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“I can’t start a group because [group that has existed for longer] will get in the way!”

This quick and concise guide will help you get over that and realize anyone can start a group. It’s a lot easier than you think.

There are three “value disciplines.” Think of them like attack, defense, and magic in Kingdom Hearts: you pick one as your strength, and sacrifice one.
Quality and innovation
Speed and accessibility
Customization and service
Will you group do things higher-quality than everyone else? And if so, at the cost of customizability, or speed? And so on.

With a value discipline picked out, now it’s time to think of your group’s “brand.” Look at these 9 brands and think of them like RPG stats. The value disciplines will give you higher stats in certain areas to start with, but you can grow them over the course of your group’s “game.”
Differentiation: Do things differently from the norm.
Purpose: Do things for a good cause.
Service: Do more for your people.
Innovation: Do things with better technology/techniques.
Value: Do things more quickly, cheaply, easily.
Performance: Do things better and more.
Quality: Do things of higher quality. (If you can’t tell the difference between this and performance, think of a muscle car vs. a luxury car. One’s faster, one has more features.)
Style: Do things more stylishly or provide more style.
Experience: Make people feel better.

You’re going to specialize in a few of these better than the others. It’ll also attract a certain kind of member to your group. This group is called your “target audience.”

Now it’s time to figure out what makes your group serve your members better than any other group they found. I want you to list three things about your target audience:
What tasks or objectives do your typical members want to do?
What do they hope to gain by doing these tasks?
What pains do they wish to avoid along the way?

Once you have all three, develop group features that help your members accomplish those tasks, enhance the gains, and alleviate the pains. With that, you now have the core reason why your group exists.

With that, we can build the model for your group. It is composed of 9 parts:
What you do and why: The core of the group we just discussed.
Who you serve: Your target audience. Again, we just discussed this, too.
How people find you: You don’t just have to blatantly advertise your group. What other ways can people find you?
What’s expected of you: What do your members want you to do? How do you uphold your reputation? How do you gain and retain members?
Who can help: Where do you get your members from? Are there other groups who can help you or you can form partnerships with?
What you need: What resources, from intangibles like energy and enthusiasm, to human resources like people and experience, to tangibles like sites and software, do you need to make the core possible?
How you do it: What activities must be regularly done to make this group function, especially in relation to the core? Ideally, you need a bottom-line long-term future-oriented goal (commonly called a vision), a present-term group for the members you serve (commonly called the mission), goals for your team, and goals for personal growth. Little projects to accomplish these goals are commonly called initiatives.
What are you willing to give?: How much time, energy, emotion, and possibly even money do you need to give to make this group possible?
What do you want in return?: For all of your efforts, what do you want your members to do? Do you just want a healthy community? Or output of more works? Or help spread the word of your group? Pick what resources you wish to gain in return (especially the intangible ones) for your efforts.

This will create what’s known as a model canvas. On paper, it looks like this:

The middle space is your core value, the thing that makes your group “valuable” to others.
The right spaces are your desirability: your “front stage” where people find and participate in your group.
The left spaces are your possibility: your “back stage” and what is required to make the front stage possible.
The bottom spaces are your cost/viability: what are you willing to trade to keep this group going? What must members do for the group, and the group for the members?

You can improve on these by seeing where on the canvas your group is lacking.

There are also four methods of adding things to the canvas to stand out:
Elimination: What typical factors groups have competed on, but you don’t necessarily need? This reduces the resources you need to run the group.
Reduction: Which typical factors can be reduced below the typical standard without a loss of the group’s quality? This also reduces the resources required to run a group.
Raise: What typically-low standard could be raised to differentiate the group?
Create: What new features have never been offered by other groups before?

Ideally, you want to raise and create opportunities on the desirability side while reducing and eliminating costs on the possibility side. However, you can also speed up efficiency by eliminating and reducing on the desirability side, cutting things down to core features only, while raising and creating resources on the possibility side for innovation and optimization. The possibilities are only limited by your creativity.

Finally, there are five stages in the journey of your members.
Awareness: How do people become aware of your group?
Consideration: How do people find out about its features and consider joining?
Buy-In: What gets them to put aside their worries and hop in?
Retention: What keeps them around? You want to keep delivering on what your group promised, so how do you do that?
Advocacy: How do you get the member to like the community so much, they recommend it to others? By doing this, more people become aware, and the cycle repeats.

And the rest comes down to organizational structure (mods and admins) and leadership (how to influence and motivate others towards goals).

Anyone can start a group with the right people and the right plan.
Don’t let the existence of longer-established groups discourage you.
Do you think automobile companies would let the horse-and-buggy industry stop them?
Or Canon’s home printer vs. Xerox’s industrial copiers of the time?
Or Apple’s iPhone vs. the Blackberry?
David vs. Goliath?
It doesn’t matter: have a team, have a plan, set yourself apart, and your group will grow.