15 Best Startup Communities Where Entrepreneurs Thrive

Startup communities are vital for entrepreneurs to thrive as they can learn from founders what it entails to run a business. This article helps you to join the best startup community where you can meet unicorn startup founders and beyond unicorns like super unicorns, decacorns, and hectacorns!

Startup communities are vital for networking, innovation, and entrepreneurship. In such ecosystems of talented and proven business people, aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs come together to create, collaborate, and succeed. 

In this article, I’ll explain, in short, why joining a startup community is essential for your entrepreneurial journey. Also, I’ll introduce you to the best platform to connect with these dynamic business communities. 

By the end, you’ll have the key to unlock a world of opportunities and support on your voyage to success in the open seas of startups. And if you are too impatient to see the list, here’s a list of the startups we’re covering in the handy table below!

Here is a table summarizing the main features of each of the covered startup communities:

What is a Startup Community?

A startup community is a digital social platform for entrepreneurs, business people, and creative professionals with innovative business ideas and looking for startup funding. Simply speaking, it’s a social media site where you’ll find like-minded people who are either looking to convert an idea into a startup business or have already started a startup and are open to sharing their experiences with fresh entrepreneurs.

Since the startup ecosystem is a new business concept, there aren’t many textbooks that can help you. So, you must rely on other founders who succeeded or failed to start a startup business. Users of startup communities are just like your buddies who already walked the rough path into a unicorn or decacorns startup and can provide proven suggestions that no one else can, from startup funding stages to the works.    

These communities aren’t just about chatting, though. These social business sites are hubs of action related to ideation, idea validation, collaboration, funding guidance, creating blueprints of startups, and so on. You can swap ideas, find business buddies, and even get investors interested. Plus, you might find mentors who’ve been through it all and can give you the lowdown.

Benefits of Joining One

Find below the advantages of joining various startup communities, following groups and channels, and finding the best mentors to get an edge over your competitors:

1. Such a community helps you to network with like-minded business persons, potential co-founders, mentors, and investors who can push your startup forward.
2. Different startups have different pitfalls. Only a founder who has already been there knows the bottlenecks and how to get out of those. You can instantly learn about these bottlenecks and risks even before starting a startup if you can connect with the right founder.
3. You can also tap into shared resources such as co-working spaces, funding opportunities, and industry-specific expertise.
4. These are supportive ecosystems that understand the challenges of entrepreneurship and offer encouragement during tough times.
5. You’ll often discover talented collaborators and mentors for your startup from the best startup communities.
6. You can also use startup communities as places for marketing your ideas, novel technologies, or startups. Here, you get word-of-mouth marketing opportunities for free by tapping into your networks.
7. Market validation of ideas, technologies, or products comes at a price. However, you can get it for free from your startup community buddies.   

How to Choose

1. Look for a community with members from diverse backgrounds and industries.
2. There must be experienced and popular startup founders on the platform from whom you can get expert consultation.
3. The social business site should be able to offer you co-working spaces, funding opportunities, and shared resources or point you in the right direction.
4. Find out first if the startup community organizes regular on-site or virtual conferences, webinars, meetups, workshops, etc.
5. There should be various modes of conversation, like groups, personal chats, wall posts, comments, and so on. 
6. The membership fees must fall within your budget.
7. Look for an active startup community so that you can engage with your network at your own convenience. You can use these as sounding boards for your business ideas, and if you are hitting a low, you can use AI for business ideas.

Now, find below some of the glorious startup communities you can join:

GrowthMentor

GrowthMentor is famous for providing 1:1 mentorship to startup entrepreneurs. With mentors who assisted globally leading startups, you can easily find out about the blind spots of the decisions you make.

Almost 600 top startup mentors are available on this platform who will offer you 100% tailored advice, support, and feedback to you. Thus, you should be able to get through the roadblocks by leveraging their years of experience. This positive-vibe community will also help you build a supportive network.

Founders Network

If you belong to the tech startup entrepreneur community, Founders Network is the right choice for getting a full lifecycle mentoring program. In this global community, you can ask for advice and share your experience. 

This platform makes peer mentorship available instantly to you anytime, anywhere. It has 7+ years of forum archive from where you will find answers to your questions. The email extensible forum enables you to post and reply from your inbox. The communication can also be integrated with Slack.

Moreover, it lets you connect with an investor related to your sector from the directory and update them with your monthly progress.

Also read, YouTube Gems: Sam Altman on launching and running a successful startup.

StartupNation Community

StartupNation Community is an extended service of the original StartupNation portal that provides expert services to develop an idea or consumer technology into a startup business. 

On the community page, you get useful links for guidance to start a small business, gig, or freelancing agency, podcasts by expert startup founders, coverages on local startup efforts in the USA cities like Detroit, and offers on Dell products and services for startups.

The community page also hosts various discussion boards for startup aspirants, like Business Planning, Grab Bag, Sharing Economy, Side Hustles, Social Media Marketing, and many more.    

SaaS Club

If you are planning to build a startup business on SaaS or want to see it grow to a new height, SaaS Club is the right community for you. Founders or entrepreneurs of startup SaaS companies can join it to get step-by-step advice on focused blueprints.

Instead of overwhelming you with information, it provides you with actionable information that derives faster results. As you get honest feedback on your actions but in a respectful manner, you can make necessary changes. Furthermore, it provides you with accountability support so that you can keep going with your venture.

