Scaling the World's Largest Startup Community with Startup Grind's Derek Andersen
Episode 13
Startup Grind is the world’s largest community of startups, founders, innovators, and creators. This community brings like-minded yet diverse individuals together to connect, learn, teach, help, build, and belong. They do this daily through events, flagship conferences, startup programs, partnerships, and online media + content - collectively reaching over 3.5 million individuals worldwide across 600 chapters in 125 countries.
In this episode, Derek Andersen (Co-Founder & CEO of Startup Grind) and Marsha Druker (Founder of Fuckup Nights Toronto) chat about scaling a community globally, letting go of control and empowering chapter leaders, using data, why right now is such a pivotal time for the community industry, and so much more.
Derek is also the Co-Founder & CEO of Bevy, a SaaS product that helps companies like Salesforce, Atlassian, Asana, Slack and Duolingo build virtual and in-person communities.
Derek has been building communities for the past 15 years. He shares his personal journey to belonging, his successes and failures, and what community means to him.
“As community people, we often lead with our heart, and not always with our analytical brain. This allows the fires to get started inside of communities. But it's also what can lead to us getting stomped out.”
- Derek Andersen
Listen to the Episode:
Connect with Derek:
Learn more about Startup Grind:
Website | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn
Learn more about Bevy:
Website | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | CMX (Acquired by Bevy)
Connect with Marsha:
LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter | Website
A huge thank you to Origins Media Haus for producing this podcast. You can find them at:
Website | Linkedin | Instagram | Twitter
Episode Transcript:
Marsha Druker 1:24
Derek, thank you so much for joining me today on Create Community. I'm super excited to chat with you.
Derek Andersen 1:29
Excited to be here. Thanks.
Marsha Druker 1:31
I find it really fascinating how community builders actually become community builders. And something that really stood out to me in your journey, is that you moved around a lot when you were growing up. So I'm really curious about what those experiences were like, how it shaped you, and what are some of those places that you lived growing up?
Derek Andersen 1:53
I grew up in Tampa, Florida, and then when I was seven, we moved to Bordeaux, France on the southwestern coast of France. Then, after three years, we went back to the States, and then I moved to Utah for a year. And then I moved to Switzerland for a year and then Germany for two years and then back to the States. And then I lived in New Zealand for a year and I lived in the Cook Islands, which are in the South Pacific for a year. And then I lived in London for a short time.
And as a child, when you're moving around that much, you sort of realize a couple of things maybe good and bad one is you realize that if you don't quickly make friends, you're going to be miserable. And then I guess maybe a negative side effect is the fact that every year I knew that I would be saying goodbye to my friends in a pre social media, you know, kind of world we would make new friends and we'd be pretty much moving the next year and so you sort of had to move quickly and say goodbye quickly and keep moving. And so I think it made me adaptable, but it probably also makes me a hard person to become a deep friend with because I grew up not having a lot of friends over a long period of time. Just kind of short, quick, deep relationships and then moving on.
Marsha Druker 3:02
That's a really unique experience to have as a child. Did you find that each time that you moved, you were able to reinvent yourself, try new things, and seek out different communities along that journey?
Derek Andersen 3:15
Even at a young age. I mean, I remember at one school or at one stop, I didn't particularly have a great experience, didn't have a lot of friends, and then I used the next move as a chance to do exactly what you described to get better, to be better. Sort of like in the startup world, the lean startup and even as a 10-11-12 year old, definitely consciously thought about those things.
Marsha Druker 3:39
Yeah, I feel like I can relate to that. I didn't live in as many places as you, but I did immigrate to Canada with my parents. When I was fairly young. I was eight years old, and then we moved around Toronto a few times and you know, I did switch schools and I can relate to it on some level. Just having to be really open minded and seeking out those friendships and really being able to get along with people and really understand different interests.
What did you end up studying in post secondary? And how did you get started on your career?
Derek Andersen 4:07
I graduated in Marketing Communications. And during college, I was trying to sort of start my own small businesses and just trying to make money. And I think I picked a major that there was a beautiful girl that I was sort of infatuated with. And she was in that major. And so that was part of the reason I picked that major. We ended up getting married and have been married for 14 years. I think it was also something where I could learn and be creative. It was like a liberal arts degree in terms of just sort of creative side of marketing versus the business side of marketing.
Marsha Druker 4:42
I love that story. It's so interesting to hear how people choose their major. And that's amazing. I love that you guys actually got married and you pursued that relationship and you got a great degree out of it as well.
Derek Andersen 4:54
Double win.
Marsha Druker 4:55
Absolutely. And you mentioned that you had a few side hustles and startups that you were running throughout University, what were some of those companies? And did they do well or were any of them struggles?
Derek Andersen 5:05
Look, when you're in college and you make $3,000 in a month, you feel like you're on top of the world. So in some respects, they did very, very well. And in some respects, I mean, they didn't amount to anything. But I sold things on eBay or gosh, I mean, I tried to get different technology products going with very limited amounts of success, started a window washing business with one of my best friends. Just very small, non-scalable kinds of things that I could make money for the summer work for myself, and hopefully have fun with some of the people that I like to spend time with.
Marsha Druker 5:40
Vaporware Labs was your first company - why did you start it and what was it?
Derek Andersen 5:46
I was working at Electronic Arts as Product Manager, and I sort of became disenfranchised with the big company process. I wasn't feeling very creative. I was staying up really late at night just laying in bed, thinking about things that I couldn't get out of my head. And so eventually in summer 2009, I just after years of talking to my wife about it and us discussing it, and we decided that this was the right thing to do. And she has been very patient with me along that path.
And I had an idea that didn't work out - it very quickly failed, that I sort of left EA to start with, but then that morphed into something else, which morphed into something else. And so Vaporware Labs, which for those who don't know what vaporware is, or means it's kind of the worst name for a company because vaporware is basically software that never actually launches. It's like vapor, it's just like it doesn't really exist. And so you know, I thought it was a very funny, clever name and would sort of set expectations very low for people if we ever launched anything.
But we did have a couple of good ideas come out of it. Startup Grind, which is a global community for entrepreneurs, was something that came out of that and then my co-founder through that and launched a video game. We ended up building about 15 different products in different capacities, and most of them were really terrible. And nobody liked them. But a few things emerge from it that had some lasting staying power. And then we got focused on them.
Marsha Druker 7:13
Yeah, obviously, running Fuckup Nights, I'm all about failure and using your failures to propel you forward and use them as your stepping stone into success. So that's really cool. Love the name of that company. I'm curious, while you were running that startup, how were you finding your own community while you were grinding away?
Derek Andersen 7:31
Look, when you start a company, when you quit your job, you immediately have no sort of professional community. And I literally found myself working in a windowless conference room in an office park that my friend let me sort of squat in and I was just there alone for weeks and months on end and no one's emailing you and you're banging on doors, trying to get people interested in what you're doing. And it was pretty lonely. It was not what I had envisioned it would be like, but I went out and attended events and eventually created my own events with Startup Grind.
But I read a lot, used the time to get educated, and met with anybody that would take the time to meet with me. Someone gave me the advice to go to lunch with 75 engineers and to beg the best two or three to work with you. And that was advice that I found to be fairly helpful. And so I did that. So I went to lunch with a lot of people. I had a lot of conversations and brainstormed with dozens, hundreds of people probably over that time, most of which never materialized into anything, but you resonate with some people and make some friendships along the way. And then, I think I've really found my community with Startup Grind.
Marsha Druker 8:41
That's amazing. Let's jump into Startup Grind. What was it specifically that inspired you to start it and what was your first event like?
Derek Andersen 8:49
First event was pretty inconsequential. We didn't take photos you know, I presented something about this product we launched called meetordie.com, which was this calculator that helps you calculate the cost of a bad meeting. We just sort of brainstormed about it, and people shared ideas of what could happen with it, what we could do with it. And that was it. There were like nine people, it was good enough to do again...there were no plans for it to really be much more than just a monthly forum. But it started off thankfully, well, and that gave us enough energy to do the next event.
