Community Stories
By Mohammed Rafy
We sit with community builders, creators and hear the backstory on building thriving Internet communities.
Building thriving communities take incredible efforts and everyone has great story on how did they start their journey.
Community StoriesAug 02, 2021
Yaro Bagriy of Playgroup on building creator communities and how to create engagement in a community
Yaro Bagriy is the creator of Playgroup, a new-age community-building platform. He previously started a community for newsletter enthusiasts called Newsletter Crew, which later got acquired. In this episode, we discuss growth and engagement strategies for communities, the ideal size of the community, and why we should build paid & private communities.
His definition of a successful community is where every member knows every other member, like how a family should be. Small.
Link to Playgroup - The best platform to build your digital community.
Link to Yaro Bagriy Twitter
Link to Rafy's Twitter
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter
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Paras Pundir on starting a career in community building and building communities for brands
In this bonus episode, Paras and I pick topics and discuss how to start a career in community building, why is building a community for a brand/business different from creator and what should be the ideal community platform to hosts communities.
Paras is known as The Community Guy, is a community builder who founded Community Folks, a community for community managers and runs multiple communities. Paras believes in creating an impact along with the power of people.
"Community is not just event. Community is not just Instagram Live. Community is everything."
Link to Paras Pundir Twitter
Link to Community Folks Community
Link to Rafy's Twitter
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter
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Community is relationships. Relationships are give & take. Kim Johnson, Head of Community at Geneva
Kim Johnson, Head of Community at Geneva talks about her time at Glossier building community ambassadors program and other initiatives which created experiences to celebrate people. She talks about challenges a community leader can face and how you can balance scale and growth with true community and connection. She discussed her ideal community-building platform and shares 3 pieces of advice for new community builders who are just getting started in their journey of building communities.
She believes in, "Your community can often tell your story better than you can".
When you are early in a community building it takes time. It takes time to make connections. It takes time to build a community that's thriving and can take off and grow on its own. Ensuring you take that time to give care and space to the community to truly grow authentically and to nurture it is super important.
Link to Geneva - Geneva is a safe and welcoming city of private groups, each with their own personality and purpose.
Link to Glossier
Link to Kim Johnson LinkedIn
Link to the episode on YouTube with timestamps
Link to Rafy's Twitter
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter
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Having a paid community can lead to better outcome & member experience, Emily & Tom, Co-founders of Propel
Emily Pik and Tom Guthrie, co-founders of Propel - a cohort-based private community join me on Community Stories to talk about their day to day operations of running a paid community and why it's good to have a paid community, defining north star of a community, how to select members for the paid community by learning their motivation, how not to define a community and what's the difference between having an audience vs having a community.
"A community is when a cumulative strength of relationships between members of the community exceeds the strength of the relationship with the members and the original creator of the community."
Link to the Propel's Community
Link to Emily Pik's Twitter
Link to Tom Guthrie's Twitter
Link to Rafy's Twitter
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter
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Ian Vanagas, Building an ideal community platform and the future of internet communities
In this episode, Ian talks about how status works in online communities and dive into community-building platforms like Discord, Reddit and explain why is Discord winning. Discord won by building 10x better spaces for communities. By selling status, they have also managed to capture more value from those communities than other platforms.
Link to Ian Vanagas Twitter
Link to Ian's Blog
Link to Rafy's Twitter
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter
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Support Uncommunity by buying a coffee
Arvid Kahl, The Bootstrapped Founder, Author of Zero to Sold and now writing The Embedded Entrepreneur
Arvid Kahl joins me on Community Stories to talk about the audience-first approach, building relationships and his latest book The Embedded Entrepreneur, prev Audience First. Audience-first means exactly what it sounds like: you start with the audience. Arvid shares his lesson building a bootstrap business, how he leveraged the audience to write his first book Zero to Sold and why he is writing Audience First. This book will teach you how to build a business the right way from the beginning: with an audience that you want to serve and that will serve you.
He says, "Building relationships is a never-ending transaction."
