The Propel Story-- Buildig the Community Infrastructure

There is a popular African proverb — most people have heard some version of it — that says it takes a village to raise a child. For most of human history, that was not a metaphor. It was just how life worked.

Think back to how you grew up. There were your parents, but there was also an entire orbit of people around them. Aunts, uncles, neighbours, family friends, and people who weren’t related to you,  yet somehow had the right to praise, guide, correct, and support you. And you listened, because you knew they cared. 

And it was not just about children. When someone struggled, the community stepped in. When someone had an idea, the community became its first audience. When someone built something new, the community showed up first, even if that investment was just time and belief. 

That’s what a community does. It distributes the weight and labour of growth.

Fast-forward to the early days of the modern technology industry, and you will find something remarkably familiar.

Before venture capital firms, accelerators, startup ecosystems, there were just people, and it looks exactly the same.

Three friends in a garage. Six colleagues who stayed late after everyone else went home. A group of engineers who ate lunch together every day and, slowly, started wondering what would happen if they tried to build something of their own. Small groups. Shared belief. People building together.

Apple. Google Microsoft. Facebook. Twitter. It all started with community, trust and shared purpose that developed between people who have chosen to be in the same orbit.

Even as the industry grew larger and more formalised, the communities remained essential. Developer communities built ecosystems around programming languages and operating systems. Open-source communities wrote the code that sits underneath almost every piece of software on the planet today. Slack channels and Discord servers and Twitter threads became the new village squares, places where knowledge was shared, reputations were built, and collaborations were born.

At its root, the tech industry was and is still being built by community, but why is that community concept still treated like an afterthought?