Supercharging enthusiasm for a super product 🍲Robert Wang, CEO of Instant Pot

“I don’t think there’s much secret. Get the product right, treat the customer well, and get them talking. And that’s it.” - Instant Pot founder Robert Wang

Instant Pot, the multipurpose pressure cooker, is so remarkable that it has spurred an outpouring of enthusiasm from a community of fans around the world. Some Potheads name their Pots, while others knit sweaters for the appliances.

That zeal wasn’t a surprise to founder Robert Wang, due to a core insight he had early on. “Cooking is not a solitary practice. It’s very much a social practice,” he tells us. “You cook for your family, you cook for your friends, you’ll throw a party if you make a dish.”

Today, more than 1.8 million “Potheads” of all ages, languages, and backgrounds have joined their Facebook group to share recipes and Instant Pot fandom. Robert and his team opened the group in 2015, imagining it as a space where customers separated by geography could help each other with Instant Pot questions—both connecting superfans and lightening the burden on the company’s customer support team.

We talk to Robert in this episode about how this community sparked and grew, and how they've approached their Facebook group as it's grown.

🔥 Check out our book Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People 📙

Get Together is a podcast about the nuts and bolts of community building. Hosts Bailey Richardson and Kevin Huynh of People & Company ask organizers who have built exceptional communities about just how they did it. How did they get the first people to show up? How did they grow to thousands more members?