About a year ago, I wrote a thread on how I went from being a non-tech college student with no work experience to working full-time in web3 within eight months.
A laptop and an internet connection are all I had.
Around 13 months later, I'm still here. Still wandering around the jungle gym that web3 is. I now work as the non-tech "Swiss army knife" at Gum and also look after the Indian community of Superteam - the one place that has changed my life, professional and personal, forever.
When I joined this community in September 2021 though, Superteam was not even called Superteam. It was called 'Superpumped' and instead of a Discord, it was a small Slack channel I was not qualified to be a part of at all.
I knew Akshay and Tanmay were onto something, so I was all in. What I didn't see coming was the impact it'll have on my life and hundreds of others.
During this time, out of a combination of deliberate efforts, a couple of mistakes, pure luck and a good dose of serendipity, I managed to leverage the Superteam community and network to find some of my best friends, the jobs I have today, a place in the ecosystem and a plethora of new opportunities.
This blog is my attempt to identify and lay out some things that worked out for me and could help a few of you as well.
So, here goes.
This should come off as obvious, but I've found it to be the hardest for new people who join an existing community.
Joining a community that's been around for a while is like coming late to a party in which everyone knows each other already. It's hard to get involved and you feel like an outsider.
But this is also a good thing. If a community seems a little hard to break into, it means there's something there that people really enjoy and relate to. Becoming a part of this group is naturally going to be hard but the best way to do it is to get involved in discussions in the community's Discord/Slack channels.
Superteam has a channel called #share-an-insight and I don't think I've spent any day without checking what's the latest on it since joining.
Here are a few things you can start with to get involved:
Share links you find interesting
Ask relevant questions from the group
If there's a discussion going on and you have an opinion to share, do it
If someone has asked for help, be the person who helps out
Once you've spoken to a few people, you're in. The party is yours to navigate and have fun in.
If a community is a party, events are the party games and the side discussions. This is where bonds are made stronger.
Most communities you join will have calls and online events. These can be community calls, watch parties, or gaming nights - you need to find what's happening this week and show up.
Like joining a community, going to an event might be intimidating as well but there are a bunch of benefits when you break that barrier and join one.
These are usually hosted/attended by the most active people in the community
They are mostly either fun-oriented or information-oriented and you cannot go wrong with either
Talking > Chatting over text
Strengthens your sense of belonging and gives you a true sense of whether this community is for you or not
Now you are an active part of a community. Other people enjoy having you around and you've made some connections.
What's next? Give something productive to the group.
The best way to build your reputation as an active contributor to a community is to figure out what it needs, take initiative and get it done.
This is a generalised point because every community needs different things done at different points in time. They might need a new moderator, a writer, or someone to redesign their website. You can find these tasks in a community's task list or from the moderator/community lead. F around, find out.
When I joined Superteam in the early days, I wanted to get involved so I joined hands with Scriblooooor and started working on Ground Zero. That project not only helped me learn a lot, but it also helped me connect with other people in the community and gain credibility by shipping an informative project.
Irfan (now co-founder of Cubik), Aarushe and Abhishek are a few folks who've followed similar paths, helped out Superteam's open-sourced projects get better and then gotten involved in the community further.
Helping never goes wrong.
You've been looking for things to do but can't find anything that suits you? Make your own things to do.
Communities, especially web3 ones, are often built around the ethos of permissionless work. This idea can be perceived negatively as free work though. While it is exactly that, helping a community when no one asked you to is a show of pure positive intent.
It signals to everyone else that you want to be involved and you're committed to making this group a better place. Even if it doesn't make you any money or get you a job, the bare minimum results that you get out of it are:
One more thing added to your Proof-of-Work
Potential connections with other community members
Credibility within the group
Social capital of shipping a project
Extremely high upside, negligible downside.
This might be a clichéd point but it's powerful regardless.
