Insight Partners
More By The Author
In the past year, community-led growth has emerged as a hot topic for SaaS companies in all stages of growth. While it is still early days for the motion – only 25% of companies in our portfolio have established communities – the leading indicators show that the motion is about to explode in adoption. In a recent survey of our portfolio companies, 55% are planning to test community in 2022.
Insight Portfolio Companies with Established Communities
Double-clicking into the data reveals that companies that are volume/velocity will prioritize community earlier in their ScaleUp journey. Enterprise-focused companies will generally prioritize account-focused sales motions but then adopt community later in the lifecycle to soften land and expand.
No matter the size or target market of the organization, community-led companies have access to a wealth of firmographic, behavioral, and technographic data points about their end users that can better inform the go-to-market. Community data that is fully operationalized is fuel for revenue growth, which makes it a highly attractive initiative to pursue. However, community is nebulous since the motion is so new, and most companies have little experience.
In this guide, you will find key insights from a series of interviews that the Marketing Center of Excellence conducted with both community and developer-relations leaders at high-growth SaaS companies, including:
- Peggy Rayzis, Director, Developer Experience at Apollo GraphQL
- Jim Shilts, Head of Community at Incredibuild
- Joyce Lin, Head of Developer Relations at Postman
- Wesley Faulkner, Head of Community at SingleStore
- Victoria Johnson, Director of Customer and Community Marketing at UpKeep
In addition to our interviews, we conducted secondary research and collected best practice guidance from both Orbit and Hivebrite. If you are currently looking to establish your community or simply looking for guidance to further connect your community to drive business value, read on for a roadmap on how to establish, scale, and measure a community-led motion.
If you have any questions about our guide or community-led growth, we encourage you to email us at community@insightpartners.com.
