Small City Cliques Suck the Life Out of You

Tucson is Not Immune

Let’s get something straight.

Tucson, Arizona, “Optics Valley,” is not an unfriendly place. People are approachable, conversations start easily, and there’s a genuine sense that people want to help. On the surface, it feels open.

But if you’re a founder, an innovator, or a newcomer trying to build something real, you’ve probably felt a different layer beneath that surface. Conversations don’t always turn into action. Introductions are offered, but don’t always happen. Momentum builds slowly, then stalls without a clear reason.

That gap isn’t about personality. It’s about structure.

Closed vs Open Ecosystems

Every city with a population less than 600,000 operates somewhere between a closed and an open ecosystem. In a closed system, access flows through relationships, trust builds slowly, and the same people tend to work together repeatedly. Newcomers can attend events and meet people, but they struggle to truly integrate. In an open system, access is more visible, trust builds faster through action, and new people are given real opportunities early on. Collaboration happens across boundaries rather than within circles.

Tucson sits right in the middle. It leans closed, but it’s far from stuck.

What Tucson Actually Looks Like on the Ground

Tucson has large, strong institutions, but with few and weaker connections between them and the thousands of small businesses in the ecosystem. They create talent, research, and opportunity. But they typically don’t connect seamlessly to founders, operators, and the broader startup community.

What you end up with is not a single cohesive network but a series of clusters. Each cluster works reasonably well internally, but the pathways between them are inconsistent and often depend on who you know. That’s where friction begins.

Trust work is personal but not portable. In more open ecosystems, trust is portable. If you’ve built something, shipped something, or proven something, people are willing to engage quickly. In Tucson, trust is more personal. It tends to move through introductions and shared history. That’s not inherently bad, but it slows things down for anyone outside the network.

This is where the experience of “cliquishness” begins to surface. It’s not that people are intentionally excluding others. It’s that trust is concentrated in smaller circles, and it doesn’t move easily beyond them.

Too few connectors carry too much weight. There are people in Tucson who do an incredible job connecting with others, opening doors, and bridging gaps. The problem is that there aren’t enough of them, and many are tied to specific groups or organizations. That creates a bottleneck. If you happen to connect with the right person, things can move quickly. If you don’t, progress can feel slow and uncertain.

Events exist, but integration typically doesn’t follow. Tucson has no shortage of meetups, panels, and gatherings. But attending an event is not the same as becoming part of the network. Many people have the experience of showing up, meeting interesting individuals, and then seeing little follow-through afterward. The surface activity is there, but the deeper integration is inconsistent.

All of this has real consequences.

Why This Matters More Than It Seems

For startups, it often means slower traction. Founders may struggle to get early customers, find the right mentors, or secure meaningful introductions. For talent, it can mean slower career mobility and fewer opportunities to plug into high-impact work. For the ecosystem as a whole, it means ideas circulate within familiar circles instead of crossing boundaries where real innovation tends to happen.

None of this is random. It follows a predictable pattern. Dense legacy relationships form over time. Trust builds within those relationships. Access becomes tied to referrals. New people find it harder to break in. Insiders continue working with insiders. And the system, without intending to, begins to resist new people and new ideas.

How “Cliquishness” Actually Forms

This pattern isn’t random. It’s structural.

The Closed Loop Effect

• Dense legacy relationships form
• Trust concentrates inside those circles
• Access becomes referral-based
• Newcomers struggle to break in
• Insiders keep working with insiders
• The system resists new ideas

🔁 And the cycle repeats

Here’s the Opportunity Most People Miss

But here’s the part that should get everyone’s attention. Tucson is not locked into this pattern. It’s not broken. It’s simply under-designed.

The city has real advantages. It has world-class research through the University of Arizona. It has a growing identity around Optics Valley and enabling technologies. It has people who genuinely want to collaborate and build something meaningful. The issue isn’t intent. The issue is that the pathways for connection, access, and trust haven’t been fully built out.

What Actually Opens an Ecosystem Like Tucson

Opening a system like Tucson doesn’t require a massive overhaul. It requires intentional changes to how access and connection work. When access becomes more structured instead of random, newcomers can plug in faster. When people are given early opportunities to contribute and win, trust builds more quickly. When more individuals take on the role of connector, the burden doesn’t fall on a small group. When interactions are designed to cross silos between universities and industry, startups and corporations, researchers and customers, new ideas begin to emerge.

Over time, those small changes shift the entire system.

The most important shift, though, is cultural

Ecosystems often reward control and access, even if unintentionally. But the systems that grow the fastest reward something else: openness, collaboration, and the ability to connect others. When the people who build bridges are recognized and valued, the behavior spreads.

That’s how a network opens.

Most cities of this size fall into the same trap

They become comfortable, familiar, and unintentionally closed. Tucson has a chance to do something different. It can move from being a network of circles to a network of connections.

And in the long run, that’s what separates ecosystems that plateau from ecosystems that break through.

The future doesn’t go to the smartest city. It goes to the most connected one.

Final Thought

Most cities with a population under 600,000 fall into this trap.

They become:

• comfortable
• familiar
• unintentionally/intentionally closed and siloed

Tucson has a real choice:

• Remain a network of cliquey circles
  or
• Become a network of connections

Because in the end:

👉 The future doesn’t go to the smartest city
👉 It goes to the most connected one