How to Build a Community in 2021 with Greg Isenberg

Earlier in 2020, Travis got the opportunity to connect with Co-Founder of Late Checkout, Greg Isenberg. Listen in as Greg shared some of his thoughts in addition to:

Episode Highlights:

There's a shortage of startup founders and people working on startups to fulfill market needs

We're entering an Entrepreneurial Renaissance that will go down as one of the most interesting periods of all time

If you can clone yourself or if you have deep insight into a particular community, you can most likely build a startup around it

• And you could probably make at least seven figures from it

Meetup story about Scott Heiferman and Meetup Crawls

From a Startup point of view, your ability to create something that speaks to that community and gets them to try it is high.

There's a thirst and hunger right now for new products

Facebook started off as a tool for college students - the book of faces, literally and eventually they added social networking and all the additional features we now know

Utility precedes community in a lot of senses

How to identify a potential community of people to serve and build a tool for

• Uber Drivers, Lyft Drivers, and the Gig Economy (DoorDash, Seamless, etc.)
• "Hey this is a group for Uber Drivers, Lyft Drivers, and the Gig Economy (DoorDash, Seamless, etc.)"
• Understand what they need - maybe they need an analytics tool that shows them how to make more money, or maybe what they really need is a map of drivers around them, or a part line, or a clubhouse area, etc
• How do you serve your community?
• The purpose of a server is to attend to the needs and wants of a particular community of people and your job is to deliver that value to the community you serve

When it comes to community-oriented products, it's about distilling the needs and wants of a particular community in a really succinct way that makes people feel at home

Every product that is mainstream started with a small group of people

1. Uber example
2. Reddit Example

In B2B, don't forget you're still working with people

Make sure you speak in plain English in a way people understand

What keeps Greg up at night

1. His ambitions
2. Being best in class

Greg shared insights about his substack and what he does at Late Checkout

Greg's key traits of a successful community and his process

• Step 0 - Where do you have a fundamental advantage over other people? What types of communities do you know better than anyone else?
• Canadian app for people who are from Canada and live in the US
• Questions about naturalization, getting citizenship, and there are probably other people who may have questions
• Where do they have those questions? What are the most common questions?
• Step 1 - Start with research and identify a few communities and you're going to select one to go deep with.
• Deep like a week doing research, and coming up with a hypothesis - where is this? Where is there an opportunity to help people? How do we serve these people?
• Step 2 - Observing and looking at the data
• Many data sources including:
• Trending SubReddits, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok Twitter, Meetup, Spotify, Clubhouse or LinkedIn
• Go deep on one of the above platforms to really understand where people are and what their needs are
• Step 3 - Develop experiments with the goal of obtaining feedback
• If Greg were to rewrite Lean Startup today, he would add a community lense to it
• add steps around the research and bringing in the community and speaking to moderators, on Reddit, speaking to moderators on Facebook, and co-building the product together
• Step 4 - Design sprint and then a community design sprint
• Step 5 - Determine if your startup can hit product-market fit or not

2 Favorite Points:

1. If you have a key insight into a particular community, you could probably build a startup around it, and you could probably make at least seven figures from it.
2. The purpose of a server is to attend to the needs and wants of a particular community of people and your job is to deliver that value to the community you serve

Memorable Quotes:

"If you have a key insight into a particular community, you could probably build a startup around it, and you could probably make at least seven figures from it."– Greg Isenberg

"From a Startup point of view, your ability to create something that speaks to that community and gets them to try it is high."– Greg Isenberg

"Utility before the community."– Greg Isenberg

"There's only been a few moments a time where I really felt that that something was in the air. But I can tell you right now, something is in ...