New startups are helping companies build and leverage communities around their products, allowing them to sideload many different tools and manage everything in one platform.
In the year Founded in the Czech Republic in 2021, Talkbase launched in private a few weeks ago, backed by $2 million in pre-seed funding from Czech and US funds including J&T Ventures, Credo Ventures, Mxv Capital and Plug. & Play Tech Center The Prague-based company will represent one of the 200 startup exhibitors at Battlegrounds at TC Disruption this week, and TechCrunch Talkbase caught up with the founders to find out what it’s all about and the problem it’s trying to solve.
Society meets production.
About the different strategies companies follow for growth, from traditional approaches such as marketing-led and sales-led, to one of the biggest buzzwords of the moment – product-led growth (PLG), where the product is written. He does the selling and boarding himself.
However, community-driven development is an increasingly popular approach to driving innovation and organically replicating business – where users of the product act as advocates and a support network for other customers. Community-led development is closely related to product-led development, as long as the user first becomes aware of a product’s existence and then finds it worthwhile to check it out and remain an active user. A “community” that performs this function can be social media influencers and review sites, dedicated forums such as Stack Overflow, Reddit, Slack or Facebook Groups.
If companies can actively use these types of channels and get millions of people beating the drum about their product, they can focus on building instead of sitting back and selling (more or less). As TechCrunch wrote last year, in many ways the Chief Community Officer is the new Chief Marketing Officer.
“I think in some ways [community-led growth and product-led growth] They go hand-in-hand, because to be product-driven and build an amazing product, you need to work closely with your users,” said co-founder and CEO Clara Loser. “And if you want to work well with them, you build a community around your product.”
Talkbase co-founders Klara Losert and Roman Nguyen. Image Credits: TechCrunch
From commercial open source companies like MongoDB (no longer open source) to popular developer-focused companies like Figma, there are examples of startups that have grown to billions of dollars on the back of community-led growth. (currently in the process of being acquired by Adobe for $20 billion) and the $40 billion unicorn Canva, one of Talkbase’s earliest customers.
“Community-driven development is one of the most popular development channels in technology, but there is no platform to support it,” Losert said. “Community managers are responsible for development, hiring, or retention programs—yet they spend most of their time using Google Sheets, Airtable, forms, and other platforms to launch a single program.”
“Program” means a one-time event, series of content (eg, video screenings), or ambassador program that trains a supporting brand on how to best spread the word. Community managers can use any of the platforms like Slack, Discord or HubSpot to manage their community, and this is basically where Talkbase enters the fray – it connects different community management tools, bringing everything under one roof.
For example, Talkbase includes task-management and collaboration tools like Trello or Asana, which allow managers to assign tasks and teams to work together on schedules to meet deadlines.
Talkbase: Action Management. Image Credits: Talkbase
Elsewhere, Talkbase includes features for creating, managing, and scheduling events, such as supporting audience registrations and managing moderators or speakers.
On top of that, Talkbase has purpose-built advocacy management tools for setting and tracking goals and gathering feedback for new projects. This can also be used to identify community members (e.g. on Twitter or LinkedIn) who are vocal supporters of a particular product, making it easier for companies to reach out and communicate directly.
Talkbase Ambassador Program. Image Credits: Talkbase
It’s worth noting that there are many other platforms that have raised significant VC funding to foster community-driven growth at companies of all sizes. Canva recently raised a $50 million Series B, while the common stock raised $52 million. Threado, meanwhile, raised a slightly more modest $3.1 million seed round.
It’s hard to ignore the parallels between Talkbase and these other companies in how they bring together the various threads of the so-called “community.” But Talkbase says it’s going above and beyond by bringing together all the different elements that make up a community manager toolkit. While it currently focuses mostly on managing events and company ambassadors, it is adding more features enabled in part by its recent funding.
Talkbase is struggling to replace surveys like Typeform. CRMs or spreadsheet tools such as Google Sheets or Airtable; Event publishing tools like Eventbrite; And outbound communication tools like Mailchimp – Lossert said they are currently developing their own newsletter tools.
In terms of pricing, the company unveiled its various plans this week, starting with “free” for $68 a month for a basic plan and $680 for everything else. per month.
