A dedicated home for your founders, alumni, attendees, and applicants, connected to a global network of 37,000+ innovators, investors, and collaborators across 153 countries.
A Community Space is your own branded space inside INSPIRED. You control the identity, the channels, the roles, and the moderation. Your members become part of a global network of innovators, investors, collaborators, and organisations already on INSPIRED. You just plug in.
Your logo, your hero, your voice. Members step into a space that feels unmistakably yours.
Custom roles and invite links let you separate applicants, alumni, sponsors, and the general public inside one community.
Public channels make your founders and content discoverable across INSPIRED's network of 37,000+ innovators, investors, and collaborators.
Every partner uses Community Spaces differently. Here are five of the most common ways we see them used.
Your founders don't disappear after Demo Day. They keep building. A showcase channel lets them share milestones, launches, hires, and raises. Investors don't just see one pitch. They see progress.
Why partners run it. Websites stay still. Newsletters disappear into inboxes. A showcase channel grows with every founder update. Partners become the curator of a living portfolio, while founders build visibility that compounds.
How to set it up:
Turn a channel into a competition. Founders, applicants, or teams submit their entries in one place while the community follows and votes. Voting shapes the outcome. It works equally well as a co-branded challenge with a prize, an application intake for an accelerator, or a post-event pitch competition that extends the buzz for months.
Why partners run it. Submissions in a Google Drive folder sit unread. A live, voted contest turns entries into content and an audience into participants, whether that's an accelerator's application intake or a pitch competition at your event. Even those who don't win get exposure, and you get weeks of momentum.
How to set it up:
Formats that work. Big co-branded challenges with a prize fund. Application-intake contests without any prize, where the winner earns a place in the programme. Post-event pitch extensions that keep the conversation running long after the doors close.
Who votes is up to you. At its core it's community voting: everyone in the space, and even the public, can vote. Want a jury? A panel can be given any weight you choose, say fifty votes, so their verdict carries alongside the community's. You can even run it jury-only, still using the space to showcase the contest and its participants to the community. You decide how voting works.
Where the votes come from. Mostly outside the community. LinkedIn, email, WhatsApp, and Instagram drive most of the vote traffic. INSPIRED members add to it, but the flywheel is external.
Most events lose their community the day the doors close. A Community Space keeps it alive between editions. Before the event, build anticipation. During it, run live channels and hybrid participation. Afterwards, publish recordings, keep the conversation going, and start building momentum for the next edition. Connect your event platform and attendees flow straight into your Community Space.
Why it works. Events are expensive to organise and short in duration. A year-round space keeps creating value long after the event ends: one edition can produce eleven months of engagement, content, and connections. It is how you build the next edition's audience before you announce it.
How to set it up. Dedicated channels for pre-event, live event days, and post-event. Publish exclusive content, such as session recordings, workshop materials, and follow-up interviews, only in the space. Exclusive content gives non-attendees a reason to join and attendees a reason to come back.
What we have seen work. Speaker announcements released over four to six weeks, one live channel per day of the event, and a "next edition" call to action opened within four weeks of the current one closing.
Multiple chapters often end up operating in parallel. A Community Space brings them together without losing what makes each one local. If you run five locations across three countries, each becomes a channel inside one community. Members belong to their local channel, plus have visibility into the others. A founder in Berlin sees what a founder in Nairobi is building. Ideas, opportunities, and connections move across the network.
Why it works. Every location keeps its own banner and its own roster, while one community host manages them all from a single place. You get the reach of a whole network without running a separate community for each chapter.
How to set it up. One community, one channel per location or programme. Custom roles for each chapter, shared through location-specific invite links so members auto-land in the right channel. Shared channels for cross-chapter events, contests, and network-wide announcements.
What we have seen work. Chapter-specific screening questions ("Which location are you closest to?") route members automatically. Monthly cross-chapter spotlight posts help every chapter feel part of the same community.
Bring your own investor network into your community. A dedicated Investor channel brings your founders and investors together in one space, on your terms.
Why partners run it. Most programmes maintain an investor list somewhere: a CRM, a WhatsApp group, an annual mailing list. A dedicated Investor channel inside your space turns that list into an active community. Founders post updates, investors follow along and reach out directly. The programme becomes the home for its own deal flow, not the middleman for it.
How to set it up. A dedicated Investor channel with restricted access. A custom Investor role, available by invitation only. A separate Founder or Portfolio channel visible to that Investor role. Optionally, a members-only monthly deal flow post curated by the partner team.
Each runs a different combination of the five use cases.
The world's largest event of solutions for the planet, 40,000+ attendees.
Runs a year-round community on INSPIRED. Extended its 2026 summit with a €20,000 innovation challenge, where founders competed through public voting.
The flagship event of London Climate Action Week, drawing 10,000+ attendees and 3,000+ VIPs and investors.
Keeps its community active year-round between its summits and side events. Bridged Reset Connect North and Reset Connect London through a shared £10,000 sustainability challenge.
Europe's largest student-run entrepreneurship initiative, 7,000+ attendees.
