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Gina Bianchini

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2021-09-23

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2021-09-23

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1. “When I was 11, my dad was killed in a car accident and it was sudden and it was, I still don't know on some level that it actually happened. Anyways, I felt that, and my father had been a teacher in the school district that I went to, he taught high school history in addition to restoring old cars. To this day, I felt so grateful that the other teachers who knew and had worked with him, I always got the sense that they were looking out for me and looking out for me, looking out for my brother, my sister in ways that were never overt, but just there. So when you ask that question, that was the first thing I think that people have done lots of kind things for me. And I hope I've done kind things for other people. But in terms of when it really mattered, and in a way that just felt like I wasn't alone, that was extremely meaningful.”

   2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Mixed and matched so that the most relevant members can find each other, they can build relationships, they can move faster to achieve the results and transformation that they want to have in their lives.”

   2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “When you can do so much of that creative work in the context of a community that you own, that's the risk. The risk is people are like, nah, I'm good. I'm going to stay on Facebook. I'm going to stay on Instagram. I'm going to stay on TikTok. It's not a delete your account situation. It's that I believe what will happen, whether it's Mighty Networks or other platforms or things people build themselves is that people won't ever delete their accounts. They're just going to spend less and less time. We're also going to just see new experiences show up and they're just novel and fun and different. I think we're tired of feeds. I think we're just tired of feeds. And by the way, Mighty Networks has feeds, but as what we're looking at, just the future of product development is communities and Spaces need”

   2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “I didn't think about that regularly, I should not be in my job. I think it is fear of the unknown. And again, that's becoming less and less relevant. But certainly when we started, people were like, what happens if I leave Facebook? We're not saying like delete your Facebook account. We're saying just don't build a Facebook. Because for us, it's about the host. Even as we enter a world where there's community ownership, it has to be thought of by some one or small group of people. I think it's this fear of I really regularly just scratch my head at what a bad deal creators are getting. It's just a bad deal today. And this idea that you're going to go and you're going to produce a bunch of content that you don't own on a platform that you are renting an audience and that that somehow is the most exciting profession of the 21st century.”

   2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Introductions, and these are features that we again built because we are building for people that don't already know each other, whereas other community platforms, whether it's Slack, where again, you're working with people, Discord, where you're gaming with people. Facebook groups where, you know, again, they're just kind of their own animal, but they were always built assuming people already knew each other. There's no features that are the online equivalent of what we would do at a party. And to me, that's just dumb. And to my team, it's dumb. And that's why we built these things into our mining network.”

   2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Showing up and thinking that the things that you're going to post aren't a conversation with other people, it's a little bit like a party that nobody knows each other and that the host isn't actually telling you why you're here. It's like, what are we doing together? And so everybody's like awkwardly kind of sitting around. People awkwardly sitting around does not mean that people don't want their own destination. It doesn't mean that people don't want to belong to multiple communities. They do. We have the data that backs it up. What is missing and it's very small. And once you do it, it's super easy, which is just letting people know what to expect. Should we be DMing with each other when you offer a poll? That's what makes polls a really great icebreaker. We also built in icebreaker questions. So like when you join a mighty network, you can have the option of like answering a question. So you're already typing the first session.”

   2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Yeah, and it's not rocket science, but here's the thing I know to be true. At the beginning of social media, we had to figure out our culture. It was a small group of people and we all kind of knew each other that were figuring it out. What do I post on Twitter? How do I use this Facebook thing? And you have conventions that emerged like and hashtags. There was a time not very long ago that those did not exist. And I think that that's just a really important thing for any entrepreneur to remember is there was a time when that wasn't a thing, which means that there's always going to be opportunity for evolution and innovation. So what I think is so interesting is that once you figure out, oh, I'm building a new culture and I just have to be more explicit with people in terms of this is not social media. This is not about.”

   2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Listen and adapt and trust the process because so much of this, and I think, again, this is an area in addition to the myths of I have to have a big audience to be successful with a subscription. I have to produce all of this content. You don't. The other big one is I am going to put something out there and have to do all of the work is just simply not true. It's simply not true. Rather, when you are able to have strategy that then you package that with software that can deliver on that strategy, you can create something that is a paid subscription with 30 members and have it be pretty damn special.”

