Building communities’ chat 04/28/21

Customers that could be experts thought leaders, whoever, because the the way that people find you nowadays is on social media it is through word of mouth, and if you can create that channel organically, that's something that you can really see over time and really kind of become a powerful pillar for growth.

Yes, and I love the point about renting your general versus going directly is something that we're a big fan of, hey, I'm gonna do a slight detour and say hi to my buddy Nate, Nate, as a colleague of mine at the firm he runs our TX o fund. Hey, Nate, how you doing, hey market. Are you doing good.

We all of your portfolio companies will probably want to build their own community, so listen and maybe ask a question and we'll make the recording live of a16z Live aren't available to them as well. We encourage them to join as well for that exact reason this is this is gonna be an excellent session. Thanks for having us. That's cool. Thanks.

All right, Melody. You have some of the added opportunity and challenge you created a two sided platform right so you have quote unquote potential community on both sides. How did you get started getting the stylists signed up, and the clients and how did you use community to help you in your growth trajectory. Yeah that's a great question, um, you know, in the beginning as stylesheet was figuring out how we could connect consumers to beauty professionals right so barber stylist makeup artist, etc. We were free, as we were figuring out, you know, how can we be valuable to both sides of the community. And what we realized is that in order to really drive value for consumers as well as for professionals, we needed to go extremely deep on the supply side so supporting stylists, because we found that they would think about us as kind of like an Instagram, Plus, originally where they'd upload a couple photos, you know, here's my list of services, and then they email us within the first hour of signing up and say, I haven't received my client yet. And it's like well we need your schedule, you know, there's a few more steps in there, but in order to really get them to take it seriously. We actually had to start charging for our product which was very scary I can tell you, the night before we, you know our paywall of, you know, you have to start paying us $35 a month to use our products. I think I drank a bottle of wine by myself in the conference room I was like laying down on the floor, sort of staring at the ceiling thinking, you know, we put some big numbers on the board we have a meaningful community etc for being free, but I have no idea if our stylists are gonna pay for this like I could not have a company tomorrow, you know what I mean. But we just had to do it that was honestly and truly one of the most scary moments, but we turned it on, we became profitable right away which is amazing and allowed us to take the next couple of years and just really go super deep in supporting all the different areas of their business end to end, which means that a stylist would sign up they would use us for, you know, website and Booking and Scheduling and payments and marketing and all that suite of tools, and that allowed us to attract the best professionals who wanted to differentiate themselves as the best lock artists the best color as the best barber right. And that attracted a really high end group of clients and so that was important for us number one. Number two, even though I was a skeptic at the time, live events for us, meetups, were huge, and it was just a way for all of us stylists to bring their stylist friends to sit in a room to get to know us give everyone a glass of wine like talk about why we're here, get to know each other. So I'd say that was another huge piece. And then the third piece was driving them clients and also becoming a resource for consumers, and actually doing that well, just very product driven data science driven design driven, but it was those three things, it's like building a product that was valuable, combining that with community because we really care about the heart and soul of our artists and of our consumers. And then also driving either side of the marketplace. I think those three things really, you know, helped establish us and get us to a point of scale. It's totally fascinating because we have so many portfolio companies and it's sort of a huge leap once you started free, like to take the leap and go like, Oh, now I'm going to charge which in most cases the right thing to do, what was the conversion, like how many folks did you lose. As a result, yeah, you know, it was about 20% conversion, which was interesting and kind of expected I mean I had no idea what it would be, and like now it's just wonderful success story because it worked but like I am not kidding when I say the day before we flipped the switch I was just like, everything could go away. You know what I mean it was really scary, but it's 20% conversion, but what's interesting is it was like 80 or 90% conversion, maybe even more of the professionals that had been engaged. So of our customers that were truly using it ended taking it seriously as a free products. The vast majority of them converted over and so that was, that was good to see. Well, and then also you have that magical word revenue, and then you can build up product features and make the product more valuable right so that sounds I mean, we became profitable in the first month flipping the switch, which is almost an unsexy word in second valley, but I can tell you that, like confidence that I got from being a real business was incredible. It's very, very thrilling to make a little bit of money to know that people will pay you for the thing that you love building for them. That's awesome. All right, we've had a new, we had a few people join me welcome Andrew Chen Andrew is one of our general partners who's made a lot of investments, including one in clubhouse which has its own community Hampton, how are you. Hey, how's it going, okay great topic. Yeah, I know the topic just for those who are new, the topic is how do you create branded communities to help you fuel your business. And then, if there's something you do that successfully, how do you manage them so we're just getting started on thanks for joining us, and I know you're pressed for time so you can jump in and out as you see fit. We haven't heard from Camille yet. Hey Camille. It's nice to see you again I think the last time I saw you was IRL at some coffee shop or something. Yeah, it's, it's been a while, and congratulations on all the stuff that you've done it notion notion is a completely different animal. You know, not a two sided marketplace. What I find amazing is that, you know notion has fans, they'll do template test those they do meetups, they create user videos to educate the community, can you just kind of separate out like how much of that was intentional and builds how much is due to the product and can you even tell and how are you thinking about it as a marketing. Yes, well first of all thank you so much for having me and notion is a very strange creature when it comes to community. So the answer to your question is yes and no in terms of being strategic. Honestly, when I started in the very beginning of 2019, it was really just about following the action where it was happening. And we saw all of these people who were being very vocal about no show on social media sharing their own creations, I think that that is really the kernel of what that really community was about was helping people express themselves and share out what they had built and what was important to them. So we pulled all those people together into an ambassador's community, and honestly what has sprung from that is a co creation, so staying very close to the people who I would say are sort of the tent poles of this community and making sure that we're constantly asking them, what's most exciting for you right now how is this beneficial for you I'd say that that's one of the core tenants that is made the community, interestingly successful is that we've empowered a lot of these folks to build their own businesses, whether they're selling premium notion templates or teaching courses are offering consulting. A lot of them are running their own larger communities that they've been able to monetize in some way or build their own personal platforms. So I would say that we observed for the first part, and now that we are seeing people coalesce around major activity areas, figuring out how to just expand and empower them to do more and go the distance, and especially the challenge right now is to how to do that around the entire world and a bunch of different languages and Camille, I was just gonna jump on something that you just said, which I love around kind of that term co creation. I think when it comes to especially products that are social or have collaboration, you know, at its core, like notion what ends up happening as you know is that not only is there the concept of product design of like picking what features actually go into the product.

