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It’s Not About You
A Slack workspace with 3,000 silent members is not necessarily a community.
It may just be a mailing list with profile pics.
Startups often launch a “community” by creating a digital space, inviting every customer, and filling the calendar with company updates. Then they wait for meaningful conversations, relationships, and advocacy to appear.
Instead, members politely mute the notifications.
The problem is not always the platform or programming. It is what the community has been built around.
Most people are not looking for another company to admire. They are looking for people who share their interests, understand their challenges, or can help them become who they want to be.
Your company can enable that connection.
It should not always be the center of it.
The strongest communities organize around progress.
Designers want to improve their craft. Founders want to build stronger companies. Runners want to reach new milestones. Independent creators want to make a living doing work they care about.
The company provides tools, access, education, or experiences that help members move toward that destination.
Notion’s community, for example, extends beyond people discussing Notion. Its ambassador program supports volunteers who organize groups around cities, languages, professional interests, and other shared identities. Members may arrive because of the product, but they participate because they can learn, teach, connect, and become more capable alongside other people. Notion describes its ambassadors as volunteers who are already teaching and sharing the product within their own communities.
That distinction matters.
A community built around your company asks, “How do we keep people talking about us?”
A community built around customer progress asks, “What are these people trying to accomplish together?”
The second question creates far more possibilities.
Notion’s community is built around more than its product. Through ambassadors and networks of creators, alumni, and employees, people connect across cities, languages, professions, and shared interests to learn, teach, and grow together.
Make Members Valuable to One Another
If every useful interaction requires someone from your company, you have built a support channel, not a self-sustaining community.
Real communities create member-to-member value.
One person answers a question. Another shares a template. Someone offers feedback, makes an introduction, or shows how they solved a problem others are still facing.
Figma has made this dynamic part of the product itself. In the Figma Community, creators can publish files, plugins, widgets, and other resources that fellow designers can use, save, discuss, and adapt. Figma supplies the infrastructure, but community members create much of the value flowing through it.
That makes the community useful even when Figma has nothing new to announce.
I think this is where many founders get community-building backward. They begin by asking what content the company should publish. A better starting point is asking what members could contribute if given the invitation, structure, and recognition.
The goal is not to perform for an audience. It is to help members become useful to one another.
Figma turned community participation into part of the product itself. Creators contribute useful resources, fellow designers build on them, and the platform becomes more valuable with every exchange.
Give the Community Roles, Rituals, and Ownership
Belonging becomes stronger when people can participate in recognizable ways.
Some members may welcome newcomers. Others might host local events, lead discussions, share expertise, create resources, or celebrate member wins. These roles give people a way to contribute beyond posting another comment.
Rituals matter too.
A weekly critique, monthly challenge, annual gathering, regular demo day, or recurring member spotlight gives the community a rhythm. It creates moments people can anticipate and stories they can retell.
Recognition does not need to be elaborate. A badge, featured contribution, early-access invitation, or direct thank-you can signal that participation matters.
The key is to leave room for members to shape what the community becomes. If every conversation, event, and idea must be approved by the company, people will behave like an audience because that is the only role available to them.
Communities need stewardship. They also need a clearing to do what they do best.
Measure Value, Not Volume
Member count is comforting because it moves neatly upward. It does not tell you whether a community is alive.
Pay closer attention to:
How many members contribute, not merely join
Whether members answer one another’s questions
How often useful resources are created or shared
Whether relationships continue beyond company-led activities
How community participation affects activation, retention, referrals, or product adoption
The 2026 CMX Community Industry Report reflects a growing emphasis on connecting community activity to business outcomes and customer data. Tools such as Common Room can help teams identify meaningful participation across community channels and understand which behaviors connect to the customer journey.
The business impact matters. But the company earns that impact by first creating value for members.
Tools such as Common Room help teams look beyond member counts to identify meaningful participation, connect activity across channels, and understand how community engagement influences the customer journey.
Final Thought
Do not ask people to gather simply because your startup exists.
Give them a shared ambition. Help them learn from one another. Create ways to contribute, belong, and grow.
If the community becomes meaningful, your company will benefit.
But if your company must always be the most important person in the room, it may end up being the only one in it.
Best,
Edwin
