Would you build community for your B2B SaaS startup?
Dhruv Bhatia
11 replies
I wonder if B2B SaaS startups should build community. If you do believe you need to build community, what are the important aspects of community building for you:
1. Get feedback for my product
2. Discussions with customers
3. Something else
Replies
Rosie Sherry@rosiesherry
Orbit
All communities start with having conversations with your people, by doing that you can find opportunities to help and build community with your customers.
It needs to be a two way street though.
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Jorcus
Yes, I started with the community and the slowly adding more stuff.
Jorcus
@dhruv_bhatia Thanks! Just hit 250 sign ups today. We have over 1,000 sign-ups in the past few weeks, only 250 of them are human sign ups. Most of them are fake/bot registration which end up it didn't approve unless we receive email from them.
Neo (Beta)
Cake Equity
Hi there,
I am thinking about products that have communities and trying to find a pattern between them. B2B SaaS startups where the market is big, definitely I will build a community. Otherwise, with help or support area or a documentation area or an academy is enough. Pipefy, Notion, Coda, Airtable, Maze... All of those ones have a community.
What do you think? Ask your users how they will use a community.
cheers,
Neo (Beta)
@rubenlozanome Very interesting! Agreed, I think it makes sense for slightly bigger startups where the market is big.
I'd say as a small startup, you can start with building an audience and a "micro-community" which should suffice for the most part
I still sit in the corporate world and pretty much every tool we use has a community that goes with it. A lot start informally, but over time they formalize - having that from day one no matter how small I think would help stickiness, feedback, product improvements etc.
Neo (Beta)
@maxwellcdavis very interesting and insightful :)
What's the most popular community tool in the corporate world that you've seen?
@dhruv_bhatia Probably just a meeting wizard for events to be honest - Roundtables are by far the most common. They enable a small group to have quality conversations with the product owners.
Depending on SaaS, it is a very broad term. Depends on market size and the value you'd expect from the community. Eventually, the definition of a community is a two-way street. If you see value from the community, sure. But on top of building one, you need to keep them as a community. Is this something that is benefiting you in a long term? And are you providing something to them in a long term?
Neo (Beta)
@kasper_kerem great points! Agreed that it's a two-way street and you need to keep them engaged for the long term.