Finding your people

The importance of having a group of people that share your passion

Loneliness is hard.

Loneliness can be caused not only by being alone but also by not fitting in. You can feel lonely even when surrounded by other people if you feel misunderstood. On the contrary, feeling as if you belong to a group you want to belong to is one of the most empowering feelings there is.

There is a reason why many young people want to move away from the place they grew up in, while others are perfectly happy where they are. Often, the former do not feel represented by the people in their hometown and want to venture out into the wide world to find a sense of belonging, while the latter feel represented in their community and feel that they fit in.

Family, romantic partners, and friends can provide comfort and ease loneliness, but there is a different type of connection that can be very powerful: finding your people. People with shared passions who are excited about the same things you are. This might be making music for some, building startups for others or a passion for a particular sport for another group. Your loved ones might be empathetic, and you have a relationship with them that you cannot easily replicate. However, they often do not understand or share your unique passion in life. Finding people who do can significantly enrich your life, even if you have strong bonds with your existing family and friends.

It took me a while to find my own people. For as long as I can remember, I have dreamed big and had a passion for building things/companies. I loved my high school and had many good friends, many of whom I would still drop everything and fly across the world for if they needed me. Playing a team sport added a trusted circle of teammates that I went through physical pain with almost every day and shared losses and wins with. However, I also felt as if something was missing, especially in hindsight and when I stopped competing in my sport. I had a good time in college and was venturing closer to my people there. Students at my alma mater were more aligned with me in terms of their obsession with achieving big things. I had glanced into finding my people by connecting with my current co-founders while studying abroad and some others I met over the years. My first real revelation of finding others as obsessed with building things and startups as I came when I went to Silicon Valley for the first time for an internship almost ten years ago. It was a breath of fresh air to find people interested in tech startups at every corner you were looking. 

The ultimate breakthrough came when we were accepted into Y Combinator a couple of years after that. Suddenly, I was part of a community that shared my borderline obsessive desire to build something massive from scratch. I finally found people with whom I could geek out about startups as much as I wanted, people who would join me for a Sunday WeWork co-working session, and people who shared the same joy and also the same pain of building a company whose purpose is to grow fast. People who understood the specific stress of fundraising, the euphoria of closing your first customer, and the yearning to go from zero to something that people want. People who grow with you over the years as your company develops or start again if the first one doesn’t work out.

To foster that feeling, I started cultivating my group further. I began bringing together people I knew and trusted into a close circle of individuals striving for the same goal. It has become a third pillar of community in my life. Family, friends, and my passion group. There is some overlap between the latter two groups, as many individuals in my founder circle have also become close friends. The depth of connection we have formed in a comparatively short time is based strongly on our shared context in life. 

Your people do not necessarily have to be related to your career. Some people I know found their group through supporting the same football club, while others discovered a shared passion for producing art as a hobby. The baseline excitement for the topic needs to be high enough for it to really work. This can develop over time, so you might benefit from trying new things. Also, there is no rule that limits you to only one group. Maybe you have a professional in-group and one for your favorite hobby. 

While having your group in close proximity is advisable, the internet makes finding like-minded peers easier than ever. Even small niche communities that only a handful of people in your local area are interested in are massive if you consider all of humanity. I have people that I consider good friends who I have talked and texted with about startups for years but have rarely (or never) met in person. The first time I met one of my good startup friends in real life was at a destination party for his 30th birthday on a different continent. Until then we had only interacted via WhatsApp or Zoom. One of my best friends and co-host for my podcast is someone I met because he DMed me on LinkedIn many years ago while I was still in college. It took us years to meet in person, and when we did, it felt as if we had spent years in the same neighborhood before.

So how can you use all of that to your benefit?

If you see someone online who tweets something you find intriguing? Reach out to them. Find a forum tailored to your favorite topic? Become an active contributor and see where it leads. Have an incredibly exciting hobby but no one to share it with? Try to find a local chapter. Maybe even move to a different place; many people discover how different the world is when they move out for college. The biggest piece of advice I can offer here is to first find out what you really care about and then find people who care about the same thing. If you do not know what you really care about that is fine, too. Just try different things and follow your intuition. 

Much of what makes life worth living is forming deep connections with other human beings you like and respect. The basis for that can be blood, a shared upbringing, or, I would argue, increasingly important when you meet new people later in life, a shared passion. Seeking out, cherishing and nurturing these shared passions with other people will give your life a whole new meaning.

Special thanks to two of my people for proofreading this, Stefan and Costa.