Product-Led Communities Need Picks and Shovels

A PLC is what happens when a company has a valued product or service, as well as an authentic, thriving community at its core.

We have seen companies leverage a variety of solutions including Facebook Groups, WhatsApp, and Slack to enable community connection, but eventually they fall short due to lack of integration with the rest of the product experience and, in some cases, the incentives of the platforms don’t align with community itself.

As communities grow, so too does their need for moderation to ensure that content does not become toxic. In communities where moderation is vital, like group therapy, these solutions can augment human moderators and allow services and platforms to scale. AI-based moderation is rarely cost-effective for a platform to build in-house.

We also believe there will be thousands of micro-PLCs. They’ll look like the course creators who have a unique audience on Teachable, the fitness influencers who have an Instagram presence and their own DTC product, a community creator passionate about bringing remote sales professionals together, or an open-source developer community.