Marsha Druker 9:20
That's so cool. How did it start growing? How did you go from events that you were hosting to events that other people were hosting?
Derek Andersen 9:27
After we’d done five or six events, we realized that some were well attended, and some were very poorly attended. And we just sort of looked at the data around what worked and what didn't work. And the ones that worked are the ones where we had (probably not surprisingly), speakers coming in and sharing their insights. And we just pivoted onto that. From there, we had a speaker who was sort of well known and he said, “Look, I can come, but I can't do a talk. So you need to just interview me.”
And so I interviewed him, the feedback from that was immediately positive. And so from there, we decided, “well, let's just do this going forward.” This seems to be something people like. So, going forward, I did all the interviews and the speakers enjoyed it. And the attendees enjoyed it. And it was a good experience for me to get to know these people. It was also really simple. And from then on, we just did that. In fact, for years, we said those are the only kinds of events that we will allow to be running at Startup Grind for many, many years. It has to be a fireside chat one on one, no panels, no workshops, no talks, nothing like that. Has to be fireside chat. We've since tweaked that a little bit. But I think that that sort of focus, we became known for something. And this format, we're interviewing a founder or CEO or thought leader, and they were providing mentorship to 100-200 people at a time.
Marsha Druker 10:43
I think when you find the format that works, you really do have to double down on it and make it the standard, especially as you're building a community. It’s very similar for us with Fuckup Nights. We also have a very specific format that we run for talks and that's what really sets Fuckup Nights apart and that's what makes people go to our events, resonate with them, and know how to relay the concept and our community to other people.
What was the first city that you expanded the to from where you started? And how did you pick that person to bring it there? The chapter leader was a natural sort of thing, or did you seek out that person? How did that go?
Derek Andersen 11:29
This guy named Pat, walked up to me after an event and said, “I love this. We need this in LA, we don't have this.” And I sort of looked at him in this sort of confused look like, “How can you not have this in LA? LA is so huge, you must have 10 of these.” And he's like, “No, we don't have the values, you know, Start Grind and this type of community.” And so he came into my office and met with me and my friend who had started it, and honestly, he was not the most credible, convincing person I had ever met, but he was really endearing and we were kind of like laughing at how much he loves Startup Grind. Like why do you like Startup Grind so much? But he didn't have a track record anything like that.
And so, you know, I just decided we have nothing to lose. I mean, I again, I sort of thought it was a bad idea - Startup Grind was never intended to be this multi chapter, global community. It was just really helping us here. But it was like, “Well, I mean, what's the worst thing that happens? Like, it doesn't work?” So I flew down to LA, I did the first interview. We interviewed some of my friends down there, and it went really well. And so from there, we're like, “Hey, let's try this in New York.” We found this woman named Perri, who started our chapter there. Basically, people were attending my events here in Silicon Valley, and I would say at the end of the event, “Hey, if you don't live here, and you're going home, you should start Startup Grind in your city. Come talk to me after.
Marsha Druker 12:43
How long did it take you to expand to five cities from when you started?
Derek Andersen 12:49
Two years after we started hosting events is really when we started doing them outside of just Silicon Valley. Within the next year from year two to year to three, we went from basically one or two cities to 35 cities. And then within another year, we were in 75 cities. And so at that point, we took the company we're working on, which did not have a lot of traction, and were able to sell the technology. And then we just totally focused on Startup Grind.
Marsha Druker 13:19
I'd love that at the beginning, you didn't totally rush into it. You took the time over the first couple of years to scale it slowly and be present at those initial events. Was it difficult to give up control of hosting? I'm sure at some point that it wasn't feasible for you to fly all over the place and always host them.
Derek Andersen 13:36
I mean, this is one of the early things that I had people saying you need to be at every event, you're doing the interviews, you know, nobody can do the interviews, in the “Startup Grind way” or whatever. And I had two little kids at the time, my wife and I have four little kids now, but then I was like, I can't live on a plane like I need to be here and we had to find a way to make it work without me flying. So the first 250 international events that we did (and think of what we're talking about earlier is me moving around). And the first 250 international events I did not go, and it was a completely deliberate decision. Because I just decided if I had to be there, this was never going to work.
