Mightybell
p/mightybell
Your own smarter social network
Gina Bianchini
Mightybell — Build a community and a business on mobile
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Replies
Helen Crozier
absolutely gorgeous..... right at a time when I need this too. I've been holding back on choosing between setting up a facebook or linkedin group but now I don't have to. Congratulations on building something so elegant and useful!
Gina Bianchini
@helencrozier Thanks, Helen! Let us know how it goes and how we can be helpful. We're passionate about successful communities and have learned a ton along the way :-)
Allyson Downey
This sounds like an amazing tool to enable aspiring entrepreneurs to use Lean Startup principles and see if a community coalesces around their idea. Seems like it could save a ton of time and development money.
Gina Bianchini
@allysondowney That's exactly what we're aiming to do: give community entrepreneurs the ability to see if an idea has legs before spending a cent. It's hopefully our one small but important contribution to making technology entrepreneurship and access to network effects more inclusive.
Erik Torenberg
Congrats on the Launch Gina! Can you give us some background on how Mightybell has evolved since you launched, and what inspired the evolution?
Gina Bianchini
@eriktorenberg, great question. We’ve invested the past few years quietly and relentlessly optimizing the engagement loops that make a niche network instantly valuable to new and returning members on mobile. What’s different about a Mightybell Network is that we are focused on how people who start as strangers build relationships with each on mobile. This is deceptively hard to get right. To give us the most time to nail it, we partnered with companies like Intuit and organizations like The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to build a platform for engaging niche networks for small business owners, the self-employed and teachers, respectively. Yet, despite being quiet, we would still get someone writing in almost daily to ask for different pieces of a complete community product for entrepreneurs: their own domain, landing page, native mobile apps, member categories, onboarding, branding, rich analytics, access to member data, as well as the option to charge for membership or court potential sponsors. After hearing the same asks over and over, we just built it. We put together all the pieces and launched the complete package on Monday. It's been a crazy few months. :-) We’re proud to support great community entrepreneurs like Randy and Gerard (their story’s here: https://mightybell.com/community...) with communities that need to exist in the world. Now they have everything they need in a single service to ensure their niche network stays strong, healthy and sustainable. We can't wait to see what other entrepreneurs do with the service from here.
Alexander Ainslie
@ginab It's all about community... @pmarca has said something like: 'many companies think they are in the business of building software, when what they are in is the business of building communities'
aileenlee
Am biased as a friend and investor - just love the mission Mightybell is on to make it easy for people with common interests to connect, and for organizations/enterprises to use Mightybell as a great way to build digital community. Super easy to use and thousands of organizations/business owners love it - just sayin'. the comment "this product has become so great" is just one example!
Rachel Masters
Congrats @ginab & team on the new Mightybell launch. Stand alone communities are so powerful & need digital platforms to help them fully actualize.
Gina Bianchini
@masters212 thank you, Rachel! We couldn't agree more.
Jiake Liu
Congrats @ginab! I currently use Telegram's Channel feature to update channel members on news/info. I like it because members are anonymous to each other, and they can't post to the channel, so only us admins can see/manage members and post to the channel. Does Mightybell have a similar feature?
Gina Bianchini
@jiakeliu our approach for this type of use case would be to have the host post the news/info. Not sure that gets you to the same result, but it might. I'll also check out the feature and if I can offer any other ideas. We haven't heard this exact result until now, so thank you for expanding our thinking.
Jiake Liu
@ginab It functions very much like an announcement thread in a forum. For your approach, can the host disable commenting/user interaction in the post?
Gina Bianchini
@jiakeliu ah, got it. We have featured posts in the feed which is our version of the function. You can see an example in one of our networks here: https://www.ownit.com/communitie.... We don't shut down comments, in part because we've enjoyed the conversations that come from the posts. Thanks again for the feedback and ideas!
Gina Bianchini
And we're live in the Slack App Store! https://mightybell.slack.com/app...
Gina Bianchini
Hi Product Hunters! I’m excited to share with you our biggest Mightybell launch since we announced the company. We’re passionate believers that software should open new possibilities for more people - and that anyone who wants to bring people together around a specific idea, identity or passion should have a path to entrepreneurship. That’s why this week we launched our new Entrepreneur packages to enable people motivated to create a community around an interest, speciality, profession, condition, diagnosis, life stage or passion to do so using the most powerful type of community - a niche network on native mobile apps - and build a business doing it. Now people who organize communities can use Mightybell to move their members into their own branded mobile apps, charge for membership or bring on potential sponsors with deeper, more actionable analytics all in one service. We’re looking forward to your feedback and questions about what we’ve launched. We move fast in our mission to make community building fun again, so ideas, thoughts and things we haven’t thought about would be fantastic. Thanks! Gina
Adam Greenwald
@ginab Kudos Gina! Absolutely love it. Would love to learn a bit more and how you guys could potentially help my business. Get in touch through the site?
Gina Bianchini
@agreenwaldhq That's perfect. Operators are standing by. :-)
James Andrews
@ginab Congrats. I was an early Mightybell host and have always enjoyed your approach to building communities. This version just takes the game to whole other level. Great stuff!
Gina Bianchini
@303 Thanks, Justin!