   2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Which, by the way, is what people pay for. People pay for the promise of results and transformation. That's why there is a booming advertising. We hop on a live call Thursdays at 4 p.m. We hop on a live call. On Mondays we offer what this week's challenge is going to be. By Friday, upload the results of your challenge to the community, to a specific topic. So that's a weekly calendar that again is supporting those monthly themes. And then lastly. And the daily actions are really designed for members to meet each other, whether that's a poll that, again, super simple thing, but never launch a poll that doesn't have a final answer, which is tell us more in the comments. That simple decision, tell us more in the comments, starts some of the best conversations that I've seen across our communities. When you think about just those five simple elements, and then we also in community design ask for five agreements. Try new things, stay curious, reframe.”

   2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Do you lay out? And this is less about features and more about strategy. And again, software, hopefully, you're able to deliver great strategy on it. And that's how we think about blending these two things, community design and a mighty network. So we talk about your year in the life. What is the year in the life of your member? What is your member able to do a year from now that they are not able to do today? It just seems so obvious. And yet it's actually not totally obvious. When you're talking about belonging and it feels so much like, okay, well, what are we doing right now? And it's like, no, no, what are you setting up for your member to be able to do a year from now that they're not able to do today? And that's where having courses or having events. Because again, one of the other things that we then think is really important is then as you deliver on that year in the life, how are you going to help that member and all of your members go from where they are today to where they want to go?”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Is a part of our platform today and only going to get stronger from here the ways that we're connecting the most relevant members to each other. Today it's by members near you, members like you, members who care about the same topics, members that you're in the same course with. Over time all of these building blocks actually are being used today right now for hosts creating movement in their networks, in their communities. And that comes with the way we teach it in our community design accelerator is you've got your big purpose. That's 80% of it. If you don't have a compelling motivation for that community, you don't have clarity around what you're going to do together. And that's really, again, that movement, that journey that you're taking people on and what are the incredibly valuable rewards of doing that, it doesn't work. And then after that, what gets really easy is we talk about like how.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “So, number one, you've got to have multiple features in one place. Certainly, I've heard a lot of it over the years of like, oh, well, you really need to focus on one thing. Well, guess what? Focusing on one thing has created a mess for entrepreneurs and creators and brands. They're Frankensteining, all of these different services together because we're going to carve out and be video provider for personal trainers. Or we're going to be the events platform for small groups. The reality is, and again, because of our North Star at Mighty Networks, is to create a network effect as a hosted service, it just makes sense to bring events and articles and chat and threaded comments and polls and prompts. But again, that's all the things we're going to do together. The magic that we believe.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “But it's because an NFT unlocks not just the community, but creating something new together. And I think that that is what's missing from the vast majority of what's viewed as a community today when it's just chat or it's whizzing by you in your Facebook feed. And it's something that we know to be true, not just because of the features we brought together in the amazing MIDI networks that we have today, but the fact that this has been universal for at least me and what I have watched over the last 15 years.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “The rewards and benefits. Again, I think sometimes people get stuck at the identity or they get stuck at the belonging step as if it's this finite thing. People join something that is new to them because they want something different. They want results. They want their lives to look or feel different than what they are today. And I think that the most successful community designers and entrepreneurs going forward, and this is true for brands as well, are those that are going to be offering members, mastery results, transformation, and that we're going to go co-create. We're going to go build something together. And I think that that's one of the things we are seeing in all of these, whether you call them headless brands or crypto clubs where the NFT is the price of membership.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “In this place. But there is this sense when we talk about community as this singular noun and belonging as a thing that like we wake up in the morning and we're like, oh yeah, we belong. The way to solve the cold start problem over and over and over again is by giving a community a goal. We talk about it as the big purpose. What is the motivation for your community? And it's got to have movement to it. We bring together who do you bring together to, what are we going to do together? And I always say this learn, share and grow is like the Charlie Brown adult voice of community building. It just doesn't mean anything to anybody anymore. But like make better, more well-informed decisions, navigate and define what it means to be a traitor or what it means to be a user experience designer in 2022 so that we can what are”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “We see a massive long tail, which is, by the way, why we're set up the way that we're set up, hearkening back to Ning, we had a very strong parallel locker. We have one at Mighty. Our tail is much longer today, which I think is cool. Here's what I'll say about belonging. I think belonging feels static. So belonging feels like, oh, I belong in this place and therefore I will belong in this place forever. And what I've actually observed about the most successful communities is that they actually have movement to them. It's a journey. And for most members, it's a journey to whether it's to get better in their career or to explore a particular art form or learn something new and learn something new surrounded by people where you're like, I'm pretty awesome because I'm looking around and I'm surrounded by people I think are awesome and therefore I think I'm a little bit more awesome than I was before I belonged in.