Community Guidelines
Welcome to the Global Iranian Startup Community 🚀
Our community is built around learning, meaningful connections, collaboration, and growth.
We want this to be more than just another group chat. The goal is to create a trusted space where founders, professionals, students, investors, operators, and aspiring entrepreneurs can connect, exchange ideas, support one another, and discover new opportunities.
To help us maintain a valuable and respectful environment, all members are expected to follow these guidelines.
1. This is a community, not a sales channel
The community should not be used primarily for direct selling, unsolicited advertising, or customer acquisition.
If you have a product, service, startup, or business to share, contribute to the community first.
Build relationships, provide value, share useful knowledge, and engage genuinely before promoting what you do.
2. Respect comes first
Our members come from different industries, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.
Healthy disagreement is welcome. Personal attacks are not.
Harassment, insults, humiliation, discriminatory behaviour, intimidation, or deliberately disrespectful communication will not be tolerated.
Disagree with ideas respectfully and professionally.
3. Contribute before you ask
Strong communities are built on mutual contribution.
Before asking others for introductions, customers, investment, support, or opportunities, consider what you can contribute as well.
This could include:
- knowledge;
- experience;
- useful resources;
- introductions;
- advice;
- feedback;
- opportunities; or
- support for another member.
Networking works best when it creates value for everyone involved.
4. No spam
Please avoid:
- repetitive promotional messages;
- irrelevant advertising;
- mass posting of links;
- chain messages;
- repeatedly sharing your own content;
- unsolicited promotional messages; and
- excessive self-promotion.
Relevant opportunities and resources are welcome when they genuinely benefit the community.
5. Respect privacy and confidentiality
Do not share private conversations, personal information, documents, contact details, business information, or other members' content outside the community without permission.
If someone shares an idea, opportunity, document, business challenge, or sensitive discussion within the community, treat it with appropriate respect and confidentiality.
Always obtain permission before publicly sharing another member's personal information or private communications.
6. Ask questions and stay curious
There are no “stupid questions”.
Members are encouraged to ask questions, seek advice, learn from others, and share what they know.
You are not expected to know everything.
If you can help another member with your knowledge or experience, we encourage you to do so.
7. Share both successes and lessons
Success stories are valuable, but so are mistakes, failed experiments, setbacks, and lessons learned.
Sharing genuine experiences can help other members avoid mistakes, discover new approaches, and make better decisions.
Useful resources, tools, opportunities, insights, and lessons are always encouraged.
8. Create meaningful connections
We encourage genuine networking.
If you know two people who could benefit from knowing each other, consider making an introduction.
Members are encouraged to share relevant:
- job opportunities;
- investment opportunities;
- startup opportunities;
- collaborations;
- events;
- useful introductions;
- partnerships; and
- professional resources.
Our goal is not simply to build a bigger network.
Our goal is to build a better network.
9. Be respectful when sending private messages
Being part of the community does not automatically mean every member has agreed to receive private promotional messages.
If you contact another member privately:
- be respectful of their time;
- introduce yourself clearly;
- explain why you are contacting them;
- avoid aggressive sales messages; and
- stop contacting them if they are not interested.
Unwanted or repeated promotional outreach may result in action by the community team.
10. Keep discussions relevant and constructive
Please avoid discussions that are deliberately inflammatory, abusive, disruptive, or unrelated to the purpose of the community.
Political discussions, personal conflicts, divisive arguments, or unrelated controversial topics should generally be kept outside the community unless they are directly relevant to entrepreneurship, business, innovation, or the professional purpose of the group.
Members do not need to agree with one another.
The expectation is simply to communicate respectfully and constructively.
11. Share opportunities
An opportunity that is not relevant to you may be extremely valuable to someone else.
If you come across a useful:
- job;
- internship;
- event;
- investment opportunity;
- funding programme;
- accelerator;
- customer introduction;
- partnership;
- mentorship opportunity; or
- useful professional connection,
we encourage you to share it with the community where appropriate.
A simple introduction or recommendation can sometimes make a significant difference to another member.
Moderation and enforcement
The Global Iranian Startup Community team may moderate content or take action where these guidelines are repeatedly or seriously violated.
Depending on the circumstances, this may include:
- removing inappropriate content;
- issuing a warning;
- restricting participation;
- removing a member from a group or event; or
- suspending or terminating community access.
Decisions may take into account the seriousness of the behaviour, previous incidents, member safety, and the overall interests of the community.
Final note
This community belongs to all of us.
Its quality depends on the way each member participates, contributes, communicates, and supports others.
Be useful.Be respectful.Make meaningful connections.Help build a stronger community.
Global Iranian Startup Community