Samir Doshi
@ginab We @ moxiapps.com just signed up with three accounts -- using it for our swishapp.com community --- really solved all of our problems and consolidated our efforts from a fragmented engagement approach... we're using it for feedback, handing beers for bugs, and polling our users.
Matteo Melani
For all the techies out there that are curious about the technologies we use to build Mightybell across iOS, Android and the Web here is the link to Stack Share http://stackshare.io/mightybell/...
Srebalaji Thirumalai
Very nice product... I love it :)
Nick Fassler
This is awesome, and something I've been expecting to see on mobile for a while (ever since the Ethan app and clones). @ginab, I am a bit surprised about the price point for the custom apps though. It seems targeted to companies with significant funding or revenue, and not early stage entrepreneurs. How did you end up at this pricing? I'm guessing the costs of spinning up and maintaining new apps is still fairly significant.
Gina Bianchini
@nickfassler great question. I'm glad you asked. We've organized our Entrepreneur plans to support community entrepreneurs from idea to revenue to ultimately investing in and growing the business. Our free Starter plan come with access to the Mightybell native app, so any community entrepreneur on Mightybell can take advantage of mobile push notifications. This means if you are just starting out, you can see if your idea has legs on mobile before spending a cent. Then, with our Indie plan, you can charge for membership and access deep, actionable analytics for potential sponsorship to generate revenue and momentum for your community. At any point, you can upgrade to our Professional plan where you can have your own branded native mobile apps on iOS and Android. The Professional plan is really designed for those entrepreneurs who would otherwise have to build their own custom apps, a six-or-seven figure investment with a ton of risk. Randy Taylor and Gerard Scarpaci, the founders of Hairbrained, the largest network of craft hairdressers, were faced with this exact decision to use Mightybell or build their own custom app. Here's their story: https://mightybell.com/community.... Hope that helps. And, again, thanks for asking. We appreciate it.
Paul Hart
awesome... diggin in and playing with purpose. finally a community platform worth moving a few of my old communities too. any way I can align 3rd party sponsors? suggestions to make a blog work?
Gina Bianchini
@roamlocally Thanks, Paul! You can absolutely tap 3rd party sponsors for your niche network on Mightybell. As for integrating with blogs, there are a number of different ways to do it. Feel free to drop us a note at strategy (at) mightybell (dot) com and we're happy to help!
Stowe Boyd
MIghtybell is now Mighty Networks
Anant Garg
Hi Gina! Looks like a great product with a much needed UI refresh compared to existing solutions. Do you have an email I can reach you on?
Gina Bianchini
@anant_garg absolutely -- strategy@mightybell.com. And thank you for the kind words. We appreciate it!
Amy Jo Kim
I'm excited to explore the next iteration of Mightbell and see how it can help my startup clients get their businesses off the ground. Congrats Gina & team!
Someone Named
This is great! Definitely a useful product for many startups. Kudos!
Gina Bianchini
@neilsandhu Thanks, Neil! We appreciate the kind words.
Jeska Dzwigalski
Go Gina & Team! :)
Gina Bianchini
@jeskad Thank you!
Bruno Ramos
This product look and feel great! Smooth and nice going. The only problem I had with the UX were: - Changing the roll of a member. It's really confusing. - The news feed is too white. Also if I have a 1000 people in community it will get tiring keep scrolling in the news feedback, maybe add different layers to split post of each member. - Maybe a option to change the news feed to mansory? Too much empty space in the main feed (IMHO). Now, by far this is the best community builder I've ever tested. Congratulations, I just became a evangelist :) Wish you guys luck!
Gina Bianchini
@bruno_rms Bruno, thanks for the kind words and giving Mightybell a spin. We love your evangelism. Two quick responses on the UX front: + Changing roles. It's definitely on our list of small tweaks to make. + For the newsfeed, three things to keep in mind: First, the Discovery page (click in the top search bar) is the quick overview of what's trending now for those who don't want to scroll. Second, the newsfeed is personalized for each member by Topics they care about and members like them. This means they don't have to scroll through everything to find things that are relevant. With mobile attention spans, we have to ensure the feed is instantly relevant to each member. And we do. :-) Third and finally, the vast majority of activity and traffic is happening on mobile - web and apps. For the ipad and laptop experiences, there is whitespace, but significantly less on smaller screens. Given this, we chose to keep the UX consistent across devices, so you learn it once and use it the same way everywhere. Appreciate the feedback and look forward to more, as you go. Thanks!
Bruno Ramos
@ginab Thanks Gina! Awesome. Last question. Is it possible to change the language? We're from Brazil and would be great to change every text or button according to our country. Many of our community don't speak english very well! Wish you the best! ps: 99 month to 3k month O.o Big step haha
Gina Bianchini
@bruno_rms Bruno - it's on the roadmap, but we don't have a date target yet. Thanks!
Marissa Di Pasquale
Bravo ! I have watched the evolution of Mightybell from early days. Not only a great community development product for the grassroots but I have loved your deliberate design led exploration to product market fit . Great wine , like great startups, take time to mature, no amount of hyper activity would get you there . This approach and thoughtful attitude to the market speaks to the quality of your brand.
Gina Bianchini
@marissadipasq Thank you, Marissa. We appreciate you being a part of the journey.