> It takes a village to raise a child; it takes a community to build a business<p>-Sahil Lavingia<p>As second-time founders and having gone through a couple of startup accelerators, we understand the immense power the network brings. Sahil aptly puts it that it takes a strong network to build and grow a successful business. A great network helps a lot in an overall journey of the founder - in hiring, finding your first customer, help you grow your business, etc. and generally these have a snowball effect where the advantage grows exponentially over time. Now the startup ecosystem has evolved a lot in the last 10-15 years where most of the startup founders get access to a strong network through startup accelerators like YC, TechStars, 500 Startups, Village Global, etc. and it continues as they raise more funds through VCs.<p>But when we embarked on a journey to create a bootstrapped business this time (why bootstrap? we'll do a separate post on that), we realized this network effect is largely absent. Yes, there are plenty of resources, forums, and groups out there, but that's not the same as having a strong network or a community. A strong community is more than just a group.<p>So we asked ourselves how can we create this strong network for the Bootstrappers? That's what we are setting out at District.so. Starting July 11th we are getting together a small group (no more than 50 people) of very ambitious early-stage Bootstrappers together and help them with various resources, workshops, weekly goal tracking. We will also bring strong network leaders, to help you through this journey so you can learn from them.<p>We are looking for people who can add value and bring diversity to the community. We are opening up our applications soon and we'd love Indie Hackers to be one of the first. Join other founders so you can be notified when it opens up -
https://district.so/bootstrappers