Is Community a B2B Strategy?

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There's a lot of value to becoming the center point, this place that enables people to connect around whatever it is you're trying to build. I do think there's a ton of value to capture for B2B companies when they're thinking about this early on. My recommendation when talking to early stage companies generally is look at this as a long-term investment. Think of ways that you can tie this into your early business goals from day one but don't make the decision based entirely on that.

Our guest today is Ben Lang, Head of Community at Notion.

Since joining the company in 2019, Ben has had his hand in several high-impact projects at Notion that has grown its tight-knit community of passionate Notion evangelists into millions of users today.

But before he was doing this as a full-time job, Ben was already spreading his love for Notion in his free time as a voracious product user. After discovering the tool on Product Hunt, he became obsessed. He got on the company’s radar after launching his own Notion template gallery on Product Hunt and joined as one of the first 15 employees.

In our conversation today, we focus on the nuts and bolts of building a global community that drives user growth. Ben shares tactical advice on:

Tackling community organically from the bottom-up, and why you shouldn’t go top-down
What companies are best suited to a centralized vs. decentralized community approach
Partnering with YouTubers and other creators
His advice to founders on finding your own first community hire

You can follow Ben on Twitter at @benln. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.