Discord chats are a great way to get started but after spending some time in the community, you can identify the folks you like, who are active and of high value.
Reach out to them, get on a 1:1 call if possible and figure out ways in which you can help them or work together. The rule of showing positive intent applies to groups as well as individuals.
Connecting with people on a personal level helps you lay the foundations of future friendships, collaborations and opportunities you don't even see coming.
Send that message. Start a conversation.
The online world, especially the web3 sub-world, is a distracting place to be in.
Every one of us knows that one guy who's involved in 7 communities, does 3 jobs, makes all the money, has a work-life balance and lives in his apartment in Indiranagar. Don't be that guy.
While it is tempting to try out everything (trust me, I know), real value almost always is a result of deliberate focus.
If you have joined a community you think you want to be a part of, spend a long time dedicating your time to that community only. One community you're deeply involved in is better than 10 in which you're merely lurking around.
Orient yourself for depth over width when it comes to joining communities. If you don't feel it after spending a few weeks or months, try a new one but go all in again.
In a world full of distractions, focus is your moat.
If you've read this post till here, you must have noticed that I've not mentioned 'earning' or 'money' or 'incentives' anywhere in the discussion.
Like play-to-earn games made us realise nobody plays to earn, observing many communities has made me realise nobody gets involved in a community just for the quantitative, tangible incentives.
Maybe that works for some but it has never been the case for me. I got involved with Superteam easily because I simply, genuinely wanted to get involved. People who join communities with self-serving goals on day one (jobs, money, airdrops, etc.) can never be active contributors in the long run because their intentions were misaligned on day one.
While incentives and money and jobs do matter, thinking of them as by-products instead of targets is a better mental model to go in with.
If you find a group that aligns with your values and goals at large, being active won't be that hard. With a little bit of work and time spent, you should be able to open new roads, make new friends, find work and have some of the best times of your life that you never saw coming.
Saving this for last because this might not be possible for a few. But if you can make it to IRL meetups or community events around you, the value of the connections you make there cannot be understated.
If there are other community members in the same city as yours, organise a dinner/lunch and get the gang together.
I have seen this play out as Superteam's community has grown over time. People who met each other IRL during events like the Hacker Houses or the Crosschain Clubhouse ended up having significantly stronger bonds with each other than those who didn't make it.
Now, that does not mean you can't get involved if you can't make it to IRL meetings. You most definitely can as mentioned in the points above.
But there's something about human connection IRL that will always trump connecting via screens.
Hope these help you in getting involved in that community you've been lurking around in. If you're wondering whether communities are worth it, let me put that doubt to rest and tell you that they are.
Along with being incredibly fun, communities are the best Edtech startups in the world.
I can speak for myself that being part of Superteam has helped me grow personally and professionally in more ways than I can think of. It is filled with giga-talented folks who have helped me grow my skillsets, thinking and perspective on things. That is the qualitative ROI that people don't talk about.
So go join a group you like, meet some new people and I hope reading this helped.
This part of the newsletter marks the point where I've finished discussing what I wanted to talk about. But as over-sharing goes, here are some books, audiobooks, and podcasts that I've been enjoying over this past week.
Balaji on Erik Torenberg’s podcast on the Fiat Crisis, Russia and China
Brian Chesky’s brilliant keynote at Config 2023 (must-watch)
Community-based products with Greg Isenberg and April MacLean
Audiobook I’m listening to right now: Monetising Innovation by Georg Tacke and Madhavan Ramanujam
This is the section where I share a picture that I’ve clicked to bring some life to this long-ass page filled with words.
Here’s a picture of the ceiling inside the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey. Arguably the most beautiful piece of architecture I have ever seen along with the Taj Mahal.
Truly worth the hype.
That’s it for this time.
If you liked what you read, do subscribe and share it with others. And if you have more ideas on how I can go about this newsletter thing better, do let me know on Twitter at @paarugsethi as well.
Until next time, stay hydrated.
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