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Members of these communities is going to be awesome. It is going to be awesome because they will be able to achieve the results and transformation that they want in their lives. And they'll be able to”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “It's crazy that in 2021, most creators are trying to answer private DMs. There's no scale to that. You literally can't do it. So who's winning in that? Instagram has their own network of effect, but how can you as a creator who's trying to manage their DMs ever get any scale? The only way you can get scale is if you are connecting your members or your followers to each other and giving them the conditions by which they find value from each other. This is not controversial or rocket science. To me, I sort of feel at times like the crazy person who's like, guys, this is how a network's been built for 30 plus years. We need to give creators and entrepreneurs and brands the opportunity to build their own network effects. And the benefits of that for me.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Don't have a massive following. They are creating really deep, really powerful communities with less than 50 people. And they're charging anywhere from $30 a month to $500 a year or more. They're seeing great engagement, members making connections with each other and sticking around. And that is the power of bringing content and community together in one place and not trying to like set up your Patreon rewards in one place and then send people over to Discord and then Discord is like super crazy and it's really hard to figure out who is the most relevant people to me here and where are all the other newbies and how is this working and what is going on here.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “It is, especially when we're growing kind of as fast as we are. But I will say now I'm going to give you the good stuff. So one of the things that is so fun about Money Networks is 76% of Mighty Networks that charge for either a course or a group or access actually have sales of that course, group, or access. 76%. So the probability that if you show up at Mighty Networks and you have that interest, that passion, that goal that you are bringing people together around, it is highly likely that you are going to be able to sell memberships to that when you choose to bring your community and your courses and content together in one place. Now, second thing is that those networks, it has an extraordinarily long tail. So the vast majority of people who are running subscriptions successfully”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Engagement pretty much across every kind of mighty network, but because a mighty network can be free or paid, or you can make it framium where your front door to your Mighty Network is free. And then you can charge for a course or membership in a group within a Mighty Network and then also bundle courses and groups and different things as well. So there's a lot of flexibility there. People pay attention to what they pay for. And we are seeing that the networks on Mighty that are charging money have more engagement. Members are actually building relationships with each other faster and more efficiently and effectively. They're sticking around longer. And what has been crazy cool about it is I'm glad we started off with like every day in the life of an entrepreneur is like a little bit of good, a little bit of bad because”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “At the beginning of any community, a host is going to do a little bit of work. They're going to lay out the rules of the game. What are we doing? How are we doing it? And that's where we have features for things like polls or prompts or we even have templated articles. So it just like makes it really easy to get started. And then what you want to see after about 30 days is that the members are talking to each other. And that might be in the contributions that members are making. We think about contributions as like they're posting, they're contributing in a chat, they're replying to other people's chats. They are not just chats, but the threaded conversations because we have all of those things. But they're DMing with each other. We have DMs per members and things like that, participating in courses and then sticking around. And all of those things, actually it turns out, get easier if you're charging for your community or your course. We have up and to the right.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “In creating the motivation for that community. But what we're doing that's pretty special is that intelligence layer on top of, okay, who are the members that should know each other? And that's just not happening on other platforms. It should, I think it will, but we just happen to be ahead of the curve on that and working on things that are easier to work on when you don't self-identify as oh, we're a chat platform or we do audio or we do video when you are defined by your feature as opposed to in our case, we're building a network effect in a box. When you do that, building that magic in for how your members are meeting and building relationships with each other is one of the most important things that we can do. And it's the thing that excites us the most.