Hi HN community!<p>A huge number of startup founders are reading Hacker News, but it's still very hard to make new personal connections here and help each other with product building, growth, or fundraising.<p>As an experiment to make HN founder community more connected, I've created a system of chat groups, organized by location, industry sector, and priority tasks.<p>We were testing it out for the last couple of weeks, starting with 200+ YCombinator alum companies. Now already have 1000+ startups there, and 80+ venture investors have joined to connect with founders early. Many pitch practices scheduled, intros made, spontaneous meetups planned, and even a few seed rounds have been raised using chat intros there.<p>Check it out: <a href="https://openland.com/invite/OIaK6GJ" rel="nofollow">https://openland.com/invite/OIaK6GJ</a>
The web and iOS app are both really buttery. Hat's off to your product team I'm sure they will continue to produce quality. Seems the make or break it here will be the community and the sticky-ness.<p>What is your strategy to onboard and retain a community that will be comparable to YC's Bookface? (assuming that's the goal)
I've been using Openland for some weeks and I'm impressed! The product is great and you clearly notice that they are improving every day.<p>The quality of the community is another plus. The possibility to connect, learn and collaborate with founders from other companies is a huge thing.
I feel like this is about the 347th time some variation of this has been attempted. None of them have "stuck" yet AFAIK. But what the hey, I'm game to give it a shot.