Community Building Strategies for Pre-Launch Startups

Recently, many startups and founders have been focusing on “community” around their products — it’s a way to build camaraderie and support from some of your most loyal customers, and when it’s done well, it helps your customers grow alongside you.

Community can mean many different things – it can be a Meetup, a Facebook group, a subreddit, a Slack channel, an email list or even social media followers. Whatever the medium, the point is to help you connect your brand to your customers, and potentially have your customers connect with each other.

So how can community help you as a pre-launch startup? We’re excited to discuss this with Steph Hon, Founder of Cadence, a DTC startup that creates magnetic capsules that can easily be filled up with your must-have, on-the-go products.

With a pre-launch community building strategy, Cadence sold out of their capsules in 10 days after launching in February. Besides a successful pre-launch strategy, community continues to be a meaningful channel for Cadence, fueling their organic growth on social media.

We’ll discuss how Steph approaches community, what she did to build it before launching Cadence, best practices for community building, and more!