Keeps founders engaged beyond the summit through a year-round community. Extended its 2026 summit with a CHF 10,000 pitch competition.
The University of Amsterdam's student marketing and business consultancy.
Ran a startup competition across multiple university communities, with public voting driving visibility beyond its own ecosystem.
Every Community Space is built from the same core building blocks. Combine them to create the setup that fits your community.
Hero banner, logo, name, description, website link. Every visitor lands in your world. The hero is the most prominent placement, often used for sponsors, and any sponsorship revenue stays with you.
Add as many channels as you need. Each channel has its own banner, icon, description, and permissions. Channels are how you organise your community: one for announcements, one for founders, one for a contest, one for alumni.
Create roles that match your programme structure: Applicants, Alumni, Speakers, Sponsors, Cohort 2026. Each role can have different permissions in every channel, so people can view, post, or vote exactly where they should.
Each invite link carries one or more roles. Send the applicant link in your application form, the sponsor link to your sponsors, the alumni link in your reunion email. Members join with the right role automatically.
Turn any channel into a contest with a leaderboard, vote counts, and a defined period. Public voting extends beyond your community and drives entries from the wider network.
Community hero and per-channel banners are your most prominent placements. Use them for announcements, sub-branding, or sponsor visibility. Any sponsorship revenue stays with you. Reports are available on request, with self-serve analytics coming later this year.
A few principles hold across every use case. Get these right and the community builds momentum on its own.
A space feels more inviting when there's already activity. Before opening it publicly, add a few posts across your core channels, and bring your inner circle in first: CEOs, alumni, ambassadors, so newcomers arrive to a community that already feels alive.
Every thriving community has someone looking after it. That might be one host for the whole community, or a point person per channel: whoever posts updates, welcomes new members, and keeps an eye on the conversation. What matters is that it gets regular attention.
A recurring beat gives members a reason to come back on a schedule: something like Monday introductions, a midweek spotlight, a Friday question. A predictable cadence keeps a community active and takes the pressure off inventing something new every week.
Content people can only get inside the community is what makes them join and keep coming back: session recordings, workshop materials, an alumni directory, investor introductions. If the same thing is already on your website or their LinkedIn feed, there's less reason to be here, so hold some of it back for members only.
Reserve the default Admin role for people you trust with the whole community. For everyone else, create Management Roles with scoped permissions. Two questions to ask: do I trust this person with the entire community, or do I want to give them a specific job? That answer tells you which role to assign.
The strongest incentives are relational. "Get discovered by investors," or "feedback from operators who have been there," lands better than "join for free." Tell people what they'll get from being inside.
INSPIRED plugs into the event platform you already use, whether that's Luma, Eventbrite, or something else. It adds matchmaking and a year-round community, so every edition builds on the last instead of starting from a guest list again. You keep selling tickets and running your event where you do today. No migration. No new workflow for your team.
Start with the community, add ticketing when you're ready, and grow into a complete event platform if and when you need it.
Matchmaking and a year-round community on top of the event platform you already use.
Run the event on INSPIRED, with ticketing built in, plus matchmaking and the community.
The deeper event-networking features Brella and Grip are known for: 1:1 meetings, personalised agendas, sponsor matchmaking, and session engagement.
Ecosystem matchmaking connects the right people, inside your community and across the wider INSPIRED network. You tell us what you're looking for, we suggest people worth meeting, and once you accept, we make the introduction.
Matchmaking continues within your community. Members across chapters, events, and past cohorts keep discovering one another, so connections grow year-round instead of fading after a single event.
Bring the right people into your ecosystem. Accelerators discover programme candidates. Events find attendees and exhibitors. Partners, mentors, and collaborators are surfaced when they're relevant.
Sponsor matching follows later this year.
Connect your members to the world. Through the wider INSPIRED network, your founders and members are introduced to collaborators, partners, organisations, and mentors who can help them move forward. When founders choose to raise, we introduce them to relevant investors who fit what they're building, one introduction at a time and always with context.
Introductions are rolling out in beta through August and September 2026.
Our team does. We set up the community, invite you in as the first admin, and then transfer ownership to you.
Yes. You choose whether your community is public (open to join) or private (join by request or invite). Both are discoverable in the network. Then, channel by channel, you decide what's visible: a private community can have a public preview channel, and a public community can have members-only channels.
Members can join in three ways:
Yes. A search sits at the top of every community and looks across its posts, so members can pull up a past update, resource, or announcement without scrolling back through the channels. It covers posts for now, with other content expected to follow. Handy once a community has published a lot over time.
Every Community Space comes with five built-in roles: Owner, Admin, Moderator, Member (anyone who has joined), and Public (anyone who hasn't). You can also create as many custom roles as you need.
Access Roles decide what people can see and do. Management Roles decide who helps run the community. In practice: Access Roles control who sees what, who can post, vote, or enter a contest, and you attach them to invite links. Management Roles cover moderation, approving join requests, and event coordination, and you assign them to team members after they join.
Yes. If someone has multiple roles, they get the combined permissions of all of them.
People you trust with the community as a whole. Admins can act on other Admins, including removing them or changing their channel permissions. For everyone else on your team, create a Management Role with the specific scope they need. This is the safer default.
