"Building a #community begins with meeting people (one at a time) and forming meaningful relationships. Always try and help people first before asking for anything in return!" - Avinash Raghava

Community building is not about creating a space or designing a system for interactions and sending mail to get the users in. It is all about helping people who care about a mission to help each other. And it starts with the founding members who form the pillars of the community.

So why is getting to know your members at a personal level so important?

• It is the most natural and human way for us to connect.

"Get to know everyone individually, until you can't" - Erik Torenberg

"I would email those people (early members) and welcome them and say something that was very clear it wasn't automated." - Ryan Hoover

• Helps you understand how the community can help the member achieve their objectives and how the member could potentially contribute to the community.
• Builds trust instantly. Good things are likely to happen when you help people without expecting anything in return.
• The more open you are to connecting, helping, and learning from the community, the more you set yourself up for serendipity.

"To build community, do things that don't scale, for quite a long time." - Rosie Sherry

"All the biggest communities in the world started with a founder who spent countless hours building relationships one at a time. There's no short cut." - David Spinks

🛠 Resources:

Butter, Whereby, Zoom - virtual tools that help you connect with members 1:1.

Coffee - great things happen over coffee. So whenever things get back to normal, the best way to get to know is to grab a coffee IRL :) (here's a snapshot from history when we were doing this at Zomato)

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