Hey, I'm Maddie (ex-Stanford, $180k made from past projects).
I'm currently working on Founders Cafe ($5k MRR) for solo founders to co-work every day, shoot the shit, and make life long friends.
I've started other communities in the past including -- queer community at Stanford, Minecraft server ($61k), and a gay sorority.
My community just had a discussion about our experiences creating discord/slack communities. Just wanted to share what I learned!
- Start with a core group of 1 or 2!! You can finding just 1 or 2 super users at the start by jumping on calls or making friends - just having a relationship. Example- When I started the queer discord, I had my 3-4 friends seed all the content. The intros, the meetups, etc. When the next 10 people joined, they followed what others did because it was already a norm.
- PING PEOPLE!!!!! Literally a growth hack. If someone joined and didn't add an intro/some action you want, just DM them to do it. :) Both me and Ananya (https://teamfullcircle.org) do this. Example - Founders Cafe I ping people to add an intro if they forgot. It works :O
- Hire interns as the community scales.. this one I learned from Ananya! Example - she has 3 interns use the account. They are the ones doing the grunt work like DM-ing people, engaging with the content, etc. Somehow she found them for FREE or low cost :O
Let me know if you have any other questions. Also lmk if you'd like an invite to Founders Cafe, happy to support fellow solo founders like myself :)