These are mostly our personal observations from one context (India), talking mostly to early and mid-career individuals (18-35 years in age). It’s not a grand report, more like a culmination of learnings from 300+ 1:1s, 1 year of full-time community building efforts (February 2022-January 2023), and running 2 EAGxs in India (2023 and 2025). It's possible that we are wrong about some of this. We're sharing these learnings anyway in case they’re useful for others thinking about community building in India.
Thanks to @Dion🔸 at CEA who encouraged us to write this up. We kept putting it off, partly because we were unsure how useful it would be. But after getting multiple nudges, we updated to the practice of sharing an honest account rather than wait for something more polished. So here it is. We also want to thank Jayat Joshi (SAFL), @diksha_shrivastava13 and @ChetanKharbanda (Impactful Giving) for providing valuable inputs and feedback.
Summary of Key Learnings
- Community building can mean a lot of things. Funders, individuals, and organisations will have very different thoughts on what is important. Choosing when and where to put your focus is important; otherwise, it’s easy to be all over the place with no concrete results. There are ways to manage this (have expanded on this below).
- In communities with large geographies like India, there are times when people end up arguing about centralisation vs decentralisation, and it rarely leads anywhere useful. What we've seen working better is a simple split: people act independently, but information lives in one shared platform. For example, a central forum with strong moderation, while events and initiatives are run by different groups. That combination feels more alive and scalable. When it flips - centralised control but information being scattered, it starts to feel overly hierarchical and less like a community.
- Building agency in people requires someone to place early trust in them. People in India can often benefit from a serious starting point, a first opportunity under the wing of someone credible. This could even look like a structured, meaningful volunteering role.
- Long feedback loops make it harder to retain even motivated people. People often drop off not because they stop caring but because months pass without visible progress or external validation. In India, this is sharper given there are fewer peers doing similar work, fewer organisations to benchmark against, and the opportunity cost of not taking a conventional job compounds over time. Especially given many individuals in the age group most EAs are in also think about being able to support their parents post-retirement or younger siblings. This might be true in other cultures too, but seeing peers grow in their careers while not being able to do so yourself puts people off/hurts them professionally when they see they are not able to hit their financial goals in life.
- In India, there’s huge interest and demand for long-term engagement such as mentorship, career guidance, and long-term roles, rather than one-off events, although such convenings have their place and importance too.
- People self-discover EA because of the ideas, they get excited because of the creative freedom it offers, and stay because of the people.
- 70:30 (experienced:new) is a good ratio to maintain a strong epistemic culture while also nurturing freshness in the community. Part of the job of a community builder is to be a strong curator.
- Belongingness in the community comes from checking in with community members even when they're not being 'useful' or 'impactful'. And yes, it makes a difference. Also, you can't do this for everyone, but it can sometimes make the difference between fallouts and founders.
- People want to engage - what stops them is impostor syndrome, and not knowing what difference their actions can make.
- The solution - Someone senior to place trust in the younger, involving them in small projects that have clear feedback loops. And slowly make them comfortable with much longer feedback loops where you often have to go ahead with the wisdom, and a leap of faith. Shorter feedback loops are great to stay motivated, longer feedback loops are what actually generate exponential returns. Invisible in the start and then suddenly a big return - See percolation effect.
- If you’re trying to facilitate impactful collaborations between people, on average you’ll need to talk to ~150 people before you start hitting good co-founder-level matches, even if you're working with a highly competent and professional audience pool. Events are the fastest and most scalable way to get to this we've noticed. This is because for co-founder level matching you need to hit - competence, vibe, complementary skills, similar life-stage, shared context, care about the same problem, timing. Would be keen to learn from others more experienced in this if their observations are different.