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “The value of the network is not the host content, which is kind of where we're at in the evolution of whether you want to call it the passion economy creator economy or just evolution of community. So to me and to our team, being able to offer both of those things at one time is really what sets us apart as a platform and is going to increasingly, again, feel like magic because the challenge of social media when it comes to making those connections between the most relevant people, they're trying to do it without any context. If you think about it, it's like the equivalent of general AI. It's just super, super hard when you're trying to connect the most relevant 2 billion people. It gets a heck of a lot easier when there is the context of an interest or a passion or a goal and a host that is setting up”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Exactly for us checking off those features, and then we're about to come out with video and going live and all of these things that folks want. That's sort of, I would say, the sort of externally facing set of things that we need to do that just even get us in the door. Now, the things we're the most excited about, the things that we are building behind the scenes that again, if we do our jobs right, they will feel increasingly like magic, like just being at like a phenomenal party, but they're all around how do we connect the most relevant members to each other? How do we break the ice? How do we create a platform that if a host brings in 10 members, that those 10 members are able to see what are unique about each other? What do they have?”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Come back because it's not just about your content. It's about the other members taking the course. It's kind of obvious.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “There's two pieces to that. We think about them as the table stakes features. We call our customers hosts. They are looking for, okay, does it have profiles check? Does it have events check? Does it have chat check? Does it have the ability to post articles check? Big surprise for us was after we launched our hosts were like, this is all great. You guys have a phenomenal community platform. Can you just pull in some online courses? And we're like, oh, sure, we'll just like, and they're like, yeah, no, we're going to need you to build online courses into the platform for like six months. We were like, what? Really? And then we did. And it turns out that that's really popular. And specifically, this ability to have online courses and community together in one place, what does it do? It allows the course to be much more effective. More people are going to.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Experience. I also am a passionate believer that one the world bends towards decentralization. It bends towards fragmentation and unbundling. And two, people are frigging awesome. And the creativity that they have and the things that they want to do are not going to be held by the same feed we've been scrolling for the last 15 years.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Joined and contributed, or any node in the network that was added to that network. What has kept people on Facebook is that they felt like they couldn't have their own network effect. They couldn't create because people wouldn't come. Well, they're not going to come if your website sucks. They're not going to come if you're not building something that surfaces the most relevant members to each other that breaks the ice, that brings people back to learn from each other, to talk to each other, to meet each other in more comfortable ways. From where I'm sitting, what we are fundamentally doing is essentially unbundling and making possible any creator, entrepreneur, or brand to have their own network effect in the same way that Shopify enables individual merchants or brands to have their own fully integrated e-commerce.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Member, consumer end user, whatever you want to call it, but to offer a member as compelling of an experience. And I would actually argue an even more compelling experience in one's own destination community when you have a community. It's not just I'm talking out at you, you're talking back at me, or I'm talking out at you and I'm going to continue to talk out at you and I'm competing in your feed on Instagram or Facebook, on Twitter to keep your attention. Once you have members in your own community, you're not only bringing people there, but they're coming back for other members. They are a member of your own community, your own network. That's what we're ultimately doing, which is 90% of software value over the last 30 years has been created by companies that had a network effect. They built a platform or a network that got more valuable to every member with each new person who.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Was very much in the spirit of this is a SaaS business, we're going to be mobile first and that we're going to continue this journey. I'm unapologetic in the fact that I've just continued to build on the same idea of creators, entrepreneurs, and brands should have their own corner of the internet and that it shouldn't be static websites. And that's, I think, one of the saddest things about the last decade is that brands and entrepreneurs and creators felt like they couldn't compete, quote unquote, with Facebook. They had to go where all of the people were. And the thing I've known to be true, the world is leaning in our direction. I think it's going to continue to move in this direction is that actually the software is catching up to be able to offer a”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “They had like 100,000 people in an intranet using Ning, and like we were charging them $36 a month. Now, needless to say, this was 2008, 2009. It wasn't a thing. Like it just didn't cross our minds to be a SaaS business that was serving our customers. And then the other piece was with so much creativity, so much that you could do on the web and like make it so awesome. When mobile came along, it was like, oh, how do we do this? So we ended up selling Ning for not an insignificant amount of money. Like it's nothing to sneeze at, but certainly didn't feel like I was finished by any stretch. And I love this customer. And so I started Mighty Software to deliver your own unique community as it's evolved into.