Community Inc.

Daybreaker is a global phenomenon. A community built around dance and joy with some 800,000 members. It has been going for over 10 years—they're coming up to a thousand events. How have they sustained this movement for so long? By taking a holistic approach to community event design known as the D.O.S.E method. Co-founder Radha Agrawal explains how and why it works. This is a public episode. If yo...

Atlassian is a fascinating business. They innovate on how they do business almost as much as the products they create. * In 2023, Atlassian had paid training offering, generating millions in revenue each year. * In 2024, they made it all free and moved learning under community. I spoke to VP of Community and Learning, Stephanie Grice , about why they made the change, how they've incorporated learn...

Hampton is a highly-vetted, peer-membership community for founders. Created by Sam Parr , known for The Hustle newsletter and host of the My First Million podcast, he started working on it with partner Joe Speiser in June 2022. It has since grown to over 1,000 members, generating ~$8M ARR . In this deep dive, we uncover how Sam Parr and team built a million-dollar community in a matter of months,...

How do you build a community program for the long haul? I spoke with Corina Gheonea , Global Community Director at UiPath, to find out. UiPath is one of the fastest-growing SaaS businesses of all time, and community has been a strategic advantage from its earliest days. UiPath's MVP program has become a cornerstone of their community. Some five years in, it still has members who have been involved...

Canva is the master of scale. 185M people use Canva each month. But how do you build community programs that can work at that scale? I spoke with Monica Silvestre , Global Head of Community at Canva, to find out. 🤯 Plus, Monica and Sara Vilas (Canva’s Global Community Operations Lead) have put together this amazing set of resources for you. It’s the exact templates they use to organize meetings,...

Joshua Zerkel just wrapped a 7-year spell as Head of Global Engagement and Community at Asana . Starting from zero, he led the development of a program that has grown a forum to over 600,000 members , recruited 26,000 ambassadors, and run over 900 community events –influencing almost $100 million in pipeline along the way. Underpinning this success has been his unrelenting commitment to internal r...

Gong pioneered the revenue intelligence category. It went from $0 to a $7.3 billion valuation in 5 years. Now with over 4,000 customers, including the likes of ADT, Indeed, LinkedIn, Snowflake, and Zillow, they've turned to community to scale their go-to-market efforts. In this deep dive, we take a look at how Gong kickstarted its community in 90 days and how its program has evolved as its impact...

Asana is one of the pioneers of work management, creating a tool to give teams clarity on their plans, processes, and projects. As it has grown it has layered in a community program, Asana Together, which has unleashed over 21,000 ambassadors to spread the word about Asana, both online and within their own companies. In this deep dive, we dig into how through smart reporting and internal PR its co...

Substack is a subscription network for independent writers and creators. It's home to some of the world’s most beloved writers like Margaret Atwood, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Roxane Gay, Michael Moore, and Patti Smith. Launched in October 2017, there are now more than 17,000 writers earning money on the platform. Community has been an important part of the network’s success, helping to make it the go-t...

LEGO is the largest toy manufacturer in the world by sales. But back 2004, it was on the verge of bankruptcy. What followed has been described as the greatest turnaround in corporate history. A key part of its revival came from its embrace of community . In this deep dive, we explore how community helped LEGO co-create new products, drive awareness, and revive its fortunes. Here’s what to expect:...

dbt Labs created the industry standard solution for data transformation, pioneered the field of analytics engineering, and earned a valuation of over $4 billion along the way. At the heart of it all is its 100,000 member-strong community - one of the largest communities in the data analytics space. That community generates a massive 80% of its inbound leads and its customers include the likes of J...

Community has been part of the Figma founding team's ethos from day one . Just over 10 years later, they've amassed some 4 million+ users , including teams at Microsoft, Uber, and the New York Times. They’ve done so well, the design software behemoth Adobe is now trying to buy it for $20 billion . In this deep dive, we take a look at how its community-led strategy has evolved as the organization h...

Sephora is a beauty empire. It has bucked retail downturn trends by opening over 1,000 new stores and expanded into 12 new countries over the last decade. Its success lies in its mastery of bringing offline and online customer journeys together into a holistic shopping experience. A key part of that is its Beauty Insider community. In this deep dive, we break down how it has achieved omnichannel s...

GitLab is a company built around community principles from its first commit. A champion of openness and transparency, it has become a leader in the DevSecOps space with an estimated 30M users . Thanks to its open-source community, more than 3,000 people have contributed code to GitLab . Community contribution is a core growth driver, forming part of its Dual Flywheel growth model . This deep dive...