After burning through \\$88,000 in ad spend with zero results, I discovered this counterintuitive strategy that led to 6x growth in just 9 months. Here's the full story and how you can replicate it.
The Counterintuitive Truth
In community building, the best practitioners often do less, not more.
The lesson: the market doesn't care about your roadmap. It sounds simple. It's incredibly hard to execute.
Why Most Approaches Fail
Many common approaches to community building are flawed at the root.
The root cause is usually one of three things:
Copying what big companies do without understanding why they do it. What works for Google doesn't work for a 10-person startup.
Over-engineering the solution when a simple approach would work better. I've seen teams spend six months building something that could have been done in two weeks.
Ignoring the human element. Technology is the easy part. Getting people to actually use it is where the real challenge lives.
The Reality Nobody Talks About
A lot of the advice on community building rests on assumptions that made sense five years ago. The world has moved on.
The first thing to understand is that timing is everything in this game. I've seen this play out across dozens of companies. The pattern is unmistakable.
Many teams spend months on the wrong path before realizing that the data tells a different story than your gut. Once they make the switch, everything changes.
Real Talk: What Actually Matters
Here is what actually matters in community building.
First, execution speed beats perfection. Every time. Companies rarely fail because they moved too fast on community building. Many fail because they moved too slowly.
Second, measure everything. If you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Set up tracking from day one, even if it's basic.
Third, talk to your users. It sounds obvious, but many founders make decisions about community building in a vacuum. Get out of the building. Talk to real people.
This connects to broader themes around community-led growth, retention strategies, content marketing, SEO for startups, viral loops that I've been thinking about a lot lately.
Final Thoughts
There are no shortcuts in community building, but there are smarter paths.
The strongest teams treat community building as a competitive advantage, not a checkbox. They invest in it early, measure it obsessively, and never stop improving.
If you're just getting started with community building, don't be intimidated. Everyone starts somewhere. The key is to start with the right mindset and the right framework, and then execute like your company depends on it. Because it probably does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q:How can I apply this thinking to my own situation?
Start by identifying the core principle behind the opinion, not the specific example. Then ask yourself: does this principle apply to my context? If yes, test it in a small, low-risk way before going all in.
Q:What experience informs this perspective?
This perspective comes from over a decade of building companies in Silicon Valley, two successful exits (RemoteTeam to Gusto, MovieLaLa to Gfycat), and investing in 234 startups including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Scale AI. I write about what I've lived.
Q:Do all experts agree with this view?
No, and that's fine. The best ideas in business are often contrarian. I share my perspective based on my experience and data, but I encourage you to seek out opposing viewpoints and form your own conclusions.