Awesome People - Ep 91
Technical product manger + community manager + free talent drops
Hi founders and fellow VC Friends!
We deliver awesome people to your inbox. These are the people you need to know—the marketers, sales gurus, engineers, ops wizzes— people who give your startup superpowers 🚀.
In addition to this newsletter, we also run a Web3 Pallet job board. Every 2 weeks I send 20 curated candidates to your inbox! Subscribe here. Our third drop went out today! We have ~60 awesome candidates waiting for you. Get 1 month free with the code awesome1month, cancel anytime.
Meet Kassen, Your Technical Product Manager & Community Builder
I met Kassen through Crypto, Culture, & Society (CCS) and DAO Masters. She caught my eye on Discord because she's an excellent community builder and always on top of projects. At DAO Masters, she led our Season 2 DAO Onboarding Research. Little did I know that she’s a recent grad and a total catch for you all.
Kassen studied CS and Anthropology at Duke. She interned at Google and Datadog and is a Bessemer Fellow. She's hungry, works hard, and is an excellent collaborator.
Most recently she worked on community initiatives at Crypto, Culture, & Society (CCS), the first product partnership at 0xStation, and scalability for Cloud AI at Google. While in college, she was the Co-President of Duke Women in Technology and launched highly requested features for Datadog’s Network Performance Monitoring product. One little-known fact about Kassen is that she once worked as a product photographer and content creator for skincare and cosmetics brands for fun.
You can hire her to define your product roadmap, develop community strategies, and build out developer-oriented ecosystems.
Want an intro to Kassen? Respond to this email and I’ll intro you!
Kassen graciously shared her top community tip: it’s okay to start small and start exclusive ✨
The earliest members of your community should be people who love your vision and want to help make it a reality.
Be picky with who you involve early —this establishes a strong foundation for future growth. It’s important that your “first round” of members have conviction in your mission to create momentum. Their conviction will attract and create more strong believers.
One of the strongest communities that I’ve been a part of is Duke Technology Scholars (DTech). It’s a campus organization, started in 2016, that provides year-round support to underrepresented students in tech. They also provide summer co-living experiences in a few tech hubs around the country. I was lucky to be a founding member of DTech Seattle in 2019. I went on to lead mentorship and alumni relation initiatives on the executive board.
I’ve witnessed DTech’s cohorts 2x+ since I joined. Now, many aspiring technologists choose Duke specifically for this community.
DTech has maintained strong feelings of intimacy and closeness, despite its fast growth. The key to success? The first cohort of less than twenty women established a strong close-knit community. Notably, much of the first cohort’s success can be attributed to the IRL bonds formed during the co-living experience.
Ultimately, the crux of DTech’s success lies in the fact its members evangelize the program. People consistently share the value that DTech brings to their professional and social lives. This attracts more program resources, new members, and fuels a growth cycle. Evangelization is key for all strong communities and drives network effects. It’s similar to a product’s k-factor.
As DTech scaled, it maintained intimacy via a few specific methods:
It hosts info sessions at the start of every semester with past DTech scholars who share their own DTech experiences. This sets the tone for a life-changing experience.
Staff and exec members place an emphasis on creating personal, 1:1 connections between new and existing members.
It strongly ingrains the value of giving back to the community, focusing on a spirit of service. This helps alumni stay connected and the network strong.
If DTech had started with 100 or 200 members, the quality of experience for each initial cohort member would have varied more, leading to a lower likelihood that they would go on to recommend the community to others (not to mention with the fervor that they did). You want a fervorous community to drive network effects.
Start small and create momentum!
Need help with community or product management? Respond to this email and I’ll connect you to Kassen!
Join the Awesome People Web3 Talent Collective ✨
For companies
If you’re hiring in Web3, join the Awesome People’s Talent Collective for hand-curated talent every two weeks. Today we dropped 20 awesome candidates from places like Coinbase, CloudFlare, and CreatorDAO. Get 1 month free with the code awesome1month, cancel anytime.
For talent
If you’re looking to get into Web3, join the talent community. It’s free. You can join publicly or anonymously. No Web3 experience is necessary 🙏
Featured job openings
Ceramic: Community Lead (Remote Global)
Spritz Finance: Part-time Creative Copywriter (NYC)
As always, please let me know if you have any questions and if you want an intro to Kassen!
Stay awesome,
Founder of Awesome People Ventures & Talent
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Hey, would love to chat to her! Have you sent you a DM on Twitter