The ultimate guide to getting your first 1,000 community members

View this email in your browser
November 23, 2021
••••••
Before you sign off for the week, check out our latest on The Review for a thorough step-by-step guide to creating a community with staying power.

A Founder’s Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your First 1,000 Community Members

There are still plenty of misconceptions around community, especially in the earliest stages of company building. It’s a fuzzy concept with all sorts of different implementations, from running a series of events to starting a Slack group, to building a comments section into your site. And most founders consider community something to tack on as an afterthought, post-finding product/market fit.

Founder and CEO Joseph Quan had many of those same misgivings early in his startup journey. But when his HR analytics startup was running on fumes after sales plummeted in March 2020, he decided to try a different approach altogether and spun up a community aimed at helping Chief People Officers navigate the COVID crisis — called CPOHQ.

In our latest on The Review, he walks us through exactly what happened next and doles out plenty of hard-won lessons for creating a community from scratch — scaling from 0 to 1,000 C-Suite members in one year. Eventually, the CPOHQ community served as the foundation for re-launching the analytics product, unlocking critical customer insights and even community members providing warm intros for fundraising efforts.

The step-by-step process he lays out for other founders includes:

  • Step 1: Quickly validate the idea and pinpoint your competitive advantage.
  • Step 2: Spin up a scrappy MVP and build a hype train.
  • Step 3: Onboard with care and lean on your power users to scale.
  • Step 4: Experiment beyond your MVP.
  • Step 5: Measure the right metrics at the right time and shore up your team.
  • Step 6: Supercharge your company with community as your moat.

It's an incredibly thorough deep dive into community as an under-used tool in a founder's toolbelt. "The businesses that succeed have always been the ones that are closest to their customers. Being customer-obsessed means deeply understanding their problems — not just how they interact with your product. Those are critical insights a community delivers," says Quan.

Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing — and happy Thanksgiving from your friends at First Round Review!

-The Review editors

Take me to The Review

Recommended resources:

OpenView released its fifth annual Financial & Operating Benchmarks report — compare against direct peers across the metrics that matter most in a SaaS business.

How to hold employees accountable (without micromanaging).

Gitlab unpacks how the company weaves informal communication in an all-remote environment.

This Twitter thread includes 7 tips for improving your writing.

Trending this week — Review Reads:

The Best Leaders are Feedback Magnets — Here's How to Become One
Drawing from her career at PayPal, Intercom, GetYourGuide, and now as founder/CEO of Ascend (an online leadership program that empowers women) Shivani Berry shares her playbook for attracting more feedback.
Finding Language/Market Fit: How to Make Customers Feel Like You’ve Read Their Minds
Changes in a few words yield huge differences. Matt Lerner (former growth at PayPal & investor at 500 Startups) makes the case for prioritizing language/market fit.
6 Counterintuitive Rules for Being a Better Manager — Advice from Lambda School, Quip & Facebook
Molly Graham shares her collection of rules for managers (which include references to robots and wilderness medicine), assembled from her experiences scaling Lambda School, Quip and Facebook.
The Ultimate Guide to Running Executive Meetings — 25 Tips from Top Startup Leaders
Frustrated with your Executive team meetings? We tapped 25 top leaders from the startup C-Suite at  Superhuman, Lattice, Asana and more to share their tested tips.

We love feedback! How would you rate this week's newsletter? 📋

GreatGoodMeh

Made with ✨ by First Round Capital.
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Older messages

7 tactical tips for becoming a "feedback magnet"

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Longtime PM & founder/CEO of Ascend (an online leadership program that empowers women) Shivani Berry shares her playbook for attracting more feedback. View this email in your browser November 16,

The framework for finding language/market fit

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Changes in a few words yield huge differences. Matt Lerner (former growth at PayPal & investor at 500 Startups) makes the case for language/market fit View this email in your browser November 9,

Grow yourself to grow the company — advice from a top executive coach

Thursday, November 4, 2021

After 20 years of executive coaching, Alisa Cohn shares advice for getting better at self-reflection, collecting feedback, and changing behavior. View this email in your browser November 4, 2021 ••••••

How one startup got its founders 100+ podcast interviews in 6 months

Thursday, October 21, 2021

A step-by-step guide for starting your own podcast interview tour. View this email in your browser October 21, 2021 •••••• This week, we're back with a topic we haven't covered before on The

This leader has interviewed hundreds of marketers — get her hiring tips

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Marketing maven Maya Spivak shares her playbooks from Segment & Wealthfront View this email in your browser October 12, 2021 •••••• After a brief hiatus, we're back this week with an essential

You Might Also Like

Weekend Reading — Happy New Year! 🥳

Saturday, December 28, 2024

Vitalis 🇺🇦 The most original and unusual landmark in Odesa, which has become a symbol of the creativity of Odesa residents. Tech Stuff Cursor I really really like Cursor. I had a great time using VS

Daily Coding Problem: Problem #1651 [Hard]

Saturday, December 28, 2024

Daily Coding Problem Good morning! Here's your coding interview problem for today. This problem was asked by Apple. You are going on a road trip, and would like to create a suitable music playlist.

📺 There's Still A Place for Universal Remotes — 10 Apps I Always Install on a New Mac

Saturday, December 28, 2024

Also: How to Add Emails to Your Tasks To-Do List in Gmail, and More! How-To Geek Logo December 28, 2024 Did You Know In December 2014, two con men from Girona, Spain, agreed to sell a fake Francisco de

Ranked | The World's Top 30 Countries, by Automobiles Manufactured 🚙

Saturday, December 28, 2024

In 2023, China led global car production, contributing nearly a third of total output. Which countries followed in this competitive industry? View Online | Subscribe | Download Our App FEATURED STORY

🐍 New Python tutorials on Real Python

Saturday, December 28, 2024

Hey there, There's always something going on over at Real Python as far as Python tutorials go. Here's what you may have missed this past week: Learn From 2024's Most Popular Python

15,000+ Four-Faith Routers Exposed to New Exploit Due to Default Credentials

Saturday, December 28, 2024

THN Daily Updates Newsletter cover Resilient Cybersecurity ($39.99 Value) FREE for a Limited Time Reconstruct your defense strategy in an evolving cyber world Download Now Sponsored LATEST NEWS Dec 28,

Hands Down One Of The Best Cards For 2025 Offering 0% interest until 2026

Saturday, December 28, 2024

iPhoneLife Logo Sponsored email sent by iPhone Life Hands Down One Of The Best Cards For 2025 Offering 0% interest until 2026 If you have outstanding credit card debt, getting a new 0% intro APR credit

📧 What Rewriting a 40-Year-Old Project Taught Me About Software Development

Saturday, December 28, 2024

​ What Rewriting a 40-Year-Old Project Taught Me About Software Development Read on: m​y website / Read time: 7 minutes The .NET Weekly is brought to you by: As the year wraps up, it's clear API

This Week in Rust #579

Saturday, December 28, 2024

Email isn't displaying correctly? Read this e-mail on the Web This Week in Rust issue 579 — 25 DEC 2024 Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust! Rust is a programming language

The Calm Voice Of Chaos 🏆

Friday, December 27, 2024

The protest singer whose songs shaped 2024. Here's a version for your browser. Hunting for the end of the long tail • December 27, 2024 The Calm Voice Of Chaos This year's Tedium awards start