How to Build a Community in 2021 with Greg Isenberg
Earlier in 2020, Travis got the opportunity to connect with Co-Founder of Late Checkout, Greg Isenberg. Listen in as Greg shared some of his thoughts in addition to:
Episode Highlights:
There's a shortage of startup founders and people working on startups to fulfill market needs
We're entering an Entrepreneurial Renaissance that will go down as one of the most interesting periods of all time
If you can clone yourself or if you have deep insight into a particular community, you can most likely build a startup around it
And you could probably make at least seven figures from it
Meetup story about https://twitter.com/heif (Scott Heiferman) and Meetup Crawls
From a Startup point of view, your ability to create something that speaks to that community and gets them to try it is high.
There's a thirst and hunger right now for new products
Facebook started off as a tool for college students - the book of faces, literally and eventually they added social networking and all the additional features we now know
Utility precedes community in a lot of senses
How to identify a potential community of people to serve and build a tool for
Uber Drivers, Lyft Drivers, and the Gig Economy (DoorDash, Seamless, etc.)
"Hey this is a group for Uber Drivers, Lyft Drivers, and the Gig Economy (DoorDash, Seamless, etc.)"
Understand what they need - maybe they need an analytics tool that shows them how to make more money, or maybe what they really need is a map of drivers around them, or a part line, or a clubhouse area, etc
How do you serve your community?
The purpose of a server is to attend to the needs and wants of a particular community of people and your job is to deliver that value to the community you serve
When it comes to community-oriented products, it's about distilling the needs and wants of a particular community in a really succinct way that makes people feel at home
Every product that is mainstream started with a small group of people
Uber example
Reddit Example
In B2B, don't forget you're still working with people
Make sure you speak in plain English in a way people understand
What keeps Greg up at night
His ambitions
Being best in class
Greg shared insights about his substack and what he does at Late Checkout
Greg's key traits of a successful community and his process
Step 0 - Where do you have a fundamental advantage over other people? What types of communities do you know better than anyone else?
Canadian app for people who are from Canada and live in the US
Questions about naturalization, getting citizenship, and there are probably other people who may have questions
Where do they have those questions? What are the most common questions?
Step 1 - Start with research and identify a few communities and you're going to select one to go deep with.
Deep like a week doing research, and coming up with a hypothesis - where is this? Where is there an opportunity to help people? How do we serve these people?
Step 2 - Observing and looking at the data
Many data sources including:
Trending SubReddits, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok Twitter, Meetup, Spotify, Clubhouse or LinkedIn
Go deep on one of the above platforms to really understand where people are and what their needs are
Step 3 - Develop experiments with the goal of obtaining feedback
If Greg were to rewrite Lean Startup today, he would add a community lense to it
add steps around the research and bringing in the community and speaking to moderators, on Reddit, speaking to moderators on Facebook, and co-building the product together
Step 4 - Design sprint and then a community design sprint
Step 5 - Determine if your startup can hit product-market fit or not
2 Favorite Points:
If you have a key insight into a particular community, you could probably build a startup around it, and you could probably make at least seven figures from it.
The purpose of a server is to attend to the needs and wants of a particular community of people and your job is
