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Had to choose between a free online network and a paid local group...
When I started my small business here in Austin, I faced a real choice. I could join a free online entrepreneur group with thousands of members, or pay $200 for a yearly membership to a local, in-person meetup. I went with the free one, thinking bigger was better... but it was a ghost town. The posts were all spammy links, and no one ever replied to my questions. After six months, I switched to the local group. The first meeting I went to, I met a guy who runs a print shop. He gave me a direct quote on some materials I needed, saying 'I can get you that for 30% less.' That one connection saved me more than the membership fee. Has anyone else found that smaller, paid networks actually deliver more value than the huge free ones?
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robert_roberts6mo ago
Yeah, I read something about that. They said free groups often have a "tragedy of the commons" problem, where no one feels responsible for making it good.
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sullivan.abby5mo ago
Not sure you need to call it a "tragedy of the commons," it's just people not caring because they didn't pay anything. Paid groups just tend to weed out the people who aren't serious, it's not that deep.
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