Precious on Community

Humans are innately community-seeking. It's why we section off into groups on playgrounds, congregate around political leaders, and build families, biological or otherwise. Communities add value, and membership goes far beyond group identity; it even drives purchasing decisions. From clothing and bottled water to open-source software, community is a powerful tool for company building, and one that no founder should underestimate.

"No two communities are the same," Seedcamp's community manager Precious Oyelade tells us. "Yet there are repeatable steps and actions you can do to make one work." And this is what Seedcamp's newest series, "Precious on Community" seeks to dive into. Over the few episodes, Precious will be interviewing community builders from all walks of life to share findings and document key learnings about how to build an effective community. 

Welcome to Precious on Community.

Shownotes and links:
- Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee
- Precious Oyelade - twitter.com/preciousolade
- Seedcamp - www.seedcamp.com
- Seedcamp's This Much I Know with GORUCK: seedcamp.com/podcasts/this-much-i-know-founder-ceo-of-goruck-jason-mccarthy-on-building-community-and-walking-the-harder-path
- Tribes, Seth Godin - goodreads.com/book/show/3828382-tribes
- How to build a community with people - www.gettogether.world

Introducing Precious on Community: What does community mean?

"If you try to grow too quickly, you miss a really critical opportunity to create the foundation of community and figure out a model that works really well and is repeatable. Don't try to do too much too quickly." David Spinks, Co-Founder @ CMX

A decade ago, the term 'community' didn't strike most as a central component of company-building, even though it was. Fast-forward to today, where the internet has transformed communication in our professional and personal realms, and community managers have become key stakeholders in product, marketing, and business development. David Spinks has been at the forefront of this community revolution. Having launched his first online community at 14 for his favourite video game, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, David now advises community teams at the likes of Google, Udemy, Waze, and Airbnb. He is the co-founder of CMX (acq. by Bevy), where over 20,000 community professionals gather to learn and support each other, and the host of the CMX Summit, the world's largest community conference.

In this episode of Precious on Community, Precious dives into David's background and dissects how founders can use community to grow their businesses. The two community leaders also dig into CMX's SPACES, a model for defining community business value which is further explored in David's recently released book The Business of Belonging.  

One of David's recommendations for early-stage startups? Don't try to do too much too quickly. Focus on one small group and build on top of their loyalty and commitment to the brand.

A few cited examples of community-building in a business-context include:

- Airbnb: www.airbnb.co.uk/d/superhos
- Reddit: www.review.firstround.com/What-to-Learn-from-the-Man-Who-Managed-Reddits-Community-of-Millions
- Skimm-bassador Program: www.theskimm.com/general/skimmbassadors-5er7Uanv5uK6eQYMiOsmaU-post
- Notion Community: www.notion.so/Notion-Community-04f306fbf59a413fae15f42e2a1ab029
- Sephora Beauty Insider: www.glamour.com/story/sephora-beauty-insider-program-updates
- Tech Ladies: www.hiretechladies.com

Links:
Precious Oyelade - www.twitter.com/preciousolade
David Spinks - www.twitter.com/DavidSpinks
Seedcamp - www.seedcamp.com
The Business of Belonging - www.davidspinks.com/book
CMX SPACES - www.cmxhub.com/the-spaces-model
CMX Community - www.cmxhub.com/community
Bevy - www.bevy.com

Precious on Community: The Business of Community

Being a leader is a lonely journey. COOs, due to their incredibly diverse job descriptions, are particularly at-risk of feeling lonely and unable to confide in people within their teams. This is what seasoned COO-turned-CEO Ben Branson-Gateley from Seedcamp portfolio company CharlieHR and Kelsey Traher from Marvel felt. In search of a community that didn't exist, they teamed up to start their own support group. What started as a small pub meet-up in 2015 has now evolved into COO Stories, a London community of over 200 Ops Leaders. From that one community, there is now a collection of different communities across the London & Berlin tech ecosystems that all share the same set of community values, rooted in friendliness, openness, humility, and integrity. 

