- Most communities form because of content being created by the community leader. People vote with their attention, and people that consume similar types of content tend to have more things in common (Lenny Ratchisky is a great example of this).
- A Slack / Discord group is not enough anymore. The best online communities facilitate introductions and make it easy for people to meet each other once inside. Because of this, Intros AI is branding itself as Chief Introduction Officers.
- Communities become more overwhelming as you scale. Communities have laws of diminishing returns, and you need to make it easy for newer members to get immediate value as you grow.
- If you can’t onboard effectively, you’re filling a leaky bucket. Your new members should get value immediately, and you should have touch points at multiple parts of your welcome campaign.
- Cohorts is a good way of making large communities feel smaller.
- Friction is a good thing. If you run a paid community, you create a buy-in for members. Paying members have higher incentives to contribute and add value.
- Very few people can play the volume game well (chasing small amounts of money from large amounts of people). Business is so much easier if you charge more from less customers.
- Communities are becoming places for people to earn online. NFT-based ownership communities, social DAOs, and other Web3 communities are making this possible by aligning incentives.
- The communities that are going to win over the next decade are going to be the ones that help members earn the most money.