Hi there,
I’m working as a community builder with a startup, guys with a drive who want everyone to know there idea. Therefore, the want to launch fast. Probably too little time to develop a core group of users with high trustlevels. What arguments can I use to go slow but steady? Any examples of communities that started too fast? Other ideas or experiences?
I think my blog post yesterday might be pretty useful. That’s real data there.
https://www.feverbee.com/datacommunities/
It’s generally hard though to find examples because organizations tend to take down failing communities.
Can you tell us more about what kind of community are you starting? What is the goal of it?
Hey thanks, I will dig into this data 
The goal of the community is for home seekers to collaborate to find suitable space to live (the Dutch housing market is one of its own with particular characteristics).
Hi Marise,
Your dilemma sounds remarkably similar to @caleb.love1’s one here!
Would it be possible for your team to launch the product without hard launching the community, or do they go hand in hand?
Good question and interesting read. Thanks. The product is based on the community, and starting of without it could lower trust levels with users. Also, ideally the users of the beta-community would be the testers of the product. It would be ideal if the stakeholders would develop some sort of non-profit manifesto (although they would financially benefit from the community as well) to strenghten the credibility of the community-to-be. Anyone any experience with this? Or maybe this “threat” doesn’t exist in reality. Again, it feels better to start with the community and test the concept to know for sure instead of the other way around. Any experience with such dilemmas here?
I’m not sure I completely sure I understand the situation but from a more general sense, if you don’t have strong relationships of trust right now, maybe there are ways of becoming, the “friend of a friend”. Gain trust vicariously through the concept of “brandscaping” (side note: it’s a seriously awesome book).
For example, in our Facebook groups we are exploring the possibility of holding ongoing joint chat events and interviews with leaders from different societies about a certain topic involved in research that both their society and our community is interested in with a plug at the end about more information regarding the society. Our hope is to gather additional expertise and content from the conversations, and reactivate people interested in the topic. Their’s is to possibly attract new society members. We both gain trust and expand our reach from the relationships. The key is to look at the space, identify the complimentary brands or nonprofits whatever, and see how, with your powers combined, you can add the most value to each other and most importantly to the customer.
Local Baseball Company + Local Baseball Bat Company organize regional baseball training camps for youth.
Great tip! The stakeholders indeed have brands with overlapping interests and audience. We could explore cooperation in a similar fashion. This would immediately increase trust levels at both sides I’m really enthousiastic about this idea! I put the book on my shopping list.