The Core Values of Community: Authenticity, Humility, Abundance
The three core values every community needs — authenticity, humility, and abundance. Why Laís de Oliveira calls them the AHA values, and how to embed them.
The Core Values of Community are the three values a community needs in order to exist rather than merely gather — authenticity, humility, and abundance. I call them the AHA values, and I call them core from the Latin cor, which means both heart and, more recently, seed: every other value a community holds grows out of these three like roots. Without them, a gathering becomes a crowd or, worse, a Cool Kids Club.
“You are only free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.”
What makes a community, if not what brings people together?
What brings people together matters far less than why they stay.
Hugh Mason, co-founder and CEO of JFDI Asia, puts it best: "community building is like the turkey in the Thanksgiving dinner — people get together to eat the turkey, but what matters are the conversations around the table."
The turkey is the reason for the invitation. It is never the reason anyone comes back.
In the long term, the why we gather matters more than the what that convenes us. And a third thing matters just as much: the how — the way we stay together.
The why means walking in the same direction.
Sharing values is how we decide the way we walk. Our modus operandi is defined by our core.
Why are they called core values?
They are called core values because of what the word actually means.
From the Latin cor, "core" refers both to the heart and — more recently — to the seed. Both readings are correct and both are load-bearing: these values are what a community feels from, and what everything else grows out of. I use the word deliberately, and in the same sense, in Find Your Core and in the Core Circle of the Closeness Circles.
Every community will develop its own broader cast of idiosyncratic values. The AHA values are different: they are intrinsic to any community at all. I call them core because all other values emerge from them like roots. Start anywhere else and you don't get a community.
Why this particular trio?
Because everything else we use to identify a real community turns out to be either an action produced by these three, or a consequence of them — creating safe spaces where people can be vulnerable, building familiarity through continuous encounters, growing a culture of contribution where everyone knows the rising tide lifts all boats.
Why does authenticity matter in a community?
Authenticity matters because there is no community if we are deceiving ourselves and each other in order to fit in. How many of us have started projects, gone places, attended parties, and bought things until we became so much like someone else that we no longer recognised ourselves? And how many of us feel threatened at the thought of being truly seen?
The threat may not be real, but the perception of it is. As the somatic psychotherapist Nora Alwah puts it, "anyone with a marginalised background knows the pain of not being able to share your whole truth." True belonging can only find its way through authenticity.
"Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be accepted. Belonging, however, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are." — Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness
Authenticity builds relationships, not transactions. One of Startup Grind's core values reads: make friends, not contacts. Authenticity is what makes us feel at home, and it is the gateway to true belonging.
There is also a hard-nosed case for it. Authenticity is energy efficiency. When you are authentic, you pump fuel straight from the heart — less sensitive to what people think, more connected to what drives you. When you build a brand from an authentic place, everything you say and do resembles you. Acting from your core saves time and money, and it generates energy you can spend on what you're actually good at.
How does a leader demonstrate authenticity?
A leader demonstrates authenticity by being the first to be vulnerable — by naming the flaw rather than working around it.
No one can relate to perfection. Flaws are what show that we are human, and a brand or a community that admits one is far harder to compete with than one that performs invulnerability.
The classic example is Avis. In the early 1960s, an agency team kept coming back with the same uncomfortable research phrase: we try harder because we have to. There was little else to separate Avis from Hertz. That honesty became one of the finest copy lines of the last fifty years — "Avis is only No. 2… We try harder" — and it carried into everything after it: Avis can't afford dirty ashtrays. Avis can't afford to make you wait. They dropped it in 2012 and came back to it, because, as Michael Johnson writes, it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. It has warmth, it has humility, it's rooted in a product truth, and it is very hard for a competitor to copy.
I learned the same lesson the harder way. In 2013 in Argentina, we ran what was probably Latin America's first fully online conference for entrepreneurs: eighty-five speakers, thousands of tickets sold across the region. On day one, our system crashed. Angry emails poured in by the minute. And I noticed something: the angriest users were the ones who cared the most.
So we wrote to everyone immediately, admitted we had screwed up, apologised, and offered a full refund to anyone who wanted one — while asking for a single day to make it right. The great majority stayed, and many sent notes of support.
We worked until 5am, spread the content across three weeks to spare our servers, and delivered what we had promised. Our community stayed because we showed vulnerability, not despite it. We came out of it stronger than we went in.
As community leaders, we have to be the first to show up. To speak our truth, and in doing so make space for other people to connect with us at all.
Why does humility matter in a community?
Humility matters because belonging and humility are the same instinct pointed in two directions — to feel part of something larger is already a humble act.
Humility emerges from self-love. It comes from feeling at home and from feeling seen. It brings a quiet confidence: knowing that you are enough. When you belong, you don't need to prove yourself, make a point, compete, or show off.
Humility sounds like this: I'm glad to be part of this. I care about the collective, because I am part of it. I care that the mission is accomplished, whether or not it carries my name. I care about results over recognition. I am seen, so I need no spotlight.
Humility yields confidence.
Our society overestimates standing out. Standing out has its place — a revolutionary act is sometimes necessary and opens the way for others to be different. But many of us got addicted to being special, and normalised competing with our peers. When "you're not like other girls" reads as a compliment, it means you had to compare yourself to others to qualify. Competition can be useful, but the moment it becomes the core driver of your actions, you have traded away your authenticity.
There is a practical case too. Patrick Lencioni's work on high-performing teams shows that the strongest ones have members focused on the common good, who feel responsible for collective goals. That ownership comes from genuinely buying into decisions, communicating authentically, and sharing a safe space. The more you belong, the more you care.
