First thing is welcome to our community @RocketMan!
I think the key thing to a community is having a solid foundation, some people who will kick the pebbles that form a landslide. The first impression someone has of a community is what they need to come back, and if there’s very few people the first time they show up, they feel like it’s too much pressure to be one of those founding members. It’s a bit of a catch-22, because if you have a critical mass of people, the community becomes self-sustaining and vibrant, but if you don’t have enough people, they don’t bother coming back. So you need enough people to attract more people in order to get people, around and around into madness (unless you can find those few people willing to put in the work to publicise it, or start with a staff core)
The other thing I’ve found with communities previously is that unless you constantly push it, it stagnates fast. Maintaining a community is high-touch, high-maintenance, and requires a ton of outreach and engagement, else you end up with a small core that just shows up and is intimidating to outsiders (if they even notice you exist)