#233: Inside Exit Five | In this episode, Matt Carnevale (Head of Community at Exit Five) joins the team at Circle to break down how we’ve doubled Exit Five community membership and boosted engagement—all by treating Exit Five like a product. He shares our playbook: audience growth, engagement systems, how we use member feedback to shape what we build, and why “curate, don’t create” has been key to scaling. If you’re running (or joining) a B2B community, this is how you make it work.
Matt covers:
- Why we think of community like a product, not just a channel
- How Exit Five grew community membership over 100% in under a year
- The systems we use to drive 40% monthly active user engagement
- The power of “tripwires,” onboarding, and member matchmaking
- How feedback loops shape what we build
Timestamps
- (00:00) - – Intro to Matt
- (04:14) - – Exit Five’s approach to community
- (06:44) - – What it means to treat community like a product
- (10:44) - – Why audience is the foundation of community growth
- (13:44) - – How Exit Five builds and converts audience from LinkedIn
- (16:44) - – Using content tripwires to drive signups
- (18:44) - – Offers that work: Why we use a 7-day free trial
- (21:44) - – How Exit Five got started as a paid community
- (24:44) - – The product mindset: build, test, iterate
- (29:08) - – Using member feedback to drive product decisions
- (31:08) - – Real example: member matchmaking feature
- (33:08) - – Promoting new community features like product launches
- (36:08) - – How we drive 40% monthly active usage
- (38:08) - – The value of member-led events and how we do them
- (41:08) - – Other plays: tagging experts, matchmaking, onboarding
- (44:08) - – Why self-promo was hurting our community and what changed when we cut it
- (46:08) - – Final takeaways + advice for small communities
- (50:08) - – Audience Q&A: re-engagement, matchmaking, content cadence
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
Optimizely - A no-code AI platform where autonomous agents execute marketing work across webpages, email, SEO, and campaigns. Get a free, personalized 45-minute AI workshop to help you identify the best AI use cases for your marketing team and map out where agents can save you time at optimizely.com/exitfive.
AirOps - The content engineering platform that helps marketers create and maintain high-quality, on-brand content that wins AI search. Go to airops.com/exitfive to start creating content that reflects your expertise, stays true to your brand, and is engineered for performance across human and AI discovery.
Visit exitfive.com/retreat to apply for Exit Five’s first-ever, in-person Marketing Leadership Retreat, March 18–20, 2026 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Join 100 CMOs and VPs of Marketing from companies like like Zoom, Snowflake, Manychat, Bitly, G2, HP, and more for two days of thinking bigger around a trusted group of peers in marketing.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
- They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
- Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
- Visit hatch.fm to learn more
