The ideal startup community

Take a pause...

While there are blueprints from years of experience on how to run a startup community, there isn't one direct way to start from scratch and grow your startup community.

This is because different startup have different mission and scope, the community needs to be tailored to help the team achieve their mission, and the community needs to get value for their support and contributions.

If you've ever jumped into a community, find them discussing things that are out of the company's goal, or generally out of the sector the startup is operating in, this is usually because a general community building approach instead of a more specific path.

It's been seven years of community building, with most of my focus now on leading ecosystems for web3 tech giants, after leading communities for 6+ startups (averagely 1 year/startup for most), backed by

Bain Capital Crypto, 6MV, DWF Labs, ABCDE, Andreessen Horowitz, and a few other reputable VCs.

Some shut down, one rebranded and a few like Nansen where I voluntarily contributed to now valued at $750M is thriving, as well as Surf Protocol (backed by Binance Labs) where I worked on the community officially, did $1B+ in volume before rebranding to TurboFlow.

The playbook I'll be sharing stemmed from experiences from these companies, some of which I was a core team member (makes a difference in output, will talk about this later), lessons learnt from failures and success, and what you should do with these info.

I've seen a couple of B2Bs say they don't need a community, meanwhile, I've also seen other B2Bs who takes advantage and create a community that solves customer support faster, encourages knowledge sharing and product feedback, leading to trust for the company.

Have you considered this? Instead of pitching a customer who you figured aren't interested, add them to your community of existing users. That's a powerful lead generation tool, you don't need to convince them anymore, they can see how others trust and use the product.

Lower marketing cost, higher customer retention.

If your goal is to build a product for B2C, then it is essential that you don't just build a community of user, rather you build a community of supporter that feels valued, heard, and can in turn sell your product naturally. This is surprisingly easier that it seems, especially when you build your community from scratch around your product idea.

In my experience, when a community is built the right way from the beginning, they'll stick through if/when your product idea changes, which matters a lot and is a tool you in your artillery.

Why build a community?

Now, we need to agree that a community is way more than a Discord server, or a Telegram group where members sends gm and play some in-server games, or maybe catch up with each other.

Once you understand that community members are essentially your users, you'll start to understand why it is important to value your community, as they will, to some extent, determine how long your product will be successful for, especially at the beginning phase of your company.

One of the lessons I learnt as a core team member at puzzle and one of Sam Altman's video is that as a founder or founding team, you must be close to your community, listen to feedback from those who actually use what you are building, ask questions, implement (necessary) ideas, and make everyone feel heard.

Most times, founding teams fail to see their product from a user perspective, which is why I take the step cue to always get involved with using any product my team is building, try to use features at random times, feel the pains that users go through, and even work with the engineering team to fix bugs before most users notice or complain.

You need a community to assist you to build a product for them, you win, they win. We've got discussions like compensations, how not to handle a community, managing expectations, handling comms, and I'll share more on what to consider for your community.

Who builds your community?

In a long time, I haven't seen any take on who to trust (not hire), when building your community, and I'm happy to share my expertise on this topic.

You've got an idea, normal.

You did some research on how to get started, best approaches, market conditions, spoke to founders and people who has been in the system, good.

Okay now you've started building something based on your idea, alongside two friends who are engineers and think the idea is genius, exactly what is needed, great!

You bootstrapped, got some traction, things not organized yet but there is solid growth, amazing!

Investors shares the same view as yours, they think the idea is great, they see traction, PMF, the market is super right, they trust you, skip angel, pre-seed & seed, funds $5M Series A at $25M valuation, thrilling! (Btw, I'm not yet an angel investor, this is just a fictional scenario but you get the idea).

Now is the time to start building full scale, everything now operates more organized, and most time you don't see a need to hire someone to take care of the users that got you traction, but as responsibilities starts to climb, you look for "someone" to hire quickly to just handle the socials where your users are -- Discord, Telegram, or X.

Now here is where the problem comes from.

You shared the idea with your friend when it was just an idea, most times they didn't get paid at the early stage, but now, you go straight to recruiting someone who may not see your idea as "genius" as you do, but since they are getting paid, they show excitement.

Now the problem is really not from their end, it relies on the founder's ability to find people who are genuinely interested in their idea.

