How to get from 0 to 100k users
How to get from 0 to 100k users
The tactics behind Bento's community-led growth
At Bento, building a strong community has been one of our core product development and go-to-market strategies from day 1.
We’ve built a super-engaged, vibrant, and vocal community of users & evangelists around our product and vision.
We made using Bento an experience you wanted to be a part of, like a status symbol you’d like to show off vs. just being a utility product. We made the community part of our journey.
We built up an emotional relationship with our users, we made them feel seen & heard, we showed them we deeply care and most importantly: we made them dream.
The Impact & Outcomes:
User Acquisition:
We established a community-led growth engine
We grew our overall Bento community from 0 to 100k and our Twitter channel from 0 to 10k followers within 6 months
We became #1 Product of the Day once we launched on Product Hunt
One year later, we won a Golden Kitty Award in the category “no code”
PR & Employer Branding:
Big tech magazines like TechCrunch reached out to us to cover our story
Potential investors and potential partners reached out to work with us
There was a huge influx of really interesting talent looking to join us, perceiving us as a cool company to work for
We got the attention of several companies that wanted to acquire us
3. Product Feedback & Insights:
We developed a group of 3k power users in our discord channel who frequently gave product feedback and supported us when launching new features.
Our community served as a valuable resource for market research. By observing discussions, trends, and user interactions, we gained insights into market demands, emerging needs, and competitive intelligence.
4. Product evangelism and advocacy:
Influencers with big followings (300-500k+) voluntarily supported us and promoted us on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter
We turned our users into passionate evangelists who spread the love about our product. Their enthusiasm helped drive adoption and attracted new users.
They recommended our product to others, provided testimonials, and defended our company in online discussions.
5. Co-Creation and Innovation:
We involved our community members in the product development journey, this is how we could tap into their expertise, insights, and creativity. This is how we were able to truly address the needs of our target audience.
At some point, our users created custom widgets and apps for Bento, that they made accessible for free to other Bento users which was the starting point of a Bento Widget Marketplace.
Observing the challenges of our users and what they struggle with, inspired and helped us to create new content / formats for social.
6. Customer Support:
Our 3k+ power users actively helped with troubleshooting bugs, sharing best practices, and providing peer-to-peer support, reducing the burden on us having to answer every single question and therefore fostering a helpful ecosystem.
Why?
When we started with Bento we identified one key go-to-market challenge:
⚡️ The link-in-bio space was super crowded. Meaning, lots of existing tools that all look the same AND do the same.
❓The question we had to answer: How do we cut through the noise?
One of the few things that can differentiate you from others is building a strong, opinionated brand + product. We wanted to shape a movement. We wanted to attract users who have similar opinions and beliefs — we wanted to build an emotional connection with them.
We also didn’t have money to spend on marketing and knowing we didn’t like ads anyway, and ad dollars spent get increasingly expensive and unsustainable for brands overall — we decided forming a community could get us off the ground and become a strategic MOAT for us over time.
When people feel they're an integral part of something that adds value to their lives, they champion it.
Looking up to role models like Notion and Figma, we’ve also seen great examples of companies that build communities at scale, which led to a competitive advantage and a strong MOAT over time. The brand is not just known, but it is trusted, it creates a whole experience along the customer journey which keeps users loyal and excited for more.
Products with a vibrant following — evangelists spreading the word — have a key advantage since users seem to have built a connection that goes beyond the feature set of the product. This is why it matters beyond the obvious advantages of “word of mouth”.
A connection that goes beyond the feature set means that users will be patient and stick around even if your competition has additional features. They believe in the cultural values surrounding your product and brand.
Consequently, products with community at their core are more resilient businesses; they can thrive in a downturn by remaining close to their customers and evolving what they deliver as needs evolve.
How?
Phase 1: Define & Set Goals
The good thing is, that most of this is all work you anyways have to do to build a great product. Ideally, this is all complementary.
Set clear goals and define the baselines:
who’s our target audience? what are their challenges & needs? where do they hang out? what do they care about? what do they talk about?
Target a niche audience to begin with — for us that was “makers”, specifically engineers and designers as they’ve been heavily underserved by existing link-in-bio tools.
what’s our tone of voice?
Looking at our competitors but also at what feels authentic to us as a team, we decided on a tone that's approachable, fun, and supportive, yet opinionated and empowering.
where do we want to build the community?
Choose one key go-to-market channel to start with where your chosen audience hangs out already. Since we decided for designers and engineers, it was pretty clear we had to start with Twitter as our main channel (there’s a strong existing community), with Discord for our Power Users.
what’s our story / the story we want to tell?
Emphasize a bold vision & story as well as what makes you different from everyone else — for us that meant focusing on simplicity, fun, and visual appeal but also our vision of where we want to be someday.
what are the rules & guidelines for being part of our community?
this doesn’t need to be fully fleshed out from the start but you should somewhat know what type of behavior you want to support or prevent
Phase 2: Personal Outreach & Interviews
Start engaging with a small group facing the problem
Test your value proposition and messaging through personal DMs, calls, and interviews BEFORE building the product — e.g. we reached out to designers & engineers personally via Twitter who used other link-in-bio services already.
Phase 3: Generate Buzz & Iterate
Once you feel ready, launch with a super clear value proposition
Create scarcity by e.g. launching a waitlist
Invite new users weekly to keep up the momentum (focus heavily on the ones that match your target audience criteria)
Work together with early adopters to drive excitement
Monitor adoption and iterate based on feedback.
Phase 4: Nurture & Sustain
Develop a consistent content & community plan, some ideas:
Keep the community engaged with fun activities like challenges, games, and sending swag to power users
Share community best practices and support
Share behind the scenes and offer community hours
Show you listen and ship fast through frequent & relevant (!) product launches
Inform community members early & involve them in the launch process for big updates
Show you care through personal replies, DMs, and emails.
Phase 5: Official Launch
Officially launch on platforms like Product Hunt
Reach out to the press to expand your audience slowly but surely
Celebrate your launch with a little party, inviting community members
Phase 6: Expand with Community Programs
Co-create content and gather ongoing feedback.
Help your community to support each other, e.g. we created a community resources area on our website and a widget marketplace where community members were able to design custom widgets to make them accessible to other community members
Celebrate your community, e.g. we introduced programs like Bento Explore and “Makers of the Week” to celebrate great community examples and motivate them to engage even more.
Phase 7: Scale with Evangelists & Ambassadors
Things we wanted to work on as a next step as part of scaling our community & growth efforts further. These are best practices from companies like Notion and Figma.
Establish official advocate, moderator, influencer, and affiliate programs to create incentives for community members to participate even more but also to scale your community efforts.
Create business-focused programs and host events to foster community growth across your core markets.
Important to note: These are tactics that worked for us but might not necessarily work for your business / product / audience. E.g. Community-led growth works especially well in a B2C or B2C2B space. Building community in B2B works as well, but the tactics & results will most likely look very different. Also, the success of our community work, was heavily influenced by strong product-market-fit. It’s a lot harder to build community around a product that no one likes 😇 What I can promise you though: Building community early will heavily increase your chances of finding product market fit.
Always happy to help if you have questions or need advice getting started!
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About the Author:
Valerie is a founder and passionate community builder. More here.
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Her newsletter is sent every 2-6 weeks directly to your email inbox. In this newsletter, she captures thoughts, good reads & learnings. Think 0-1, early growth & GTM strategies, community building, brand & product positioning as well as her founder journey.