Community isn't: Always a big forum or Slack; it takes different forms based on your position
30
in-person Notion events monthly
20
initial ambassadors (2019)
400+
Notion team size now
Community = DiscoveryFor Notion, community led to brand discovery so strong that larger companies felt de-risked adopting it.
How to Build It
Designing an Ambassador Program
Start with who's already vocal: Identify your 20 most enthusiastic users across social media, not who you wish they would be
Make them feel special: Early feature access, direct connection to founders/product team, exclusive experiences
Amplify their work: Put their content on your channels instead of your own
Subsidize participation: Event sponsorships, resources, and explicit support for their efforts
The KPI that matters
Net new visitors to your website month-over-month. Track the humans discovering you, not just awareness metrics.
Why feature preview wins
Early access to new features motivated ambassadors more than expected. They felt heard by the product team and had influence over the roadmap.
Contrarian
When Community Doesn't Work
Sales-led, high-touch enterprise products with long contracts may not need it yet
Products still finding PMF may be better served with smaller CABs than massive communities
If your model requires consultants/integration partners, community takes different form (Salesforce model)
Community isn't always Slack: it scales from advisory boards to events to influencer networks
Key insightRun a 2x2 analysis on your current state (PMF vs exploring) and buyer type (enterprise vs consumer) to find YOUR community model.
Contrarian Takes
Content & Community Myths
✗Community only works for consumer productsINSTEAD →✓ Community works everywhere. It just takes different forms: CABs for early-stage enterprise, champions communities for mid-market, ambassadors for consumer-led growth.
✗Content should be about your productINSTEAD →✓ Content should solve the customer's core problem adjacent to what your product does. First Round Review taught founders, not just praised Stripe.
✗You need a big Slack community to succeedINSTEAD →✓ Wrong form factor thinking. Start with 20 vocal ambassadors, scale to events, maybe add a consultants network. Not everyone needs a forum.
✗Build community before product-market fitINSTEAD →✓ At pre-PMF, start smaller with customer advisory boards. Let community size follow your product success, not vice versa.