I've been trying to create a "social network for makers" for the last 15 years with different approaches. I made what was basically WIP multiple times 10+ years ago, but it failed each time. The reason is, that a super early, super small community has different needs from a later stage, larger community. Few people want to post into the void. And those that do, won't stick around long if there's no response. With https://t.co/aMZ4K3azU0 I finally figured out how to do it: 1. It started as a telegram chatgroup for makers. 2. Realizing that a chatgroup tends to get off topic quick, we started sharing our progress by typing /done something you just did 3. I created a bot that would put all these /done's on a simple website so you'd have a changelog of your work. Further incentivizing people to share their daily progress. 4. We started hitting some of the limits of a groupchat. It was hard to keep track of conversations, todo activity became interruptions. It didn't scale well. So I kept improving the website functionality by progressively adding more social network functionality. 5. Over time, the website became more important than the chat. We now successfully 'migrated' the community to a platform I have more control over and fits our use case better. 6. Today, WIP is that "social network for makers" I've been trying to create for so long. The next challenge? Onboarding more makers. More people, means more input from others, a higher chance someone knows the answer to your question, etc. More frequent meetups and online hangouts. But at the same time I want to protect our community's culture. WIP has zero spam, virtually no self-promotion, and the overall group dynamic seems very positive and productive. So to let in more people, I can't just open the registrations for everyone. It would be the death of the community. We've all seen it happen before. I've experimented with multiple approaches. Paid-only registrations. While not perfect, having an entry fee does scare away people who are less serious about bootstrapping a business. But it also excludes many people who can't afford it yet, and even for those who can, the value of WIP isn't immediately obvious until you've tried it for a while. The other thing I tried is an "job application system". Where you apply by filling out a form. And other members can invite you. This doesn't seem to be working as well as I hoped. We've got 1,000+ pending applications (that part works!), but our members are busy growing their business. I can't really expect them to review dozens of "job applications" and few indeed do. We also have "invites", allowing people to invite their friends and collagues. Whoever they believe are a good fit for the community. This seems to be working the best so far. I can control our growth by tweaking how many invites we give out and to whom. The system needs some work and members some nudge to use their invites, but it looks promising. Of course the downside, is that it feels and somewhat is exclusionary. Which is a common critism of WIP. But it's the cost we pay for fending off the spammers, self-promoters, and other people wreaking havoc on a community. --- Anyway TLDR get back to work!