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

Startup communities fail all the time. In fact, right now, I would guess that over half of the communities that have deployed serious dollars and effort are failing. Not in some dramatic, buildings-on-fire, investors-fleeing-town kind of way. Community failure is sneakier than that. It usually shows up wearing a sponsor badge, standing near the coffee, saying things like “ecosystem alignment” and “innovation district.”

What I am saying is that community failure rarely walks into the room wearing a black cape, twirling a mustache, and announcing, “Good evening, I am here to destroy your entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

Now, before someone throws a locally roasted coffee at me, let me clarify. I am not saying your city is doomed. I am not saying your accelerator is useless. I am not saying your coworking space is just expensive Wi-Fi, exposed brick, and a kombucha tap.

Here is the only question that you need to decide if you are failing: are founders better off?

If the answer is no, or even “we’re not sure,” failure may have just tapped you on the shoulder.

The simplest definition I know is this: community failure occurs when the startup community starts serving itself rather than the founders.

And the signs are usually right in front of us.

Sign #1: Founders stop engaging.

Not all at once. They just quietly disappear. They skip the breakfasts, start avoiding panels, and stop answering emails from “ecosystem leaders.” Founders are busy. If they do not see value, they vote with their feet. This is the biggie, and this is the first audit I do when arriving in a new city. No founders showing up is failure.

Sign #2: There are more non-founders than founders at the important meeting.

Sorry to say that I see this all too often. To be clear, I appreciate the desire to help your community, but if you are holding meetings without founders in the room, you are failing your community. Period.

Sign #3: Mentorship is dated.

I have been tugging at this one lately. The best mentorship is 1-on-1. Programmatic mentorship is better than none, but still suboptimal. The worst is when founders sense advice from a world that no longer exists. Want to know if mentorship is failing? Ask 10 founders who their fav mentor is, and then see if they are local. If most are from out of town, then you are failing.

Sign #4: New investors and investor groups aren’t growing.

A growing ecosystem organically adds new investors or investor groups. This happens when there are more good deals than investors. That void becomes obvious and wants to be filled. But it cannot be engineered or subsidized. If your community is not seeing new investor groups showing up, your foundation is failing.

Sign #5: Marketing your startup region.

I love a good marketing strategy, but I just don't believe cities/regions should waste time and effort on marketing techniques that will fail in the long run. This is a classic signal that says the region is more important than the individual founders.

Community failure is not always loud.

Community failure is not permanent. It is a signal.

So when it taps you on the shoulder, do not form a committee to study the tapping.

So look.

Ask better questions.

Ask a founder what they need.

Then put the founders back in the center of your plans.

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