Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#11

Post by katzgrau » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

I run a pretty active community of about 650 in the local news publishing space. Start when you have a handful of smart people with a common agenda (we originally called it "the thinktank").

Then organize them using software that stays in their day to day workflow like an email list or social media group. Despite its shortcomings, I used Facebook groups and it works kind of well.

Then link to, market, and promote your group wherever appropriate. Ours is still approval-based to keep the quality high and the users engaged.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#12

Post by aswathrao » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

This is a quote from Jeremy Howard the Founder of fast.ai

Create a community and be the largest contributor for the community

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#13

Post by benjamaan » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

I am busy defining a role for myself within my company as a Community Engineer and wrote this little article recently to share some of my thoughts on the matter

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21824495

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#14

Post by fergie » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

fastbeef wrote: post #6

onion2k wrote: post #2

The people who start then have built a significant following in their field over the previous decade or two (eg HN), or they have a large amount of money to spend on marketing (eg StackOverflow), or there's an existing loose community who are looking for a home (eg Shadertoy). Starting a successful community without any of those things is extremely unusual. "Built it, they will come" generally doesn't work.

Didn’t Stack Overflow piggyback on the existing and quiet sizeable audiences of Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky?

Yes. Spolsky in particular was a content marketing genius- his blog managed to garner a large audience, which in turn generated far more sales of Fogbugz than the software itself ever deserved.

Marketing is an important part of any business, so fair play to him.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#15

Post by mbesto » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

Fake it initially.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#16

Post by pequalsnp » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

Peter Thiel has a good book on this [1].

[1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18050143-zero-to-one

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#17

Post by DrNuke » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

Content is king... good and interesting content serves any given market niche and acts as your hook to aggregate people?

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#18

Post by derwiki » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

idoh wrote: post #7

KhalPanda wrote: post #5

I've launched and grown/run a few forums over the years and the key for me was to always seed it with as much quality content as possible. Fake it until you make it. I believe reddit did the same.

reddit did it. I think this very forum did it too, see e.g. the whole nickb thing.

nickb thing?

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#19

Post by JohnBooty » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

1. Seed with high quality community members. Initially this might just be a small circle of friends or emigres from another online community.

2. Be really hands on with identifying, engaging with, and empowering the best community members. Typically, this would mean giving them some sort of moderation powers and/or giving them access to some sort of "backchannel" (ie, a mods-only chat or forum) in which they can be a part of the discussions where you discuss community direction.

In general, treat your small (initial) size as an asset. Your community cannot represent a Stack Overflow-sized massive knowledge base.

So, what can you offer that a large existing community cannot? Chiefly, this would be an ability for members to get in on the ground floor and shape the direction of the community while having a direct line of communication to the founder(s).

Hands-on communication with a community founder can really reach people. Think about what it would mean for Paul Graham to reach out to you personally in response to an HN comment you made. In the early stages of your community, you can be the founder and make those connections.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

#20

Post by cslarson » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

In r/ethtrader we are currently running an experiment where contributions are collated bi-weekly and tokenized on Ethereum. The tokens are also part of a dao with a number of features integrated directly into Reddit. Voting, tipping, subscribing to special features, harberger assets, etc. Basically the contributions people make turn into voting weight and the currency for a local economy.