My buddy Nate Westheimer has a good post about “egoless community organizing.”
There has been all this discussion, especially with in the Washington DC tech community, around whether someone with a strong personal brand can work on a team where they’re serving the team and not just serving themselves.
I think Nate hits the nail on the head when he writes that they key is, “creating a culture where people ‘stay focused on the mission, as opposed to personal ambition.’ ”
I think it’s one of the reasons why Clearspring has been so successful. Despite there being a lot of industry rockstars here that have had some pretty massive accomplishments, there is a culture where we’re all focused on the mission of “helping publishers and marketers extend their reach to the leading social networks, start pages and blogs and to respond to growing consumer demand for a more personalized desktop, Web, and mobile experience.”
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 
Justin!
There are many ways to build a community and people need to find the one that works for them. I enjoy personality driven commnitues because I, like a lot of people are driven to personalities. One example is Wine Library TV. I would never sit through a stuffy wine review site or participate in that sort if community if Gary Vaynerchuk wasntthr guy in front of it and was making it interesting and fun.
Saul Colt
Head of Magic
Freshbooks.com
Saul, I totally agree. What I took away from what Nate wrote and what I was trying to express is that personal brand and building strong communities for a company aren’t mutually exclusive.
You can have folks be out there and known by the community and still keep it where everyone is keeping their eyes on the mission of the company.
Freshbooks is a perfect example of that. You, Sunir, and Rayanne are all rockstars, awesome, and super well known by the tech community but in no way does that stand in the way of being focused on the mission of serving Freshbooks customers.
Well, Barack Obama is the best example of them not being mutually exclusive; not coincidentally, he’s the one I’m quoting there.
Nice post.