So start one that's completely toxic to the current mainstream culture. People forget just how unpopular tech was in the 90s/00s. Or that counter cultures are always reviled by the majority.
Maybe that's someone's jam, but I just wanted to hang out with some nerds that reminded me of back home. Everywhere else I've traveled, I could visit the local hackerspace and get my fix, but the bay area was..... different.
I'm not anti-monetization by any means, but so often I'd end up in conversations that the other partner wanted to be a startup pitch, and I wanted to just talk about something cool. There's so much premature optimization of monetization out there.
I always compare this with the grumps back in the day who thought computers were worthless. And all have a smartphone in their pocket now of course.
We could see where it was going, and as well as that the journey there was just a ton of fun. Tech doesn't have to be perfect to be worth the time.