Building Great Companies through Community-Led Growth (with Lloyed Lobo, Author "From Grassroots to Greatness")

Feb 4, 2024

Lloyed Lobo, author of "From Grassroots to Greatness" and co-founder of Boast, shares his insights on community-driven growth. He emphasizes that community should be ingrained in a company’s DNA, not just a marketing tactic. With personal anecdotes from his childhood in Mumbai, Lloyed explores how showing up for your community fosters loyalty. He discusses the delicate balance of providing value without immediate expectations while also encouraging necessary sales conversations. His ideas challenge traditional business strategies with powerful, innovative approaches to growth.

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ANECDOTE

Bootstrapping Boast from Manual to Tech

Boast automated government R&D funding applications to help innovators get funding faster and with less risk.
They bootstrapped to $10 million ARR with under 30 people and no marketing team initially.

ADVICE

Define Success, Follow Customer Signals

Customers paying, staying, and growing your base are clear signals to keep going and consider funding.
Founders should define their own success, not follow VC definitions blindly.

ADVICE

Niche Down and Build Community

Find a niche market where you have passion, the market is small but growing, customers can pay, and you have easy access.
Build a community by consistently showing up and providing tactical value to your targeted audience.

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Lloyed Lobo got his first understanding of the power of community when visiting his grandparents in the Mumbai slums, and watching people come together in his childhood during the Gulf War. He has since turned this into an entrepreneurial superpower and used community-building to catapult his bootstrapped startup into the big time. He's since written a book about all of this stuff called "From Grassroots to Greatness: 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community-Led Growth". We spoke about the book and many of the topics within.

Episode highlights:

1. Community is a company strategy, not a marketing strategy

It's not enough to just sit there and layer "community" on top of your existing marketing and expect it to pay back instantly. It has to be part of your company's DNA, something that your customers and your employees can be inspired and motivated by. Attribution is hard, but the results will come.

2. You need to show up for your community or they won't show up for you

You cannot take your community for granted. You need to provide them with constant, consistent value with no immediate expectation of reward. They will keep coming for the value, and you are engineering serendipity for future conversations.

3. Don't be afraid to have the sales conversations

That said, if you don't ask, you don't get. You cannot be afraid of trying to offer paid value to your community, even if it feels uncomfortable to ask. If you are providing value then people will be happy to talk to you. Not everyone will become a customer, but some will. Use the reciprocity bias to your advantage.

4. There is power in finding your niche and sticking to it

Don't try to go too wide chasing vanity metrics. You will get more value out of a smaller community of people who share your exact passions than out of a generic sea of people who couldn't care less. Make sure you identify your people, show up for them, and own your white space.

5. Community can be as much of a moat as technology or industry expertise

There are more communities and products to solve problems for communities than ever before but, if you have the right community, you can use it to your advantage. Having an engaged, passionate community can help prevent your company from becoming a commodity.

Check out "From Grassroots to Greatness"

"In a world where traditional marketing is losing its edge and products are struggling to stand out, a thriving community is your biggest asset. Recognizing that true success lies not in products or technologies, but in the power of people, author Lloyed Lobo explores the intricate art of harnessing the community's strength as your ultimate acquisition channel, brand differentiator, feedback source, retention lever, and catalyst for transformative change."

Check it out on Amazon.

Contact Lloyed

You can catch up with Lloyed on LinkedIn or Instagram.