Build With Users

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Build With Users – Issue 1

www.buildwithusers.com

Build With Users – Issue 1

The relevancy of community for SaaS – introducing our upcoming interviewees on community building, 'product-led' communities & more

Frank Lagendijk
,
Gino Mangnoesing
, and
Steven Aanen
Sep 28, 2020
2
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Build With Users – Issue 1

www.buildwithusers.com

Hey! 👋 Me – Frank, and my team are super excited you’re reading this first issue! As true product builders that got excited about community, we’ll be sharing interesting takes and insights on the topic on a weekly basis.

You might have seen our coming soon post that didn’t announce any names for the interview series yet. We decided, and are super excited 🤩, to introduce a few that will join us. They’ll share their experiences on building community as a SaaS startup. Find them below…

To receive insights on building community as a software startup on a weekly basis, consider subscribing (if you haven’t yet) 👇


The relevancy of community for SaaS

people raises hands

In the past couple of decades, we've seen companies transform into software companies. The SaaS business model has proven to be a more efficient model for delivering software. People can just try software before they commit to paying for it. 

One of the main challenges facing the leaders of SaaS companies is the accelerating commoditization of software. As a result, many SaaS companies went through cultural and operational shifts to go above and beyond to satisfy their users. 

A recent and accelerating shift is that of companies starting or becoming increasingly community-led. In 2019, 80% of founders reported building a community of users as important to their business, with 28% describing it as their moat and critical to their success.  

While it can be hard to build a community alongside a great product / service, those that succeed seem to have a competitive edge that is hard to replicate and has a lot of benefits:

Twitter avatar for @lolitataub
lolitataub @lolitataub
The benefits of community-driven cos They increase 💪🏽retention 💰LTV 📈sales leads 🌱organic word-of-mouth ☺️ membership 💸margins ✨sticky factor 🏰difficulty in replicating the business 💁🏽‍♀️ease to recruit talent For more read @bussgang's post. /3 hbr.org/2020/01/when-c…
hbr.orgWhen Community Becomes Your Competitive AdvantageHow businesses shift from selling products to building networks.
10:08 PM ∙ Aug 25, 2020
37Likes5Retweets


As founders of Shipright, we’ve always believed that consistently staying as close to your (potential) users as possible is key. A community is an amazing way to accomplish that.

We’ve learned a ton already, but are diving deeper and sharing our knowledge with you. As a part of that, we’re talking to the following talented folks about building and running a community for their SaaS company:

David is one of the co-founders of Typeform and currently working on VideoAsk. As they’re running a community for the latter, we’ll be diving a bit deeper into how they’re approaching this.

Guillaume is an amazing French entrepreneur who took his business lemlist to 2M in ARR over a timespan of only 2.5 years. His community “The Sales Automation Family” has been a huge part of that succes and he’ll explain how they did it.

Tuomas is one of the founders of Linear, a new issue tracking tool created by experienced product folks from companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Coinbase. Tuomas will explain a thing or two on why he and his team are building Linear community-first using Slack as their homebase for the community.

Chris leads Customer Success at Unstack. A no code startup that has grown fast to nearly 3000 customers. They’re running a Slack community in their no code space and Chris will share some of his thoughts on how they deal with community building.

Ryan is a co-founder at Interactr – a startup that lets you create interactive videos. They’re running a Facebook community with almost 3000 people called ‘Interactive Users Community’. We’ll be picking Ryan’s brain on some of the topics for building a community as a software startup.


🤩 Reads of the week

Interesting reads on building and working with a community as a software startup.

A Sense of Belonging – “what is a product-led community and why is this happening?”

15 min read – A 3 part series. If you’re working on building a community, an understanding of the different archetypes of communities can be really helpful. Building a product-led community, have you ever thought about the time horizon (immediate consumption vs. long-term investment) against which the user is seeking to achieve a goal, and the amount of friction required to participate in the community?

How Entrepreneurs Can Build Product-Led Communities

13 min read – What’s a ‘product-led’ community? And what are the basic principles to building one? Stephen Whemple wrote a great article explaining some of the basics.

Launching a community without a community manager

5 min read – As a startup with traction running a community in the early days, time and resources are a scarcity. Noele Flowers wrote this 5-step guide on how to build out your community in the early days, without having a community manager to help you.


🐦 Tweets of the week

Twitter avatar for @lolitataub
lolitataub @lolitataub
📚Underestimated founders + investors: what do you think about community-driven cos? In this thread I explore: 🤔 What makes for a community-driven co 🥳 The benefits of community-driven cos ✅ Community must-haves 🧰 Tactics to build community 🙌🏽 Community-driven cos /1
10:08 PM ∙ Aug 25, 2020
174Likes32Retweets
Twitter avatar for @bentossell
Ben Tossell @bentossell
📣 Introducing our Community Program A six-week program that explores how to successfully build, grow & manage an online community Learn from the likes of @gregisenberg @stephsmithio + @rosiesherry 🗓 Oct 12 - Nov 20th. Spaces limited, apply here: makerpad.co/programs/commu…
Image
6:18 PM ∙ Sep 22, 2020
144Likes19Retweets
Twitter avatar for @imcatnoone
Cat Noone @imcatnoone
We built @getstarkco for and with the community. One never superseded the other, and we build better solutions because of it. Over 250,000 designers to date have used Stark. Please don't listen to this. Find your tribe, invest in them, and watch as they invest in you.
Twitter avatar for @BrianNorgard
Norgard @BrianNorgard
Building community before product is for people who don’t know how to build product.
1:01 AM ∙ Sep 22, 2020
109Likes22Retweets

If you’re finding our weekly issues valuable, consider sharing it with friends, or subscribing if you aren’t already.

✌️ Cheers,

Frank, Gino, Steven & Lennart

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Build With Users – Issue 1

www.buildwithusers.com
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