But, you know, there's a whole thing about that is really about like community design of trying to curate and figure out like who goes into the early community as well and you kind of get a lot of the right people, then you know they sort of feed back and forth with each other into sort of co creation, you know, snap and so I think there's, you know, really obviously how notion and slack and a lot of these products were started out in sort of these tech forward communities. And then that sort of, you know, created the aspirational desire for a lot of other companies that didn't adopt notion and slack and some of these like kind of cool tools, you know, alongside, you know, like building the actual right features as well. Yeah, but one of the key discoveries I think that's a really good point was that we wanted to pull in folks to the ambassador's community who were excited to be running communities organically outside of notion sphere, so that really gave us the potential to seed communities for example we have a notion in Arabic community that has over 30,000 users in it, we have a notion in Japan community that has 6000 users in it, so it really gave us that leverage, and also I think was, was possible to really take advantage of the fact that people want it to be part of communities that felt organic and authentic and not like marketing, so actually having that buffer space between us and these groups has proven to be a really great tactic.

It's interesting Camille you brought up something that you said like you watched for a while and then you kind of basically went into this cocreation point this is an excellent one for Eric Camille melody whoever wants to take it like, what is the right moment, when you want to fuel into, like, pour fuel on to the community building part like what's the, what's the crossover between observing and then building.

I can give an example, at least I think one of our favorite line examples is glossier, which obviously is now one of the biggest names in beauty and DTC and everything like that but you know obviously they started basically with a community around Emily Weiss's into the gloss blog, and I think even around their first product launch, they, what they did is they, they brought in like 30 women, they put them into like the Slack community rather than the office they haven't tried products. And I think what I've heard is like this the original 30 women became such a tightly knit group they've like been in each other's weddings, things like that. And I think, you know, for them it really started like almost on day one, and I think even today, the community is 1000s of people between customers advocates, you know fans just, you know beauty experts, and it kind of doesn't matter how famous they are they they engage with all of them, they take all their feedback, I think they released this licking facewash and, you know, when you look at all the marketing that they're talking about he dug through 400 comments of people who previewed the product, and it really provides so much more value than just, you know, word of mouth, obviously affiliate sales are great for growth and everything but I think as you incorporate the community more holistically, into your brand and your marketing experience and the customer journey as a whole, it becomes like even more powerful than just the referrals can create. Yeah, not to say the obvious it sure beats doing again focus group, right, like you just actually watch what people are doing what they're responding to. Absolutely, yeah. Um, there is a school of thought and maybe it's old fashioned maybe it applies to certain companies but I'd love anyone's take on it sort of just build a great product and they will come, versus getting, you know, going all the way out to like Emily did where from day one, she's like how it has potential users in the house.

