I once blew $66,000 on ads and got absolutely nothing back. Zero. It was early in my journey, and I thought that’s just what you did. You raise money, you pour it into Google and Facebook, and customers magically appear. How wrong I was.
That failure forced me to get creative. It led me to a completely different approach that resulted in 9x growth in just 5 months for one of my early ventures. The secret wasn’t about spending more money. It was about building a community, a real one. And it’s a system anyone can replicate.
Over the years, both with my own companies like RemoteTeam and MovieLaLa, and through advising over 200 startups, I’ve seen founders make the same mistakes over and over. They chase vanity metrics, they automate too early, and they completely misunderstand what a community is. It’s not just a Slack group or a mailing list. It’s a moat. It’s your most defensible asset.
Here are the 11 biggest mistakes I see founders make when it comes to building their community.
1. Focusing on Quantity Over Quality
Everyone wants to boast about having 10,000 users. It sounds great in a pitch deck. But it’s a trap. 10,000 disengaged users are worthless. 100 true fans are priceless.
When we were starting MovieLaLa, we could have easily bought a list of 50,000 movie fans. Instead, we spent months finding the first 500 users ourselves. We went to movie forums, we engaged in subreddits, we talked to people outside of theaters. It was slow, painful work. But those first 500 users became our evangelists. They gave us the feedback that shaped the product, and their word-of-mouth was more powerful than any ad we could have bought.
Stop chasing a big number. Find the people who feel the pain you’re solving most acutely. Your first 100 users should be a concierge experience. You should know their names. You should be on a first-name basis with them.
2. Not Defining the “Why”
A community needs a purpose. A reason to exist beyond just your product. Are you here to help people get better at a skill? To connect with others in their industry? To be entertained? If you can’t articulate this in a single sentence, you don’t have a community. You have a captive audience.
With RemoteTeam, our “why” was clear: to help founders and leaders navigate the challenges of building and scaling a remote-first company. Every piece of content, every event, every discussion was centered around that core purpose. We weren’t just selling a product; we were creating a space for leaders to learn from each other. That’s a powerful reason to stick around, even if you’re not a paying customer yet.
3. Building on Rented Land
So many founders build their entire community on Facebook, Twitter, or another social platform. It’s a huge mistake. You don’t own that audience. Mark Zuckerberg does. He can change the algorithm tomorrow and your reach could disappear overnight. I’ve seen it happen.
Use social media to find your people, but your goal should always be to move them to a platform you control. An email list, a dedicated forum on your own website, a private Slack or Discord. This is your most valuable asset. Protect it. We learned this the hard way when a platform we relied on for early user acquisition changed its API rules, and our growth stalled for three months. Never again.
4. Automating Too Early
Founders love to automate. It’s in our DNA. But in the early days of community building, automation is your enemy. You can’t automate human connection.
For the first year of RemoteTeam, I personally welcomed every single new member to our community. I’d ask them what they were working on, what their biggest challenges were. It took hours every week. But the insights I gained were invaluable. It’s how we identified the features that would eventually become our core product. You can’t get that from a survey or an automated welcome email.
Do things that don’t scale. That’s where the magic happens.
5. One-Way Communication
Your community is not a megaphone for your marketing team. If you’re just broadcasting updates and announcements, you’re doing it wrong. It needs to be a conversation. A two-way street.
Ask questions. Run polls. Solicit feedback. And when people give you their opinion, listen. Actually listen. And then act on it. When our community told us they were struggling with international payroll, we built a solution for it. It became one of our most popular features. Your community is your best R&D team, and they work for free.
6. Ignoring Your Superusers
In any community, you’ll have a small group of people who are far more engaged than anyone else. These are your superusers. They answer other people’s questions, they start discussions, they evangelize your product. These people are gold.
Identify them. Empower them. Give them special access, early previews, a direct line to your team. Make them feel like the insiders they are. At MovieLaLa, we created a “Movie Masters” program for our top 1% of users. They got to test new features first, and their feedback was instrumental in our development process. It cost us nothing but made them feel like a core part of the team.
7. Inconsistent Engagement
Building a community is like keeping a fire going. You can’t just light it and walk away. You have to tend to it. If you disappear for weeks at a time, the conversation will die out. People will forget why they joined in the first place.
You or someone on your team needs to be present every single day. Sparking conversations, answering questions, making introductions. It doesn’t have to be a full-time job, but it has to be consistent. Even 30 minutes a day can make a huge difference.
8. No Clear Onboarding
What happens when someone new joins your community? Do they get a welcome email? Are they pointed to the most important channels or discussions? Is there a clear starting point?
Most of the time, the answer is no. A new member joins, and they’re dropped into a sea of conversations with no context. It’s overwhelming. Most will just lurk for a while and then leave.
Create a simple, clear onboarding process. A welcome post that gets pinned. An automated email sequence that explains the rules of the road and highlights the best of your community. It’s a small thing that has a massive impact on retention.
9. Fearing Competition
I’ve seen founders try to shut down any mention of a competitor in their community. They’re afraid of losing customers. It’s a sign of weakness. Be confident enough in your product to let people talk openly.
In fact, you should welcome it. It’s a chance to learn what your competitors are doing well and where they’re falling short. And when you address those conversations head-on, with transparency, you build trust. Trust is the foundation of any strong community.
10. Not Measuring What Matters
Vanity metrics like member count are easy to track, but they don’t tell you the whole story. You need to go deeper. What’s your active user rate? How many new discussions are being created each week? What’s the response time to a new question?
These are the metrics that show the health of your community. And more importantly, you need to tie community activity back to business results. Do community members have a higher retention rate? Do they convert to paying customers at a higher rate? This is how you prove the ROI of community and justify further investment in it.
11. Giving Up Too Soon
Community building is a long game. It’s not a hack you can implement in a week. It takes months, sometimes years, to build a thriving, self-sustaining community. Most founders give up too soon.
They try for a few months, they don’t see explosive growth, and they move on to the next shiny object. The founders who succeed are the ones who are patient, persistent, and genuinely care about the people they’re bringing together.
It’s not easy. It’s not glamorous. But building a real community is the closest thing to a silver bullet I’ve found in my 20+ years of building companies. It’s the ultimate competitive advantage. So don’t make these mistakes. Do the hard work. It will pay off in the long run. I promise.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I implement all of these at once?
I'd strongly recommend against it. Pick the 2-3 items that resonate most with your current situation and focus there. Trying to do everything simultaneously is a recipe for doing nothing well.
How were these items selected?
Each item on this list comes from direct experience, either from building my own companies or from patterns I've observed across the 200+ startups I've invested in. I prioritize practical, actionable items over theoretical concepts.
Are these recommendations still relevant in 2026?
Absolutely. While specific tools and tactics change, the underlying principles remain consistent. I update my thinking regularly based on what I'm seeing in the market and across my portfolio companies.