I challenged a YC company to a public launch battle. Here's what I'm learning.

I run a small founder community. About 20 active members. All indie builders, early-stage, building in public.

A few weeks ago I did something kind of reckless. I challenged a YC-backed startup and their community to a public launch battle. They accepted.

The format: both communities submit products, every submission gets scored by real builders on creativity, execution, usefulness, and presentation. Every single vote requires written feedback. No empty upvotes.

This is the third experiment I've run with this community. The first two were focused on building genuine relationships between founders. Those worked incredibly well. This one was a big swing – an attempt to bring new people in through competition. I built the entire platform after the challenge was accepted. Probably a little reckless, definitely a lot of late nights.

Here's what I'm learning so far:

1. Community size doesn't matter nearly as much as community density. Having a tight group of people who genuinely know each other and care about each other's work creates a level of participation that a large, loose community can't match. Nearly everyone in our crew showed up – submitting products, voting, writing real feedback.

2. I never cared too much about what the accolades looked like for each member of the crew. What I cared about was whether the person was active, ambitious, and down-to-earth. What surprised me is just how diverse and badass this crew turned out to be. Super vibe coders, eccentric dropouts, exited founders, C-level execs. Nearly all of them humble and down-to-earth. You don't screen for that. You just put the most genuine version of yourself out there, and people who resonate with that show up wanting to do the same.

Even though it's not over yet, I'm glad I did it. The crew leveled up as a team. Through our marketing efforts – while minimal – our members are feeling seen. They have true community. I don't have the biggest community, but I have the best one. Not because of its size but because of its heart and strength. Our brand is literally "A home for good-hearted pirates. Future captains." I believe we're living up to that. And there are plenty more experiments to go.

Happy to answer any questions.

P.S. The battle is still open if anyone wants to check it out: kaijubeam.com