Sriram Krishnan: recommendation

Transcript context

…Find the niche, start really small and find the niche. I think oftentimes I've seen other startup founders and I invest and advise in a lot of early stage companies. I went through Y Combinator, so I go back to YC as much as I can and go help out folks. But oftentimes I'll see people starting companies or founders coming in and being like, "I'm going to build this product that is going to cater to this community. I'm going to build this world's largest community off this kind of thing," and it almost starts at this super scaled version and then they set themselves up for failure. You're almost better off doing these small, niche, non-scalable things to go find these oddball set of people who are doing this, who are really interested in this one thing and kind of scale from there and grow from there. And I think that's one big thing that when you're starting to build a community, don't start to build this super scaled community. Start with few people who are passionate about a particular problem and want to get together kind of thing. Start there. Two, I think people, and this might be a controversial thing, but I often think people don't think through monetization. If you're a community builder early on, start thinking about, if you're truly focused on this as a business, how would you actually make money off of it? Oftentimes they hit some sort of scale and be like, "Crap, now what do I do? And then they're try all these options, they will have some churn and then they're like, "Oh no, but I thought this was a very sticky community." I'm like, "Yes, but it's not as sticky as this particular price tag." And so you have to start thinking through, if we hit a particular velocity, what is that going to look like? What are the things that I'm going to unlock. And think through monetization a little bit ahead of time before it comes in and becomes a crutch rather than a weapon that you can go leverage. But I want to say, Aarthi is kind of the creator of Facebook Stars and of so much of the thinking there and I can see her go super deep on this. Of course on everything she said, I have a slightly different framework. First of all, I really don't like the word community because the word community, the word networking, the word platform is a little abstract and it can mean a lot of things. And I like to think of things like a dinner party or church or things that seem more tangible and people know, "Okay, I know exactly what that is." So when I think of a community or starting one, I think first of all, it's a party. And you're first starting off, you're like, "All right, what is a vibe?" For example and this is also true for every social media platform where if you can be a crazy, people are dancing on bars, having a great time, getting really drunk party or you can have a really formal dinner where everyone is seated, there is plates with name tags and there's a clinking of glasses and you have to dress up. And they're both fine, they're both fun in their own way, but you need to tell people, as the host, which one it is. And by the way, I think one of the things that Twitter didn't get right in the original days which some of the other apps did, it never told people what kind of party it was. It like, "Are we going to Michelin star restaurant where sit down or it's a sports bar after the Super Bowl and you can go crazy?" And if you don't do that, people make up their own rules. That's number one. The second part is as the host, you have to curate the original set of people and you need a mix, this is super important. I think sometimes people do this thing where they either optimize for "interesting famous people" or they get the most talkative lot of people. And I actually read a bunch of books on hosting great dinner parties, I actually have some interesting suggestions there and it'll say like, "Well, you need a mix." For example, in any organization, let's say you're the VP that everyone knows about, but that VP doesn't have the time to maybe participate on a WhatsApp channel or a Slack channel and chit-chat all the time or show up for everything. And then maybe you need the really boisterous young BD exec who's out and about and meeting everybody. You need that person, you need somebody who's quiet and thoughtful. You need to merge different kinds of energy and that's almost an alchemy and that's more art than science. You have to start there. Third I think is as the host, you have to have a sixth sense of how is a community feeling at any given point in time? Are two people dominating the conversation? That person hasn't said anything in a while. One of the things I like to when somebody joins a group or one of these places, I try and get them into a question which they will feel happy about because you know what happens the very first time you walk into a party? You look around, you're like, "I don't know anybody here. Oh gosh, okay. them into a question which they will feel happy about because you know what happens the very first time you walk into a party? You look around, you're like, "I don't know anybody here. Oh gosh, okay. I know this one person and I'm going to go talk to them," and you just feel nervous. I'm trying to break that. For example, if you walk in a place and you didn't know anybody, Lenny is actually very good at being social, but I'd be like, "Hey. Lenny has one of the most popular things on Substack and he just wrote [inaudible 00:36:04]. I'm just giving you an opening, you to feel comfortable and that's another part. The third part I love is rituals and religions do a great job of this, which is do something every month. There's a little group I hosted some of my friends and during all of COVID, we did a Zoom meeting every Tuesday evening. And that was a ritual, it had nothing, it's just Zoom meeting with a bunch of friends, people can share-…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.