Join the conversation with 1800+ supportive Western New York startup founders, operators and supporters.
Community Rules
The community has created a set of rules that we ask people to abide by:
- Everyone is Welcome. We're an open and inclusive slack that supports the WNY Startup Community. If you want to support startups, we want to have you as a member.
- We're here to support Founders. Founders are the engine of the startup community. If you're not a founder, but you're here, your job is to support them through whatever means you have to contribute. We welcome service providers and supporters, but the needs of Founders trump your needs/wants in this community. The rules reflect that.
- We have a 20 year vision. Every day we're here building the community of the future. When you make a decision, think about what it's impact will look like with second and third order effects. How are we making WNY's startup community stronger?
- Give First. In the startup world, Give First means simply trying to help anyone - especially entrepreneurs - with no expectation of getting anything back. It's the pay-it-forward principle that builds strong startup networks.
- This is a _**"no sales zone" (unless you're a Founder). **_Sorry sales-people, we didn't aggregate a startup community for you to sell to. We built it to build VC-backable companies. If you try and sell here, you will be asked to leave. As a rule, Founders don't have money and if they do, they should spend it on building their product and team (Not your services/products). You can build relationships through sharing your deep expertise, industry knowledge, and network - so please bring those to the table (not your pitch).
- We request Display Names start with the name you would introduce yourself by at an in-person meeting. This community is about building relationship between humans, not providing a platform for brands. You're allowed to add flare to your Display Name. i.e. Good Form : Jane Smith - Brand Good Form: Jane Smith Bad Form: Brand Name Bad Form: ZeroCool1984
- Hate speech will not be tolerated. Enough said.
- Harassment will not be tolerated. This is a professional place for people to do business and everyone is welcome: sexual, gender, pronouns, age, race, and other class based harassment are forbidden. This includes comments in DMs. Two Maxims: "If you don't have something nice to say, say nothing at all.", "Don't comment on people's appearances, only their ideas."
- **Use threaded replies or DMs whenever possible. **Threading allows for high information density and makes large community slacks easier to participate in.
- Reserve the use of @here for time sensitive requests of medium priority. If we overuse broad-reach notifications, no one will respond because they will have muted notifications from this slack.
- Reserve the use of @channel for high importance, high urgency communications. If we ping everyone to their phone more than once a week without adding value, people will start to mute notifications from this slack.
- DM negative feedback to the individual. There's over 1,800 people on this slack, realize that when you provide negative feedback. If you're a jerk to someone, you look like a jerk in front of a room full of people.