For us, we definitely, I mean that's been our entire growth philosophy I think style seat had powered, something like $7 billion in appointments across our platform before we then decided to hire a marketing team. And that's it sounds like a lot but you know it makes you think we needed one given. Well, it's, you know, for us, it was about building a platform where stylists would come and run their business, and then the next phase was give our stylists marketing tools for them to build their own community and grow their own community and bring them to style suit, and then the next phase for us is aligning our business model, with our community so that they wanted to bring everyone to style seat because we, you know, we told them early on was every client that books on style seat versus text you calls you emails you is gonna spend 100 more dollars with you than those other channels. And so that's the type of you know by powering them with that and having a platform that where that's actually true. They wanted to bring their communities to us which then helped augment our own platform and then clients would come to us and say, Hey, I got a haircut, it was amazing I think I'm gonna find my makeup artist here too, because I really enjoyed the experience. The reason why we want to turn on a marketing team is because, you know, there's, we're doing a billion dollars a year and bookings, a year in beauty but there's 70 billion that's spent in the space. That's still a drop in the bucket, and we have ambitions of being huge but I definitely believe that, starting with a platform that actually performs, you know that's engineering and data science driven, whatever that means for you and then aligning your interest with their community and really helping them achieve their own objectives and career goals and having that for your own is just the nicest way to be able to get to scale. I'm hearing you say basically sort of focus on product market fit and then do all the other stuff around it.

Let me just sort of turn to folks maybe Eric, you can start with us, we're gonna be out like what, what is the actual specific advice, you know, I'm assuming folks are listening to this, that all sounds good, but what do I do.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. I think that it can start small and start simple, I think the one of the mistakes that not be made but I think that we considered making was just starting with a tour de force it like let's do a fence, let's do this community engagement, let's do email newsletter, and really it just started with bringing together the folks who were being the most vocal and also being the most engaged with helping other users that was a big one for us is, who was actively like on the subreddit or on Twitter, being of service to other users, bringing them into the community so that they could meet each other and they just used a Slack interface and we still do. And honestly, it has worked great for us because people already, most people do have slack in their day to day workflows, they don't have to go to another destination, they're not familiar with. So I think starting with a very small step versus maybe building out a bigger strategy would be my first recommendation. So you basically have like people who kind of self identify as wanting to be part of a community through signals that they're sending either on Twitter or wherever they are and then using sort of easy sort of low, low hurdle tools like a Slack whatever people are already doing, it sounds like that's I'm hearing you say, yeah, that was really a good learning I think for us it's just to use tools, people were already excited about. We actually sent out the first wave of invites to people specifically saying like hey we've noticed you we think that you are going to be a great addition for these reasons, and then we promoted the fact that they were members out to the broader community and open it up as an application process.

Yeah, I would say that in a lot of the advice that we tend to give, I would like a meal, talking about starting small and I would also like obviously Melody's advice around having a great product because it starts obviously with customers that already love you and are wanting to talk about you wanting to advocate for you. And I think it really starts with them in terms of identifying even if they're super small like customers that have bought from you that are mentioning you on social and creating basically just like triggers and incentives and kind of ways for them to engage, either with the brand on social media or with each other. A lot of times, typically what we see is when brands are starting out obviously they have an existing customer base, they have, you know fans on social media, and they'll create essentially a program for ambassadorship. And typically it's pretty informal to start, you might have email address you might have a landing page that kind of formalizes it a bit, but typically it really involves you know finding people that really love the brand, they already have your product or you're willing to kind of send them some free product to try out and you know while it might be you know a little scary to just send products to people without really any guarantee of anything returned, assuming that you're picking people in the right way and obviously your product is good and really means something to people, you'll get a lot of kind of word of mouth, out of that and people just posting about you, and continuing to nurture those relationships from there, is really where it becomes this kind of like testing invest like virtuous cycle. And as people create more content as well, or kind of potentially even doing things like affiliate sales to drive growth, you can really start to spot the patterns of like where are their pockets in different either social media channels or different, you know, community groups where hey this is where people are really engaged talking about my product or talking about kind of the, you know, the action around my product, and that's where I should invest in, whether it be, you know formalizing some of those relationships more into even things like contracts or, you know like running advertising in those communities or things like that. So really, it starts with again like like Camille was saying starting small and at least from a b2c perspective as it relates to growth kind of invest in finding ways to invest and like nurture those relationships either formally or informally.

So I have a question here, because I work with a lot of early stage consumer brands, this is fantastic, by the way. So how to early stage companies, what are some of the things they could do. Eric or Camille or melody or Tina, what are some things they could do to identify these superfans. And what what I'm asking is this basic what is the difference in someone who might have been delighted in the moment, and the other person who may just be a complete superfan who's gonna post all the time there's gonna bring everything together, talk about the brand and kind of spark conversation around the brand, how did how do early stage startups really identify the difference between the two.

Sorry.

Yeah I mean it's it's it's definitely, I would say that, you know a lot of this is pretty manual and at the start because you're when you're starting with nothing you're kind of really doing a lot of the vetting yourself, and I would say it just starts with looking at how they're engaging with the brand and if they're naturally talking about it already, if they've written reviews about it if they're talking about it on social media, like it's often worth just you know, engaging with them even if it's for nothing more than, Hey, would you like to kind of, you know, share this, share this with your friends, giving them referral code giving them some interesting promotions, all the way up to, you know if they've been really engaged with you kind of inviting them to in person events and things like that. It really starts small I think a lot of the A lot of times like the cost is less than the money that you're either sending them in terms of products or gifts or anything like that and the cost is really more your time, and that's where it comes into this kind of like manual process because these people aren't necessarily influencers they're relatively small, but I think that as you as you do that as you kind of like, you know gift and see what kind of goodwill out there, and even do like surprise and delight moments for people that are completely unexpected, you'll start to see a lot of people kind of like self identify and there's like really enthusiastic moments where they're just like talking about you all the time. And you can honestly track a lot of that in analytics and reinvest in you know the people that are really talking about, you mentioned surprise and delight and the folks who are already opting in I'd love a sense to get a sense from, how do you keep the tone authentic so it doesn't, so the committee doesn't feel like they're being quote unquote used to for your business purposes like what's the line there.

