How to leverage community in building and scaling early stage B2C startups
When Nepal's youth organized a political movement, they didn't use Facebook—they used Discord. Punit shares this fascinating story and explains why dark social and gated communities are replacing the public web, and what founders should do about it.
Jason Louro
Programiz had millions of users but zero brand recognition. Discover why they spent a year putting faces to their content before launching their paid product, and what this reveals about the evolution from utility to community.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Guillermo Martinez shares how Buen Provecho spent months validating their concept through a WhatsApp group before building their app, managing everything manually to prove demand existed before investing in development
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
While most users are young professionals or families, Buen Provecho's top user is a 67-year-old woman who orders 2-3 times daily as her walking exercise. Guillermo discusses unexpected user personas and the power of user stories.
Jason Louro
While competitors emphasize the "cheap" aspect of surplus food, Buen Provecho focuses on environmental impact with CO2 savings and waste prevented. Guillermo explains why this protects premium brand partnerships.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Before CKBK even existed as a platform, founder Matthew Cockerill faced a fundamental question: In a world drowning in free recipes online, do cookbooks still matter?
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Most subscription platforms treat content creators as distant figures whose work gets consumed but who remain largely inaccessible to users. CKBK founder Matthew Cockerill took a radically different approach: he made cookbook authors directly accessible to users through the platform itself.
Jason Louro
On The Levels Podcast, Matthew shared how his 2018 Kickstarter campaign doubled its funding target and provided the validation needed to build what's now a thriving subscription platform with over 20,000 users.
Jason Louro
How do you build an initial user base when you have no existing community? João Neves and his team at Bloop solved this challenge by turning their fundraising process and press strategy into community building tools, creating 300 engaged beta users before they even launched.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
In a recent conversation on the Levels Podcast, João explained how Bloop's "for everyone" philosophy challenges traditional influencer marketing assumptions and creates a more authentic, accessible system for earning through recommendations.
Jason Louro
When most startups think about crowdfunding, they picture polished campaigns on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, complete with professional videos and stretch goals. João Neves, co-founder and CTO of Bloop, took a completely different approach: the power of word-of-mouth.
Jason Louro
Sylvi AI, a language learning app that helps users practice conversations with AI pen pals, launched in April 2024 and has already reached over 1,000 paying customers. But their path to building a loyal user base started with a simple question: "How did you find us?"
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Amy Cameron, Head of Marketing at Sylvi AI, discovered a fundamentally different approach that transformed their product development process and accelerated their path to product-market fit.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Most B2C startups approach creator partnerships with a simple playbook: offer affiliate commissions and hope for the best. But according to Tim Johnson, who's managed creator communities at three major consumer apps including Wattpad (acquired for $600M), this approach is fundamentally flawed.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Tim recently joined the Levels Podcast to share insights from his unique journey across multiple B2C platforms, and his perspective on creator partnerships challenges conventional wisdom.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe