Should I build a community around my company brand or around a broader topic bigger than my product?
The short answer
A topic bigger than your product almost always grows faster, because people join movements and causes, not vendors, and a broad community earns trust you can later channel toward what you sell. The risk is a topic community that never connects to your business, so pick a topic where your product is a natural answer, not a stretch. If you are very early with no brand yet, topic-first is usually the safer bet.
Go deeper, your way
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Why we picked it
This is the cleanest short explainer we found on the exact fork in your question: a community tied to your brand and customers versus one built around a practice or topic bigger than you. It does not pick a winner for you, it lays out what each is actually for (retention and support versus reach and acquisition) so you can match the choice to where your company is. Treat it as a starting point for deciding which job you need the community to do first.
A brand or customer community is aimed at people who already use you, and mostly pays off in retention, support, and advocacy.
A community of practice is aimed at your whole niche, including non-customers, and mostly pays off in reach and pulling new people toward you.
The two are not mutually exclusive: a topic-led community can quietly feed your product, but you should be honest about which goal is primary right now.
Why we picked it
David Sacks argues that the strongest companies rally people around a cause and a change in the world, not around the product spec sheet, and that this earned attention outperforms a purely product-centric pitch. It is the sharpest, most-cited case for why a broader topic beats a narrow product group, with a concrete set of principles instead of vibes. Read it as a way to pressure-test whether your topic is big enough to carry a community, not as a mandate to manufacture a mission you do not have.
Why we picked it
Pat Flynn's whole argument is that people become superfans because of a mission and a set of shared moments, not because of any one product, which is exactly the topic-over-brand instinct in your question. His Pyramid of Fandom gives you a concrete ladder from casual audience to true believer, so the abstract idea of building around something bigger becomes a set of steps. It is a starting point on the how, best paired with a strategy piece on the why.
Superfans form around a mission and repeated meaningful moments, so the community can outlast any single product you ship.
The Pyramid of Fandom (casual audience, active audience, connected community, superfans) is a practical map for moving people up the ladder.
A smaller, deeply committed group beats a large indifferent audience, which lowers the bar on scale and suits founders building outside the big startup hubs.
