EP70: Build Your Community Using Your Community w/ Osmosis

Welcome to our 50th episode! Since this is our 50th episode we wanted to do something special, this interview from Startup Grind Global 2020 is with the cofounder and CEO of Reddit Steven Huffman. We dove into some really unique perspectives we haven’t talked about before like what is the soul of community, and trying to figure out what a “healthy” community is beyond basic metrics and of course how the largest online community looks at building C2C communities. Too Long; Didn’t Listen 2:28m- The way Steve looks at community today is a group of people with a soul. Instead of approaching it with the view of a product builder he approaches it as an anthropologist and trying to understand the people that make up that community rather than optimize for vanity metrics. 8:24m- Reddit now has 100,000 active communities and Steve talks about what other metrics are actually meaningful for a healthy community. He has looked at time on site, votes, comments, length of comments but they are constantly evaluating what a “healthy, interesting community” is internally so they aren’t just chasing a number and can actually achieve that. 21:10m- When he watched other platforms that are also roughly “community” based in being social networks blow past Reddit, he realized they are based on different values. Whereas instagram is looking at monthly active users through vehicles like influencers, Reddit is based around quality discussion which inherently lends itself to less growth. So focus on their on values not growing as fast made sense and that focus also kept users happy.