Ask HN: Non-valley startup guy. How do I find an entrepreneur community? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Non-valley startup guy. How do I find an entrepreneur community?

I live in Jacksonville, FL. It's not known for its booming tech scene. Although there are a few folks doing some interesting things, I don't know anyone in the area that might be experiencing some of the same things as I am and no one I can sit down and have a beer with and talk shop with someone who understands.

Any ideas, online or otherwise?

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I launched a meetup when I moved to a new city that targeted self-starter developers of any sort. I knew some folks in that category would be entrepreneurs naturally or that I could convince them :-)

You can launch your own with us. I'm trying to template our once-a-month freeform hackathon approach so anyone (like you) can launch a "Code Until Dawn" meetup in their town. * http://codeuntildawn.com * http://meetup.com/codeuntildawn

I was and still in truth am a beginner developer, and I took that time to continue learning and asking for advice. It was one of the best decisions I've made professionally.

The community may be disparate in your city, but you can stand as a magnet for the right kinds of folks just by making an effort to organize.

In short, go to things. Lots. I've talked about this a bit here: http://bit.ly/MbQOkf

If there are no things, start hosting.

http://nreduce.com/ is pretty awesome.

Meetup.com

Yep. Get a paid Meetup.com account and start a "FOO Area Startup Group" meetup, give it all the correct tags, and once a few people join, start doing meetups. They don't necessarily have to be anything fancy, just meeting at a Barnes & Noble or Starbucks for coffee is a good way to get started.

Go from there. Practice marketing the group the way you'd market a business. Mine LinkedIn for leads, cold-email people, ask for referrals, all the normal stuff.

Edit: Almost forgot... use the "Hackers & Founders" name, and be sure to join the national Hackers & Founders mailing list. When you have meetings, announce them here on HN, use Twitter, G+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

If there isn't much of an entrepreneurial scene locally, you might not be so much finding one as helping create one. Good luck.

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