From experience, there are people who are just going to be genuinely interested in your idea and want to contribute/support, always following the company's progress, willing to step in and take ownership if given a chance.

Prioritized employing people who are excited about what you are building

A conversation at 6am, two years ago, excited about the product and features of a company, took charge of community activities, including reward distribution, nine months before I got paid and employed officially as a core team member

How to employ your community lead

When you employ someone that is excited about the solution you are building, you've fixed most of the problems that may arise in the future, relating to performance.

How?

People who genuinely care about the company go out of their way to make the company successful without you asking.

I've stayed up late and woken up early, sometimes wake at midnight, to attend to user's issue, driven back home from a couple of places I was at, outside work time because I thought the community needed significant attention at that time, being active during weekends, basically operating like I own the company, sharing interesting ideas with the founder, helping out the engineering team where I could, collecting feedback from the community and sharing with the product team to create userflows that led to higher retention, and more.

I never felt bored, tired, or bothered about work-life balance. In fact, I think there is no work-life balance if you are working at a startup. There can be chaos any day, one day we are celebrating $100k revenue, the next day we are firefighting fraud, but being genuinely excited about the product made the difference for us, we shipped regardless.

As a founder, your community lead employment process should be as solid as the engineers, it shouldn't reflect hiring for a less position. You control the narrative/working environment an employee walks into, placing more importance to the role means you are attaching importance and expecting more compared to a regular community manager.

I'll advise you get a founding community lead when the company starts to get some traction, and basically check within your community for someone credible (always verify their background please), who is genuinely excited about what you are building, then you can proceed to interview them, maybe do an adhoc for two weeks, and make your conclusion.

Don't just look to hire, look to trust someone with community ownership

That way, you'd understand that you aren't just hiring someone random, you are employing someone you can trust to handle an important backbone of your company.

When more importance is placed to the role, magic happens. I was employed to lead the community in my last role, but I led the project's ecosystem, comms & product launches, recruited ambassadors in 30+ countries, support, bug escalations & resolutions, led 50+ content creation team, still excelled at managing & growing the community, and I loved every bit.

If you are in web3, consider employing people globally if they are talented, feel free to explore tools like Deel for full time employments outside your region.

How to build your community

I'll share a few ways you can get you first set of loyalists, not just community members. Numbers are important, but quality > quantity at the early stage.

1. Public account & Hackathon: Getting your first users is the hardest part, but we all know a founder is someone who is always pitching their idea and getting people to see the dream. Except the founder didn't create a community in the first place (which happens surprisingly in many cases), the first set of loyalist comes from pitching your ideas, hackathons or accelerators. Have an X account where new members can follow pending when you are set to create your first community platform.

   
   

2. Waitlist: This is the point where you've gotten the idea off the ground, maybe won a couple of hackathons, or joined an accelerator, angel checks, and might have been spotlighted by a bigger company. You can start to share some teasers of what you are building, important updates, which in turn get people excited. Here is when you set up a waitlist usually via your website. One mistake people make is to leave your waitlist signups without interaction. Your competitors will add new features and people will move on fast. Always make sure they join a discord/telegram community after waitlist.

   
   

3. Quest: If you are building something relating to wallets or anything fun, you can use quests and incentives as a way to get more community members only if you do it the right way, else, your community will create an arbitrary expectation of overly demanding rewards, and this gets tied to feedback (encourages misleading stats), people get entitled, this overall signals the wrong kind of community. More on this later.

   
   

4. Build easy-to-use products: This is underrated but a very powerful tool not just for growing/building your community, but also for getting users and retaining them. In the past companies I worked with, I had more to do (in regards to content and technical breakdown) for users to get what they needed to do on an app or website. However, when it is easy to navigate and understand the product without a tutorial or tooltip, they easily get onboarded, and are eager to invite their friends to try it out.

   
   

5. Apart from the above, there are general tips like virtual events, meetups, word of month, it is also useful to spotlight members, you can give early OG roles, always remember those who were with you during the early days, and appreciate them and they'll take care of the community when you are not around.

Always treat the community the way you treat your company

Compensation or not?

This is one sensitive topic, especially in web3.

Many "community members" thinks project doesn't reward them enough when they launch. Many project say they've been fair with reward distribution or airdrop. Who is wrong?