Once we were sort of established then actually started traveling once in a while to the events, so just be part of the community and see what was happening. And we'd arrive and be like, “Oh, you're part of Startup Grind? We've been running Startup Grind for a long time. What have you done for Startup Grind?” “Well, I helped start it!” That was a wonderfully rewarding experience. But, you know, it's really about like, how do we scale this with the least amount of humans as possible and without getting on planes and ruining the planet and ruining our families in the process. And that's really how we figured out how to scale Startup Grind just because we had to.
Marsha Druker 14:45
Another thing that comes out of it is that when you give up that control, and you empower people in their own cities to run it. They're so immersed in their own ecosystem. They know who the speakers are, they know who to partner with, they know the best venues, it just makes so much sense and it really brings it to life in a way that makes sense for that city.
Speaking of those chapter leaders, how do you empower them? What kind of support do you provide? Do you have a community playbook? Is there any specific training that you do?
Derek Andersen 15:12
I on-boarded the first 150 chapters myself and I approved them and talked to those people over Skype at the time. And actually, we did it in my garage, now with COVID, I'm back working in my garage. So I'm sitting in the exact same place I was when I did that, sitting here in the garage over the years. The thing that we would say more than anything else on a daily basis was how do we make our Chapter Directors' lives better? And when we're trying to figure out a tough decision or a new direction, or whether or not we should do something or if it was good for the organization, we always put it through that lens.
And you know, if the answer was well, it's good for us, but it's really bad for the directors. It's good for the revenue of the company or something but it's bad for the directors then it was a kill and it didn't get discussed again.
This sort of magical place for us as a community and a business was like when we could find things that both leveled up the business and also leveled up the chapter directors, things like we did a partnership with Google where they had the “Powered By” branding on our logo. They had that particular branding for like seven years. And that was super valuable to our local directors, because they could then show that they were associated with Google. And then also it helped fund the HQ operations to actually grow and scale the business and the community.
But if we were stopping the focus on the chapter directors, we were losing. And I think that over 10,000 different times where you ask yourself that question, and you make a decision based off of that, certainly, we haven't always done that. And we've made lots of mistakes along the way. But anytime we've done that, it's worked out for us.
Marsha Druker 16:53
That's great. And can you tell me again about the Startup Grind values? You kind of touched on it before, but what are those values? And do use them to find your chapter leaders or filter out people who wouldn't be a good fit to run a chapter?
Derek Andersen 17:06
One thing that I have learned from meeting people and living with people across the world [ you know, France, I went to school with kids from Algeria Morocco and in Germany, I lived with kids from Turkey and in New Zealand, I spent a lot of time with the Maoris and Polynesian community.] Basically, all human beings are the same, the most fundamental level, and I think from a professional standpoint, and from a cultural standpoint, everybody's trying to take care of their kids and to feed their family and help their family. And so I think for us, we've sort of tried to eliminate and put less focus on where the geographical boundaries and borders are or where the cultural divisions are within, you know, our different religions and different beliefs and national objectives. And to just look at it as more of a humanistic level. And I think at the most basic level, this is where our values come into play.
Startup Grind's values are about giving before you take, which is certainly not something we made up. It's been around for a long, long time. And it's about helping others before you help yourself. And it's about making friends. It's not about how many LinkedIn connections, you got at an event or an experience.
Marsha Druker 18:25
It seems like it's been such a natural journey growing [Startup Grind] and it's just a concept that resonated and people wanted to bring it to their own cities. And it just grew in a really natural way.
What were you using on the technology side, and were there any challenges there for you to grow it?
