How to Apply Product Thinking to Build Online Communities

Growing a community is similar to growing a product

Level up your product and creator skills in just 5 min a week. Join 50,000 readers:

---

Dear subscribers,

Is growing an online community similar to growing a product?

To find the answer, I interviewed Jen Lee, a friend who has managed countless Discord communities and also helped Justin Kan grow his YouTube channel to 100K subscribers in 5 months.

In the interview below, I talked to Jen about how she:

1. Applies product thinking to build online communities

2. Expects the community space to evolve

---

How to apply product thinking to build online communities

Do you have any advice on building a community from scratch?

Like growing a new product or company, you have to do things that don’t scale in the beginning. I think it’s important to:

1. Give new members great onboarding

2. Seed the community with great content

3. Focus conversations on a few channels

Let’s start with #1. How do you onboard new members to a community?

I DM every person that joins to personally welcome them and ask them what they’re looking to get out of the community. This helps me:

1. Better understand what each member wants. I could then tag relevant members in community conversations.

2. Build a relationship with new members. They would often be delighted that I took the time to DM them and I would then encourage them to post.

I can see how welcoming members personally can make a big difference. How did you seed the community with great content?