By Chris Heivly, Managing Director at Build The Fort and Startup Community EIR @ Techstars

One of the sneakiest barriers to building a company — or a community — is the presence of artificial constraints. These are the "rules" that someone else makes up, often because it serves their own agenda, not yours.

I’ve been around long enough to remember when a venture capitalist told me, “You can’t build a real company outside of Silicon Valley.” It sounds absurd now, but even 15-20 years ago, that was considered conventional wisdom. If you weren’t rubbing shoulders on Sand Hill Road, you weren’t serious. But here’s the thing: even back then, there were plenty of billion-dollar companies thriving in places the Valley barely knew existed.

I know because I helped build one — MapQuest — in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Hardly the heart of the tech universe. But we didn’t buy into those artificial constraints. Honestly, I don’t think we even heard them. We were too focused on what we were doing: disrupting how people used maps. We knew we were onto something, and the fact that we weren’t based in California never crossed our minds as a limitation.

It’s incredibly easy to let artificial constraints seep into your thinking, especially if you’re in a startup community without a long track record of success stories. The voices around you — sometimes well-meaning, sometimes self-serving — might start to sound like gospel: “You can’t raise venture capital here.” “No big tech company would ever be interested in a startup from this city.” “There aren’t enough engineers to scale.”

None of it has to be true.

As a community leader, your job is to actively ignore these supposed "truths." Don’t acknowledge them. Don’t give them an ounce of credibility. Your community — and the entrepreneurs in it — are only as limited as you allow yourselves to be.

We are living proof that geography, access, pedigree — these are not immovable obstacles. They’re only limitations if you let them be. Your mindset is the real constraint. Break that, and the possibilities multiply fast.

In short: burn other people’s rule book. Don’t let someone else's small thinking box you in. Think bigger than your surroundings. Believe in the impossible, because history shows over and over — the people who change the world are the ones who refuse to believe they’re constrained.

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