“I never meant to start a community it was really it really was a matter of um it started like when I first had this light bul moment of oh my gosh I'm a generalist... can I find one then I thought can I find 10 and then when I found 10 just the pure like laziness of me I was like I can't keep doing 10 one:1 DMs I was like I'll I'll pop them all in slack that that was the beginning of generalist World”

Communities should be DM-ladder accidents, not business-plan products

The strongest paid communities don't start with a community business plan — they start as a tag-along solution to the founder's own loneliness. Find one person like you. DM them. Find ten. Realize the DMs don't scale. Open a Slack. That ladder validates demand at every rung. If you can't make it past step one (find a single peer who lights up), you don't have a community business yet — you have a marketing fantasy.