How important is building a real-life community when growing a software company?
Building community used to be a Web3 thing. Crypto projects lived by their Discord. Token holders became evangelists, most of the times the community was the product, almost as much as the technology itself.
In 2026 AI companies are borrowing the same playbook and taking it offline. The trend I'm watching most closely right now is in-person events as a growth channel. Not conferences. Not sponsored booths. Genuine community gatherings built around the product.
A few examples worth paying attention to:
@Cursor has been running Cafe Cursor events: intimate, local gatherings for developers who use the product. @benln and the team have turned their most engaged users into a real-life network. @HeyGen and @n8n are doing similar things, building communities of power users who gather, share workflows, and end up becoming the best distribution channel the company has.
And then there are hackathons. @InsForge (their hackaton was online) and @beehiiv are among the companies leaning into this format
bringing builders together around a specific problem or tool, and creating moments that generate content, community, and product feedback all at once.
The companies investing in real-life community are getting something that no ad spend can replicate. People who feel ownership over the product's success.
So I'm curious:
Have you built or been part of a product community that went beyond online?
Do you think in-person events are a real growth lever or just a nice-to-have?
And which companies do you think are doing community-building best right now?
Replies
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
Lovable is a good example that it goes beyond online. They started differentiating with their hackathons, and I must say that it made a huge difference in my eyes.
ZeroHuman.
@busmark_w_nika hmmmm. Don’t confuse them with Bolt? Because Bolt held huge hackathons just last year. I don’t remember Lovable doing anything like that. Or maybe I’m the one mixing them up.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@byalexai I think that they had one and people were angry about the winner because the solution wasn't so good or so :D
I definitely agree with this perspective! There's nothing better a company can do for their marketing other than making people feel welcome and invite them to safe spaces, making them feel a kind of home at company events. A year ago, I built a small business called borderline craze, hosting events and writing short five minute stories for adults to browse through in their spare time, and I can say with 100% assurance that the connections I made from my events are some of my most loyal customers. Events aren't just profit generating two hours of a day, they're the foundation of professional networks that can make or break you in the real world. whenever I host new events or publish a new book, my event attendees are always the first ones to engage!
ZeroHuman.
@yashika_vahi Wow, that’s super cool. Could you share more about your experience, and is there any online information about those events?
@byalexai yes of course! most of them are creative events that I hosted through eventbrite, and you can search my profile 'Yashika Vahi' to look through them. In my experience, hosting events isn't just about promotions but about building a community that really relies on you to make their work/their efforts feel seen. Even if you're building an AI platform, you really need to think about how you are elevating the works of people who are already working hard on their own products. I really like chatgpt in this manner because of their marketing and ads, targeting people in all industries - even farming, fashion, and healthcare.
A really surprising incident for me was when I was volunteering abroad at a local secluded farm in Alaska and the owner used to use chatgpt to ask simple questions like, "what kind of soil does a strawberry plant need?", "how soon does a pea plant grow?" and so on. It's really intriguing to see people find a mentor in AI and use it to advance their own goals.
The Web3 observation is sharp and more people should pay attention to it.
The projects that survived the crypto crash weren't the ones with the best technology. They were the ones with the strongest communities. The token became worthless. The people stayed. That's the data point everyone ignored.
We've been thinking about this differently at MRVL.
Rather than treating community as a growth channel layered on top of the product, we built it into every single app in our portfolio from day one. Every app ships with a community hub where users vote on what gets built next, follow the roadmap, and tell us directly what they want. We built the platform for it — Shpd — because the tool we needed didn't exist.
The dream behind it isn't engagement metrics. It's ownership.
When a user votes on a feature and that feature ships, something shifts. They stop being a user. They become a stakeholder. They tell people. Not because of a referral programme but because they feel like they helped build something.
That's the thing in-person events do that no ad spend replicates — they create the feeling of belonging to something. Of having a hand in it.
The companies doing this best right now aren't the ones with the biggest events budgets. They're the ones whose users would genuinely miss them if they disappeared.
That's the only test that matters.