Editor’s note: Billy Warden is a writer, multimedia producer and the co-founder, with Greg Behr, of the p.r./marketing firm GBW Strategies.

RALEIGH – Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, reclined against a wall, beating the heat that sweltering June day with a long pull on the straw protruding from a cold ‘big gulp’-sized cup.

This was 2011, and the Triangle was still years away from being scouted by the likes of Apple and Amazon, so having a top tech exec in Durham was electrifying. That she was touring a basement might’ve seemed odd, but she was in good company. Standing nearby was silver-haired, open-collared Jeff Immelt of G.E., looking every bit the Great American CEO.

They had come to this basement – along with the rest of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness – to tour a startup hub called the American Underground (AU).

AU had launched less than a year earlier at the American Tobacco Campus as a collection of small companies and entrepreneurial support groups in a subterranean cluster of exposed brick offices. But already, the hub was a homegrown sensation. Within a couple more years, CNBC would deem the Bull City and AU “the startup hub of the South.”

My company, GBW Strategies, ran the AU’s launch, and with the hub having just celebrated its 10th anniversary, it’s fascinating to find that our program’s three top lessons are as relevant as ever:

  • Riding the zeitgeist
  • Sharing compelling stories
  • Building a community culture
Zeitgeist Lightning

Every idea launches in the larger context of what’s happening in the world. Sometimes you find a sweet spot where your venture atunes to the zeitgeist; where the mission meets the moment.

Think of gleaming, family-friendly Disneyland opening in perfect sync with the prosperity of 1955 America’s post-WWII middle class. Or of the Japanese car makers whose fuel-efficient engines revved to new heights during the ’70s oil crisis.

In 2010, America was climbing out of an economic collapse. Many people had lost their jobs; many major corporations were on shaky footing. Meantime, “The Rise of the Creative Class” had touched off a renewed interest in urbanism while high profile startups in California and New York City were famously brimming with new ideas and cash.

A sense of expectancy swam through the culture; that out of the Titanic-like wreckage of the Great Recession would come something new. But what, who, how?

We launched AU with an eye on being part of the answer. The headline of our inaugural press release positioned the hub as “a new engine for the new economy.” We grounded this idea in sturdy realities, noting the symbiotic relationship with the Triangle’s research universities as well as the region’s legacy of innovation.

We had our lane. But it was one we shared with other startup hubs launching around the country. We needed to differentiate further.

Compelling Stories

Every endeavor has an origin story. The most iconic tend to be about the singular vision and grit of a ‘hero’ founder, from Thomas Edison to Elon Musk. But places can also be powerful, from the Garden of Eden right on up to the creation of Chobani Yogurt in a once-shuttered dairy factory.

AU launched after members of the Goodmon family, who developed American Tobacco Campus, had a notion to turn a murky storage basement there into work spaces for young companies. In our p.r. outreach, we highlighted that basement — located in a former cigarette factory, no less — because its transformation into something shiny and productive crystallized AU’s mission.

As the hub’s work spaces filled up, we focused on the founders of our member companies — from the Duke student who created an energy drink in her dorm room to the seasoned pros who went without paychecks for a spell while developing a unique e-commerce platform.

An Enduring Community

While AU soon left that iconic basement for a funky, larger space in the heart of downtown, we retained the final key piece of our launch plan: a strong sense of community. We amplified successes throughout Durham using the hashtag #BullSpeed.

A bona fide AU culture took shape. To enliven an early AU annual report, the team recruited a local hip hop artist to turn it into a song. When TIME columnist Joe Klein dropped in on Durham in 2012, he reported “There’s a jauntiness and an optimism to the place.”

Our invitations to influencers continued. For two days in 2013, we toured a TechCrunch team through AU and other Triangle sites. Their coverage pushed us to the attention of mainstream media reporters covering tech, which, in the ideal cycle of making news, led to more coverage.

Creating alliances helps build audience and credibility for any organization. Our ultimate seal of approval came when Google made AU a Google for Startups (GFS) Tech Hub, a network that includes entrepreneurial communities around the world. Now our community was much bigger.

This set the stage for GFS and AU to team up on the creation of an enduring annual event, the Black Founders Exchange. Durham is one of North Carolina’s most diverse cities, and early on, AU embraced the idea — now writ large in the U.S. — that the startup community should also be diverse and inclusive.

No doubt, AU was ‘hot’ when the President’s Council visited in the summer of 2011. Our early launch strategies had aligned the hub with a national conversation. But conversations come and go. What has sustained AU is its embrace of community. And those seeds, too, go all the way back to the founding.

You only get one launch. Seize the moment and make it count!