Writers helping writers 📬 Fiona Monga & Nadia Eghbal, Substack
Get Together
- 750 views
- over 3 years ago
- 45:06
“Community means there's a reason why these people are here, irrespective of the platform.” - Nadia EghbalIf you haven’t heard of Substack, you will soon. The company is just three years old and growing quickly. The co-founders came together to see if they could solve a problem: helping writers earn a living directly from their readers. When readers pay writers directly, the founders realized, writers can focus on doing the work they care about most, not what editors, algorithms or advertisers deem valuable.Substack resembles the email newsletter tools you’re familiar with, but with a crucial twist. When readers subscribe to a Substack, you have the chance to pay the author for their work–maybe $3 a month, maybe $10 a month. With economies of scale, these paying subscribers can really add up for writers and for Substack, which takes a 10% cut of the revenue writers earn. Some writers have turned Substack into their full time gig and earn into the six figures, while others are using Substack as a reliable anchor of income.We spoke with Fiona Monga and Nadia Eghbal, two of the early team members at Substack who work with the writer community. In their own rights, each have led impressive careers that add dynamic value to the Substack team. Having worked in publishing and at Instagram, Fiona understands how creators connect directly with growing audiences. Through Nadia’s past experience working at Github and writing Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, she’s developed an appreciation for the power of documentation to scale know-how.  In this episode, Fiona and Nadia share the systems and signals they have in place to notice and nurture best practices on the Substack platform.Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:Pinpointing their “kindling.” Writers with the potential to go independent were the kindling that sparked Substack’s community.Defining Substack’s “why.” How the Substack founders got clear as an organization on why they were bringing writers together.The platform vs. its communities. The community investments for Substack aim to increase the number of direct relationships writers have with each other, not with the Substack team or brand.Scaling support. How the Substack team manages their time with inbound requests, helping people help themselves and each other at scale.👋🏻Say hi to Fiona Monga and Nadia Eghbal and learn more about Substack.📄See the full transcriptThis podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.
Training and connecting the coders of the future đź‘ľ Isis Miller, Black Girls CODE
Get Together
- 790 views
- over 3 years ago
- 46:35
“We know that there is a tomorrow and we want to be able to prepare our girls and our community for what that tomorrow looks like. Not only prepare them for it, but make sure that they have a hand in building it. ” - Isis MillerThroughout her biotech engineering career, Kimberly Bryant was often the only black female in the room. Kimberly’s experience wasn’t rare. In fact, it’s the norm. Black women make up less than 0.5% of the leadership roles in tech. As Kimberly watched her young daughter Kai grow a budding interest in gaming and coding, but with no spaces to explore or develop those interests alongside people that looked like her, Kimberly decided to take charge. Kimberly and her colleagues at Genentech put together a six-week coding curriculum for girls of color in 2011, conducting the first educational series in a basement of a college prep institution in San Francisco. In a few years, the operation transformed from a basement experiment into a global non-profit with 15 chapters supported by volunteers under the name Black Girls CODE. Today we interview Isis Miller, who joined the organization earlier this year just before COVID-19 struck. We’ll talk to Isis about how Black Girls CODE has gone virtual with online workshops and career panels that reach out to 1,000 students per week and what a meaningful partnership with Black Girls CODE means.Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:Defining a holistic “why.” Learning to code is only part of the Black Girls CODE experience. People engage because it’s a space for girls to be inspired, motivated, and build confidence in addition to coding skills.Developing a community ecosystem. Programming engages not only girls who want to learn to code but also guardians, those that support them.Going digital. Zoom tricks that have kept Black Girls CODE true to their “why.”Honoring the moment. How Isis has created space to honor joy and trauma in grieving.Partnerships. Entering into a partnership is about building with–creating value that is not possible in one organization on their own.👋🏻Say hi to Isis on twitter learn more about Black Girls CODE on their website.📄See the full transcriptThis podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.
“When you growth hack with incentives, you erode authenticity” 🗯 Laura Nestler, Duolingo & Yelp
Get Together
- 770 views
- over 3 years ago
- 52:45
“Community is not transactional by nature. Humans seek to connect on a deeper level. They're looking for validation or for support or for something bigger than themselves.Now that community is such a buzzword. Everyone wants it and they want it quickly. We have more levers than ever, and they work. But when you growth hack with incentives, what you gain in volume, you erode in authenticity.” - Laura NestlerIn 2007, Laura Nestler responded to a Craigslist ad that “was either as sketchy as it sounded or her dream job.” Fortunately, it was her dream job with a little startup called Yelp. She started as the community manager in Portland, Oregon, and would go on to spend a decade with the company refining their community playbook and living in cities all around the world, launching Yelp communities in new markets. Now Laura is the Global Head of Community at Duolingo, a platform that hundreds of millions of people around the world turn to to learn a language. Before COVID, Duolingo users were hosting thousands of in-person language circles around the world each month. Laura shared how she did over forty iterative tests before Duolingo landing on this shared activity.Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:“Protect the source.” This guiding principle at Yelp ensured the community was a central focus.Community doesn’t happen through growth hacking. Social incentives are different from business incentives.The role of a community manager and executives are to tell the story of a community's value.Test and test again. Get something out there and make sure you are not solving for a personal bias. Laura tested and iterated on 40 events before they landed on Duolingo’s language circles.👋🏻Say hi to Laura on twitter @LauraNestler.📄See the full transcript.This podcast was created by the team at People & Company. 🔥Say hi! We would love to get to know you.We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building. And we help organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments.Hit subscribe🎙 and head over to our website to learn about the work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations.