LikeMinds

I learnt a crucial lesson and gained a critical insight while building my previous venture that I sold to a Seattle based unicorn in an all cash deal. The lesson and the insight led me to building a SaaS startup instead of staying in the field of consumer products!! The lesson was around how nuanced, complex and time consuming it is to build a good product. In fact, it took us 2 years to build the stable version of Curofy. Let me talk about this complexity with an example: Tagging. It can look simple initially if you look at it just from the perspective of being a user who tags people on LinkedIn, X or Instagram. But when you look deeper at the logical flow it is very complex. Imagine you are tagging a specific person on an app, they need to be notified. This means, interaction with the server to figure out answers to various questions such as: ❓Who all should show up in search results when you start typing a name? For eg: if someone starts typing my name do they see the result only with people with exact name matching or of all the people who have "NI" in their names? ❓How to differentiate between a normal user's name and a tagged user's name while typing considering cases like email IDs also have @ in them? ❓How should the search results be stacked? ❓What should be the notification behavior if multiple people are tagging at the same time? ❓How to manage the cost of these notifications at scale? ❓Should there be a rate limit to avoid spamming by a single person? ❓How to enable the choice for a user to get tagged or not and if yes, by whom? ❓Can user select the number/frequency of the tag notifications? ❓What other elements of privacy should be taken care of? There can be a lot more questions in this list but you get the idea. Now imagine having a similar list for other features - comments, replies, reactions, chat messages, media sharing and so on... each of them becomes a huge project that demands high investment of time, money and human resources. This now leads us to the insight: A product without engagement and retention features is like trying to fill a leaky bucket. You'll need to keep adding water until you fix the leak but the challenge is in building these features. It's impossible to prioritise everything and yet impossible to unlock steady growth without it. This is also the reason me and Natesh Relhan started LikeMinds where we offer pre-built social features along with Chat and Feed APIs. From creating resource libraries to cohort groups to crowdsourcing support to reviews to UGC - almost every social experience for driving engagement and retention can be built using our infra. All this with full customisability. What took us 2 years at Curofy, can now be built within minutes using LikeMinds. Have you also noticed complexity in building consumer/social products? I'd love to hear some stories in comments or DM.

Unpopular opinion: Engagement is overrated! And I say this as a founder who is building SaaS for user engagement. Hear me out. First off, I don't agree with the definition itself. Most people think of engagement in terms of likes, comments and shares and while it is easier to separate passive consumers of content as "lurkers", they form the majority of members/audience/users. Imagine you have a brand community - on your app, website or Slack/Discord wherever... There are so many reasons people won't actively engage as per typical definition. 👉  If there is a long discussion thread on a topic, late comers will just read if it's a helpful discussion but most likely won't participate much. 👉  People won't engage on a regular basis if your product does not require a daily action, or they aren't threatened to engage daily (looking at you Duolingo), 👉 If your in-app social feature/community is designed as an extra touchpoint for CX, people won't actively engage unless they need trouble shooting. How do you map the success of social features/community then? Look at the outcome metric instead: 👉  Has the average app open duration increased after you added the social features? What's the revenue change that happened after? 👉 Did the average FRT (First Response Time) decrease? Did number of CX tickets reduce by adding a social layer? 👉 How did the brand perception change in the months after adding community? Are you getting more shout outs? This is also one of the reasons I am a strong proponent of building social features inside your existing app or website. It is easier to capture and analyze different kind of "engagement" data points including complete user journeys w.r.t. the outcome metric. This gives you a lot more information, something that's missed out when you host community outside of your product. What's your take on outcome metric approach instead of engagement metrics? Let me know in comments/DM.

Super Apps are here to stay! In fact, a lot of businesses that started with providing a niche solution are now becoming a one stop solution and rightly so. Until few years back, the west used to have a preference for different and refined solutions for different needs (eg. Instagram for photo sharing) vs east had a very super app heavy approach (think Weixin/WeChat, Paytm, Gojek etc.) Over time though, with CACs going through the roof, the west is also shifting gears and taking a leaf from the eastern playbook. Now, the common wisdom is that the more you can offer to a user, the more you can retain them and the more business (LTV) you can get from them. Look at Slack for example: It started as internal communication tool and offered integrations in the beginning that led to users launching everything from the app and over time rolled out features to provide some of those integrations in the Slack app instead. Huddle in Slack started as audio call but now has video, screen sharing as well as huddle thread feature. Infact, Slack went one step ahead and allowed for auto saving any chats shared during the huddle is kept in the chat/channel as thread. Something that incumbents like G-Meet is missing and isn't as easy to access in case of Zoom. Latest addition in Slack is "Lists" feature that now competes with the likes of Trello, Asana and Clickup and I am curious to see how much they evolve in this subsegment. Figma now offers audio chat option; Instagram has stories, feed and part of threads; Tata Group has launched their super app Tata Neu and allows the Neu coins to be used across their super app as well as the stand alone apps within their umbrella (I have friends who have used them on 1mg). These are many such examples. The takeaway here is simple. Whether you are going the universal super-app route like Gojek or Paytm or want to be one stop productivity solution like Slack, having features that retain users and make the app their go-to in the respective category is the way to improve LTV. Did you also notice the List feature in Slack? Adding a screenshot here in case you missed it.