- When choosing what to focus on re community building, focus on resources that are surplus in your region - for eg. The US has surplus capital so it makes sense that they have a lot of grant-making organisations. In India, there’s a perceived surplus of technical talent, so community building activities that focus on drawing out or channeling that talent into EA causes could be a useful thing to do. But in most cases, you'll recognise there's a barrier to channeling that surplus, for instance:
- Funders need to see examples of people they're excited by, doing work they can see matters (sometimes you need to put extra effort in making your context legible to the funder)
- Individuals need to see promising opportunities to work on, that can use their skills and start paying reasonably well in a year or two
- Organisations need funds to be able to hire the best talent
- Scarcity of any of this can lead to zero-sum games, even in impact-focused communities. Here's a demo:
- Less funders - People protect their contacts and stop sharing information
- Less talent - Orgs try to poach each other's talent, and stop sharing their talent directory
- Less organisations - Community members stop sharing info about opportunities with each other
- Information asymmetry leads to power dynamics and the prisoners' dilemma
- A community-builders' unsaid job is to create abundance that can turn these zero sum games into positive sum games or win-win situations, when people can't discover it themselves.
- You CANNOT take sides, no matter what your personal opinion might be. People will try to extract it out of you. Not taking sides may cost you some relationships, but remember, as a community builder, your responsibility is towards the community, not towards any particular individual or a group of individuals. There will be people who will understand this and will support you regardless.
- You cannot force people to collaborate with each other if they don't like each other, even if the upside of that collaboration could be very high. Should this hurt the community or impact prospects? No. Does it? Yes. Can we do something about it? Yes. If it's important enough, you might need to act as the bridge. They might be open to collaborate with you if you've maintained a professional relationship and stayed non-allied. This puts you in a position to be able to do things none of them could/would do by themselves. Being a mediator is often a thankless, but super important role.
- Inspire people to build towards something, rather than running away from something. Inspiration leads to action, fear leads to inaction. There are times when fear is a useful motivator - but only if the forthcoming crisis is short lived and imminent.
- If you ever have to choose between competence and culture, choose culture fit, unless you're really short on time - in our experience, this applies in hiring as well as building a community.
- It takes a minimum of 2 years to do something mildly successful. So, prepare to have a 2-year runway if you want to do something unconventional aka a job you can't explain to your family/friends like Chandler (from F.R.I.E.N.D.S), eg. community building as a professional role.
- To do such roles in a way that does not lead to anxiety, you will need to be pretty risk-tolerant.
- You also need to be okay with receiving criticism and even being disliked by some.
- To protect the culture and core interests of the community, sometimes you need to take harsh decisions and even let go of some people even though inclusiveness is a core value in this community. If you're ever in such a situation, it's best to take suggestions from the community health team at CEA before acting on your instincts. There are some people with a strong sense of handling this well, even having one of them you can reach out to immediately is worth keeping in mind. It's a useful skill to learn anyway.
- Legibility or rather legible transparency in this community is not optional, but foundational. When you share your claims, observations, thoughts, openly, document your process and reasoning choices, it’s easier for someone externally to see how you’re steering and suggest when you’re hitting or missing something. Something we would do differently if we had to start all over again, is work on our legibility. It can often get deprioritised in front of other urgent tasks that keep coming up, which always seem more important to do, but as we've learnt over time, legibility affects credibility.
- It’s easy to think of community building as running activities, eg. ‘we’re running talks, workshops, meet-ups etc’ but if donated money is going into it then building useful calibrations for how well your efforts are translating into impact is important. One way is to benchmark against incubators or EAGx(s). For example, If you were able to help 10 people transition by running a 250-person event at a budget of 100k USD, see if your community building activities are beating that benchmark.
- Impact measurement looks different based on what goals you have set for community building. For example, if your focus is bringing new talent to EA, you can measure it by how many people have counterfactually made transitions into EA causes OR How many superstar agentic people you’re able to bring into EA causes.
- Before you recruit someone into this path, be honest about what the career pathway actually looks like right now . Many people will drop out as a result of career uncertainty. That's okay [Look at self-selection: Like the deductible in insurance] What’s not okay is them finding out mid-journey that the pathway was hazier than they were led to believe. That can become a trust problem which is harder to recover from, and has led to EA criticism and value drift in the past.
