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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?
  4. 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.
  5. 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).
  6. 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
  7. Hate speech will not be tolerated. Enough said.
  8. 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."
  9. **Use threaded replies or DMs whenever possible. **Threading allows for high information density and makes large community slacks easier to participate in.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.