This seems like a hard question, but it's okay.

For us, it has been really about focusing on when we're talking to our stylists, keeping the topics around topics that are important to them right so not throwing an event around style seat or talking about us and how they can help us, it's always about us trying to get creative, starting dialogue content, events, Whatever that engagement looks like we're media channels that we're putting out there that are about supporting them, giving them resources, showcasing you know professionals that have done incredible things giving them access to insights based on what we're seeing that can help them in their business. And I think always focusing on being a resource for our community and the same thing on the client side, so that it's when they read it, They're like oh yeah that's great. Oh I didn't know that, you know this added value to me thank you stylesheet or like I went to this event and met a bunch of members of the team, but it was actually informative and I came away with something that's really going to help me with my own goals, that's been, how we thought about it. So it sounds like making it about them and also coming up next, don't go on mute, but also making it look and actually doing it more like a peer to peer event versus a takedown situation.

Yeah, I would definitely echo that as well. We try to create as many events or just opportunities for the folks who belong to these communities to interface just with each other without any sort of oversight or participation from somebody at notion and those have gone quite well. The other things that come to mind for me on this question is definitely understanding their goals for us it's usually people wanting to generate revenue on their own in some way or wanting to build a platform, a personal brand for themselves. So we've created tools and different resources that can help them along those lines. And then the third thing that's been really interesting for us it's just being radically transparent with the people who belong to these groups so making sure that they get a sneak peek at features that are coming down the line they get to do ama is with the people who are behind building those products, often when we're doing policy changes. We will let them know in advance so that they feel like they are part of our advanced team helping educate the rest of our broader user base on these things, and that includes when we have made mistakes or we have been humbled in some fashion, we often do, or post mortems with the community so that they really feel like they are in, in this with us and on the journey with us.

Yeah, I completely agree with that, I think, having them invested in all aspects of what you're doing, even the mistakes can really kind of shield you from things that happen I think just to kind of go back to Margaret's point about making it feel authentic I do think that the most successful programs tend to be things where you're not just posting to actually sell products and I think a great example is actually one of me and Tina's, old, old, old classmates from for business school, Trina sphere at figs scrubs, so they're obviously they're making, you know scrubs for medical professionals, and they've kind of built a lot of growth, they're not a customer of ours had no information but they're they've built a lot of their growth off the back of basically almost like creating this, you know social media movements of, you know ambassadors and healthcare professionals that kind of almost turned into influencers as a result of working on this, but really a lot of the content that they're posting has, you know, hashtag where it fits in it but a lot of the content is really around their personal story and healthcare or the stress and the burdens they feel like you know working especially over this last year during COVID and things like that.

And in kind of like running these types of content, content driven campaigns around like, you know, inclusivity around the healthcare community, and things like that rather than I think kind of it I don't actually think figs has like affiliate programs to drive direct referral referrals or anything like that it really is just trying to get send people to the scrubs and have them talk about their story. In the context of the healthcare community but with obviously figs as kind of a partner in that it might make my next question, everybody feel free to ask me another question that might make my next question obsolete but I was gonna ask, are there kinds of companies that where it just doesn't really make sense to invest in the community the scripts example makes me sense. It makes me think like no, everybody can do this, but, you know, is it more important for marketplaces is it less important for b2c companies versus b2b companies like, Are there any takers any, any philosophies, over here.

I mean my guess would be, it's less critical for commodity driven marketplaces, right, you think about the commodity driven arts food delivery or transportation. I don't know if community building would be helpful for those, maybe, maybe not this is just me throwing some ideas out there versus creator driven, you know marketplaces or tools or, you know certainly platforms that empower communities, feels like that's a much more central part of their core offering and how they grow. I can also see that, you know, very, very complicated products that just are influenced by the community that much say security. However, if you sell to developers, then it's super important. So it seems like broadly applicable, as opposed to going here but if someone is someone in the audience disagrees, like climate, we're gonna get the questions in a little bit. Right, so this was all sort of the naughty dog happy side of it like community can be so great for you and it's awesome. How do you figure out how to manage the community because it's, you know, they don't work for you. They don't do as you tell them to do, you know, how do you how do you figure out what the line is where the community kind of runs itself versus you have your ambassador program like how do you think about that.

