Tamara is a thought leader in Digital Journal’s Insight Forum (become a member).
Building a startup is never easy, but it doesn’t have to be lonely.
Community is a lifeline for entrepreneurs, and having a network of tech founders and investors ready to share their hard-earned wisdom can make a big difference.
The numbers don’t lie, and the numbers are stark — approximately 75% of venture-backed startups fail.
Entrepreneurship is a deeply personal endeavour. It can also be harrowing and (especially for newer founders) filled with pitfalls on the way to funding and scaling. But being surrounded by leaders who have walked that path, built, failed, scaled, and exited is invaluable.
That’s why I think it’s important to share what we’ve learned at the A100, an organization of acclaimed technology leaders and investors in Western Canada, for the benefit of entrepreneurs playing against the data odds.
Keeping the human element top of mind and the right set of community events, programs, and interactions, a founder can tip the scales in their favour.
This can make yours one of the businesses that defies the odds.
Why we invested in community to support our members
After launching in 2010, we made great progress in our first decade to meet our original mission: creating a way for experienced tech founders and executives in Alberta to share their knowledge and resources with the next generation of entrepreneurs. We were externally-focused during that time — and it worked. Alberta saw a 233% increase in the number of technology companies between 2012 and 2021, from about 900 companies to more than 3,000.
As we achieved key milestones and our ecosystem evolved, we wanted to shift to an internally-focused model: to direct the energies of our members, who now numbered well over 100 and extended into other parts of Western Canada, to supporting our own community. That didn’t mean totally eliminating supporting people in tech outside the A100 but it did mean putting far more emphasis on our own members.
Why focus internally?
Fundamentally, things are tougher out there for Canadian tech companies.
After years of good news stories about the growth of regional tech ecosystems across the country, there are still challenges. In 2023, there was a 13% decline in the number of VC-backed deals and a 34% drop in dollars invested. There was also uninvested capital of an estimated $10 billion, and there has been a recent decline in seed and pre-seed funding.
With the broader ecosystem growing, we wanted to double down on the members inside our community to help them go from where they are now to where we know they can get.
Below I’ll share what our community model looks like, along with some key takeaways for companies, accelerators, and organizations of tech leaders. This is what’s working for us and it might work for you, too.
The A100 Community model
COVID made many of us more comfortable connecting online and less comfortable connecting in person. Both of those trends continue to this day. So we built our model around a centralized digital platform that is the hub of the A100 Community. We didn’t eliminate in-person events but we acknowledged the limitations on our members’ time and their desire to interact with each other in more accessible ways.
Our community platform is jam-packed. We offer a live feed (similar to the timeline you might see on Facebook or X) where members can post content of their choosing. That could be anything from an interesting data point to an opportunity for the other members. Similar to LinkedIn, there are also targeted groups with content and discussion specific to interests and regions. The platform also includes forums, which are creating an accessible knowledge database of questions and answers as our members help each other out. There’s a deal flow section where people post investment opportunities, a news page, various groups based on interests or geography, and a list of internal and external events. There’s so much that we’re still exploring and learning about everything we can do there.
5 key things to think about when building online community
1. Create multiple ways for people to participate
Tech entrepreneurs are busy. Any community model should acknowledge that the majority of members will need to dip in and out of the community as their time allows. That’s why a digital community experience is so effective. A member who has exited in the past can offer their thoughts and wisdom in a short post in the forums or groups feed even if they don’t have time to attend an in-person gathering the same day. Some members might simply want to share an article or insight or reach out to a new member with a question or welcome. We’ve created the ability for everyone to do all of that on our platform, with a minimal time investment and low friction.
The other factor to consider here is geography. At the A100, we now have members in three different provinces. Live events are going to be (inevitably) exclusionary. Contributing in the digital space is open to everyone, all the time.
2. Gamify the experience to drive engagement
Like any other community, we have our ‘super users,’ who are regularly on the platform. But we also offer incentives for participation. Certain pieces of content or information are only available if someone logs into the platform and we’ve gamified the experience. So the more contributions someone makes on the platform, the more ‘points’ they accumulate, which can then be exchanged for things like A100 swag or other prizes. This is the same mechanism that many major consumer brands use to create engagement.
3. Grow your community strategically (but not necessarily rapidly)
We didn’t want to grow too fast and lose what’s special about our community. We want everyone who has access to our community to be making valuable contributions, not just benefiting from our members’ expertise and willingness to help. As a result, we’ve maintained our original membership qualifications and have grown largely through referrals from our existing membership. That ensures the people who join are pre-vetted and likely to be a good fit.
4. Understand that your community will take on a life of its own
In the past, as executive director, I facilitated or was aware of the majority of community interactions, since so many were live or in-person. But now, one of the things I’m proudest of is the sheer volume of direct messages A100 members send to each other. Obviously I don’t have access to the individual messages but we do have analytics that show members are frequently messaging each other. They’re using the A100 Community and tapping into each other’s insights without needing my hand on the wheel. The community has taken on a life of its own. This is success.
5. Reinforce the growth mindset
Despite remarkable success, technology executives, leaders, and investors may be reluctant to throw themselves into a community platform they’re unfamiliar with. So, reinforcing a growth mindset is important. Even those that have worked in innovation for years or exited multiple times may be hesitant about trying new things. But in the A100 Community — now so focused on helping their fellow members level up — that’s a bridge we try to help people across.
We’re all here to learn and grow. That’s what community is all about.