Link to the book Audience First
Link to Arvid Kahl's Twitter
Link to The Bootstrapped Founder
Link to Rafy's Twitter
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter
Learn about Uncommunity
Support Uncommunity by buying a coffee
John, Founder of Yen and creator of YEN.FM - daily digest exploring community-centric world
In this episode, John talks about building communities, newsletters and how all that he does like sending a daily newsletter, engaging with the audience on Twitter, engaging with a community on Indie Hackers is intentional and aligned with his business objectives. He explores the topic of creating YEN.FM.
John is on a mission to democratize community building through YEN.FM by sharing free content, education, and featuring folks who are leading the charge into a brave, new, community-first world.
Link to YEN.FM
Link to John's Twitter
Link to Rafy's Twitter
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter
Learn about Uncommunity
Support Uncommunity by buying a coffee
KP, Founder of Cuppa and now Program Director of On Deck No-Code Fellowship (ODNC) | Building Audience on the Internet & Building Communities
In this episode, KP shares the story on building the leverage on the internet by building multiple products and creating Cuppa: a 1-1 virtual coffee platform with talent sourced from Twitter. He is currently working as a Program Director of On Deck No-Code Fellowship.
Link to Cuppa
Link to KP's Twitter
Link to On Deck
Link to Rafy's Twitter
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter
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Support Uncommunity by buying a coffee
Building B2B branded communites and creating content with Tara Hunt of Phlywheel
In this episode, Tara talks about brands building communities, the intersection between marketing and communities.
About Phlywheel - Phlywheel was founded by Toronto-based strategic marketing firm, Truly Inc. Truly is an award-winning firm that has worked with Nokia, REALTOR.ca, CAMSO, Michelin, CPA and many more.
Link to Phlywheel.
Link to Truly Inc.
Link to Tara's Twitter.
Link to Rafy's Twitter.
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter.
Learn about Uncommunity.
Support Uncommunity by buying a coffee.
Growing a paid Content Marketing Community
In this episode, Christina shares her story behind creating ContentUK community to gather content marketers in the UK and why she decided to pivot from free to the paid community.
Link to the community ContentUK.
Link to Christina's Twitter.
Link to Rafy's Twitter.
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter.
Learn about Uncommunity.
Support Uncommunity by buying a coffee.
Growing a paid community to $800 MRR by Charlie Ward of Weekend Club
In this episode, Charlie explains how he created the #1 Indie Hackers accountability community based out of the UK. He also shares his learning on how he pivoted to online-only community from real life and what he learned by doing so.
About Weekend Club - Weekend Club is the #1 solo founder support community. They offer weekly, remote Saturday deep working sessions with 30+ other founders (like the creators of Simple Poll & VEED), plus 100+ software discounts. You can sign up for a limited 30 days free trial at Weekend Club.
Link to Weekend Club.
Link to Charlie's Twitter.
Link to Rafy's Twitter.
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter.
Learn about Uncommunity.
Support Uncommunity by buying a coffee.
Building developer communities and contributing to open source organizations like Mozilla
In the second episode of Uncommunity, Rafy speaks with Shreyas to learn more about how he started his career in the community management space by contributing to open source communities such as Mozilla and how he thinks about developer communities and impact on the ecosystem. Shreyas brings more than 9 years of experience and has landed remote opportunities by working in India.
Link to Shreyas's Twitter.
Link to Rafy's Twitter.
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter.
Learn about Uncommunity.
Support Uncommunity by buying a coffee.
0-100 events in 14 months - Building The Product Folks Community
In this pilot episode, Rafy speaks with Suhas to learn more about how Suhas and his team built The Product Folks community from scratch. After 14 months of hard work and consistency, they have been able to get product managers and founders from Airbnb, Stripe, Superhuman to speak in their online meetups.
Link to The Product Folks.
Link to Suhas's Twitter.
Link to Rafy's Twitter.
Link to Uncommunity's Newsletter.
Learn about Uncommunity.
Support Uncommunity by buying a coffee.