Hi! 👋

I'm Pramod, one of the Co-founders of Threado, a command centre to manage your online community. Welcome to our weekly newsletter about everything community. 🤝

Here's what we've curated for you in this edition:

🖌️ Figma - the $10 billion community OG in the world of design

🦄 Are community tools the next unicorns?

🗞️ Community Reads - stay updated on what's happening in the community space

📅 Community Events - insightful workshops, webinars, masterclasses to help you grow and manage your communities better

💼 Community Jobs - exciting openings at community-led organizations

🤝 Hiring alert at Threado - let's build Threado together

If you like our content, tell your friends about it and help spread the word ❤️

✓

🖌️ Figma - the $10 billion community OG in the world of design

The image of a global tight-knit design community enabled by Figma. That's what you are looking at - a heat map of file shares and invites sent on Figma, across the Globe. But how did it get there? How does one even start on a mission that's so massive in scale? Let's go down the rabbit hole!

A 19-year-old dropout from Brown University took $100,000 from Thiel Fellowship to start a business with his (then) teaching assistant. The 0 to 1 journey, like for any other startup - was a messed up one. Their initial idea was to build a drone company. (Fortunately for us 😄) They failed to pivot around this idea mostly because they couldn't build anything in the space without hurting people or violating their privacy.

Right after, Dylan Field had his eureka moment when he saw Evan Wallace give a demo of WebGL (a JavaScript API for rendering high-performance interactive 3D and 2D graphics). He wanted to deliver this ultimate experience of interface design coupled with Google Docs - to enable a collaborative setup. That is how Figma was conceived, back in 2012. ❤️

Dylan wanted to make Figma the Github for designers. He believed that design should be more open, cloud-first and on the Web. They built multiplayer capabilities in Figma for designers or teams to collaborate and work together over a design.

But this wasn't it - Dylan had bigger plans. 🚀

In 2019, 3 years after the public launch, he took a step forward towards this vision and launched the beta version of Figma's community. Designers loved it ❤️

Figma aced the engagement and retention within its community, which helped them drive new users by just word of mouth marketing. Its user growth exploded - rising from about 8% of respondents (~4000 designers were picked for the survey by uxtools.co) using the tool in 2017 to about 57% in 2020.

... This is the story of how Figma become the #1 go-to-place for designers and brought in adaptability for its collaborative statement! You don't want to miss this 👇

Read Now

🗞️ Community Reads

🦄 Are community tools the next unicorns?

In 2020, community tools raised around $179.8 million and another $115.6 million have come their way in 2021.

Online communities have been popping up, more so post the Covid-19 outbreak. Managing and engaging needed tool-based support besides the multitasking hand of a Community Manager. More roles oped up - Community Marketing, Chief Community Officer, etc. Users have become open to the idea of adapting to a collaborative, community-led tool. The rise of metaverse products, NFT communities and DAOs all indicate towards a shining star this space is about to chase. Communities & community tools are the future.

In this article, Nisha Ramchandani and Suhas Motwani talk about the future of community tools. 👇

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Are Community Tools The Next Unicorns? - Moneycontrol<br>&#13;<a href="https://t.co/aK41PToywg">https://t.co/aK41PToywg</a></p>&mdash; nocodewatch (@nocodewatch) <a href="https://twitter.com/nocodewatch/status/1446661701038968838?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 9, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

‍

🎙️ The Room Where It Happens - A show, podcast and a community

Greg Isenberg and Sahil Bloom are launching something super cool for all the founders!

• Access insider perspectives and learn about proven frameworks
• Learn more about creator economy, social investing, NFTs and all the trending spaces - from the best in line!
• Great opportunity to access mentorship and networking with the best, from the best.

Sign-up now for early access👇

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I have some news!<br><br>I started a show, a podcast and a community called The Room Where it Happens with one of my best friends <a href="https://twitter.com/SahilBloom?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SahilBloom</a><br><br>Read on for more: <a href="https://t.co/dLs4NCpdpn">pic.twitter.com/dLs4NCpdpn</a></p>&mdash; GREG ISENBERG (@gregisenberg) <a href="https://twitter.com/gregisenberg/status/1446506489208733697?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 8, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

‍

💬 Whatsapp is working on a 'community' feature

Several communities exist today on Whatsapp. It's the easiest way to get the engagement going, especially if you're in a smaller community.

Challenges of using Whatsapp for running a community currently include: no capability for threaded conversation - important messages are lost in translation, moderation is all over the place, inability to build APIs or automate tasks for the CM, you can't scale the community beyond 256 members, micro-communities can't be enabled.

There’s a lot of room to improve! So here's hoping the team is building kickass features for running communities on Whatsapp ❤️

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">WhatsApp Community could be the app’s upcoming social media function <a href="https://t.co/91Onhotzzm">https://t.co/91Onhotzzm</a></p>&mdash; Just Android (@JustAndroidnet) <a href="https://twitter.com/JustAndroidnet/status/1447496079579115526?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 11, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

‍

🎁 An amazing curation of sweet deals for founders by The Product Folks

Everything you need to grow, build and scale your startup 👇

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Here&#39;s your festive gift from the team at TPF! 🤩<br><br>All the tools you need to ship world class products in a single place with unbelievable offers🔥<br><br>Join the waitlist now:<a href="https://t.co/mRjorjcTKj">https://t.co/mRjorjcTKj</a><br><br>Any tools you wish to see over here? Tag &#39;em here &amp; we&#39;ll take care of the rest💫 <a href="https://t.co/t33Q8yX1kY">pic.twitter.com/t33Q8yX1kY</a></p>&mdash; The Product Folks 🚀 (@TheProductfolks) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheProductfolks/status/1447556808235630596?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 11, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

‍

‍

🐤 'Community Nuggets' on Twitter Revue: stay updated on community-tweets

We're taking Twitter Revue for a spin. Will be compiling the latest happenings, news and wise words from the community space on 'Community Nuggets' - top 5 Tweets every day, in your inbox.

Check out the latest issue!

📅 Community Events

• Oct 19-20th 2021: Community Conference 2021

• Nov 3-4th 2021: Demand Curve - Growth Summit

👨‍💼 Community Jobs

• Minti - NFT Community Manager (Us, Remote)
• Tether - Community Manager (Remote)

💼 Hiring Alert at Threado!!

If you are eager to be a part of the founding team of an early-stage product-led startup, hop on to our ride! We're hiring for key roles. Check them out 👇

📱Head of Product Design - Great design is at the core of our mission to enable community builders across the globe to create memorable community experiences. We are looking for a Head of Product Design who will shape the design of our product and build the design culture at Threado from scratch.

👩‍💼 Product Manager - looking for our Founding Product Manager who will own product value discovery, our product roadmap, work closely with our early partners and ship products that delight community builders.

✍️ Content Marketing Lead - who will own and shape the voice of Threado. Every interaction with our potential users (community builders) across platforms is an opportunity for us to delight them and add value. As a Content Marketing Lead, you will be deeply involved in delighting our users through engaging, entertaining and educational content.

💻 No-Code Creator - You live and breathe no-code.You love building products and solving problems. You eat side projects for your breakfast - You are the No-code Creator our Growth team is looking for. A role at the intersection of growth, content marketing and product development.

"Community is the moat. Focus on humans, not dollars."

-Cooper Turley

That’s it for this week. If you liked our content, please do give us a shoutout and spread the word. 💌 🤟

Share on Twitter

You can find us here on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

Would love to hear your feedback and help you out with anything around Community Building. Feel free to write back. We read EVERY reply.

Cheers,

Pramod