The "Peter Pan Effect"

How to Build Community By Returning to your Roots

“A painting of Peter Pan at a computer” — DALL-E

Every company starts as a community.

As they grow up, they just forget.

I call this the “Peter Pan Effect”.

Think about it…

Since a startup’s product is still early, or doesn’t yet exist, they can only get their first customers, investors, and early adopters by leaning heavily on relationships.

They raise money from friends and family (their existing community).

They spend countless hours sitting with potential customers to learn what they need in the product.

The initial team is small, close-knit, and employees feel deeply connected. 

All of these are elements in building community: connectedness, proximity, being part of something new, exciting, and impactful…

That’s how they get to product-market-fit. 

But that’s where most startups lose their way…

Leaving Neverland

In order to ramp up the pace of growth, they switch gears to a strategy that doesn’t center people. Ads, content marketing, product-led growth…they sacrifice connection for scale.

It works for a while. But slowly and surely, they start to feel disconnected from their customers. 

Their product starts to feel clunky because they keep adding features based on complaints instead of conversations.

Their content starts feeling stale because they’re writing for SEO instead of humans. 

The company starts feeling more and more like a “grown-up”.

Buttoned-up, operational, professional, cold, rigid, calculating…distant.

It becomes more of a machine, and less of a community. 

A lot of companies who come to me for consulting are at this stage. They once had a strong feeling of community, but now it’s gone. They want to know how to rekindle the flame. 

Here’s the thing:

Companies already know how to build community because they’ve all done it before. Like Peter Pan, they left Neverland and have just forgotten what it’s like. 

Returning to Neverland

Before working with a company on community strategy, goals, and tactics, I ask them to tell me their founding story. 

Without fail, the founder’s eyes will light up, their heart will flutter, and they’ll share the wild ride they experienced, with their team and customers, together. There’s always a story.

That’s where we start when putting together their new community strategy. From their roots.

The same energy, and often the same tactics, that worked on day one are exactly what their new community initiative needs to succeed today:

• A bold, exciting vision

• Starting with people who already trust you

• Organizing small, meaningful groups and gatherings

• Obsession over your members’ needs

• Tapping into organic advocates

It’s what worked at the start, and it’s what will work today. 

tl;dr: If you’re trying to figure out how to build community today, reflect back on how your company built community on day one. Come back to Neverland.

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My Next Experiment 👨‍🔬

I recently shared the list of projects I’m thinking about testing. Well, here goes my first experiment!

Companies regularly reach out to me asking who they should hire for community positions. I also get a lot of great candidates who ask me if I’ve heard of any good job opps. So I’m testing something new called “David’s Talent Collective” to connect experienced community builders with companies who are *legitimately* investing in community.

To me "legitimate investment" means:

1. There's buy-in from the CEO down

2. The community team is properly compensated and funded

3. The company takes a long-term view on building community authentically

I already have over 30 experienced community builders signed up and a number of incredible companies. I’ll be doing my first “drop” in the next couple weeks.

Hiring your dream community team or looking for your next gig? I’d love to help. 💌 Hit reply and I’ll send you the details on how to join the beta group.

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Notes and Reflections

What I’m reading and contemplating this week…

1. I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of “Home and community”. What makes a home? What makes a community “feel like home”?

   I recently moved from SF back to NY after 10 years. NY is the home I grew up in and where all of my family lives, but SF feels more like home to me now. Something I’m unpacking and hope to write about soon.

   What do you think makes a community feel like home? Hit reply and lmk.

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2. I’m reading Transitions by William Bridges right now, another gem recommendation from Steve Schlafman, which has been wildly helpful for me as I navigate big transitions in work, location, family, and well…every part of my life.

   Bridges offers two questions to reflect on as you navigate a big transition in your life:

   1. What is it time to let go of in my own life right now? 

   2. What is standing backstage, in the wings of my life, waiting to make its entrance?

   The point is that you have to let go of the past state in order to create space to welcome in a new state.

   I’m thinking a lot about transitions both for my personal life, but also for communities. Communities are in a constant state of change, and many start to fade when they fail to evolve. Reframing Bridge’s questions for community:

   1. What is it time to let go of in your community right now?

   2. What is standing backstage, in the wings of your community, waiting to make its entrance?

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3. One of the common challenges of community-owned businesses is how to distribute income. Does everyone get paid equally regardless of how they contributed? Should it be hourly? Based on skills and impact?

   Francesca Pick, someone I’ve followed for a long time in the community and collaboration space, is experimenting with a collective where they use something called the “Happy Money Story” which she describes as, “a relational approach to how a group distributes a budget, based on a form of consensus decision. The desired outcome is for everyone who worked on the project to agree on a distribution of the money that makes all participants happy.”

   I love the experimentation happening around these concepts right now. I still have questions like:

   • How are disagreements accounted for when they are deeply rooted?

   • What happens if a consensus cannot be reached?

   • How do you account for the social pressure that arises if someone feels like they disagree with the majority, but doesn’t want to take on the weight of being the contrarian?

   • How do you know everyone is actually happy, and not just taking the path of least social resistance?

Consensus-based decision-making gets messy quick, as we’ve seen in *checks notes*, every DAO yet.

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4. Krytal Wu asked on Twitter, “What do you think is missing from the community industry?”.

   I think there are still a lot of things missing:

   • More industry research

   • More tools to help automate manual tasks and connect different systems better

   • More simple approaches to measuring value more training programs

   • A legit college degree

   We've come a long way, and there's still a long way to go. What do you think is missing? Respond to Krystal and let her know.

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That’s all for this week. Appreciate you all for reading, truly. We’re over 1,500 strong now! Keep building and keep taking care of yourselves. I read every reply and comment so keep them coming.

❤️ David