Derek Andersen 18:49
Yeah, when we got to about 150 cities, we're using things like WordPress, Eventbrite, Meetup, MailChimp, etc. Probably a lot of tools people that are listening to this are familiar with it. A lot of Google Docs, a lot of spreadsheets. And we had sort of reached our sort of maximum capacity at 150 cities. And our directors were getting really upset with us, because the technology we had built on top of those things, was sort of crumbling and breaking. And so my Co-Founder, and I sat down and we just said, “Okay, what can we do?” So I looked at all the technologies that were available, nothing I could find in the market would solve more than 60% of our problems. And not only that, even what was available was going to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And so we said, well, if we're going to run Starcraft for the next 10 years, why don't we just spend half a million dollars of our own money on R&D for developing our own product, and then over 10 years, that'll cost us $50,000 a year, but it'll be 100% of what we need.
And so we built it, we took a year and we didn't get any outside product feedback. We just built what we wanted. For us. We launched it in early 2016 to one of the largest communities in the world, then we sort of got hammered, because it wasn't ready for that kind of group to be using it exclusively. But over the next six months, we refined it, we beta tested it. And Startup Grind growth literally started to take off today we're in 650 cities, we're doing 250 events a month for 10s of thousands of people.
So mid 2016, we've got this product, I'm showing it to other people and other community leaders, because they're like, “How are y'all growing so fast?” And they see it, they're like, “Wow, could we use that to grow our community?” And I was like, “Well, I don't know. We haven't really considered it. But how much will you pay for it?” Because we have to operate profitably, no one's sort of bankrolling us. And we kind of came up with a price and first person agreed to that and we white labeled it for them and created it for them, and then we did it for another and another and a few went by and we added a company called Atlassian. And we start powering their entire community. It's like a massive public company, a big technology company. They build products like JIRA and Trello. And we're like, wow, if this company will use our product, to run their community, we must really have something special. And that's when we started to really seriously look at what does this look like as a standalone company on its own?
Marsha Druker 21:23
That's how Bevy was born - just out of your own challenge as a community leader. What can Bevy do for companies that other event platforms can't? What is that that makes it really unique?
Derek Andersen 21:35
There's a couple of things that make Bevy unique: we have a C2C or customer to customer marketing model built into the tool. The best companies in the world, Salesforce, Google, Red Bull, Duolingo, etc. - no matter what vertical you're in, they're working with their customers to get the message out about their product and also enrich their lives. Through that natural marketing flow, we call customer to customer marketing. And so none of the event platforms that I ever looked at ever had this model in mind, they had ways that they tried to solve it.
But, you know, for us, we have a 100 point permission system, where we can turn on and off different things in different permissions for different kinds of users, based on whatever the HQ organization needs. And so for instance, if I want to be GDPR compliant, but I want someone to be able to host events, they can't download the email marketing list, you know, and put those people's privacy at risk, but they need to be able to check people in and they need to be able to message them and all that kind of stuff. And so that's one of 100 different problems that could arise. And so the other thing that we do is we really focus on helping people scale without having to hire a lot more people. The community managers that work with us, they should get promoted, they should be able to do more a lot faster and they should be getting more sleep on the weekends. And that's how we set it up with Startup Grind. And that's what we've done with a lot of big companies that use Bevy.
Marsha Druker 23:09
So as Bevy grew something really exciting along your path was that you acquired CMX, which is the largest community of community professionals. What did that mean for Bevy and for CMX when that happened?
Derek Andersen 23:21
So the Founder of CMX is a person named David Spinks. I've been a big fan of CMX since I first discovered it many years ago. I've been an attendee, I've been a speaker, I've been somebody that got a lot from my experience inside the community. And we were trying to build our own community and had started doing that before we joined forces together. And Dave and I were speaking, we were sponsoring CMX and you know, we're just talking about it and we said, Hey, you know, if we did this together, it could be so much more powerful and we could really amplify the mission and vision of CMX and give David a little bit of breathing room. He was this bootstrap entrepreneur trying to make this business work. Like let's just invest some time and energy and resources into this. And I think once we acquired CMX and started working together on it, I think that's exactly what happened. He just got a lot more help. And the results have been really amazing.
Marsha Druker 24:17
That's fantastic. It's the perfect fit and I'm so glad that you were able to make that happen.
I wanted to say a huge congratulations on your recent 15 million investment round. That's so huge, and that's so exciting for Bevy, but also just for the community industry, in general. I think it really shows that community is here to stay. And it's something that's growing, and it's such an exciting place to be. What are you most excited to put this funding towards? How are you investing it back into the community?
