Scaling Intimacy is a Community Leader’s Greatest Challenge

Planning for the future of growth

What does intimacy feel like? By definition, it’s “a private cozy atmosphere”. It’s a feeling of closeness.

At Groove, we’re building a community. Right now, it’s pretty intimate. We’re in beta testing and have a few hundred users. But, it won’t be that way forever. As we grow, the question continuing to circle my head is: How will we scale this intimacy, this special feeling we have today?

Scaling intimacy revolves around expanding Groovers’ access to more Groovers (more people to cowork with and keep them accountable) without compromising the experience of interacting with familiar faces. It’s about prioritizing connection and keeping that at the heart of our decisions.

The key is to act small now. In order to scale intimacy, community leaders must focus first on doing things that aren’t scalable while they still have the chance. While your community is small, you can experiment more, be curious, get to know people, and develop a clear understanding of who your community is for and who it’s not for.

Scaling can be scary for existing community members. They might feel like the pool is getting too big and they are losing a sense of belonging. It’s harder for them to bump into the same faces often. They also may feel like the vision for what they want the community to be like is different from the team’s. One thing our community has been extremely vocal about is not wanting Groove to feel like social media. We’ve seen so many tech products lean on the model of followers, status, and demographic separation to create a unique experience for the user and a smaller circle for them to interact with.

At Groove, we believe in our demographically diverse community not putting themselves into buckets. We believe in the power of spontaneity, meeting new people, and bonding over intention vs. resumes. Groove combines the best aspects of real life with the convenience of technology.

Most of our power users have never met each other in real life (a few actually attended an in-person meet-up recently; it was really special). They’ve spent hours and hours together over the last few months, dedicating time to completing tasks with intention.

One of our top Groovers has Grooved over 400x. Of those, she’s Grooved 60x with someone she’s never met in person. They’ve spent time bonding over their big dreams, confiding in each other about challenges with mental health and how it’s affected them personally and professionally, and have laughed so hard they’ve cried… many times.

The question is: As thousands of users join Groove, how will it still feel like your Groove, not just a Groove?

“While it’s tempting to grow as fast as you can in every dimension, it’s the decisions that you say no to that define who you are.” (First Round Review).

These are a few ways we’re focused on maintaining intimacy as we scale at Groove:

• Leveraging passion. Groovers often talk about work and tasks that light them up and energize them inside of Grooves. And, the hard parts about doing work we’re proud of. TED is a great example of this. “They’ve learned how to tap into people’s passions, fears, pain points and thirst for knowledge to rapidly scale to success” (First Round Review).
• Building with our community. We are constantly taking the “pulse” of our community, checking in on the biggest challenges they face inside and outside of Groove. We’ve created a two-way dialogue. Their insights help drive product and strategy decisions. They are part of the scaling journey and understand how they can contribute at these early stages as beta testers.
• Our referral system helps us scale pre-established relationships. There’s trust and intimacy built in those relationships already. We’re looking to leverage this further in the next few months.
• We’re building features and community-led projects to allow members to personalize their Groove experience and better distribute control and contribution opportunities to members of the community.

Scaling intimacy isn’t a unique challenge for Groove, but how we’re approaching it with such care and intention is really important to us and something I look forward to keeping top priority as we grow.