Think of snowflakes. Each has a unique design, and a single snowflake makes no snow. Humility says that you are unique, just like everyone else, and it is what lets a community grow past you..
Why does abundance matter in a community?
Abundance matters because a community only grows when value is allowed to flow before it is accounted for. Abundance is the state of mind that the rising tide lifts all boats: trusting that someone else's success benefits everyone, including you, and rejoicing in other people's joy.
It means recognising that we don't have to fight over the last slice of pizza — we can make more pizza together.
That can sound idealistic, so let's be concrete. Creating abundance facilitates sharing, which means it favours the flow of knowledge and resources. Above all, it means optimisation. We gain more when we share. Most of us, though, were raised on the opposite intuition: that giving first means being tricked, falling behind, losing.
Abundance is not naïveté, and it is not a policy of tolerating everything. If someone is acting unethically or extracting from your community, you have to act. Occasionally burning a bridge with scarcity-minded behaviour is exactly what keeps the space abundant for everyone else.
Is there an economic case for an abundance mindset?
Yes, and it is one of the better-documented findings in ecosystem research. Annalee Saxenian's Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 attributes Silicon Valley's advantage over Boston's Route 128 not to talent or capital but to a culture of openness and sharing.
Research by Startup Genome finds the same pattern at the level of cities: economic growth is accelerated by local connectedness — the amount of peer-to-peer support founders give each other, plus support from experts and investors who hold no stake in the companies they help.
Argentina is the case I watched up close. Inc. has described it as one of the toughest business climates in the world. It is also where MercadoLibre raised a US$289m IPO on NASDAQ in 2007, and, as the Financial Times reported in 2016, home to most of Latin America's tech unicorns — Globant, OLX, Despegar. The mechanism is generational. Argentina's 1990s founders became the leading investors in their own ecosystem, mentoring and backing the founders who came after them — often their own former employees. Endeavor calls it the "multiplier effect." Kaszek Ventures, one of Latin America's most prominent VC firms, was founded by two early MercadoLibre employees. The correlation between past and future unicorns is tight, and it runs on people choosing to give first.
What has to be true before these values can take hold?
A safe space is the sine qua non — the condition without which none of the three can appear. A safe space is one where people feel at home because they find something familiar in it. You cannot ask people to be authentic before they feel safe enough to be seen, and you cannot ask them to give first while they are bracing for loss.
You can always find generous people in a context of scarcity, and that generosity is beautiful — it can inspire the same act in someone else, and so on, pay-it-forward. But under ordinary conditions abundance thrives best when it runs in every direction, and creating safe spaces is the way to start in every case. When people feel safe, they trust whoever else is in that space, and become far more willing to contribute.
To give first means to belong.
Putting the framework to work
Which of the core values should you start with?
There is no chronological order between them. You can embed them into your community from any corner — start anywhere and everywhere:
Demonstrate authenticity. It builds trust and makes people feel they can give first.
Act with humility. It shows there is no need for power struggles or competition, and that standing out isn't what matters here.
Practice abundance. It inspires others to give, which deepens trust and lets people relax, open up, and share.
That is how you create a virtuous circle: from one to many. Each value makes the next one easier, and the loop closes back on itself.
What's the difference between stated values and lived values?
Stated values are what a community says on its website; lived values are what it does when nobody is watching — and only the second kind builds anything. A beautiful company manifesto is not enough. Values written on a wall and contradicted in a meeting don't merely fail to help; they actively teach people that what is said here can be ignored.
We have always told stories that translate our values into metaphor — tribal elders, then manifestos, then mission statements painted on office walls. As Yuval Noah Harari puts it, "as long as everybody believes in the same fiction, everybody obeys and follows the same rules, the same norms, the same values." We tell stories to align behaviours. But the story only holds if the daily action underneath it matches.
Actions speak louder than words. Leading by example is the only way to implement a value you expect your community to follow — and it works, as long as it's repeated relentlessly in front of the same group of people.
What happens when a community is missing one of the core values?
Each absence has its own distinct failure mode, which makes the three values useful as a diagnostic and not just an aspiration.
Authenticity missing → people perform instead of belonging. What you get is fitting in, not belonging, and trust quietly erodes because nobody is sure who anyone actually is.
Humility missing → the community organises around a person rather than a purpose. Power struggles, competition for status, and a leader who cannot be made obsolete. It won't outlive them.
Abundance missing → relationships become transactions. People arrive to extract rather than contribute, and the value stops flowing peer-to-peer, which is the one thing that separates a community from a customer base.
If a community feels off and you can't name why, work through the three. It's usually one of them.
How the Core Values interact with other Hacking Communities Frameworks
How this connects to the other frameworks
Closeness Circles — the people who move fastest toward your core are the ones already living the AHA values before anyone told them what the values are. The values explain why contribution-led closeness works.
Community Design: the 5 Ps — the values are the how; the 5 Ps are the what with. Purpose without authenticity is a slogan; Participation without abundance is extraction.
Interaction Design: Lighthouse, Port, City — every stage of the funnel has to express the same three values, or the depth you build in the City contradicts what you promised at the Lighthouse.
Engineering Serendipity — collisions only turn into connections inside a safe space. The prerequisite for the values is the prerequisite for serendipity.
The Member Success and Contribution Journey (and Lifecycle) — contribution is what the values look like as behaviour, tracked over time.
The Dandelion Lifecycle — the values apply at every stage, but they are set at Seed. What you embed at the start is what every seed carries outward.
Adapted from Chapter 5 of Hacking Communities: Cracking the Code to Vibrant Communities by Laís de Oliveira. Also published in Portuguese as Reinventando Comunidades. Sections on vulnerability draw on Chapters 6 and 12.
Last updated: 19 August 2026