Derek Andersen 24:48
Thank you for sharing that. And I feel excited about it for the same reasons that you shared. The two people that we added to our team through the funding: one is Ryan Sweeney, who's an investor Accel partners who invested in companies like Atlassian, Venmo, Qualtrics, and my personal favorite GOAT. He's really just one of the very top investors in the world when it comes to SaaS Enterprise software. And so to get someone like that, in the community industry on a community product is a big deal. And then the second person is Ryan Smith, who's the Founder and CEO of Qualtrics, which had the largest enterprise exit of all time selling to SAP for a billion dollars. And to have him also put his stamp on Bevy and say, “Hey, I see this as a big new trend and something big.” We need more top top talent and people in all industries to come and spend time in our industry, the people in AI and the people in machine learning and the people in the investor community and the founder community, we need a lot more of the smartest people in the world working on these problems. And they all come through CMX so like we'd love those people that are coming up and I think we're trying to add to that ecosystem and grow that for us as a company, we're constantly looking at what do our customers need as the next phase to grow their communities.
Marsha Druker 26:21
So I want to shift gears here a little bit and get some of your advice for companies and for community leaders. I think that “community” can still be seen as this “touchy-feely” thing, and we're showing pictures and we're doing these great events. But when difficult times strike, it's often the very first thing to go. But I think that's so wrong. So how, as community professionals, can we get better at tying community to specific lines of revenue, and really showing that it drives business and it impacts customer behavior?
Derek Andersen 26:52
I'm hopeful that with the focus on community post COVID that trend is going to cease, and to slow way, way down, of community being one of the first things that gets cut. That said, community people generally lead with our heart, and not always with our analytical brain. And this ends up being what allows the fires to get started inside of communities. But it's also what can lead to us getting stomped out. If you're building a community, if you're thinking about it, if you're planning it, if you've started it is fun and engaging and interesting and creative as you might feel building it, you have to create a business case around why you're doing it.
Marsha Druker 27:42
Absolutely. It's so key and CMX is a great place to get started and then Bevy as well - if you're using the product that's really going to help you showcase that data and really get an understanding of which parts of your community are healthy, what can do better. So the combination of the two is really powerful.
What do you tell companies are just now thinking of starting a community (that through everything that's going on with COVID have seen the value of community), how can they get started?
Derek Andersen 28:08
You first need to identify what problem you're trying to solve. Here are the top two or three: 1) I need to acquire new customers, 2) I want to retain and expand existing customers, or 3) I'm looking for new ideas or new product extensions. Once you identify the sort of core focus, let's say, again, most likely customer acquisition and pipeline creation or retention, then you should build a program that is best tailored around solving that problem.
Look, there's never been a better time to build a community. I think customers in the business world require it. They're expecting it now, which is a new thing and it's exciting. I always love to ask people, “What's your favorite community and why?” Whether that's in business or outside of business, and you know, they might say, Oh, I like the Boys and Girls Club or I like this group or I like this group and it's like, well, why?
Think about the reasons why you like those communities, why you like spending time around them, even though you're not paid to do that, and then try to recreate that amongst the people that think about your product in the same way that you think about those things. Like, they just genuinely like what you're doing. And they would work on it, even when they're not paid to work on it. They think about it even when they're not paid to think about it.
Marsha Druker 29:22
And I'm also curious about how your team pivoted during COVID-19, both on Startup Grind, Bevy and CMX. What did those initial weeks look like? And where are you guys at now?
Derek Andersen 29:33
There was a period where it felt like every day was the worst day I'd ever had professionally, and it just kept getting worse. I started journaling, which I haven't done in 20 years, because I couldn't believe what was happening. And just even from a business standpoint, Startup Grind’s business model was completely eviscerated, which is all events (in-person events). And so we've looked really hard like “Hey, the prudent thing to do business-wise is probably to lay off some portion of the team because we don't know where revenue is going to come from.