- When building your team, take time to get to know people through interviews, regardless of whether it’s for a professional or a volunteer role. A team that gels well together can outdo a team where you have stronger individual contributors but one or two people's energy lowers the others'.
- Investing time and effort in building 1:1 relationships with credible people has long-term and compounding value, outside of EA too. Don’t shove EA down people’s throats/don’t become an EA missionary, especially as a community builder. Just know why you are doing it. Most people will weigh how you carry yourself - politeness, ability to articulate things, how informed you are, a general sense of discretion more than the words you say. What values you embody engage people more than the words you say. The way to be a good representative of EA is to embody its core values: Open-mindedness, Good Calibration, Agency, Inclusiveness. Or in other words - Purity in heart, Clarity in thought, Sincerity in action. And once you engage people with this aptitude, people will engage with you more. Offer them opportunities to read and connect with the best representatives of EA you know. And that's how they will get invested. Slowly, by wanting to be around people that are different. Who genuinely care. Who truly listen. Who are really trying.
- Lack of research training costs Indian people real opportunities. Regardless of the opportunity, it’s a competitive skill to build and puts you far above the rest.
- Doing field trips to orgs doing their groundwork is underrated, and should be done more. It inspires people in a way no talk in a closed room will.
- Senior people in the community can be more proactive in offering mentorship or apprenticeship opportunities to the younger. We've tried to make it easier for them through our virtual co-working and volunteering efforts.
- Pick each group - Individuals, Organisations, Funders. Sample 5 people who seem strong representatives of a particular viewpoint. It's best if these 5 people have different views. Have 1:1s with all of them, that would be 15-20 1:1s max. Curate all the points, not just summaries, and share in the group, create a poll.
- Figure out everyone’s priorities by having 1:1s directly with them - identify their barriers - is there anything in there that is important but nobody’s job yet.
- Some people will ask you to do extensive research before taking a single step, others will tell you to just pick one thing and stick to it. Both miss important nuances, and it depends more on your strengths than you might realise. If you're stuck in analysis paralysis, it's best to start with something and figure it out on the way. A community works differently from an organisation. Evaluate Depth-first vs Breadth-first approaches. Use iterative deepening/spaghetti on the wall/everything at once pilots. Learn through action.
- Take the information, drop the emotion and keep doing the work. But be open to pivot or reprioritise things if the new piece of information reveals a blindspot. Example: SBF Information - Find out how much media risk there really is. Is it legal? What are the cruxes of the people involved, what will make them change their mind about things etc.
- People don't like filling surveys. For instance, every time we've shared one, it has taken at least 5-10 follow-ups and personal chasing, and despite all that very few people fill the survey, and with sub-par context. Instead do polls, and then DM and set 1:1s with the people who participated, to get more context.
Engaging with EA India
Where You Can Help Us
We’re a small, hands-on team juggling a lot, and there are a few areas where we’d really welcome support. Here are some ways you can support us:
- Public Writing & Content: This post took us a while to write and finally publish. Writing regularly hasn’t been a strong habit for us yet. If you found it useful and want to see more, let us know what we should write next here. We’re also open to co-authoring. If interested, reach out to us on [email protected].
- Defining Success Metrics for Meta Work: The impact of community building is hard to measure. We’re experimenting, but would appreciate inputs. What would you consider meaningful metrics of success for a group like INI? Curious to know your thoughts in the comments.
- Social Media Support: Our social media presence is… underwhelming. If you like crafting posts, telling stories, and building community online, we’d love your help. If you're interested in volunteering or collaborating on this, reach out to us on [email protected].
This is also an invitation
If you're thinking about working in India or trying to figure out how to do that well, we’re happy to chat. We’ve learned a lot, the hard way at times, and would love to save you some time and money. We’re also open to collaboration, cross-posting, feedback, comparing notes, partnerships etc. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.
We believe that any global initiative trying to be future-proof needs a thoughtful India strategy, and we’d love to see more people building thoughtfully here!
You can reach us on [email protected] or fill your preference here
– The INI Team
