Number of Members in Your Founders’ Group

In response to the question “what is the ideal number of members in your founders’ group,” we love this response from Sky Blue with TheNextBigStep (published with permission):

I think 5 people is minimum. If you can’t reconcile your vision for a community with at least 4 other people, you might have hard time creating something that’s going to be appealing to more than that. I also think that in terms of both the social dynamics and simply the time and energy needed, 5 is the minimum to really get going.

But I think Yana is right too. Three could be a fine place to start for just the initial visioning stage. I think you pretty quickly want to get to a place where you’re clear enough about what you want that you can start inviting more people in. More than 5 can work too. I would agree that you probably don’t want to be more than 8 until you’ve got a lot of stuff worked out, unless the relationships are really solid and you’re doing a good job of working out early governance and project management stuff.

It all depends. There’s no magic formula. Every founding story of a successful community is going to be different. It’s related to what I like to caution around “best practices.” On some level ICs are all far more alike than they are different. And I think people would do well to recognize that more and reach out to each other for support more. But on another level, each is unique. And what might be a best practice for one community might not be for another, even if they are very similar in many respects.

photo by Jed Villejo