Using Community to Supercharge Growth
Tags: B2b Rocks, Startup, B2B, Community, SaaS

-by Ryan Burke, VP International at InVision

Ryan Burke, VP International at InVision, gave this talk about how do you build and ultimately leverage a community, at B2B Rocks Paris — the international conference for B2B & SaaS startups.

More info on https://b2brocks.co/paris/

“I came last year it was a great conference. Incredibly impressed with sort of the vibrancy and the energy around the French startup and tech community. So, today, I’m going to talk about how do you build and ultimately leverage a community.

So, who am I?

First, I work with at the company called InVision design collaboration platform for context. We have got about 900 employees globally, with the largest fully remote company in the world. We have raised $350 million and worked with 100% of the Fortune 100.

But most importantly for this talk, we’ve got about five million people in our community. I’ve been with this company personally for about five years. When I started, there were about 30 people at the company and a few hundred thousand folks in that community. So, I’m going to talk a little bit about the journey that I’ve seen from that transition to 900 employees.

Community, what it is?

For a company like InVision, the community is our superpower. The thing for all of the startups out there today is communities are really important early on. Building that trust and credibility with the folks who are ultimately going to cater to, is going to go so far for you to buy credibility, build trust, and buy you some time as well.

So, a quick look back, you know sort of the work environment historically, and you think it was a little bit more insular people were sort of in their office and nine to fiving in their cubes. Things have changed.

Now you think about the world with open source, people are creating software for free for the good of the community — things like Dribble in the design world or the proliferation of Meetups.

It’s a little bit no longer work-life balance; it’s a little bit more work like if integration for better or worse. So, people are enormously invested in having those connections creating those emotional touchpoints, and that’s the foundation for a community

What does this mean?

‘Creating those emotional touchpoints, creating those interactions, that’s how you build a community.’

Whether you like it or not, your brand is part of these conversations. So, you need to get involved; you need to engage. At these meetups, people are having conversations about the brands that they connect with, and you need to make sure you are inserting and controlling that.

The key thing especially early on is you know that ‘people love brands, not products.’ So, you’ve got to make sure that you’re focused on standing for more than just what your product is and this is important early on when you’re trying to build a community.

‘Sell that dream, sell the vision of what ultimately your product will fulfill.’

That’s what your brand’s story will be because ultimately, the brand is what’s going to help you drive, create, and foster a healthy community. Everybody knows this story but selling that vision of a thousand songs in your pocket versus a four gig mp3 digital music player. That’s selling the vision not selling the dream.

Lululemon when they first started, it wasn’t about yoga clothing it was about yoga, it was about the promise the vision, the dream of yoga. They hosted retreats; they sponsored workshops everywhere. That was how they turn that emotional connection and that vision into brand love.

That is what is important because as a start-up, you’re not going to be able to be everywhere, no big salesforce with a lot the marketing air cover. These conversations would happen, and you need to weaponize that community to make sure they have a positive experience, and so they’re representing that for you in the market like use that community to your advantage

Where do you start?

You start with understanding your customers.

“Like everybody says ‘know your customers’, but the reality is like ‘who’s the hero of your story?’. You got to figure it out.”

At InVision, the designer is our hero. Understanding ‘who the, what the’ hero of the story is what the motivations are about. Taking it back to the Apple example, blackberry was a pretty good product. People love blackberry in terms of enterprise security, IT, and enterprise applications and all of that.

Like the IT buyers loved it but what they did is they catered to the buyer and not the customer. That was the opportunity Apple exploited; they knew the customer and built that emotional connection with the customer. We all know how that played out.

You have to invest in figuring out who that hero of your story is, talking to them, getting to know them personally, knowing their market.’

The big thing is understanding everything about them. You got to know what they want as a person to help you start to build some empathy around it. So, you can get to know them and then when you do; you’ve got to start getting the product in that community’s hands. Figure out at every step of the way if there are opportunities to get your product out there.

Identify those friction points and address each one of them.

With this, you know if people lack trust in your brand early. Use customer testimonials, long term commitment, give them an opt-out; there are always tactical things that you can do. But understand that entire customer journey and where those things are that you can remove from friction.

The big thing for the community as well as to bring them into the product conversation, set up product councils, share the road map if you have one. You have got to show that vision, and that’s where early on you know removing those barriers and the product will help you establish that trust.

Building those anchor relationships

Building those anchor relationships is so key for understanding and building that community for the earlier markets. Figure out the kind of cool kids and the ‘who in the market’ that everybody else looks up to and then build relationships with them to leverage on that network effect.

The key thing especially early on when you’re selling that vision and building that brand is making sure that you’re delivering value not just selling software. There’s a lot of opportunities to do this. This is definitely one of InVision superpowers is you know delivering content and vehicles to connect people with a community.

If you’re going to invest in something like swag and you’re trying to build that brand connection with your community. Try to build that brand an emotional connection with people early on something as simple as swag can be important and so be thoughtful about it.

You can also have an opportunity early on to be a connection point; you can be a conduit for others. You can be that conduit, that connection point to deliver value outside of just that product/market. You need to make sure you’re doing that at every touchpoint.

The brand is the key to building the community and everybody in your company is a representative of that brand at every touchpoint. But having that conversation with folks like that’s what people will value in the early stages when you’re trying to build that connection with your brand.

The key is you need to be authentic. We make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes, and you got to admit to that.’

When you build that emotional connection and trust that buys you credibility, that buys you some time. So, bring them into the fold and have those connections and then take that customer love, because it comes down to building that customer connection and build that into everything that you do.

That’s important, you’ve got to have values around your customer, and then you need to hold people accountable to them, building and everything you do include the hiring. For example, have they demonstrated authenticity, do they show customer empathy, are these the type of traits that you’re looking for, ensure you’re testing for that in the process and hire?

If they believe in the dream, they believe in that opportunity; they want to be owners. Those are the types of things that you need to be checking, and testing for early on the people are there for the right reasons.

You’ve got to build it into even your go-to-market, this is the moral of the story here for us at InVision. We have what’s called the 3P’s (People, Practices, and Platform), and no one of these is more important than the other.

For People, you have an opportunity to be that connection point to bring these people together, like they want that, and so figure out what those vehicles could be for your business.

For Practices, as you start to build the community, the secret sauce is you start learning what are they doing, what’s going on behind the scenes, and you can start to share that with their permission.

“People want to have a voice; they want to have their voice elevated given that platform.”

For Platform, it is beyond just the software. It is about giving back to the community a product they can interact with it to build that emotional connection.

But ultimately, the sweet spot is the intersection of the three for us. There are times when people, maybe are not as fulfilled, on the product side, but they stick with us because of what they are getting. For the connections, for the value adds, or there are times when you know people are you know coming to us with best practices.

It’s that combination of those three things that’s the sweet spot that has been the secret sauce for us at InVision for building a community of five million people.

Quick summary

Understand the hero of your story — like what motivates them, how do they get promoted, how do you evangelize for them, hire and bring them into the fold

Get your brand into the community — build that brand around the community needs, identify the friction points remove and iterate on that, but most importantly, sell that dream

Delivering value every step of the way — being authentic, bring your customers into the process, and most importantly, with that community and customer love.