Catalysing Product Growth through Community

During the process of product growth, community will always form a cornerstone of the overall strategy. There should be a dynamic interplay between the product strategy and the community.

Harnessing the collective energy surrounding the product and leveraging it as a way of distribution is a battle-tested way to create reliable growth.

Let's dive into some of the details of creating community-driven products and where it has been successfully applied.

Product, Profit, People

The three pillars of sustainable growth are often called the 3 P's. Your product will always be the nucleus around which the others revolve. While profit is a natural outcome of a high-quality product, people is harder to make tangible.

If we look at the product in the center with profit as an outcome of it, then we should place people above product.

People
  ↓
Product
  ↓
Profit

Involving the people that are impacted by your product in its development creates better products which in turn creates more profit.

Open-Source and Outstanding

The open-source community are the true masters of the People, Product, Profit approach. Open-source products like Supabase, Prisma, and Docker cleverly leverage the people at the top of their funnel to craft beautiful products that deliver impact.

While it is easier to involve the community in the development of the product when they can contribute to it directly, it is not impossible for closed-source products to achieve the same feedback loop.

The first step of getting this feedback loop up and running is setting up a direct channel for you to communicate with your users. For this you can use existing community platforms like Discord or Slack. Using an existing platform comes with the benefit that your users are already familiar with these platforms, lowering the barrier to entry.

Understanding Community Dynamics

Building a healthy community consists of a variety of parts. One of which is understanding and guiding the dynamic of the community. Different users will join the community with different goals, visions and ideas. Some might join because they are looking to find the answer to a specific question or problem, while others might be looking for inspiration from similar members.

Catering to the different needs of the community is similar to identifying the target audience of your business. Once you start taking the first steps towards extending the people segment of the 3P funnel, identify the goal of your community and cater to the needs of the identified personas.