Along with learning how to create a profitable business, community-building is at the core of almost every entrepreneur’s priorities today. The presence of a strong community one can make you the star of your own show (see Beyoncé and her Beyhive — or Gru and his #gentleminions).

We’ve seen many makers leverage their communities to help skyrocket growth, from D2C brands like Glossier to Apple’s die-hard fanbase, and Notion reminds us regularly that even workplace SaaS can bring people together socially. You may be asking “How do I do that?” Many makers have shared their secret sauce. There are also a host of tools that empower current and prospective community-builders.

Threado launched today as a “command center for community builders,” founded by Pramod Rao who was formerly a VP of Marketing at Zomato (India’s food-delivery unicorn turned public company). Nowadays, makers use so many different platforms to create online communities — and Rao recognized that as a pain point for community managers trying to manage their followings. They're often overwhelmed with trying to dissect engagement data across platforms.

So Rao and his co-founder, Abhishek Nalin, created a way to get actionable insights, automate workflows and activate members across channels including Slack, Discord, Discourse, Twitter, and GitHub. The goal is to help community-builders effectively measure member needs and expedite community growth.

Threado launched its first product back in November, a workbook of community tools on Notion. Today is its big debut follows a $3.1M fundraise. The makers say they power over 260 communities so far.

Backspace is a new addition in this space as well. It helps creators build and monetize their online communities “without having to use an overwhelming stack of tools and platforms.” Backspace and Threado join a growing number of community management tools, like Orbit and Geneva.

Feeling inspired to build your own Beyhive?

• We have Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc, hosting an AMA. Ask him anything about community building, or lessons from his 4K hours of business model and marketing research.

• If you’ve given up Duolingo one too many times, we won’t judge. Iago is another language option that helps you learn Japanese by interacting with subtitles from your favorite shows.

• Keyviz lets you showcase what shortcuts/keys you're pressing during your screencasts, presentations, and collaborations.

• Remotebase is a marketplace that matches startups with software engineers available to hire immediately, at a fixed monthly cost.

Buddydoc helps pet owners potentially save a trip to the vet by assessing symptoms at home.

The maker picked up on issues pet parents were facing—”the fundamental problem is the inability to judge our pets' conditions accurately in order to make the best decision for them” — and created the free platform. It’s equipped with a symptom checker, vet Q&A forum, and food dictionary.