Some of the most important relationships of my entrepreneurial career started at Missouri Startup Weekend, one of the biggest pitch and startup events in Missouri. I've been a regular for years now. I keep going back not because the events themselves are remarkable — though they are — but because of the community that's built up around them. It's a group of founders, would-be founders, and supporters who actually know each other, push each other, and show up for each other. That kind of group doesn't appear by accident. Someone has to build it.
I've helped a few local entrepreneurship groups form over the years through my work with Skypig and educators across the United States. The patterns of what works are fairly consistent.
What a Local Entrepreneurship Group Actually Does
A local entrepreneurship group is a recurring, in-person gathering of people interested in starting or supporting new ventures in a specific community. The format varies widely. Some groups meet weekly for coworking. Some meet monthly for talks and workshops. Some run quarterly pitch nights. Some are anchored to a university, others to a coworking space, others to nothing more than a coffee shop and a recurring calendar invite.
The defining feature isn't the format. It's the consistency. Groups that meet sporadically don't build relationships. Groups that meet on a predictable cadence — even if attendance varies — become real communities over time. The first six months are the hardest. After that, the momentum compounds.
The reason these groups matter is that entrepreneurship is fundamentally a social activity, even when the work itself is solitary. Founders make better decisions when they have other founders to talk to. Would-be founders take action sooner when they see peers doing the same. Mentors invest more deeply in mentees they've gotten to know over time. The group is the soil that makes any of those interactions possible. Organizations like the Kauffman Foundation have documented the role of local entrepreneurship ecosystems in producing successful founders, and the consistent finding is that the human network matters as much as the formal infrastructure.
How to Actually Build One
If you want to start a local entrepreneurship group in your community, the practical path is more straightforward than it looks.
Start small. Pick a recurring time and place — say, the second Tuesday of every month at a coffee shop or library — and commit to showing up whether anyone else does. The first few meetings will be small. That's fine. Use the time to plan the next meeting, reach out to potential attendees, and develop the format you want to run. Consistency beats size in the early months.
Bring in working entrepreneurs as soon as you can. Even a single working founder showing up regularly transforms the energy of the group. Newer entrepreneurs and aspiring founders get to see what the work actually looks like. The founder, in turn, gets practice articulating what they're learning. It's a productive trade for both sides.
Build in formats that produce visible output. A monthly pitch round. A quarterly invention exercise. A book club where members read entrepreneurship books and discuss them. Output formats give the group something to point to and create natural moments for new attendees to participate. This is also a great context for tools like Products: The Card Game, which I built partly to give groups like these a reliable way to run pitch practice without setup.
Connect to nearby ecosystems. Most cities have at least one larger entrepreneurship event nearby — a Startup Weekend, a 1 Million Cups chapter, a college pitch competition. Bring your group to those events. Recruit attendees from them. Position your local group as the smaller, more regular complement to the bigger ones. The relationships compound across both.
If you're connected to a school, build the group as part of your entrepreneurship curriculum. Groups that include students alongside adult founders create powerful intergenerational dynamics. The students see what's possible. The adults see fresh ideas they wouldn't have considered. Both groups benefit.
The hardest part of building a local entrepreneurship group is usually the first six months, when attendance is small and consistency requires faith. The temptation is to give up or change the format every meeting. Resist that. Pick a format that's good enough, run it on the same cadence, and let the group find its rhythm. The compounding effect is real, but it takes time to show up.
The community I've watched form around Missouri Startup Weekend wasn't built by anyone in particular. It was built by years of consistent effort from many people, each contributing in small ways. That's the model. You don't have to be the singular leader of a local entrepreneurship group — you just have to be the consistent presence that holds it together while everyone else figures out their role. Pieces like how to host a pitch competition, six steps to creating a pitch competition in your school, and how to teach entrepreneurship education all touch on related work that complements the community-building.
Start the calendar invite. Pick the place. Show up next month. The group will grow from there.
About the Author
Aaron Heienickle is the founder of Skypig and the creator of Products: The Card Game, a hands-on entrepreneurship game played in classrooms, family game nights, and corporate offsites across the country.
He started Skypig his senior year of high school and has been building it ever since. Aaron studied Marketing and Computer Science at the University of Missouri and is a regular at Missouri Startup Weekend, one of the largest pitch competitions in the state.
Through Skypig, Aaron has worked with educators, students, and corporate teams to bring entrepreneurship to life through doing — not just discussing. Learn more about Aaron.