This is a collection of thoughts following my experience building communities and observations based on the most promising ones. For a bit more context, I founded my first community when I was 16 and this wasn’t a thing back then either, or not as much as today. I’ve been part of several communities, developing or growing them, more intensively for the past five years including in my last role. Also, I saw (lots) of mistakes and I came across founders who still avoid giving enough importance to this topic. Besides someone in BD, growth, or evangelist roles, community leader and management are as essential these days.

The feeling of belonging

People will use someone’s software today based on the community around it and not as much availability of thorough documentation, and hands-on or examples. No matter how many tutorials you provide, the purpose of them is to validate your product and not to attract new community members, who are more than just adopters.

If someone found out about your product, and you noticed a mass adoption, it’s usually because of one of two reasons. You made something accessible that otherwise was only a paid option or you democratised its access because it was used prior by certain people with certain skills. For example, you created a freely available package that solves a problem in a unique, fast, and cheap way that corporations researched and developed internally (e.g., the case of federated learning) or you have a product that doesn’t require programming knowledge, and a high-level understanding is sufficient to start using it (e.g., the case of large language models). All right, there can be a third reason, because of the well-done branding around the founder. However, I believe any founder will prefer long-term adoption and not a mere spike. How do you make the (new) adopters stay faithful to your journey while you continue improving the product to offer better experiences?

Here are some of my findings.

  • The first 24 hours of “wow”. The easiest magic pill to impress someone who joins a private space such as a Slack channel is to quickly react or respond to their messages, e.g., to their intro or a question they post. Get those notifications on or schedule who and during which hours is someone’s responsibility to do so especially if you target a worldwide market.
  • If you want people to share a bit more about themselves and their reason for joining, there are workflows that can be automatised which also can bring more fun and structure. One of them is the Welcome Bot on Slack.
  • 1:1 calls with the founder or the founding team. As with any community, e.g., religious ones, people follow the leader. Thus, this shows that you are a real person, you are reachable, and you care about your users and how your product is used or can be used to solve someone’s pain.
  • A log file documenting the feedback received and ideally a public dashboard for the implementation pipeline of the collected feedback. This shows the effort required to make the changes, and maybe attract people (or additional funding) who can contribute. It also offers an overview of the possible directions and the pivoting that you might have to follow.
  • Monthly (online) meetings. These calls can be an opportunity to discuss topics that affect your members, for example, the rise of GPTs and their implications for your software.
  • Spotlight. I’ve seen some founders inviting those who used their product to showcase how it solved a real problem. It’s a remarkable way of putting in the light those who worked hard especially because they had to decide to stick to your product, convince eventually their leadership, and deploy it in their organisations. You can organise a Q&A session, record an interview, write a blog post, promote their scientific publication, or prepare a layman video based on their work.
  • An annual gathering such as a summit or conference. More on this another time.
  • Speed networking. People join communities because they expect to find like-minded. It is what people get from each other and not only from the founders themselves. Maybe writing a grant with someone, getting a job, or finding a co-founder. It’s the collaboration and new relationships that matter as much.
  • The choice of the platform. Please choose the one with the least fraction. If you are targeting scientists, not everyone can expect to find a forum on GitHub to address their concerns. The GitHub is seen for PRs and similar but not for finding people with the same interests and exchanging ideas. Some even aren’t aware yet of the existence of such places and opportunities and to take action to look for them. Ask yourself if the chosen platform is really the most appropriate. Secondly, if you are using two platforms, let’s say, Slack and Discourse, that will be so confusing! Besides no one likes to get notifications about the same product from all sorts of places and declutter what’s important to make their work life easier. The mindset and culture are not yet there and depend a lot on the target group and generations, and tailouring is key for a community to function.

In my opinion, three things will shape the future of the community for someone’s product: (1) the experience someone can get, e.g., getting something work quickly to solve their problem, being in touch with the founding team directly (2) the recurrent value of coming back to the platform, and the community, e.g., research news, grant opportunities, and (3) the quality and quantity of the members, e.g., industry professionals, well-renowned scientists, finding a next job. The full circle is from connection to transformation through the sense of identity. Your community is an asset where the (new) currency is giving people attention, and only you decide the relation between the community and the ROI of your start-up.

If you read so far, I’ll leave you with three questions to consider when thinking of appointing a full-time community manager: (1) How much time are you spending now? (2) What impact are you creating now? (3) What influence do you aspire to create?