Book · Book (~256 pages)

The Business of Belonging

David Spinks · Wiley Paid Intermediate

The canonical book on making community a competitive advantage, from someone who trained community teams at Facebook, Airbnb, Salesforce and Google.

  • Community drives measurable value across product, marketing, support and retention.
  • Design rituals and spaces where members create value for each other.
  • Measure participation and returning members, not raw headcount.
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It answers 3 questions

  1. How do I start a community from zero?
  2. How do I solve the cold-start / chicken-and-egg problem for a network or community?
  3. What metrics actually tell me if my community is healthy, beyond member count?

Read with it

  1. The definitive playbook for network and community-led products, drawn from Andrew Chen's a16z experience and interviews with... Harper Business Book · Book (~368 pages) The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects Andrew Chen
  2. From the founder of CMX and author of The Business of Belonging, a practical framework for deciding whether to build community... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~25 min read A Founder's Guide to Community David Spinks
  3. This is the clearest breakdown we found of which numbers actually signal a healthy community versus which ones just look good... Circle Blog Article The Complete Guide to Community Analytics Pedro Hernandes (Circle)
  4. Of the tools we checked this is the one still built squarely for community health, since Common Room has since pivoted toward... Circle Tool Circle Community Analytics Circle
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