One thing that's been big for us is understanding how engagement is working within the community so who is in there actively participating all of the time. What do they want to do so we often do conversations with most of the members in this community. I work with two incredible colleagues Ben Lange and Francisco Mendoza, who are both full time dedicated to really understanding the sentiment within the company what people want to be doing, what they wish was different, and were able to upgrade and sort of roll out processes in response to those conversations so just staying really close to the people involved.

Yeah, I would say that from my angle, Obviously I deal with mostly consumer brands and I would say that, not, not the majority of them necessarily have I would say kind of a top down driven community space where, you know, they're kind of, you know like a first party officiant of a community a lot of times, obviously, the community is kind of spawn or kind of come up organically and obviously they have their own kind of moderation. You know people that are running them but for the most part I think brands tend to say maybe endorse some of those communities but not necessarily take an active leadership role of them I think for two reasons. Number one, it, you know, it keeps that community really organic and the discussion, they're very authentic between the members who are kind of all going through that your experience and I think number two, probably at some level to shield themselves from, you know, having to you know take on some of that liability if if things happen that are gonna have adverse effect of the rent. So, while, while there are definitely some of those spaces like I think there's like a huge like discussion forum for communities like support and things like that, you know, it's not always the case where the brand is trying is trying to do that and a lot of times the brands media tends to be like this relationship that a lot of these consumer brands have with individuals in like an ambassador program or something like that. Okay so let me put it a bit more a little bit more spice like what if the community turns into an angry mob and the anger is directed to you and it could be over. A statement you made that you didn't make as, as far as a political topic is concerned, something that happens at your company that's sort of tough. I know somebody gets fired complains or Sue's, how do you deal with that.

I think you have to decide what you want to stand for, and that has to be a very, very looking at your authentic decision that is thoughtful and deliberate, because things will happen, that you didn't intend to happen, and you have to be able to face your community or the people involved and own up to it and be honest and come forward with an authentic reaction, which is, you know, we did or did not intend for this to happen and it did and so here's what we're doing next. Here's how we're changing or whatever, or if you're talking about a political statement, making a statement and realizing there are going to be consequences and feeling fine with those consequences and standing behind your values as a business. I'm very, very passionate about this this is, this is pretty key to what we do and a lot of different ways. And it's hard, and as a founder, you know when you're really busy and you're in all of these meetings and deactivating the product meeting and all these things and then, you know, these issues can sort of come up and if you haven't put that thought into it about who you are what you stand for, what you're willing to tolerate how you're gonna react to things like things can really catch you by surprise so it's in my opinion one of those topics that's worth, even though we're all, you know, busy and just trying to build companies, putting thought into and caring about it because at the end of the day, it's going to be one of the absolute most important things that you can do and people can also sniff out if we're sad or how you react to something or who you empower within your organization or whatever that might look like, you know, they know if that's authentic or not, and is there's a direct relationship between your community caring about you believing in you, or, you know, thinking you're just putting words out there. So since you said you feel very passionate about it like can you maybe provide a next level of detail like do you or does the company speak out on most of the societal topics that come up, do you not do that at all. Does it do you only do it when it sort of covers health and beauty, how do you really think about it like day to day, that might be instructive for folks. Yeah, I mean, you know, and this is one of those things that every company has to define for themselves and there are some companies that really want to stay out of it there's some companies that are partisan and or political and stand behind issues in the beauty industry in particular, both social justice and racial justice, and a lot of the topics that have come up over the past year are particularly important because we're creating products and experiences that tie into all of those topics, and it is impossible to separate you know to say hey we're a beauty brands or in our cases its beauty services, it's impossible to separate what we do from those issues.

And it also depends on the founder right like my personal views are that I absolutely support these social justice movements, there is no if ands or buts about it there's no gray area, and we have made statements we've made donations, we've talked about it internally we have always tried to create an environment within my company where that is seen and heard and respected and reflected amongst our team I'm not saying we're so happy with where we are today, there's always room to do better, but that is something that I talked about, and I've shared both internally and externally, that if there are people that do not support our stance on those issues that I'm 100% Fine, in losing customers and losing employees and losing out on investment opportunities, whatever that is, because that is what we stand for, and that's just our take on it right and it's, you know, people can have their different opinions on it but it's hard to decide. Right, but it helps you clear and so it's, you know, people can opt in or out pretty clearly. We have a question, Dr. Rose thanks for joining us up on stage please ask your question. Thank you, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for creating this awesome space. So I'm coming from the mental health profession to owning my own business and in the medical profession, people sought me out for help so it's very different owning your own business. We recently got a grant from American Express, as an innovative grant and we market, all natural piecewise instant teas. So what we decided to do with that grant is to give away free tea to the community. Once again, we're trying to build community, and we have offered free tea. We have some ambassadors that are also offering free tea. So, as a part of that, the ambassadors are getting free tea for a year.