But we decided to wait as long as we possibly could, which is not the best advice that I would give somebody that basically doesn't have a business model anymore. Because if you wait as long as you possibly can you eliminate doors that you could possibly have. But we decided to do that. And I'm really proud of the team there.
They've completely reinvented the business model around digital and working with our community digitally and with our partners digitally with incredible success. So that's looking a totally different direction than it did three months ago. And it's a really positive new development. With Bevy what happened was all of our customers starting in about mid-March, all went from these huge in person event programs to shifting everything virtual.
So Startup Grind hosted one virtual event in February, in Beijing, China. We hosted 250 virtual events in April, you know, we saw the same thing with Salesforce. They went from one or two virtual early in the year to 350 events and Duolingo went to 1000 events virtually in April. So these things started sort of being right in our face. It's like, Okay, well, like actually Bevy is an incredible platform to run virtual programs. And to scale those the same way. It was, for in person this again, the C2C model, it's not just in person events, it works for lots of different things if you have the right structure in place.
And so our whole team has shifted towards that over the last three months, we have obviously raised the funding coming out of that we hired 10 people in June. And it's really to fuel these kinds of new virtual experiences and communities that we had never seen before COVID but is essential for businesses to have in order to acquire new customers or to keep retention at a high level.
Marsha Druker 31:48
That's so incredible, and I'm so glad that you did wait and you were able to pivot in this way. It's really amazing what you've been able to do in such a short period of time, and again, I think it just goes back to showing that community is more needed than ever, you know, it looks different, but it's so incredibly needed. And I think it's only going to keep growing.
What communities are you part of in Palo Alto outside of the tech and startup ecosystem? And why are some of those communities meaningful to you?
Derek Andersen 32:16
The two communities I spend the most time with outside of work and my family are my church community, I spent a lot of time with my faith based group and supporting them and then my Palo Alto baseball community. And I'll just say, first of all, inside of the faith community that I'm part of, when people have similar beliefs at a extremely deep level, it creates an almost family-like bond, and I'm in the Latter Day Saint community and it's almost militant, how close and supportive people are to helping each other. And I mean, I've had people in my church community sleeping in my garage. They're all sorts of people that it gives me access to to be able to help and people have helped me tremendously through that and it's really just based on shared beliefs and values.
And then I’m part of the baseball community. The great thing about little league baseball or little kids youth sports is that everyone is doing it for basically the excuse to spend more time with their kids. And so there is literally nothing else overly positive gain from it than that. I mean, it's like you help other people's kids too, and you make friends, but it's so much work. It is so time consuming, in many ways, completely thankless work, but it forces me for six or eight hours a week to be hanging out with my son and have something to talk about and spending time together. And that's super, super valuable. Now for me, and I think, for a long- term relationship, it's valuable.
Marsha Druker 33:42
How do you choose your people - the five or six people that are truly closest to, your best friends?
Derek Andersen 33:48
I think my deepest relationships, outside of family, are people that I feel energized around. People that are on a similar journey at a similar point in their life's journey is me. And we're all trying to kind of do it together. I love people that are trying to push themselves. I love people that are actively trying to make something great out of their life.
And that doesn't mean they need to be a technology company CEO, there are much better things you can do, but just people that are working hard every day to be better. And I think people that are like that I get energy around. I want to spend more time around those kinds of people. And people that want to have fun.
Marsha Druker 34:26
That's such a great answer. And I find this question really interesting myself too. And I've gotten such diverse and interesting answers from it. And my last question for you is, and I asked this of everybody on the podcast, what does “community” mean to you?
Derek Andersen 34:40
Community to me is finding a place where you belong. It's finding values that speak deeply to who you are as a person and who your soul is. Community is a place where you will naturally be inclined to support and to help the other people that are around you in a similar situation. And so in some ways community is very much about you, and what your soul is looking for. And it's also about the good that you can do in the lives of other people that are like you. And that shared value allows them to open up to allow you to help them and for you to open up and allow them to help you.
Marsha Druker 35:29
That's such a great definition of community. Awesome. Derek, thank you so much again for taking the time to chat with me.
Derek Andersen 35:36
Thank you for having me.
