“with Indie hackers you know I think that the group self-selects for high initiative... the people that are involved in this tend to be extremely high in initiative they seem to be extremely intelligent and interesting but they're also kind of go getters”

Design the community to self-select for initiative

Don't try to onboard everyone — build brand, tone, and rituals so that only high-initiative people self-select in, and the rest self-select out. The community's identity becomes the filter. This compounds: high-initiative members produce better content, which attracts more high-initiative members, which makes monetization (ads, masterminds) dramatically easier because advertisers know exactly who they're reaching.