This issue is sponsored by Mastering the Email-Based Course and fuelfinance.

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​Brian Sierakowski was “the main character of the internet” for a day.

What did he do?

Well, Brian, who had recently taken over the role of CEO at Baremetrics (which had been acquired a few months before that), decided that to learn more about his customers, he would introduce “Call to Cancel.”

The internet was not amused.

Specifically, the founder community was up in arms within minutes of this becoming news, and Brian lived through a shitstorm that I can still remember to this day. I even participated in it!

This week, I chatted with Brian, who recently stepped down from his CEO role to get back into indie hacking. We dove into the unpopular choices he made and what it takes to run a business that someone else built. As indie hackers, we rarely get to see what happens to our businesses after an exit. Brian can tell you all about it. Check out our conversation on The Bootstrapped Founder.

The intense and quite vitriolic reaction of our community to Brians's (admittedly risky) choices got me thinking about the dynamics that ensure the adherence to norms and social agreements in our virtual communities. And I found that this goes back way further than the invention of social media.

The way we organize ourselves is something deeply human, something ancient, and it still has these very old roots even in its most modern incarnation.

Online communities often remind me of villages, offering a sense of belonging, a place to grow roots, and a bustling exchange of ideas and services. I found my ‘village’ among sci-fi enthusiasts and software entrepreneurs online. And I do my best to contribute to the continuation and improvement of these communities.

But not everyone has that long-term perspective. Some people very selfishly act in ways that kill the village.

Maintaining these virtual communities is —no doubt— challenging. We need to understand what makes a community thrive and what can lead to its downfall. To avoid killing the village, we have to know what sustains the village.

Looking back at how settlements develop, they tend to start with pioneers who establish the basic infrastructure needed to settle, followed by settlers who develop the village further using their more specific skills. Generalists followed by specialists. This applies equally to online communities where key members set up everything before others contribute value in many different ways.

As more people join a community and interact with each other, it grows into something self-sustaining, like a village. People forge bonds as their daily lives intermingle. The farmers grow the crops that, once milled and turned to flour, allow the baker to make the bread that the blacksmith eats before forging more farming instruments. It’s cyclical, interdependent, and —most of all— built on trust. Mutual necessity establishes strong ties over time.

But the problems arise when too many new members arrive in the village without enough time for trust-building. Villages develop culture, which boils down to a shared way of doing things. When too many new settlers flow into a village without soaking up the established culture, there are no shared ways anymore. That significantly erodes trust. And in a virtual community that might even consist of a significant number of pseudonymous or anonymous members, this trust is the only thing that prevents scams, cons, and abuse.

But if you don’t know your virtual neighbor from many positive interactions before, how can you extend that trust?

Well, you can’t. You start doubting the intentions of your fellow villager. You wonder why they do the things they do. And more importantly, they don’t do the things they do for the sake of the community.

They do things only for themselves.

Selfish behavior is another major contributor to the death of the village. In a world of advertising fueling the bank accounts of some of the world’s largest companies, virtual villages have been barraged by promotional activities. While some self-promotion is acceptable if it’s beneficial for the group (something I call ‘selfless self-promotion’), purely selfish acts harm the community — because they go against the community.

And that’s something a lot of founders are guilty of.

Sometimes entrepreneurs enter communities solely for personal gain. They need customers and try everything to get a few more conversions. But without contributing anything valuable to the community themselves, they’re using it as a means to an end. And that violates Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative, particularly its second and less well-known formulation:

This means that anything you do in a community, from the public space on Twitter to the invite-only expert groups on Facebook, your actions should always also improve the community in addition to getting you what you want.

Exclusively selfish acts are not making communities better. These acts kill the village.

Scamming or even just making very optimistic promises damages trust in communities. That’s why platforms like Reddit established a culture that quickly punishes selfish behavior. Promotional activities should benefit everyone rather than just the promoter alone. And if you don’t have a history of contribution to show for, you will be banned from that subreddit for life if you start promoting your services.

Selfishness erodes the foundations of community.

Selflessness leads to increased reputation and trust.

It’s a very easy choice — at least if you think long-term. Because the inconvenient truth is that these short-term selfish acts often do generate customers or purchases. But they come with the hidden cost of burning your reputation. And in the long haul, reputation is worth significantly more than a few more sales today. Look at the “elders” of our virtual villages, the people who have been part of our communities for decades. Not a single one of them tries to cheat you out of your money. Most don’t even talk about their services. They trust that you’ll find them when you’re ready. They’d instead participate in the community than mindlessly monetize it at all costs.

Communities flourish through contributions from members helping each other without expecting returns. Which, ironically, often leads to outsized returns, to eventual reciprocity as people feel compelled to give back after receiving much help themselves. Trust fosters opportunities. Not knowing your neighbors destroys them.

But this doesn’t mean new community members are a threat. In fact, they are needed to keep the village alive and able to keep up with the progress of the world.

A healthy community avoids becoming overly insular or tribal, where only those with similar ideologies are accepted. If a community locks out everyone, it can promote internal extremism and has reduced adaptability due lack of diversity or fresh ideas. Communities and villages need shaking up sometimes.

Or just any activity at all. Active participation keeps a village alive, while apathy leads toward decline. If you find your virtual village becoming noticeably less engaged, that may indicate issues such as selfish individuals pulling participants away to other places or overly rigid norms and regulations preventing fringe thinkers from contributing somewhat spicy ideas. Conformism kills the village.

So, what can you do, pioneer, settler, or late-stage community joiner? Encourage active participation; contribute to your communities. Don’t lurk, post. Engage with people who share their thoughts while discouraging ideological rigidity. Prioritize relationship-building over personal gain and allow room for dissenting voices so your ‘village’ remains adaptive and enduring.

Because we moved into the village because it was a great place to live.

So keep it alive and make it a place that others like you want to live in, too.

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Classifieds

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I'm doing Twitter teardowns. For $100 (parity pricing enabled), I record a 15min video going through your Twitter profile, pointing out what keeps you from gaining more of the right followers more easily. Strategic mistakes, low-hanging fruits to immediately change, and confusing copy: I'll find it all and tell you about it. Learn more about the teardowns and watch a real free example video here.​

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I want to highlight a newsletter that I read almost religiously: Alts.co. They highlight alternative assets, investments outside the traditional realm. I loved their episode on Game Trading Cards, or investing in Wine and Whisky. Even Micro SaaS made it in there! Every week, I get introduced to something I never knew I could invest in. Interested?​

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Another platform I regularly use is Skillshare. Not only do I consume lots of courses there; I am an instructor on the platform as well. Get a free month of Skillshare Explore: thousands of hands-on creative classes with one membership. I learned photography with that — and even though 90% of my photos are of my dog, they are GOOD photos of my dog. Just saying.

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