Where are there online communities for people into this kind of tech sub-culture? Most Indie Hacker type communities seem to eventually attract a critical mass of "Hustle Boys" and most startup communities tend to be dismissive of anything that doesn't have hyper-growth potential. It makes sense that a large number of tech entrepreneurs live between these two extremes. Where do they hang out?
I decided to start a Discord for it, it's been on my mind for a while. I'm not interested in the VC moonshot culture, and frankly am not in the location for it anyway. I also don't care for SEO marketing ploys and hustle bullshit.
The community values I would want in a community like that are:
* A focus on building products that meet real world problems
* Pragmatism, stability and longevity in your products
* Discussions about bootstrapping with real customers
* Investment can be useful but it shouldn't be a stand in for a real business model
* Realistically these are businesses, money is a real factor, but no get rich quick schemes, we're just trying to get sensibly rich slowly
* No narcissistic hustle bullshit, no marketing ploys
This goes into the direction of something I heard of in the past as "slow business". I started a (now rather small) list, together with the lost manifesto:
https://v01.io/2021/01/13/slow-business-list/
Slow business is a great term for it, that is the antithesis for grow-fast or burn out trying style companies. I love seeing businesses that grew naturally out of a grass roots need, tied directly to real world industry or community needs.
Mastodon and Pleroma are home to many communities filled with people like this! One of my favorite instances, Merveilles[1], is probably among the highest quality in terms of the people themselves and the projects they work on, but there are dozens of others with similar energy. Make an account somewhere[2][3] and see for yourself!
Oh, and if you're willing to leave the Web, there's also Gemini[4]. Here are some proxied links to aggregators, CAPCOM[5] and Spacewalk[6], where you can find all sorts of people writing about their intimate personal projects, technological and otherwise (although mostly technological).
I think you can find it in the crossover towards more artistic/design/science focussed communities.
Generative art, data visualisation etc. Of course there are hustlers there as well but to me it does feel to be more about the creativity, techniques, ideas.
There are various communities around the web that all have their own personalities. HN, /r/programming and Twitter are the biggest and most active but also most cynical. Lobste.rs (https://lobste.rs/) is almost purely tech focussed. Dev.to is very (overly?) friendly but it's hard to find substance among the noise. Indie Hackers which you've alluded to, does what it says on the tin but also attracts those hustler types.
The great thing about the internet is that if you think it's missing something, you can build it! I've been working on my own tech community called Able (https://able.bio) in my spare time for about 3 years now. I'd like it to be an intersection of software, hardware and business but with less cynicism and self-hype of other places. Just a place to appreciate the merits of human ingenuity. You're welcome to come hang out there if you like.
But yeah, if anyone knows of any other communities I'd also be interested to check them out. I feel like a bit of variety would be nice at the moment.
