familiar with Reddit.
Primarily a tech-focused community. It’s one community I use to find the most innovative tech stories. However, I find it a bit more difficult to be involved in, primarily due to my non-tech background.
A community is key to keep you going while growing your network. Are you part of a communities that you'd recommend for other founders and independent makers?
(originally posted on Markd's blog - keep track of people from around the web with one click)