StartupSauce Academy

Only a SaaS startup entrepreneur knows how hard it is to build this type of business. Fortunately, you do not have to be alone in this journey if you join StartupSauce Academy. Here, you get introduced to other successful entrepreneurs outside Silicon Valley and learn from them.

This private community for SaaS founders does not allow direct competitors to join it. Hence, you can openly discuss sensitive points like finances, conversion rates, growth hacks, and many more. 

Additionally, you can communicate with other group members using Slack and Zoom. Access to member-only content, monthly events and workshops, and regular mastermind calls are other benefits of joining this community. 

GrowthHackers

GrowthHackers is an invite-only startup community that focuses on unlocking growth through collaboration. Here, you can connect with growth, product, and marketing professionals who have dealt with similar challenges and overcame those successfully. 

Joining this community means you will be able to share your own insights while learning from the experts and discovering new strategies for growth. It is also ideal for expanding your global network and gaining new perspectives through peer collaboration. 

Together, you can resolve issues faced by many entrepreneurs by joining the discussion on growth, marketing, and experimentation. It is also a safe platform to share knowledge, learning, and real-life experiences. 

Indie Hackers

Indie Hackers is a community where you can learn from the founders of successful online businesses. It also offers you the chance to connect with other entrepreneurs who are starting and growing their own companies.

Founders of profitable ventures join this platform to share their experiences, while the new members can seek out advice whenever they are stuck. Members of this community are also allowed to organize meetups for networking and live engagement. 

Indie Hackers also has a podcast, newsletter, and article services. Founders can contribute to these, and others can learn from here.

DemandCurve

Marketing plays an important role in making your startup business work. DemandCurve offers a private Slack community where you can exchange growth insights with world-class marketers. Legitimate marketers join this community to share growth tactics and blueprints. 

On the Slack channel, you can discuss various SEM tactics, content and SEO, landing pages, eCommerce plugins and ads, advertisement networks, marketing tools, and B2B outreach.

Here, you can ask any question that has been bothering your business and get feedback from the marketers belonging to the fastest-growing startups. No matter how hard the growth problem is, you can find its solution by collaboration.

Startup Grind

Derek Andersen, the founder, and some of his fellow entrepreneurs understood the common problem of the startup ecosystem is launching a company. They created a startup movement, and soon, it took the shape of Startup Grind, the largest startup community in the world, as claimed by the founders.

Startup Grind helps every startup aspirant in various ways, like local events, global conferences, memberships, partner offers, student programs, investor programs, learning content, and blogs. 

You can join Startup Grind as a Chapter director, community member, investor, or sponsor. There are no joining fees, so good for your pocket. However, its joining form is highly elaborate and requires considerable effort to complete so the founders can consider you as a member.

SaaStr

SaaStr is one of the largest communities of Software-as-a-Service founders and entrepreneurs. The objective of this platform is to help startups grow while making the process less stressful for entrepreneurs. For that, it offers industry-leading content and community connections. 

Though SaaSTr started its journey as a WordPress blog, it expanded over time and currently offers several resources, such as e-books, videos, weekly workshops, podcasts, and SaaStr University courses. The community members get the facility of attending live events around the globe.

Apart from these, SaaStr functions as a co-selling space, an automated e-learning platform, and a place to get investment funds.

Product-Led Alliance

If you’re a new startup in an already saturated market of business or consumer products, you must create a solid go-to-market (GTM) strategy to launch your software, app, or consumer goods. A GTM strategy could cost tens of thousands to millions of dollars, but you can avoid that if you join Product-Led Alliance. 

This is an emerging startup community that hosts product growth experts, product pros, thought leaders, and startup founders. Its rich community of vibrant product professionals and high-quality content help you craft and validate the best PLG strategy for your startup or small business.

It offers a limited access Free Membership plan along with paid plans like Pro and Pro+ Membership.

CoFoundersLab

Do you need to convert your idea into a startup, set it up, grow it into a revenue-earning business, and get funds to grow further? Experienced startup founders and leaders on CoFoundersLab. 

Primarily, it helps you to find a cofounder for your startup. However, you can also raise funding from verified investors. It has two curated products: CoFoundersLab Launch and Find Your CoFounder. At the time of writing, memberships are free but may get behind a paywall soon. 

CoFoundersLab Launch helps you to get a dedicated growth partner for the startup, connect with an expert community of startup founders, and join weekly masterclasses conducted by industry experts.

Find Your CoFounder mainly helps you to search the entire database of community members to find the right mentor, investor, or advisor. You can also grow your startup community network using this tool.   

Apart from these startup community brands, you’ll also find like-minded business people and startup mentors on common social media platforms. Find below three top communities you can join below: 

1. Startup Growth Hub on Discord
2. StartUp Business and Entrepreneurs Network on LinkedIn
3. Startups on Reddit 

Try a few of these communities out and see which best fits the bill for you, as everyone’s entrepreneurship needs are different. However, this list should give you a head start.

Conclusion

The landscape of entrepreneurship is ever-evolving. You must thrive in this landscape, and that should also be your ultimate goal.

In this ultimate rundown of startup communities, we’ve uncovered the best platforms for you to get support, shared resources, mentorship, and collaboration opportunities that you require.  

Next up, find here the best platforms to list or launch your product.