Community driven Start-ups are the Present and Future - Vikas Goel

Community building is gaining significant importance with start-ups these days. Wikipedia, Whatsapp, pagalguy, CiteHR have created a niche within their communities by carefully and tactfully enabling users to add and get value via content and experiences.

When a community comes together to produce and put together their resources and effort for the community itself through a start-up, then it is called a community-driven start-up. In some cases, a community can be built around the product. In a community-driven start-up, the community members are the consumers. They also create value for other community members, to keep everyone engaged and grow together. Usually, the community members start the marketing and sales of the start-up.

The top 3 reasons why Community-driven Start-ups are succeeding and have a bright future?

1. The biggest reason for the success of any community-driven start-ups are their passionate members. They are always committed and dedicated to help each other. Therefore, the customers are always satisfied as every other member is ready to help them.

2. As humans are social animals, we always like to remain connected with others and want to be around like-minded people. Today, people are looking for communities, not for the companies that pitch their products. They want to be helped. The proof for the same is the popularity and enormous engagements through the platforms like Facebook groups, Slack, subreddits, discord communities, etc.

3. Attention is a rare and expensive thing on the planet. Companies and brands spend millions and billions on marketing and advertising but there is no better form of marketing than a referral. If you can make your customers the advocates for your product or service, then there is no better form of marketing and no one can beat your brand. In Community Driven start-ups, the customers become your brand ambassadors. Therefore, the cost of marketing is low and even more effective.

Communities that became successful Start-ups –

Yourstory - It was started with a blog to share the stories of entrepreneurs. It eventually led to the building of a small robust group of like-minded people. Back then, the community was built by the passionate Co-founder, Shraddha Sharma who brought inspirational start-up stories to people. The story lovers & young entrepreneurs got inspired by it. Today, after 12 years from its inception, Yourstory has become India’s biggest platforms for start-ups and entrepreneurs with over 60k+ stories published on it

2. Fittr - It was started as a Facebook group in the year 2013. Back in the year 2013, the founder of Fittr, Jitendra Choksey who belonged to a technical background, started the community of fitness lovers on Facebook. He used to give them fitness advice, based upon his learning and experience. Today, Fittr has over 8,00,000 members and around 200 certified coaches and fitness trainers. It crossed revenue of USD 13 million last year and has raised a funding of $2 million from Sequoia Capital India's Surge program.

3. Unacademy - Gaurav Munjal, the co-founder of Unacademy started it as a side hobby. He started his journey through a YouTube Channel, in the year 2010 by giving Java lessons while he was in college. He eventually became one of the most-followed people on the Quora in Computer Science. Today, Unacademy is among the leading ed-tech start-ups in the country and is a unicorn start-up.

This list goes on and on with start-ups like Airbnb, Khan Academy, Wittyfeed, etc.

Undoubtedly, the trend of community-driven start-ups is growing. It is a very sound strategy for a start-up to begin as a community and then turn it into a business model. Kunal Shah’s CRED has become a benchmark for such community-driven start-ups.

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He is building a community of the taxpayers and affluent people of the country through CRED. Its valuation has touched $806 million, though it doesn’t have a sound revenue model. The single reason for its high valuation is the power it has because of the community it has been building. The power of community can make any start-up the next unicorn.