I, we still, we're still not having the impact that I thought we would have at this juncture, and maybe because it's not really my area of expertise, maybe I'm coming in naive, but, you know, it's natural tea that has all these great benefits in this environment of COVID, where our flagship product is Ginger golden honey, which of course is great for the immune system. And, you know, kind of just building up your, your resistance. So Dr. Rose if I'm hearing you correctly, your question is like you seem to have, you have product market fit, You have a great product and the community isn't really doing for you what you were expecting to do. Who wants to take that one.

Yeah, I'm sorry, can you hear me No, no, no, please go ahead. Oh, I was gonna say, um, yeah, I think it's, it is well it is I would say, a really good strategy to start with gifting I think it starts with an understanding, again, of where customers are at vetting the right people and you know I mean I think at the beginning. A lot of times it does help to find people that are more influential to talk about you, even if it's for giving them free products and a lot of times what you can do is you can get people with pretty big followings like 1000s of followers 10s of 1000s of followers if they can resonate with your brand with your values the health and wellness stuff that they're trying to build your tribe build with them, and especially if you're a startup, you're going to transcribe with that message. A lot of times you can get those people to post for free. So a lot of times what we recommend is, is basically to start small and be just really open and transparent and honest about your brand and reaching out to people that are actually relatively big that probably would normally charge money until like a brand that is you know bigger more established and trying to try to get some awareness that way I think it is difficult just reach out to everyday people and get the metal skeleton industry manual to kits or life programs. Yeah a little detour, I don't know, probably have a question but I want to say hi, Paul is building an awesome community that we're all on call clubhouse.

Doing well, thanks for having me. My thanks for coming up on, we're talking about how to build communities around product and how to help grow that like you are building a community and this community is very, very diverse as lots of different opinions, how are you thinking about managing the community are you basically saying that anything goes, what's worked for you like. I haven't thought about it much

at all I know. We've never talked about it.

Oh my gosh, I mean it's, it's literally on a zoom talking about it right now because it's like it's everything right it's. So we think about, we thought about from the early days like the very early days are is, how do you build the right seat of the community. And to do that we just we enlisted the help of the. We started by getting a group of people who knew each other enjoy hanging out with each other, had you know enough. Shared Contacts and interests that they would enjoy hanging out and it was a lot of like brute force and then from there we enlisted the help of the community and we said, Help us, you know, we really want a diverse and inclusive and welcoming community so we literally went out to people to like help us, Help us, you know, invite more women if I were to represent minorities invite people from other parts of the country of other parts of the world, people that are backgrounds and, and the people just everyone just delivered in spades and, and when you have a model that grows through invites that just naturally expands outward, but I think as you grow. I mean, there's so much to manage right i mean the community changes you go from, you have to make this transition from being a single community of beta testers into a global network of many different communities. Right. And for us, you have, you have people use it for different reasons, everything from from private conversations with two or three people to community conversations that are really participatory and all the way up to like shows where people want to use it for broadcasting they don't want it to be participatory and I honestly, I will stop now because I could talk about it for hours but it's the most important thing you can possibly get right and it is incredibly complex and ever evolving.

Yep, you have the community management topic of all times on your hands. There'll be great, I'm sure, yeah. One last thing like one amazing thing about our product is just that, I mean it is a coincidence of the nature of the product, that it's live group audio, I mean I've never had a product that I work on where you can talk with people in real time while they're using the product right i mean that's, that's crazy. You just get so much feedback that, that you can you can iterate really quickly and learn a lot. Yeah, I always wonder why you hang up. I mean I don't wonder but like you are and a lot of luck has conversations but to you it's basically one giant focus group right, it informs the urgency of all the really, really helpful.

I'm gonna jump back to the audience cuz I'm literally on a zoom right now but thank you so much for having me on. Thanks Paul.

Do you know, do we have, yeah. Should we get held Do you want to you want ask the question, which brought you up on stage.

Hi, yah, thank you so much for having me up here. I just really liked your insights and what you guys had to say and just to follow up with with what Paul had to say I think, I think what he's created with clubhouse and and all the community that's you know that's come up with so many different people, the diversity, it's, it's truly amazing. You know, so I really appreciate it and and supporting diverse people is the number one way to make this app success success, and I hope that we can continue to do so. So that's why I have that little picture there, so thank you guys for, for having me up here, I really appreciate it. No worries, I'm sad that Paul was gone but this having worked with him for a while now that is a key, key priority so thanks for noticing and yes, they're working hard on keeping it that way.

And did you have a question.

Yeah, it's great to be here everyone, so I was intrigued by what melody mentioned about the importance of values and, you know, tying that to the community and essentially society, so I was curious. I'm sure many of you have heard about what happened recently, Basecamp announcing, no social issue related areas no politics in the company, as far as external politics. And I'm just curious about all of your thoughts about that because they've got quite a backlash for it. And do you think, taking a stance of not having any kind of commentary on, you know what's going on in society is a safe bet or a damaging one.

