Home BloomBites BloomBites: Getting involved in your startup community, even as a founder! | 3/3/20

BloomBites: Getting involved in your startup community, even as a founder! | 3/3/20

by Neal Bloom

As busy entrepreneurs, how much time do we all really have every day? As a founder of a startup, you’re pulled in every direction. Despite this, I want to have the conversation on why you should help your startup community and the founder who’s a step or two behind you. I recently was asked to contribute to CEO World Magazine and wrote about why and how CEOs should get involved in their startup community. Check out the piece and let me know if it resonates.

In SD, there are a lot of examples of founders working on their company and simultaneously lending a hand in the ecosystem, like Al Bsharah of Seismic and Mel Gordon, CEO of Evergreen/TapHunter, who were early board members of Startup San Diego while running their respective startups. They both have also since joined Tech Coast Angels to invest locally, along with CPC Strategy (now Tinuiti) co-founder Nii Ahene. Taylor Cavanaugh, CEO of PetDesk, also recently joined the Startup SD board, and Adam Harris, CEO of Cloudbeds, is now on the Connect board. 

This is not a guilt trip to any of my CEO friends! This is just a reminder that there’s a lot to gain from being involved in shaping the ecosystem around us, as I lay out in the above article. The question I often get next is, “where can I help?” I would say go either somewhere that either helped or even more, didn’t help you, and lean in to make it better. There’s a great list of resources here that you can help you get more involved.

It’s up to us, no one else. Let’s go!

Cheers,

Neal

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