Communities are popular amongst founders for lots of reasons. It's usually pretty lonely to be a founder, especially if you don't live in a tech hub. Most of your friends and family don't get why you aren't just doing a job. So lots of people join online communities where they can get advice, share their ups and downs and of course, do some marketing for their startup.
Here are some recommendations for the best communities for founders:
Best subreddits for entrepreneurs
An obvious option for findng a community for founders is to go on Reddit, which is a free platform with millions of users. One potential problem with Reddit is that groups are usually guarded by mods who can be very harsh with new members or who do too many self-promotional posts.
My advice would always be too contribute more than you take. Even then, you might still get some flak so don't take it personally. A lot of founders are happy to risk attacks given the huge numbers of potential users you can attract from a post that does well.
Here are some good sub-reddits:
There are also some huge subreddits that are worth posting in. For instance, r/internetIsBeautiful has 17 million users so that's a great place if you have something truly unique and earth-shatteringly cool.
Best Telegram groups for entrepreneurs
Telegram is an extremely popular community tool and the app has over a billion users worldwide. A lot of people, like myself, prefer the UI of Telegram and it feels a lot more fun and playful to use than a more corporate tool like Slack. Here are some of the best Telegram groups for founder:
WIP
WIP (Work in progress) is a Telegram group set up by Marc Köhlbrugge, a serial founder of bootstrapped startups like BetaList, Startup Jobs and Handle Horse. There's an international mix of people here. Most are bootstrapped founders. There is also a website, where you can log todo list items, ask questions and request people roast a creation of yours e.g. a landing page, a logo or an idea. There are 2,870 members.
Price: free but priority to people with invites
Solo Founders
Solo Founders is a community started by Alexander Isora, who sold Unicorn Builder for $800k. As the name suggests, it's specifically for people who are making startups on their own. It's mostly bootstrapped founders who are also developers. The group absorbed members of the Makerlog Telegram group in 2024 after it shut down. There's a strict ban on posts promoting Product Hunt launches.
Price: free
Directory Builders
Directory Builders is a paid Telegram group for founders who like building directories. An example of a directory is a website that lists the best AI tools. The group was set up by Chris Osbourne, who created 20 directories in one year. This community is good for people who want to curate information for a niche audience. People here are a mix of developers and no-code users.
Price: $149
Best Slacks for entrepreneurs
Slack is a tool for startups and companies to use for internal chats. It has also become popular amongst online community creators as it's free. One downside is that most groups do not pay for Slack so your private messages will be unreadable after a few months. An upside is that a lot of people already have a Slack account for their job so most platforms on Slack can attract a healthy amount of users.
Ramen Club
Ramen Club is a paid Slack group organised by Charlie Ward, a London-based founder. Charlie also organises the very popular Indie Beers meetup in Shoreditch, London. (There are now other Indie Beers meetups in Lisbon, New York and Tokyo).
Ramen Club offers a Slack group for founders and there's a nice addition in that they have in-house experts on topics like accounting. There are also in-person coworking sessions in London if you are craving IRL time.
Price: various (depending on online or in-person membership)
MegaMaker
MegaMaker is a paid Slack group created in 2013 by Justin Jackson, the co-founder of Transistor FM. There are over 800 members. MegaMaker counts founders such as Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt, as past members.
Price: $299
Solo Writers
Solo Writers is a free Slack group for Twitter ghost writers and other content marketers. It's best for people who are running social media agencies. It was founded by Charlie Light in October 2023.
Price: free
Best Circle communities for entrepreneurs
Circle is a relatively new community tool. It's designed to give users the option to either have one big group, like Telegram, or to have threads people can reply to like on Slack.
SaaS friends
SaaS Friends is a free group just for SaaS founders making more than $20k MRR. As such it attracts a lot of the most successful SaaS entrepreneurs. There's no membership fee - the group is monetized by ads from companies like Stripe. It was created by Davis, the founder of the social media scheduling tool OneUp and the form builder YouForm.
Other communities for founders
Small Bets
Small Bets is a group for founders started by Daniel Vassallo, who made a popular course about growing on Twitter. It has regular guests come by for lectures on niche topics. There's a one-time fee and no subscription to join.
Price: $129
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