I know Marga has a lot of thoughts on this one. I do, I'm the unpopular one, I think, in this group and in many groups I actually think is the right call the right thing to do. That does not mean a company shouldn't care about these topics at all so at our firm we have lots of conversations around these topics internally. I just think that the constant statement is, is a hard thing to do because one is companies tend to not have solutions, And the minute you sort of make the statement you are asked to have a solution. And these societal ills, I mean I'm an immigrant and I've been here for a long time now and I've not yet seen the plan, so that just becomes a hard challenge. And then I think when you are a very large company, you also, it's as a CEO, you have an interesting conundrum, it's like, what is your opinion is as a company opinion, How could you possibly speak for 40,000 employees for example, and I know that made made me come across as heartless but I have seen many, many companies kind of devolve culturally because the people internally disagree and have their feelings hurt and whatnot and they are, at some point, unable to come together around the common cause of building the company. So that's the conundrum. Now I totally appreciate melodies as the opposite point of view which is like it's my company and here are my values and I'm totally okay with people not working here or people not using the product, but it's a, it's a, it's a really big decision and I think people get very fast into the slippery slope of like, oh yeah let's say it makes little sense, and then all of a sudden you're speaking out on everything and if you look at the New York Times tech section, and we were talking, who I love but but every other day the story about what CEOs have said about the topic y or z. And of rant.

Yeah, I definitely think it's it's it is difficult. So I think it's kind of like a personal choice to Melody's point with personal traits on the founding team as well as, you know, kind of like a cultural choice of the kind of culture you want to build and I definitely see the point of I think as we become bigger and bigger and it's harder to scale out of that subjective opinion and the goalposts keep moving, I think, in our case we have been pretty vocal about social justice and I think. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that, you know so much of our company is intertwined with the Creator Community and the like hundreds of 1000s of people that interact with our platform in that and I think it's from a business, I think, a business standpoint, I don't think it's viable for us to kind of take a neutral opinion there, just because it is I think inclusive of Melody's case in the beauty community, whether it's the beauty community or any of these different like sub communities of social media and in the Creator economy.

I think from a practical standpoint for us it's not viable to do that and also from a personal standpoint, I mean, I think we are small enough right do you think that kind of, we can put our opinions on here and say look if I'm running a company like I, you know, I want to stand for this. And the one thing I'll say this because this is a this is a brand communities club that says that one cool thing about having our own community of brands and our own kind of community and aspire IQ is that we are trying to kind of co author solutions and tactics we can do as a group of brands. And so that's like one other kind of cool thing to do, you know if you can actually kind of find like minded people in the community is, you know, how can you kind of like tailor solutions that aren't just from your company but group companies as well.

Great. Chauncey, did you have a question for sure though. Yeah, thank you so much. It's great to speak to you guys tonight. You know we have even, you see this PTR a bunch of people in the audience, clubhouse, respect like voices, and probably the community is are the black voices in this community. A lot of the flavor, a lot of the fun things from NY see girls taking something from somebody else and they got a reward for it too. You know when George floor, I don't see a lot of community managers in those rooms but what happened everybody was in those rooms and, you know, when it when it, when it, when Texas happened everybody supported that. I just think that when you build a community, you really need to be a part of the community and go into rooms that you might feel uncomfortable with sometimes you don't have to go up on stage but to sit down and listen, and just pay attention, a lot of times I want rooms that I have no idea, I can't speak on, and you know I know Paul and Mohan, are the founders, but I never say my rooms that I go to. I never see I mean, you know, things that I care about. So when you talk about community, it's really important that if you want to run stuff I worked for Jimmy I've been for 25 years, I've worked for some amazing people and you know, you're gonna have your ups and downs, you will have your disagreements, but here's the video like you have to end these apps in a situation, and it's time and date, we need to really embrace the creators here on clubhouse in the black community we feel jaded. I'm not I'm not even a great I'm more of a just trying to help all these amazing people that I see, I see a run down I see a glen Lundy I see a bunch of dope, black people doing stuff, and I never hear about them getting love. I never hear about them. Don't just just feeling amazing so I hope one day that we can do a town hall with no black people like myself and a couple people, and we can really talk about community because we don't really feel a part of the community we don't is that we're not getting paid for it. When is that because you actually enjoy everything you said technically you like, and we budget stuff we don't, but we're here because we found a community but we actually don't feel like we're going to St love as other communities, I'm speaking for myself and some people that might feel the same, but I only speak for Chelsea bell so I just want to know, what can we, this, this to do better, to help talk to our community. So I've been speaking. So just to go on the record, I appreciate you, appreciate you saying what you just said but I'll go on the record real quick. I was on this app. Last summer, when George point happened. So I was gonna go on the record and state upon Ron was very supportive, and I was in a lot of rooms because I started on back then back before we even have room titles, where there was a lot of dialogue going on around. George Floyd Black Lives Matter, and all of the founders were in those rooms for hours on end back and back in those days, and this was last summer in spring, and that was in those rooms and that was matter of fact, there are a lot of WhatsApp groups and calls, behind the scenes to talk about how to support the early members on to have those conversations and we had some very difficult conversation where there's a lot of respect and Ally ship that went on back then and so I just wanna go on the record and set the record straight and just advocate for what actually happened to us all with my own eyes. So just want to say that. And I also want to say, Can I Can I finish quickly, and we'll get back to community there was a smaller community. Yeah well it was around when it actually happened so it's important to to note that no matter what the size really was, you know, this was a response immediately to the events that were happening as they were happening, and don't didn't run hard they showed up, and so that's important to know take that, and then it's also important to say that you know not only me but several of the other early black users were given tons and tons of invites to get people on the platform and during that time the complaint was that the platform was not diverse and it was not being given enough invites to people of color, and that that would that was not true at the time when it was said and it was remedied even further at the time, so I just want to go on the record to make sure I set that straight but I really appreciate what you had to say here Chauncey and obviously I'm gonna remain a part of the community I want you to reach out to me DM me please because you know I want to make sure that we create a dialogue as much as possible so please DM me brother. And I will appreciate you pointing that out. I just think as community grows like anything else you have to expand with the community as well so you know they do have different people like yourself, that are coming to them I don't know, you know, I never seen any ones I mean so I'm so happy that we spoke right now so I can reach out to you, but I would love some of my white brothers and sisters Asian brothers, sisters, Jewish by the sisters to come in and be a part of that community to and talk and listen. So, you know, that's, that's, that's why I'm so thank you.

