We cannot get where we want without concerted effort from folks who cannot sit idle.
The oft-misquoted statement that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results” applies just as much to not doing anything as it does to doing something wrong or misguided. Inaction can be deadly for the community and movement refusing to be formed.
This isn’t me finger-wagging at you, telling you to get off your butt and do something. I’ll finger wag a bit later. First, I’ll tell you about how I learned about agency.
I was trying to leave
I was trying to leave the state.
I was tired of the malaise, tired of the lack of ambition, tired of the nonexistent tech community. I was tired of having to rely on quickly-disappearing remote jobs to make up for the fact that Hattiesburg had very little in the way of tech startups and jobs to work in.
It was Mississippi’s fault for not having a tech industry. It was Hattiesburg’s fault that all the students were leaving the state.
I reached a point of peak frustration one day a few months ago and told my wife “we’ve gotta leave.” She very calmly, very kindly and very firmly reminded me that we cannot, in fact, just pull our two kids out of school, sell our house and pick up our 3 dogs, 2 cats and 8 chickens to move to New York, Nashville or Denver.
So, I stewed in my frustration for a bit, just angry at the place I lived and angry that there wasn’t a community to build in. I stewed in it until that annoying, introspective part of my mind started to chime in, louder and louder…
“Well, to be fair, you haven’t tried to build anything. Have you taken action? Have you worked on the problems?”
Agency. I’d heard the word, but I hadn’t let it hit me hard enough until that moment of frustration. If there’s something wrong with your environment, have the agency to fix it. If there’s a change you want to see in the world, have the agency to work at it. If there’s something that needs doing and you don’t think it’s getting done, have the agency to make it happen.
We need more agency
There are plenty of problems in the world to fix. For all the critique that Silicone Valley deserves for essentially creating problems to build startups on top of, they also have an extremely high-agency culture in the startup space. Where there is a problem, there will be a ton of founders fighting hand over fist to be the ones to solve it, and solve it well.
Having agency means seeing problems in one’s environment as being something for you to solve, not someone else. You don’t wait on the problem to get fixed by someone else, you don’t write it off as someone else’s issue, you don’t sit around and complain about the problem.
You go fix it.
Agency is a key trait for founders. You can’t start your own business, chase funding, stay up until 2AM coding and get up at 4AM to send cold outreach emails without agency. You’d lose motivation very quickly.
Hub City Hackers already has a lot of agency.
After Meetup 2, I walked over to Taylor, the founder of CentrEdu. He’d given a presentation about his progress, and he killed it. In the time it took for me to say hi to a few folks and get to him to thank him for presenting, he’d formed a working group with 2-3 other founders to help non-profits in Hattiesburg with their tech.
That’s agency. I didn’t tell him to do that. Nobody did. The group formed naturally when Taylor said that non-profits need help and that he didn’t have the bandwidth to help more than a few of them.
Another founder told me he couldn’t make it to Meetup 2. He’s running DispatchPro an application that helps with sales and logistics for propane delivery companies. He wasn’t hanging out at the house cooking barbecue during Meetup 2, he was driving several hundred miles across the countries meeting with customers, giving them a white glove treatment and making sure they’re happy.
Did he have to do that? No. He’s a high-agency founder.
Hub City Hackers already has a ton of high-agency builders. We have folks working on solutions architecture for charities, folks starting non-profits, folks teaching others about marketing and sales.
But we’re always looking for more. We’re always looking to inspire more agency in more folks so we can get more problems solved.
We’re looking for founders, builders, innovators, inventors, marketers, business folks, entrepreneurs, mentors and leaders. If you’re one of those roles, HCH is your home. If you want to be one of those, hop on board and we’ll get you there.
You should join us
Our next Meetup is 1 October at 6:30PM in Scianna Hall, room 1046. We’re going to talk about agency, founding software startups and building technology. I’ll be giving a presentation and at least one other HCH affiliated founder will as well.
I’ll see you there!