How do you actually build a community around a tech product?

We built Protocall five years ago, used it internally every day since. But when we decided to launch, we knew there were still plenty of things to fix and add. So we had two options:

1. Don't launch 😁 and spend another year making it great on our own, going only off internal team and client feedback.

2. Find people who'd actually share their feedback and help us get there much, much faster.

One decision I went back and forth on for a long time: whether to add rewards for testing and feedback, or just ask people nicely.

Since testing a product properly, reporting a bug that's actually reproducible, or writing up an idea that's usable looks like real work. It's literally someone's job internally, our product owner and QA engineers get paid to do exactly this.

Asking strangers to do the same thing for free felt like asking a favor we wouldn't ask of our own team without paying them. So we set up a small pool: $10 to $200 per contribution.

Curious how others here have handled this: did you find rewards necessary to get real engagement early on, or did an organic community form on its own? Genuinely want to know what's worked, or hasn't, for you.

If anyone's curious what we ended up building: community.protocall.ch