“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.” – Rudyard Kipling

Entrepreneurship can be a lonely and stressful journey. You are constantly bombarded with unexpected situations that can create stress. At the same time you have to lead a brand new team and keep moving the ball forward. In the words of Daniel Cheng, MBA2020 and co-founder of BeenThere, a mental health startup for overseas Chinese students: “Entrepreneurship is the hell mode of leadership.You don’t have money or incentives to pay people, and you don’t have big brands to put in people’s resumes. You yourself don’t know if it will work. You need to lead people to push forward a venture – that is challenging.”

Apart from your mentors, you may not have a lot of other people you can work with as thought partners. Here is where a peer support network comes in. Entrepreneurs who are building ventures in roughly the same stages are tremendous assets to each other. They can share tips and tricks that are contemporary and relevant to each other, pool resources, and offer emotional support to each other.

On this page, we share our observations on how entrepreneurs might engage and where, so that you can help other entrepreneurs build their venture and vise versa.

How entrepreneurs can support each other

Contact sharing

The first thing that needs to happen is contact sharing so people can find each other. This can be effectively managed using a Google Spreadsheet where a link is sent out to the community and entrepreneurs are free to opt-in by entering their team name, and the team lead’s name and email for coordination purposes.

Slack channel for instant communications

Slack or other instant messaging platforms are very effective when you want to chat with someone else outside your team about a topic of interest – whether it is is sharing best practices on online marketing and digital advertisements, hiring interns, or a quick one-off question. It is also great for making announcements. This is only useful if you get critical mass (about 50 participants with 10-20 very active users is a minimum).

Weekly CEO check-in's

A weekly CEO checkin is the single most effective way to keep yourself accountable and foster cross pollination. You can share your successes and challenges in a safe environment and get support. This is best done in a facilitated workshop no more than 1 hour long (if there are too many CEOs you may need to break this up).

Happy hours

Talking about work all the time does not build relationships effectively. Mixing it up with a social event is always a good idea. We have seen a lot of accelerators adopt a weekly happy hour, typically held at the end of the day. This can be done remotely over video chat or in person.

Technologies that can help you stay coordinated

Here are some IT platforms that can help you build a community.

IM Platforms like Slack

An IM platform is key in keeping your closed community connected and up to date.

Video chat platforms like Zoom

As the community may comprise teams in different locations and time zones, a common video chat platform is key.

Video sharing platforms like startup.io

There are new tools out there to help startups share progress via voice or video snippets to a closed group.

Content sharing platforms like Dropbox

Oftentimes community members have great content and resources to share with each other. A Dropbox or Google drive can work, and so can a hosted Wiki platform.