Last week I was talking to an entrepreneur that worked out of the Atlanta Tech Village for several years. When his original startup didn’t work out he went and joined a different startup. Now, he’s on his third one. Only, this one is with someone he met at the Tech Village during his first one.
Seeing this “recycling” of entrepreneurs where startups are regularly shut down and new ones formed — often with serial founders and friends from the startup community — was an early dream and vision of the Tech Village. The idea: let’s get hundreds of people under the same roof building the future while surrounding them with everything we can to increase their chance of success. A byproduct would then be recombinations of entrepreneurs — some entrepreneurs move on from their current venture and start new ventures with other entrepreneurs they’ve met along the way. Now, 10 years later, we’ve seen this happen many times.
To promote relationship building we work on ways to engineer serendipity through programs and events as well as shared resources like kitchens and common spaces. In the world of distributed teams and remote work environments, human relationships are more important than ever, and physical spaces, while not used in the same ways as pre-COVID, are still critical for bringing people together.
The more entrepreneurs spend time with other entrepreneurs, the greater the chance they find a match for a future startup. Entrepreneurs combining on new startups is a strong signal this works and an integral part of startup communities.
David Cummings on Startups 