AMA with Lolita Taub of The Community Fund! 😍 Uncommunity #26
Hi, Rafy here.
This is Uncommunity’s bi-weekly newsletter. We bring you community experts’ interviews, resources related to building communities, tools to scale community or events, books to read & become better community builders, and jobs to be applied.
Let’s go. 🚀🚀🚀
Introducing.
Lolita Taub is Corporate Development VP at Catalyte and the Co-Founder and General Partner at The Community Fund where she invests in community-driven companies. With 15 years working within the Silicon Valley ecosystem, she has accomplished $70M+ in sales and made 60+ investments as an angel investor and VC at Backstage Capital and The Community Fund.
Why should founders build communities? What changed in the last two years?
I wouldn’t recommend that all founders build community-driven companies. Founders need to ask themselves whether it makes sense for their businesses. But the benefits of a community-driven business are real and should be considered (e.g., lower CAC, higher retention). Learn more about community-driven companies here.
The timing is right for community-driven companies to rise and build the companies of the future because:
people more than ever are seeking community
platforms to unite/create communities are abundantly available (e.g., Slack, Facebook Groups)
traditional ways of attracting customers are expensive
You are one of the renowned investors in community-driven companies. What are the few things that you look at in companies when you consider investing in them?
Thanks for the compliment! At The Community Fund, we’re looking for companies that will become unicorns. To learn more, read - The Community Fund: How We Source, Select, and Support Startups.
What are challenges in the community space that new upcoming entrepreneurs can solve for?
Growth, engagement, retention, content moderation, connection, human touch, authenticity, and most importantly aligning community with business outcomes.
What are you most excited about the future when it comes to community-led companies?
Watching communities shape the products and services that they need to solve their problems and achieve their goals, while creating a sense of greater purpose and belonging. That and watching community-driven companies, members, and investors reap outsized returns from enabling all of that.
Advice for founders who are building a business with community as a moat.
Remember that a differentiator is something that you offer/have that the competition doesn’t (and would be hard to replicate) and that your customer wants to pay for. If community is your moat, you need to make sure you tend to it, nourish it, and sustain it as the core of your business.
Follow Lolita Taub on Twitter.
*INTERMISSION*
WOW! There you have it. All the information to build a community-driven startup. If you are a founder then you know what to solve for. Growth, engagement, moderation, and all.
Feel free to take a break. Stretch, breathe, get some water, etc. Then come back.
There are only three sections left now: What else we’re reading including few tweets, community news, and new jobs to checkout.
You good? Ok! Let’s dive back in 😅
What else we’re reading?
How Dickie Bush gained 40,000 followers in less than six months. Read this interview of Dickie Bush here on how to grow an audience on Twitter, generate creative ideas, etc.
With an extra five minutes of polishing, you can turn your notes into something worthy of publishing.
Curation is a great way to get started on a platform like Twitter because it has a low lift and allows you to build a small audience of people who come to you as a trusted curation source.
Every tweet is a free option with unlimited upside and little downside.
By paying attention to what readers are liking and retweeting you can get a better idea of what will resonate.
When you start a new project or set a goal, fast forward to the end and imagine yourself falling short. Then, try to put a system in place to prevent those catalysts for failure.
How To Use Data to Prioritize In Your Community. This tactical in-depth guide to community building is must read for every community builders. Checkout the full guide by Richard Millington.
Is prioritizing your community activities a challenge for your team? If your boss told you tomorrow to improve the community, where would you even begin?
Do you try to improve the website? Initiate and reply to more discussions? Work on gamification and superuser programs? Host more events and activities? Offer bigger rewards and more promotions?
The problem at this stage is that you’re guessing. Unless you have good data that shows what members need, you shouldn’t be doing anything to satisfy those needs.
Product Hunt is Everywhere - This is How It Got There. Ryan Hoover, Founder of Product Hunt shares the tactics startups can use to capture attention early and build on it for success. Read the full article on First Round Review.
People say they don’t know how to build an audience, but it boils down to providing some sort of value to people. What advice can you give? What do you know that most people don’t? If you start putting that out there, you can build a reputation and connections that will help you with a launch down the line — people will care about what you have to say. Ryan Hoover.
Design a community flywheel like David Perell does for his business.
Build community to support people.
Community, community, community.
The best to attract people to your community is fine storytelling.
What’s in the News?
Paid communities are on Luma. Check out the product.
Mmhmm raises massive $100 Million funding to make video conferencing easier.
Go to Uncommunity.club to find out about the latest tools and new jobs that we added this week from companies like ReadySet, HubSpot, Colabra, Evernote, Figma etc. Check out the jobs.
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