Why We Started OnGround

It started with a feeling most builders know intimately: the loneliness of working on something you deeply care about, while nobody around you truly understands why.

You're at a dinner party, and someone asks what you do on weekends. You mumble something about “a project,” because explaining that you're building a tool to help neighborhoods coordinate disaster response feels too earnest for small talk. Your friends nod politely. Your family wonders when you'll do something “normal.” And at 2 AM, when you hit a wall and need someone — anyone — who gets it, you scroll through forums full of strangers sharing revenue screenshots.

That's where OnGround started. Not with a business plan. With the realization that the builder community space is large but shallow.

The broadcast problem

Look at the communities that exist for builders today. Indie Hackers has hundreds of thousands of members sharing milestone posts. Twitter's #BuildInPublic hashtag is full of revenue screenshots and growth hacks. Reddit's founder communities are active and sprawling.

They're all optimized for the same thing: broadcast. Post your update. Share your metrics. Announce your launch. Get likes. Move on.

But when was the last time one of those communities helped you find someone who truly understood the specific problem you're working on? When did a forum post turn into a real collaboration? When did sharing your MRR screenshot lead to someone saying, “I'm working on the same thing — let's talk”?

For most people, the answer is: rarely. Or never.

What's actually missing

The gap isn't content. It's not advice. It's not even community in the generic sense. What's missing is connection — the specific, personal, “this person gets what I'm going through” kind.

A solo founder in Nairobi working on agricultural supply chain transparency has more in common with a student in Berlin building a food waste app than either of them has with the thousands of people in their existing online communities. But they'll never find each other. Not because the internet is too small, but because no platform is designed to make that connection happen.

Existing platforms ask: “What are you building?”

We ask: “What problem are you solving?”

It's a subtle shift, but it changes everything. When you lead with the problem, you attract people who care about the same thing — regardless of their tech stack, business model, or stage. You find collaborators, not competitors. Solidarity, not comparison.

What OnGround is becoming

OnGround is a community platform that connects people based on the problems they're solving. Not their follower count. Not their revenue. Not their resume.

Here's what that means in practice:

• Problem-first profiles. Every member shares who they are and what problem they're working on. This becomes your signal — the thing that connects you to others.
• Intentional matching. We connect builders with complementary skills, adjacent problems, or the experience you need. Not cold networking — genuine introductions.
• Cross-pollination. We deliberately mix technical builders with impact-driven changemakers. Side-project hackers with solo founders. The magic happens at the intersections.
• Accountability that works. Weekly standups, builder pods, and structured check-ins that keep projects moving and people connected.

Why now

In August 2024, Buildspace — one of the most loved builder communities with over 30,000 participants — shut down. The founder was burned out. The monetization model never clicked. But the demand it proved was real: tens of thousands of people want a place where they can build alongside others who get it.

That demand hasn't gone anywhere. Those builders are still out there — scattered across noisy forums, dead Slack channels, and Discord servers they've muted. They're still building alone. Still looking for their people.

OnGround is being built with the lessons of what came before: sustainable from the start, community-driven rather than personality-driven, and designed to create real connections — not just another feed to scroll.

An invitation

If you're working on something that matters — whether it's a side project, a startup, or an initiative to improve your community — you belong here. You don't need revenue. You don't need a polished pitch. You need one thing: a problem you care about enough to work on.

We're in the early days, building in the open and growing intentionally. If any of this resonates, we'd love to have you.