Ask HN: Solopreneurs, how do you maintain a professional/social network?

Joining communities and virtual meet-ups is helpful. I really like this one: https://microsaashq.com - it's community plus newsletter for solo-founders/bootstrappers.

In the same boat, I left 2 months ago to bootstrap my own startup. I'd recommend getting a shared co-working space. It'll give you home/work separation and you'll get to meet others who are in a similar situation and you can bounce ideas off or just socialize. Of course, keeping up with friends, ex-coworkers and getting lunch/coffee every once in a while is nice too. Good luck!

You need to change your mindset. I.e. as a founder you should become a content creator which is different from a regular peer social contact. I.e. the amount of people in your network should increase 100X but you will not know most of them.

The best way is to become a B2B creator in linked in.

As a creator you should be ready to add value to your network in any post. It is a lot of free work, but the main goal is to gain trust.

Once you have the trust, you can start asking the network to be customers, etc.

Well, first you join HN, :) but after that:

1. If you're into in-person, there's groups for startups and particular tech topics (like a programming language), on meetup.com and elsewhere. Just Web search for your city and the topic. Also, some universities will post calendars of talks that are open to the public (and some departments will have their own calendars that have more things than the main university calendar does).

2. For online activity throughout the day (but which you can turn off), there's online chats for various tech topics. Some of these turn into long-term online socializing (sometimes with a forked channel, so the public topic one remains, but some people also off in the one where everyone is familiar and generally talk about other things).

I joined some Discord servers for maps, webgl (I'm building a mapping application) and I created one of my own. This has mostly filled the workplace Slack void. I hop in there or mute it whenever the mood strikes.

I answer some questions on StackOverflow to fill the void of mentoring in my past jobs.

I work from coffee shops or WeWork to have the opportunity for random small talk with strangers.

I do a few running clubs, pickup soccer games or hikes from Meetup to meet and talk with new people.

I try to read and reply to comments on Hacker News.

This mostly fills my socializing needs, but I also live with my girlfriend and we're semi introverted so it might not be enough for people who lean more extrovert.

I went solo about 2.5 years ago and Twitter has surprisingly filled that gap for me. I ruthlessly prune the folks I’m following which makes me enjoy the space way more than if I followed a ton of folks. The relationships go so far as to meeting IRL with a bunch of them at a recent conference.

Lunch/Dinner — of my favorite: walk and talks — with former colleagues a couple times a month. I really have to nudge myself for social contact since I'm a hermit by nature and can easily go long stretches without connecting with friends or family. This same principle applies for maintaining my professional network.

I joined a discord channel to help people with some tech I’m an expert at. As a side effect I’m now one of the “regulars” and we lightly chat a bit through the week. It feels about right for me.

It depends what you’re looking for.

1. Join a social club (golf, shooting, cars, etc) or if you’re religious in any way a church (or equivalent in your area / belief system). These help build connections in the local community and branch out. It’s good socially and professionally.

2. Go to meet ups / conferences and force yourself to meet people and make connections. Meet for coffee, lunch, etc

3. Keep in touch with former coworkers. I tend to reach out to everyone at least twice a year and wish everyone happy new year, etc.

4. Reach out to people on GitHub, linkedin, what have you via email. I tend to meet some interesting folks that way.

I personally blog, post here a lot, have a farm (work with neighbors to get stuff done - the farm is not where I live), join local social groups and make sure I know my neighbors where I live and get together.

One of the easiest ways is Meetup.com. If you don't find a community that works, you can create your own. Twitter is helpful for finding people and their new Circles feature looks interesting. I don't use Facebook much these days, but have joined several groups in the past. It's a lot of work, but I also once (pre-Twitter) built my own website with a forum and posted articles and tutorials that got pretty good search engine traffic and pulled like-minded people to my site.

So this is just my experience and absolutely not some advice.

Building and talking to customers takes all my time. I stoped attending meetups and going to events if I don't have something concrete to show or to talk about.

A network is a very valuable asset, but networking looks like a productive activity where in reality it is a time and energy trap.

I wish I spent more time being social for my own sake but honestly I just don't have the time to do it all especially since I don't have someone to share the work burden.

So yeah I just live like a monk and I am mostly fine with that otherwise I would look for a cofounder.

This is in my opinion what being early stage look like, a relevant network will grow with the business.

Co-working space was the way to go for me. Some co-working spaces are run by very friendly and out-going community managers that really work hard to bring people together and I think this works well especially for shy/introverted people like myself.

It's been a while since I was bootstrapping anything, but at the time I really enjoyed these: https://bootstrappersbreakfast.com/

You might enjoy an online community like https://wannabe-entrepreneur.com

Profesional/social i always found rather lonely. I joined a local programming language meetup, which was something, but its not directly related to what i do, and it's died off since corona. Profession specific network i find rather difficult, as in my business basically everyone is a competitor. Also, since everything can be done online and remote, even contact with customers is limited. The most difficult is not having someone to reflect off ideas, so often a lot of gambling when taking decisions.

Find a community of practice -- Indiehackers, listserv, whatever -- and be useful to colleagues with advice and encouragement.

Across a couple of solopreneur careers, I've found that this creates deep connections and lasting networks.

I have been a solo entrepreneur for about 10 years. I guess I’m lucky since my wife is a stay at home mom and we’ve been able to keep each other company. Outside of that, I play a lot of sports, so I engage with people that way. I’m also friends with other entrepreneurs, and we sometimes go to one another’s apartments to work. My schedule is pretty flexible, outside of kid duties, so whenever opportunities crop up to do something new and interesting, I try to take advantage of it.

For starters, you can stop thinking of making friends as “maintaining a social network”.

As some one was mentioning in the comments, https://microsaashq.com is one the communities out there and I run this community. Its primarily an async community for conversations.

Also, note that its not just a simple community but its a massive ecosystem for Micro SaaS builders with niche reports (detailed reports for multiple ideas in a given niche along with a lot of analysis on technical chops, marketing chops, competitor analysis etc, costs analysis to implement an idea). We also recently launched Founder Insights series with Founder Interviews from 1000+ founders mapped to each niche.

And to answer your original question around communities - Our community has all conversations ranging from mental health to idea feedback to landing pages feedback to sharing wins/loses with some weekly streaks/monthly streaks.

Would be happy to answer any questions. I am a builder and I myself took a few of these models and implemented successfully.

I leveraged the silence to focus on shipping, and went to friends (physically) when I felt lonely. If you are looking for other builders to hang out with, check out StartupSchool and IndieHackers.

Post launch, life has been chaotic, and now there are times I miss the tranquility.

Good luck!

Having a community of people outside of work (such as religious, hobby-based, etc.) helps a lot. I found that "founder-focused" Slack workspaces tend to just be a waste of time (everyone is just trying to sell to each other).

I enjoy sharing an office space with someone else who has a similar work schedule and work ethic as mine. Even though our industries are unrelated, we can still talk through ideas as we both do sales.

Going out on a midday run with someone has also been good as it is social and helps break up the work day.

Find a few events in person or online to attend every week or two. If you can’t find one, consider starting one, there probably are others just like you in your area. I was lucky to do the latter and start a small group in my city about 10y ago and it has become a great group of friends who were acquaintances or strangers that has experienced exits, marriages, babies, first house purchases and moving to different cities.

I highly recommend daily walks with your SO or cofounder to talk through whatever issues you’re working through at the time.

There’s something about the different context and a stroll while explaining something to someone else that can help lead to clarity.

When things are in beta, set up a chat room or forum asap. The PhotoStructure forum and Discord have been invaluable to me, and to my users.