Common Room | Collective Intelligence | Summary and Q&A

TL;DR

Common Room is an intelligent community growth platform for companies looking to leverage community as a growth driver with actionable insights from user engagement data.

Key Insights

• 🥺 Community-led growth is becoming a significant driver for companies across various industries.
• 🆘 Common Room helps companies of all sizes leverage their communities for growth and differentiation.
• 👤 The platform offers actionable insights from user engagement data to improve community interactions.
• 🎓 Modern marketing now incorporates elements of community engagement, education, and activation.
• 😤 Support teams are evolving to be responsive across various engagement channels and need tools to manage interactions effectively.
• 🏛️ Building a better product involves constant feedback collection and analysis from the community.
• ❓ Collaborating across the organization and involving community insights in product development are essential for success.

Transcript

Read and summarize the transcript of this video on Glasp Reader (beta).

Questions & Answers

Q: What is the core focus of Common Room as a product?

Common Room focuses on assisting companies in recognizing and leveraging their community as a growth driver and differentiator. It offers tools to support community engagement and growth at every stage of a company's development.

Q: How did the founder, Linda Lien, identify the need for a platform like Common Room?

Linda's experiences at AWS revealed the challenges of managing a large developer community without adequate tools. These challenges led her to realize the need for a platform that could help companies effectively engage with their communities.

Q: How does Common Room address the challenges faced by community managers in engaging with users across multiple channels?

Common Room provides a centralized platform that aggregates data from various engagement channels, such as social media, forums, and support channels. This allows community managers to have a holistic view of user interactions and streamline communication.

Q: What key value does Common Room bring to commercial open source companies?

Common Room enables commercial open source companies to engage with their community effectively by bridging the gap between their open-source offerings and commercial products. It helps companies build stronger relationships with users and drive better adoption of their products.

Summary

In this podcast episode, Sara Guo interviews Linda Lian, the co-founder and CEO of Common Room, an intelligent community growth platform. They discuss the importance of community in driving growth for companies and the challenges faced by community teams. Linda shares how Common Room solves these challenges by providing visibility, actionable insights, and collaboration capabilities for community teams. She also talks about the role of community in commercial open source companies and web 3 organizations.

Questions & Answers

Q: Congratulations on Common Room's official launch! Can you explain what Common Room does as a product?

Common Room is an intelligent community growth platform for fast-growing private and public companies. We help companies at every stage of the maturity curve, from early-stage startups to publicly traded companies. Our platform brings together community engagement, product usage, and customer data into a single place, providing actionable insights for companies to nurture their community and drive growth.

Q: How did you identify the problem that Common Room aims to solve?

During my time at AWS, I noticed the rise of user-led and developer-led adoption in the software industry. Traditional sales-led models were being replaced by enabling developers to get hands-on with services and building champion programs. However, there was a lack of community management tooling, and the existing tools couldn't handle the scale and diversity of engagement channels. I realized that companies needed a way to manage and leverage their community for growth, which led me to start Common Room.

Q: Can you share some stories or anecdotes that highlight the challenges faced by community teams?

One challenge is the lack of visibility and collaboration. Community teams often rely on spreadsheets or have no system of record to manage their community engagement. They struggle to collaborate with other teams, such as product, sales, and customer success, who need insights from the community. Another challenge is the manual and time-consuming nature of tracking and analyzing community feedback. Without a robust tool, community managers have to read through various channels and manually categorize and prioritize feedback. This inefficiency hinders their ability to build a better product and deliver a great user experience.

Q: How does Common Room help companies with their community-driven growth?

Common Room addresses the challenges faced by community teams by providing a unified platform that combines community engagement, product usage, and customer data. Our platform utilizes AI and analytics to surface actionable insights and automate workflows. Community teams can easily identify important signals and take proactive actions, such as reaching out to potential customers or addressing support issues. Furthermore, Common Room enables collaboration across the entire organization, breaking down silos and ensuring that community insights are integrated into decision-making processes.

Q: What is the role of community in commercial open source companies and web 3 organizations?

In commercial open source companies, community is crucial for both distribution and success of the commercial offering. The community serves as the source of co-building, feedback, and evangelism. Community managers and developer advocates play a strategic role in facilitating community growth, engagement, and support. Web 3 organizations, which are based on crypto and blockchain technologies, are also community-driven by nature. Community managers are often the first hires and focus on building a strong and engaged community. Common Room supports both these types of companies by providing the tools and insights needed for community success.

Q: How did you assemble your co-founding team for Common Room?

I found my co-founders, Francis Liu (design) and Raj (CTO), through LinkedIn. After initial messages were ignored, we eventually connected and aligned on our vision and values. We also brought on Tom Kleinpeter as our chief software architect. Our strong foundation of shared values, transparent communication, and complementary skill sets has been essential for navigating the challenges of startup building.

Q: What have you learned from your beta partners that influenced the development of Common Room?

Our beta partners have provided valuable insights and use cases that have shaped the development of Common Room. We discovered that modern marketing is closely tied to enablement, education, and activation. Support now means being responsive across various engagement channels. Building a better product faster requires a constant pulse on community feedback. These insights have informed our product roadmap and helped us address the pain points faced by community teams.

Q: What are the primary parts of Common Room's platform?

Common Room's platform is centered around a data platform that combines structured and unstructured conversational data into a user 360 view. This platform enables companies to understand their community members and their engagement across various channels. On top of the data platform, we provide AI and analytics capabilities to surface insights and workflows. This allows community teams to automate actions and collaborate with other teams within the organization.

Q: How does Common Room support different personas within organizations, such as community managers and developer relations teams?

Community teams act as quarterbacks, engaging with users and passing insights, feedback, and customer activity to internal teams like product, marketing, sales, and customer success. Common Room provides tools to enable this collaboration and ensures that community insights are integrated into decision-making processes. For example, community feedback can inform product roadmaps, support issues can be escalated to the right teams, and potential champions can be identified for further engagement.

Q: What's next for Common Room after the GA launch?

We're excited to continue building with our community and expanding Common Room's capabilities. We have a 10-year roadmap, and we're committed to being customer-centric and working closely with our users to solve their evolving needs. We also aim to contribute to defining best practices and playbooks for community-driven companies through our uncommon community.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Common Room is a platform that assists companies in harnessing the power of their community for growth and differentiation.

• It offers a robust solution for companies at various stages, from early-growth startups to established organizations like Atlassian.

• The platform aggregates and analyzes user engagement data to provide actionable insights for improving community interactions.