Appreciate it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah, and I'm chanting I'm following you, so I'm gonna, I'm going to try and find you on the clubhouse so thank you. It's a totally valid point. I think we have one more question right Tina. Yeah, Jessica your question for us. Yes, hi everyone. Can you guys hear me okay, yep. Okay, awesome. One thing that I'm struggling with, with a community that I managed for work, is that a lot of our individuals using our platform are very happy, they leave really great testimonials really great feedback. However, there's been resistance to sharing their experience with our tool, and customer profiles, and as far as like being ambassadors, and one of the reasons that we discovered from our conversations with them is that they don't want their competitors to find out they're using our products in case their competitors use as well. So, that is the highest form of competence sorry I'll let you finish.

Thank you. Well I love that but also I don't know that because I would really love to nurture a community to have it become very organic and supportive, and a real wonderful resource as well as, you know, some way to build more activity on our platform and service. So do you guys have any advice for how to do that.

That is a tough one. I would love to ask you a question around what it is that you're asking them to do like what types of activities do you offer as part of the experience. Absolutely, so our platform connects fashion brands and designers to Italian manufacturers. And basically, they don't want their competitors to know that, you know, I found this wonderful manufacturer, they're really easy to work with they have high quality materials, etc. So we'd really love ideally to spotlight, a couple of the wonderful fashion brands that are doing so well that we work with, maybe tell their story on our blog, share them on social media, brag about the fact that they're using our platform to create these wonderful products, but they don't necessarily want to claim affiliation with our service.

That is a tough one. I have one idea that is going to be minor and then I'd love to hear maybe from other panelists, but would it be possible for them to create stories on their own platforms, Whether that's social media or their blog or something along those lines, where they're saying like look at what we've been able to enable and then like, ask us what our secret is, or something along those lines where they're generating curiosity, in a way that maybe gives you a smaller forum.

I would actually love that and I think we've even reached out and offered to create content that maybe they could put their own spin on and share it in their own way, and there hasn't really been any bites for it.

It's really interesting because it's like you, your product is a trade secret. And, you know, those that use it and get benefit from it, don't want to tell her better like it gets really interesting I think about maybe a correlation to you guys on the consumer side is something like Expedia. Where is another travel product where like you, you say what you're willing to pay and then after you accept, you see the hotel that's willing to offer that, but hotels don't want to say, Yeah, you know what I mean. And so I wonder if you could market yourself in a different way, which is talking about your utility and talking about how you're the best kept secret in the fashion world. And so it's not as much community driven but you sort of take that angle that is really true to you and you build campaigns around it, you build content around it as something that you try and study that's just an idea.

I love that, that's really cool, I hadn't thought of that.

Yet I don't know if it's always either, but I think the one solution I had is something similar, what we have actually is we have kind of a brand community that has both customers and people in the industry and it's, it's a closed group it's invite only, and it's not kind of something that's highly publicized across, you know, public forums and things like that so I think that the, the opinions getting shared are a lot more probably open and less scrutinized and potentially just easier for people to digest and share so that might be another idea that it's not something that's like completely public but it's something that's kind of a closed group that can still kind of fuel your growth in a way that at some point that I want.

That's a great point Eric just make the commuter, the community private, I mean just, this is non trivial but I think that's a great note, note to end on.

Customers, it could be experts thought leaders, whoever, because the way that people find you nowadays is on social media it is through word of mouth, and if you can create that channel again.

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