Our small team identified 144 bugs and solved 83 of them. All under 7 hours!! Here is how 👇 Just to add a bit more drama we also: ➡ identified 38 product improvements, ➡ managed to get non-tech stakeholders involved ➡ do not have a dedicated QA or HR All with the power of #gamification. This is our 3rd year of organizing the #LMOlympics - a week of all kinds of activities one of them being bug bash 🐛 . I will talk about why and how non traditional approach of community engagement works better (both internal and external) in my next post but here is a sneak peak into why #BugBash is loved by our team here at LikeMinds: 👉 There is a leaderboard and prize for both reporters and solvers thus making it a level playing field 👉 Builds product empathy for non-tech stakeholders feel + gives them a chance to poke at tech team (are you even building a startup if your teams aren't frenemies?) 👉 Gives the product team an even better understanding of how people of different job roles and background engage with the product 👉 Everything that isn't resolved on the day, gets added in upcoming sprints - ensuring that no effort is wasted or worse - duplicated. 👉 Breaks the monotony of regular work day because this one day is all about finding bugs and quashing them  👉 There is pizza 🍕 While gamification is a broad term, tailoring it to your people is hugely rewarding. We do this once every 6 months and the intensity and enthusiasm is always sky high. Highly highly recommend going beyond traditional engagement activities and doing what your team loves.

Community is not just about retention. Here is how a brand community can support more than 1 goal 👇 Picture this: instead of spending infinitely on ads, you bring users to your community where prospects and customers co-exist. An open community focused on the area of interest more than brand proposition. Users discuss the trends, experience and observations within the domain and also ask for honest feedback from existing users. Once a member starts associating the knowledge sharing with the brand, they are automatically drawn to buying the product since there is loyalty and trust now. If you intentionally include steps in your community strategy to encourage: 👉  User interaction 👉 Information sharing by the brand and users 👉 Resource libraries led by UGC 👉 Exclusive community perks such as referral incentives to both sides You are setting up your community for success. I remember DeMario Bell talked about in one of our events at LikeMinds, how the Culture Amp community is focused on knowledge sharing, P2P interaction and brand visibility and with this focus, the community has driven over $1.1 mil in revenue last year. In the AI wave, need for authentic human connection is also increasing. Would you rather just go with what's trending in the moment or have a user first approach for a long term growth?

Seeing uptick in sales but no boost in profits? Focusing primarily on acquisition is trying to fill a leaky bucket. You need to focus on retention if you want to plug the leak because guess what - a 5% increase in customer #retention can lead to more than 25% increase in #profits. (source: Fred Reichheld's study with Bain & Company on this) This is a common challenge faced by businesses so let me give you the community ways of fixing the leak: 👉 CBCs: Cohort Based Communities are one of the best ways to boost retention specially for habit building or products with a longer value cycle. 👉 Q&A feeds: Great for businesses providing productivity solutions or industries such as edtech, healthtech, fintech, travel, SaaS etc. where peer to peer interaction is sought. 👉 Resource feeds: Have your team or expert users share resources with and engage your larger user base; big enabler for businesses where knowledge is a key component in improving the user experience 👉 Community chats: Create various channels for engaging your users on different topics of shared interests; this is a great way to build relationships with your users. There are other community led features that can supercharge retention such as social feeds, online consultations, peer networking, online events and more. You just need to pick the right solution for your product. Have you seen any of these community-led retention strategies in action? Let me know in the comments.

Discounts are like casual dating, while communities are like serious relationships. Deep discounting is effective only as long as you have the funds and no competitor offers a better deal. It's a short-term strategy, much like flings. Communities and other loyalty-building initiatives are about going to the far end with your customers. The goal is to make customers valued, fulfilled and happy, much like committed, serious relationships. Eventually, people experience dating fatigue and businesses can't burn money endlessly. And if that's the case, why not focus on things that work from the start?

Community can lead to a 33% higher adoption rate! Yes, that's right and Salesforce has achieved it proving that community is a funnel on its own and not just a step of a larger function. Not just higher adoption, community has also contributed to almost every function at Salesforce: 💰 2x more deals generated by community members 💰 2x larger deal size 💰 3x lower attrition 💰 83% of customer queries answered by community 💰 425k visits every month from Google to answer pages 💰 $2 million monthly support savings 💰 3000+ product features added on roadmap from 65k ideas provided by community Here is how they did it! Key Initiatives: 👉  Dreamforce Conference: This annual event isn't just a conference; it's a mega-community gathering featuring workshops, keynotes, and networking events designed to inspire and educate. Dreamforce effectively transforms attendees into active users and evangelists for Salesforce products.  👉 Trailhead: Salesforce's online learning platform, Trailhead, gamifies the learning experience, making education both fun and community-driven. As users advance, they form connections with fellow learners, which enhances user stickiness and brand loyalty. 👉  Local User Groups: With over 200 global chapters, Salesforce user groups provide a localized touch point for users to meet, share, and solve challenges together. This grassroots level engagement is crucial for converting casual users into committed community members. 👉  Online Forums and Social Media Engagement: Through active participation in online forums and robust interactions on social media, Salesforce ensures that both prospects and existing users feel heard, valued, and engaged. This ongoing dialogue helps convert curious onlookers into new users. 👉  Acquire small and upsell: A key part of the strategy is to engage self-serve customers (who would start small) into community and then increase the revenue generated from them by cross-selling, upselling, or adding additional seats. Salesforce's strategy illustrates that integrating community-building can yield substantial benefits in both growing and maintaining a user base. By investing in community, Salesforce has created a self-sustaining ecosystem where users continuously engage, learn, and grow. Today, Salesforce is a SaaS giant with annual revenue of USD 35bn. Shoutout to Gareth Wilson for the deep dive article that mentions many of these numbers. Link to the piece in comments. Do you know any other brand that has been growing on the back of community? Give them a shoutout in comments. Will try to do a detailed post on them in future. #SalesforceSuccess #CommunityEngagement #CRM #UserAcquisition #RoIofCommunity PS: "Astro Nomical" is their mascot 😎