On Building Communities

I’ve noticed that my biggest breakthroughs in business always came during stretches when the number of new acquaintances and partners around me suddenly spiked. Everything in this world arrives through people: opportunities, projects, ideas, insights.

The internet tore down the borders — it gave us access to an enormous number of people. Today we can share what we think and find kindred spirits at a scale that, just twenty years ago, would have seemed impossible. Take this channel, for example: I can’t sit down with each of you and walk you through my ideas one by one, but here I become “legible” even to people who don’t always share my views.

You’ll agree that when we pick a partner, we’ll more often go with the one who is open and transparent — even if we don’t agree with them on everything — than with someone who is a “black box” of unpredictable actions and motives.

Building communities is a key not only in business but in any other field too: hobbies, science, the arts. Wherever a community is born, multiplied growth begins.

For a long time I lived by inertia, on the old Soviet pattern of “don’t stand out,” and stayed as private a person as I could be. But unless you’re running shady schemes, working for the security services, or mixed up in crime, that strategy only holds you back. Today it’s the opposite: the more people we gather around ourselves, the more value we create — for ourselves and for others.

Right now I’m launching communities one after another — around business, around hobbies, around AI initiatives. And every time I’m reminded of the same thing: there’s no reason to be shy about it. What’s more, the “more boring” a niche looks at first glance, the more often that’s exactly where the highest-quality people gather, and the more real, measurable growth shows up for the whole community.

There’s a well-known line from Jim Collins in Good to Great: “No company can grow revenues consistently faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth.”

I’d add to it: no company can grow faster than its ability to build new social connections.

Here’s to all of us building communities around what we love — and growing right along with them! 😎