In this episode of Precious on Community, Precious Oyelade sits down with Ben and Kelsey to discuss how they built COO Stories and what they have learned about building a healthy community during their time together. They dive into the drumbeat of their community, the importance of letting leaders emerge from within, and how the conscious decisions they made on membership criteria, the cadence of events, and platform for communication have shaped COO Stories into a space where members are truly engaged and collaborative. Remember to check out the first and second episodes of Precious on Community in the show notes before diving into this one!

Show notes
Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee
Seedcamp - www.seedcamp.com
Ben Branson-Gateley - twitter.com/gateley
Kelsey Traher - twitter.com/kelsddog
COO Stories - www.coostories.com
CharlieHR - www.charliehr.com
Marvel - www.marvelapp.com
Precious on Community, Ep 1 - https://seedcamp.com/podcasts/seedcamp-sessions-introducing-precious-on-community-what-does-community-mean/
Precious on Community, Ep 2 - https://seedcamp.com/podcasts/seedcamp-sessions-precious-on-community-the-business-of-community/

COO Stories — Building Community through Consistency

The power of community lies in the ability to thrive virtually and scale across borders. Behind these communities, lie powerful and dedicated leaders whose intrinsic motivation to connect and support members creates compounding value.

On the final ‘Precious on Community’ episode, Precious speaks with Erika Batista, VP International at On Deck on managing and growing their communities.

On Deck is an ecosystem of founders, investors and angels providing programmes and creating communities that strengthen each other one after the other. Erika shares her experience of building community through new geographies and finding the ‘North Star’ that resonates with individuals and unites them as a community. She offers advice on striking the balance between doing things that don’t scale, and managing the influx of information that comes when thinking about community as a growing product. Precious and Erika explore the difference between operational failures and experimental failures, and Erika offers some hot tips on how she manages to get her community members always coming back to events. Tune in, it’s a good one.

Show links:
Precious Oyelade - www.twitter.com/preciousOlade
Erika Batista - www.twitter.com/erikabatista
Seedcamp - www.seedcamp.com
OnDeck - www.beondeck.com

Precious on Community: Managing and Growing Community with On Deck

The power of community lies in the ability to thrive virtually and scale across borders. Behind these communities, lie powerful and dedicated leaders whose intrinsic motivation to connect and support members creates compounding value.

On the second-to-last ‘Precious on Community’ episodes, Precious speaks with Hung Lee, Curator at Recruiting Brainfood on managing and growing communities.

Recruiting Brainfood is an industry newsletter for talent professionals that Hung Lee started in 2017 and has grown to 38,000 subscribers. Hung shared a lot of important questions to ask yourself when starting, managing and moderating a community: Have you nailed the community values down by being true to your intrinsic motivation? What does the community member get for showing up? How will you ensure the community doesn’t get corrupted? The age-old question of Platform was raised as Hung shared his preference for newsletters over Slack (naturally), and how setting up a community is as customised an experience as setting up a bar, “you need to go and create a reason for being”. 

Tune in, it's a good one!


Show links:
Precious Oyelade - www.twitter.com/preciousOlade
Hung Lee - www.twitter.com/Hunglee
Seedcamp - www.seedcamp.com
Recruiting Brainfood - www.recruitingbrainfood.com

Precious on Community: Curating a Community Solo with Hung Lee

This Much I Know is the podcast from Seedcamp, Europe’s seed fund.

Tune into hear the inside story from startup founders, investors and leading tech voices: the people who’ve built businesses, scaled globally, failed fantastically and learnt massively.

Seedcamp invests early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. Seedcamp provides the infrastructure to fast-track a founder’s vision and create value through immediate access to smart capital, a lifelong community of support and a global network built upon a decade’s experience backing exceptional talent.

Precious on Community

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