CommunityMany founders‘ stories start with a passion to build something for themselves while at the same time believing it‘s something the world needs as well. My story is no different.
Mom, when I grow up, I will have friends all around the world.
I remember repeatedly saying this to her when I was a child. Back then, when there was no internet and smartphones, maintaining such a global relationship was considered an undertaking. Nowadays, it‘s common sense. Not only that, but the youngsters can‘t even imagine a life without friends here and there, scattered around the globe.
The rise of social media has given to us that possibility and connected us in some ways online. But their systems and business models were never truly designed and incentivized to take that experience offline. On top of that, as the pandemic began, more and more companies turned to provide online experiences. For some, it was a business case, for others, the only way to survive.
And for me? I have nothing to lose. So, I skipped building for the present pandemic times and begun building for the post-pandemic world—a platform and a community where the main incentive is the offline experience. That‘s the gist of how Tribevibe was born.
Does that make Tribevibe a community for making international friends? In effect it is true. In essence, it goes a few layers deeper.
To say that it is for making international friends would not justify its depth. But let‘s start with that. Because making friends is fun. But do you know what‘s more fun? Maintaining that friendship for years to come.
For a friendship to stay relevant over time, it needs something more than a late-night drunken hangout. The binding ingredient needs to transcend race and gender, culture and religion, caste and creed.
I‘ve come to the understanding that we begin to live in times where human connections are made based on what I would intuitively call a vibe. In fact, it has always been like that but was never phrased as such. And while some understand this ingredient as a metaphor, I mean it literally.
Each thought, emotion, and feeling we express creates a vibration. As we express certain thoughts, emotions and feelings over time, we stabilize at a certain frequency of operation. If we meet other humans who operate on the same, or similar frequency, a resonance happens. This is how certain groups of people feel comfortable being together, and act as one entity.
Now it‘s getting interesting. What if Tribevibe helps to inspire such people to increase their frequency of operation? Let‘s get rid of the “what if” because the “secret agenda” that I want to accomplish through Tribevibe is to indeed increase the operational frequency of humanity. There. I spelt it out. It‘s not a secret anymore.
The success of Tribevibe is not a one-man show. It heavily depends on the right people using this tool, especially in the very beginning.
When I was still forming the idea about Tribevibe, a wise person warned me:
Before you build a product, you must first build a community.
That wise person wanted to remain anonymous, but I still hear the echo from his words.
This
is the key reason why I built the platform around an invite system.
Because I can‘t know all the suitable people in the world, but I can
surely know a few hundreds strong that can invite the next batch of
suitable people, and so on. It‘s paramount to fine-tune Tribevibe on as
much high frequency as possible before it launches so that once
unleashed, the core community can naturally attract people akin in mind
and spirit. Because good people have good people as their friends,
right?
Once the core community over time strengthens and stabilizes on a frequency that is based on acceptance, love, giving, and sharing, then the minority who will inevitably join and will not operate on those values, will either naturally drop off, or embrace to be transformed by the community. My wish is, of course, the latter reality. Therein lies Tribevibe‘s success—inner transformation through human connections.
During this writing, I used the pronoun “I” quite often, as if I am the one building all of this. But what if I go a step further, and remove myself from the equation? What if there is no “I”?
There is a shift in awareness happening in society, which is increasingly drawn to a whole new set of values such as ecology, sustainability, connectedness, meaning, spirituality and self-actualization.
That‘s where I see the world heading. But the true realisation is that: It will happen with or without me. So, what am I even doing here?
I would like to remove all expectations of any success connected to Tribevibe. But I would be happy for the divinely-ordained pre-determined future to use my design and business expertise, and my bootstrapped funding as an instrument for that future to be manifested in ways easily understood and used by the young Tribevibers. Because Tribevibe is more than a startup—it‘s my life‘s work.
I‘m aware that a startup founder needs to have a crystal clear direction and a sharply defined business plan for years ahead. And I do, at least for the vision part. But I would not like to close in on a concrete future scenario and use my full force to work solely upon that. Life tends to unfold in ways our minds cannot grasp, if we only leave it do its job.
Tribevibe is, after all, a community-driven platform. And as such, I‘d like to leave for the community to steer the outcomes and experiences they wish to create as they use the platform, and the depth they wish to instill over time. My job here is to set the guardrails and act as a fiduciary so to speak.
Worst-case scenario, it‘s still going to remain a community for making friends at a casual level, or it might turn into a peculiar dating niche. Although, I‘m pretty sure it‘s going to be somewhere in the middle between that, and the enthusiastic vision that I philosophically expounded above.
Meanwhile, into the recesses of the night, I shall continue to dream of a voice reverberating.
If your vision is not to change the world, then your vision is not big enough.
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