Customer Communities

5Law 1: You Can Start Anytime: It Doesn't Have to Be Expensive and Everyone in Your Organization Can Help

By Scott Salkin, Harshi Banka, and Kenneth Refsgaard

Running a business is challenging at any stage. Whether working out of your home office as you try to land and deliver for your first few customers or grappling with the challenges of scaling a global organization rallying for public market dominance, every journey has unique tests and circumstances. But nothing can compare to the diverse range of trials, tribulations, and razor-thin margins of error that come alongside those first few years of starting, funding, and scaling a new business.

Enter the power of community. For many early-stage companies, it's the benefits of being part of a community that help them persevere through their day-to-day challenges and decision-making. But the best startups don't only leverage communities—they make community part of their DNA from day one. That can be through local meetups, low-cost digital channels such as Medium or Slack, or even by investing in tools and resources that can help them build the foundation for more robust and meaningful interactions.

Elissa Fink, former chief marketing officer of Tableau, remembers the early days of Tableau when they had around $5 million in revenue. At that time, Tableau competed with larger traditional business intelligence (BI) platforms. She realized at the time, “If we have a happy community and they're learning and want to share, they're ...