Building a Remote Onboarding Community

If you run a remote team, this is worth a read. Might be the coolest thing I've seen in ages. (Not perks. Not ai.) Something that makes life a bit better  We have 100s of devs across the Philippines, LATAM - everywhere. Some hybrid. Some fully remote.  Different clients, skills, experience etc Same thing: → Working solo most of the time. Heads down. Sometimes isolated. → Even when in the office. It kept reminding me of founder peer groups like EO, YPO, Hampton - Private forums where founders can share what's going on Talk openly. Share struggles. Help each other. No judgement. But founders aren’t the only ones who need that. Devs feel it too. Everyone does. So we asked: What if our devs had peer forums? Same rules: → No managers or direct team mates → Confidential safe space → Real talk on life and work We piloted it: Small groups (max 8). Same cohort monthly. Format: Share 1 work win + 1 work challenge Share 1 personal win + 1 personal challenge The group picks / votes 2 challenges from the group to deep dive on No advice - just experience-sharing The feedback? → One of the most special things I’ve done → Raw conversations → New real friendships → A safe space to learn and share ideas  What I learned: Peer learning might be the strongest form of learning Connection doesn’t just happen in remote - it has to be intentional Create the structure. Now they run the show They’ve planned their own hike next month I love this stuff. Thought it was worth sharing I think it could work anywhere - across roles, functions, or industries V cool to catch up with the pioneer group just now Danica Julius Darwin Stephanie Trishia Nicole Patricia. We told dad jokes. 🧡 Would love to hear if anyone else is experimenting with community building ideas 👇

Wade Foster is the co-founder and CEO of Zapier, an automation business that raised only $1M and was most recently valued at $5 billion. In this episode, Wade and I discuss why Zapier barely raised any money and unpack their strategy for growing profitably. Wade shares lessons from building one of the first remote-only companies in tech, including key tips for hiring, onboarding, building a great management team, and much more. Some of my favorite takeaways from a true first-principles thinker: 5 Tips for Effective Remote Work… 1. Remote work requires companies to be more explicit than in-person work. Document rules of engagement, operating principles, accountability, naming conventions, and more. 2. Play with adding in non-work related conversations to virtual meetings. Zapier has an “unplugged” section of their Friday check-ins where employees share something they did outside of work with a photo. 3. People often dwell on whether in-person get-togethers should be more strategy oriented, versus more team/fun-oriented. It almost doesn’t matter what form they take, just getting people together makes a huge difference. If you really want to figure out what’s working, survey employees about their experience and ask them how to make it better next time. 4. When onboarding, share a deep sense of purpose, mission, and culture. Zapier starts people in batches and has a dedicated slack channel for every onboarding cohort that joins (#crew-<datejoined>). This allows new employees to move through the organization together with a sense of tight-knit community. 5. Slack can make it difficult to interpret the level of severity of any given idea or issue particularly when it comes from the senior most folks in the org. Use a naming convention to give people context and set expectations. These are Zapier’s (borrowed from Hubspot) #fyi = I’m just putting this out there for your information, take it or leave it #suggestion = I have an idea, but I haven’t looked into it deeply #recommendation = I have evidence or expertise on this, please consider it #plea - please for the love of God (a mandate) “Don’t Hire Until it Hurts”  The main thing a company spends money on is people. Zapier adopted a “don’t hire ‘til it hurts” philosophy so that when any given person was brought on, they knew exactly what they would do. In their case, constraints helped keep things simpler at the early stage (pre-product-market fit). Finding Product-Market Fit  Wade recalls one of his earliest interactions at Zapier with a customer that was struggling to use an early version of the product. It took 30 minutes to talk the customer through setting up a Zap and certainly wasn’t smooth, but when it worked, the user was blown away. It immediately addressed something that the customer hated doing manually. Despite the then janky customer experience, the customer insisted on paying Zapier. “When you have to ask [if you’ve found PMF], you kind of know the answer.”

In 2020, we launched our first paid online community, SPI Pro, with 500 founding members...and we made some mistakes. You see, community building is a different game from audience building. It's not a one-to-many broadcast; it’s creating a safe space where many-to-many conversations thrive. In "Lean Learning" fashion, we learned from our mistakes while diving head first into this world, and we were able to find solutions to the tough challenges we faced. Here are 3 mistakes and how we solved for them: 1️⃣ Overwhelm Happens Fast We had tons of resources and events lined up – but quickly realized people felt overwhelmed and stretched too thin. Members felt they had to "do it all" to get value. The fix? 👉 We revamped our onboarding to guide members on how to find their pockets of value without feeling like they need to engage with everything. Now, we teach members to embrace what serves them and let the rest go. 2️⃣ Don’t Underestimate Time Zones Our events were originally one-off, live-only sessions. Turns out, that doesn’t work when you’re serving a global community! We adapted by: 👉Hosting multiple sessions for key events to cover more timezones. 👉For our Ask Me Anything events, we converted a 1-hour live event to a 24-hour asynchronous thread to allow for anyone at anytime to get a "real time" answer – with the expectation that answers would, at the latest, come in by the end of the day. 👉Offering recordings so members can learn on their own time, and positioning live events as valuable content that will remain in the community, and if you happen to be able to make it live, that's a bonus. 3️⃣ Engagement Needs a Nudge We assumed engagement would happen naturally after careful planning, and proper onboarding. Spoiler: It doesn’t! We had to get intentional about connection. Our solutions? 👉Tagging members in responses to jump-start replies 👉Launching a mastermind matching program 👉Co-creating with members to build spaces and resources they truly want Community building takes effort, iteration, and a strong focus on human connection. But the payoff has been incredible. When I get a chance to meet members in person (which we hope to facilitate even more in the near future), hearing their stories brings it all full circle – and reminds me why community is worth every tweak and adjustment. 💬 Have any community-building questions? Drop them below – I’d love to help!