Would you build community for your B2B SaaS startup?

Dhruv Bhatia
11 replies
I wonder if B2B SaaS startups should build community. If you do believe you need to build community, what are the important aspects of community building for you: 1. Get feedback for my product 2. Discussions with customers 3. Something else

Replies

Ng Fang Kiang
Yes, I started with the community and the slowly adding more stuff.
Dhruv Bhatia
@jorcus wow, that's awesome! Would love to learn how it's going and what process you are following to build community 🚀🚀🚀
Ng Fang Kiang
@dhruv_bhatia Thanks! Just hit 250 sign ups today. We have over 1,000 sign-ups in the past few weeks, only 250 of them are human sign ups. Most of them are fake/bot registration which end up it didn't approve unless we receive email from them.
Ruben Lozano
Hi there, I am thinking about products that have communities and trying to find a pattern between them. B2B SaaS startups where the market is big, definitely I will build a community. Otherwise, with help or support area or a documentation area or an academy is enough. Pipefy, Notion, Coda, Airtable, Maze... All of those ones have a community. What do you think? Ask your users how they will use a community. cheers,
Dhruv Bhatia
@rubenlozanome Very interesting! Agreed, I think it makes sense for slightly bigger startups where the market is big. I'd say as a small startup, you can start with building an audience and a "micro-community" which should suffice for the most part
Kasper Kerem
Depending on SaaS, it is a very broad term. Depends on market size and the value you'd expect from the community. Eventually, the definition of a community is a two-way street. If you see value from the community, sure. But on top of building one, you need to keep them as a community. Is this something that is benefiting you in a long term? And are you providing something to them in a long term?
Dhruv Bhatia
@kasper_kerem great points! Agreed that it's a two-way street and you need to keep them engaged for the long term.
I still sit in the corporate world and pretty much every tool we use has a community that goes with it. A lot start informally, but over time they formalize - having that from day one no matter how small I think would help stickiness, feedback, product improvements etc.
Dhruv Bhatia
@maxwellcdavis very interesting and insightful :) What's the most popular community tool in the corporate world that you've seen?
@dhruv_bhatia Probably just a meeting wizard for events to be honest - Roundtables are by far the most common. They enable a small group to have quality conversations with the product owners.
Rosie Sherry
All communities start with having conversations with your people, by doing that you can find opportunities to help and build community with your customers. It needs to be a two way street though.