The power of small design communities

Designers don't need yet another large community.

Designers need small curated groups:

- People facing similar challenges.

- Building genuine relationships.

- Learn from people at similar level.

Being a design can be lonely. Especially in small companies where you may be the only designer or live in an area where there isn’t other likeminded designers. Great people want to be around other great people. There are too many noisy communities out there.

Many designers feel they do not have the support in their careers to excel.

They want to stay relevant, they don’t want to be left behind.

We have tons of communities for people who are new to the industry.

We have design leadership communities for the elite designers.

What about everyone else? We can’t forget the 99%.

Where do they turn to? They don’t have communities around them.

We as an industry need to help these people. Instead of huge 18,000+ people communities, we need curated small groups of people who are facing similar challenges so people can action advice in their companies.

The larger groups can be more generic and not tailored to individual needs. Yes, sure, you can go online, but the information is scattered and without accountability the majority of people will not action it and move onto another topic of interest.

To go deeper into this topic, I wanted to speak to someone who has built design communities successfully for years. Not a quick Slack group which turns into a ghost town, but a thoughtful curated group. Mindaugas Petrutis worked on the Design Leadership Forum at InVision and curated and hosted many leadership dinners all over the world at On Deck and now he’s building curated peer group masterminds at Coho

You get a lot of people joining communities, but I believe top designers want to connect with people at a similar level to them. Introverts who don’t value being in large communities are losing out.

Q: Why are a lot of communities not approachable?

Over the last decade, I’ve built communities of different types—from Slack groups that grew organically to over 1,000 members, to structured, high-intent groups at InVision, to exclusive fellowship programs at OnDeck where membership required both application and payment.

The best experience I’ve had in that time? Curating dinners at InVision. These weren’t typical networking events. I’d spend hours researching attendees, reading through their LinkedIn profiles to put together the right mix of people. It was about creating meaningful connections and everyone walking away having learned something new.

What I’ve learned is that true community isn’t just a place to meet people. When done right, a community mirrors back something valuable about its members—things they wouldn’t have noticed on their own. It’s hard to achieve that in large, impersonal spaces. The value lies in smaller, well-curated groups where trust develops naturally.

A lot of communities turn into spam

A big issue I’ve noticed is that many communities lose their intimacy as they scale. Growth often kills the closeness that makes a community work. It’s one of the reasons I keep my groups small—around 4-6 people. The second problem is that a lot of platforms that claim to build connection are actually just marketing tools. They may look like communities on the surface, but their main focus isn’t about helping people connect deeply.

Then there’s the question of sustainability. Many communities are run by individuals or teams doing it for free, and if they lose interest or get busy, the community falls apart. It’s rare to find long-lasting spaces that remain valuable as they grow.

Q: Do you feel there is a need for smaller communities in design?

I’ve talked to thousands of designers in the last decade, and one thing that stands out is how isolated senior designers—staff, lead, principal designers, and design managers—often feel. They don’t need another generic network. What they need is a safe space to open up about their challenges.

The reality is, resources for early-career designers are everywhere—bootcamps, books, YouTube, and free courses. But once you reach a senior level, the path forward becomes less clear. The opportunities for growth dry up, and the isolation sets in.

There’s a lack of community and education for senior designers

Once designers become senior, they often find themselves in companies where the internal politics make it hard to be vulnerable about their struggles. It’s tough to admit you don’t have all the answers when you’re surrounded by peers who might be competing for the same promotion.

There’s a clear gap:

• Junior designers get mentorship.
• Executives have access to mastermind groups or leadership retreats.
• But senior designers—the largest group—are left navigating things alone.

Without support, they stagnate or burn out. Everyone needs someone they can trust to confide in, but for this middle layer, those opportunities are rare.

The power of 6

The solution I’ve found is to build small, curated groups of 4-6 peers. These groups are spaces where people can be honest about their challenges. You don’t just get random advice—you get feedback from people who’ve been through the same situations.

Here’s why these groups work:

• Accessibility: You shouldn’t need a huge budget to get real feedback.
• Intimacy: Smaller groups build trust, and trust is what makes people open up.
• Value: Focused discussions with peers who’ve been in your shoes. That’s where the most actionable insights come from.

On top of that, you get

• Immediate emotional relief
• A sense of validation
• Safe space to build trust
• Collaborative problem-solving
• Real, experience-based advice
• Measurable improvements at work
• Lasting professional and personal relationships
• A reliable support network for challenging situations

In one of the masterminds I curated, I saw a design manager who was stuck between climbing the career ladder or going back to IC. The group helped them see both paths clearly by sharing their own experiences. They walked away with perspectives they could immediately apply.

It’s difficult to find these kinds of groups because most communities either scale too fast and lose their value, or they’re too generic to be useful. Affordable options that create real intimacy are rare.

Both On Deck and Coho started as broader, paid membership models, offering a mix of events, 1:1 introductions, content, and conversations. Alongside all of that, mastermind and peer groups were just one feature within this larger community.

Curating these groups was complex, expensive, and the experience wasn’t always consistent. But when we got it right, we really got it right. Some of those groups are still meeting three years later—that’s powerful. It became clear that this peer group experience was the most impactful part of what we were doing, far beyond the other offerings.

That realisation led me to rethink everything: More people should experience this kind of connection, and we needed to make it accessible and scalable.

So, I started thinking about how to do this without sacrificing quality. I’ve spent the last few months working with a small team—a designer, an engineer, and an AI & data science expert—on how to build a product that delivers the same curated experience but at a fraction of the cost.

We’re soon shipping V1 to our early users. We’ve made some real breakthroughs in how we bring people together and how we deliver value. Some mastermind groups cost $10k per year—ours will never be that.

Q: What will Coho provide designers?

With Coho, I’m building small, highly curated groups where trust and rapport are built from the start. Six is the sweet spot—it’s the result of years of experimenting with different group sizes to find what works best.

Scaling that kind of deep curation isn’t easy, but it’s necessary for senior designers who are too experienced for junior-level mentorship but aren’t yet in executive programs.

These designers shouldn’t have to struggle alone. They need a space where they can connect with people who truly understand what they’re going through and build long-term relationships that will help them grow.