I think none of them are wrong, the project just failed to manage expectations early, and users fed on wrong assumptions, got misinformed, expected too much, and got less.

Compensation, or in other terms, marketing budget is important when available, when planned well.

To start with, a project seeks users, testers, and community members when they create their first app or product, usually on testnet. As time goes on, some gets organic users, while many use KOLs to promote their product. Most of these KOLs have painted impressions that hurt both the project and the users, which is why I'd say be intentional if you are using a KOL to promote your product.

There is no direct playbook, but there is a scale to balance between letting the community know that you aren't promising any reward (or any reward significantly much), and trying not to lose users who are there only for rewards. Anyways, building your community with the tips I shared early will make sure those users are not your core (first 2k -5K) early members.

The reward system/compensation I'll suggest is an impact-based FCFS structure, and make it known to the community early. This will be determined by the what you intend to achieve with your project. Do you need more users or more TVL?

At this point is where the number matters, assuming you need more testers.

So I'd say, if you are on testnet, you could incentivized the first 10k - 50k users, depending on how much you are raising and your target as a company, and let the community know that only the first 10k will be eligible for the time being. Also put in verification methods so you don't get flooded by bot. If community members are loyalists like I've shared, they will also participate in testing. Incentive useful feedback among community members, this will ensure that community members are active.

In summary, don't allow even up to 10% of the early community that actually supported, end up with nothing.

Don't forget, we currently have big companies with huge funding but no users and less than $100 revenue daily revenue currently, as well as companies not so big, but with great support systems and revenue.

The community really never forgets.

Final thoughts and lessons

Community are people - Community are essentially still people, real people, just like people around you. Yes I understand that there may be bots account, but when you see a community, wherever you decide to host them, having real discussions, trying to help each other, and also have fun while contributing to a common cause, then you know you've won.

I've met people from many online communities I led, in real life, in different countries scattered across South America, Africa, and Asia, and got to certify that I've actually built a strong influence and value with my community.

Handling chaos & de-escalating conflict - This is a skill I've had to build over years and it becomes easier as you grow. Generally, you need to be compassionate when handling people, doesn't mean you should take bs though, but having empathy gives an edge.

The next thing is to be transparent, always have nothing to hide. Key private informations cannot be shared to the community sometimes, but know when and what information to share in time, to save your community from losing trust in times of conflict.

Don't just watch or start to delete messages that ought to be address. If you watch, the situation goes out of hand, if you delete, you think you are "cleaning the negative vibe", but the community sees it as silencing them, escalating issues that could be resolved in minutes.

Solution? Act fast! It is more like firefighting, the faster you kill the fire, the less damage, and the community moves on fast. Ignore, it lingers on for weeks and cause more damage. I'm very quick to put up a mini announcement to address any major issue.

One important tip as your community grows and messages flow in so fast especially when there is a major concern, is to put a timer in chats, address the issue fast, then remove the timer.

An example was when I grew 8k discord community members that were not very active, to 28k, and there was a chaos with the token claim, thousands of messages came and narrative kept spinning up fast. I had to address them but was still not fast enough, timer help greatly.

People say a lot of things when angry. Racist stuff, derogatory words, and many others. My most used tool is to timeout users breaking server rules, to buy me time to address their concerns properly. I even go to DMs when needed, and when they go really far, I time them out for 1 week, after which most people get calm. Where I draw the line and ban people real fast is when they try to scam or send malicious links.

Have fun - My interactions with many community members has brought me joy, made memories many of which I laugh at, lessons you can't learn being too strict, and relationships that matters.

Learn to have fun while building you community. While you want the end result to be a successful community you are proud of, the process provides even much more.

This was fun for me to write, it took a couple of days, but I've been able to share excerpts from what I've learnt actively building communities for startups in the past 4+ years, and general communities for 7+ years.

Community building and management has since been one of my skills, with me succeeding in other skills like product communications, recruiting and managing ambassadors & organized networks, and leaning heavily into operation execution.

Working with startups has been so impactful, I always have to think strategically and act fast, learn to understand the market and put the company on spotlight with a good narrative, as well as being a stakeholder or core team member while also overseeing some of our partners.

I really hope this was insightful to read, this is one of my longest articles (excluding technical explanatory blogs), do let me know you thoughts!