Any channel can be turned into a contest. You define the name, description, period, and whether the leaderboard shows vote counts or just rank. Participants (defined by role) submit entries. Voters (defined by role, including the Public role) cast votes, and a leaderboard renders automatically. The contest feature is enabled by request, so just ask us to switch it on.
That depends on the voting model you choose. Open voting to the public and most votes come from outside INSPIRED: LinkedIn, email, WhatsApp, and Instagram drive the largest share of vote traffic in the contests we have run, with INSPIRED members adding to it. Keep voting inside your community, or restrict it to a jury, and the votes come from exactly those people instead.
Yes, and it is rolling out in three phases.
Phase 1, now: the integration, adding matchmaking and a year-round community on top of the event platform you already use, whether that is Luma, Eventbrite, or another.
Phase 2, October 2026: host the event on INSPIRED itself with ticketing built in, the event hosting Luma offers, plus matchmaking and the community.
Phase 3, 2027: a full offering for bigger summits, with the deeper networking features Brella and Grip are known for: 1:1 meeting scheduling, personalised agendas, sponsor and exhibitor matchmaking, and session engagement.
Yes. The community hero, channel banners, and contest banners are prime placements you fully control. Sell them into your sponsor packages. All sponsorship revenue is yours. INSPIRED does not take a cut.
Right now, we can pull the numbers for you on request: invite-link usage, member growth, join requests, engagement metrics, and more. Self-serve dashboards are on the way, so you'll be able to see it all yourself without asking us.
Phase 1 is rolling out in beta across August and September 2026. AI-powered ecosystem matchmaking introduces your members to relevant people across the wider INSPIRED network. Members tell us what they're looking for, we suggest people worth an introduction, and once they accept, we make it.
Phase 2 brings the same matchmaking inside a single Community Space, so members connect with the right peers within your own community. That suits identity-driven networks (impact, climate, student entrepreneurship, and similar) where people join specifically to meet others inside that community rather than the wider network.
The big one is our event features: hosting and ticketing on INSPIRED from October 2026, and a full offering for larger summits in 2027. Also on the way: named invite links and community analytics. Ask us for the current status if you are evaluating.
Here's how your Community Space comes together.
We carefully review every Community Space to keep the network relevant and valuable for everyone in it. Once you're in, we create yours, make you an admin, and transfer ownership. Nothing for you to build.
Upload your hero (16:9), logo (1:1, square), a one-line description, and your website. This is what every member sees first.
Pick the use case that fits your goals, or combine a few. See the use cases →
Add the channels your use cases call for, and brand each with its own icon and banner. Pin a welcome post at the top of each one so members know what it's for and what to do there.
Only if different audiences should do different things. Roles let you decide who can view, post, or vote in each channel. A role has to exist before you can attach it to an invite link, so create it now. Example: to let only your startups post in a channel, create a Startups role and give it its own invite link (next step), then send that link to just that group. Skip this if the defaults are enough: an invite link with no custom role brings people in as basic members with view access.
Create an invite link (it carries the role you choose) and drop it into your next email, newsletter, or application form. Members land in the right place automatically, with no manual assignment.
Generate a co-branded PDF for founders, attendees, or investors that walks them through joining INSPIRED and your space, then share it. Make yours below →
A ready-made, co-branded guide for the people you’re inviting. Choose the audience, fill in your details, and generate a PDF ready to share. It walks members through joining INSPIRED, getting started, and finding their way around your Community Space.
INSPIRED is where the global innovation ecosystem stays connected. Build your profile once and become discoverable to investors, partners, collaborators, and organisations. Joining is free and takes around ten minutes.
Your organisation has a Community Space on INSPIRED: your year-round home to stay connected, get discovered, and take part long after the programme ends.
Create your free account on desktop, iOS, or Android: [sign-up link]
Coming soon: Introductions. INSPIRED will match and introduce you to the right people based on what you're looking for, to help you build. Complete your profile now so you're ready when it goes live.
INSPIRED is where the global innovation ecosystem stays connected. Create your profile once and become part of a global network of founders, investors, organisations, and collaborators. Joining is free and only takes a few minutes.
Your organisation has a Community Space on INSPIRED: your year-round home to connect, stay in the loop, and stay involved.
Create your free account on desktop, iOS, or Android: [sign-up link]
Coming soon: Introductions. INSPIRED will match and introduce you to the right people based on what you're looking for. Complete your profile now so you're ready when it goes live.
INSPIRED is where the global innovation ecosystem stays connected. Create your profile once and discover founders, ventures, and investment opportunities across the network. Joining is free and takes a few minutes.
Your organisation has a Community Space on INSPIRED: a curated place to discover the community, connect with founders, and follow their progress.
Create your free account on desktop, iOS, or Android: [sign-up link]
Coming soon: Introductions. INSPIRED will introduce you to relevant founders based on what you're looking to back, one at a time and with real context. Complete your profile now so you're ready when it goes live.
Refer a community you think would be a great fit. Every new community makes the network more valuable for everyone.