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “That was when I knew what I was going to work on forever. And we make two mistakes at Ning, two big mistakes at Ning. And I chalk them up to us being early and us also being in Silicon Valley. One was that we thought it was an advertising model as opposed to a subscription service. When I left Ning, we had 3 million Ning networks created, 300,000 active on a monthly basis, reaching nearly 100 million people around the world about 60% of our traffic was outside the US.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “14 hip hop stars, the Dallas Mavericks. Like everybody was like, oh my God, this is so cool. We can have our own social networks. And we can have our own place photos and videos and a blog, make it our own design. And then if we want to like get into the source code, we can do that too. That was when all, I know this has been a very long story, but that was the moment where I was like, I get this. These are my people. And people are awesome. They're just awesome. Now, did we have some dark networks? For sure. But I would say on balance, when I have watched people have access to creating and creative software to build communities that get more valuable to every member with each new person who joins and contributes, it's magic.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “That we weren't ever going to learn how to code. They weren't ever going to take our primitives and turn them into new applications that they were building on. And that was our original vision at Ning. We pivoted and in February of 2007, we launched Ning Networks, which was a drag and drop platform for creating your own social network for anything. And that took off. And that took off nearly overnight. It was basically my space had taught people that they could have creativity and that they could trick out their MySpace pages. And it was before Facebook had opened itself up beyond colleges. And Ning really just had a moment as a very pioneering service. For me, in my experience, when we launched Ning Networks and we started to have whether it was people who were navigating type 1 diabetes or other people who collected PES dispensers.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Together, I was like, I get this. One of my friends had started this professional social network called LinkedIn, and then another friend of mine was like investing in like Friendster and then another friend of mine was like, oh, I'm really interested in this user generated content. And so it all kind of just, it was all happening in like a five-block radius of each other in downtown Palo Alto. And so when I started Ning with my friend Mark and what we were doing was let's go create a programmable platform for social applications. That just made sense to me. And what we found actually, so we put out this programmable platform for social applications, building it, thinking it was going to be similar to what people had done with the web and websites. There would be social sites. What we found within the first year was our customer was more about normal people.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “It just made sense to me because I had spent my formative years thinking about communities and people and teams and how human systems work. And then I spent the first part of my career up until that point, I guess six, eight years at that point, working in technology. And my experience in the technology industry has been different, I think, than maybe some other people where I wasn't an engineer, but nobody made me feel bad about it. I felt and was surrounded by so many amazing engineers who wanted to explain things to me. And to this day, I feel incredibly fortunate that I'm still surrounded by people who are builders and engineers who just want to explain things to me and like great engineers love to talk about what they're building and how they're building it. And I've just been very fortunate in my career to have had a front row seat to those experiences. So when all of this was coming to me,”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “To achieve a goal. Literally, how do we score some goals, whether it was in soccer or field talking? So that was to me always what I was passionate about and obsessive about. So I specifically loved studying social movements and political movements and fast forward went to Stanford, majored in political science just because it to me was how I understood systems and systems thinking and then got my first job at Goldman Sachs in their high technology group when it was literally five people. It was viewed as a career limiting move to be in the technology industry because it was like IPOs are only 25 million dollars. Who wants to do that? It was 1994 and a lot happened in 1994 related to technology. And fast forward when the social web started to emerge in 2002, 2003, 2004.”

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39. “And then at the same time, my mom was interested in so many different things. When I was a kid, she was raising guinea pigs so that she could show them. So on the weekends, my dad and our family, we were members of a model T Ford Club. And there was a guinea pig club of Santa Clara County. And so this was the environment. I mean, two miles away was where the homebrew computer club met. It's very normal for the people and the environment I grew up in for people to take things apart and put them back together. For me, I was like, yeah, let me play my Atari. Let me play pitfall on my Atari. Like, that's cool or whatever. We were like being taught how to code, but like that was not my thing. My thing was how do people work? How do groups work? And I played sports growing up. And to me, just that peripheral vision of like, how is this all working together?”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “I grew up in a time and a place that everyone I knew, every adult I knew, every kid I knew had an interest. They had hobbies. It was a culture of interest and passion. So for example, my father restored old cars. So when he was 16, he got a model T Ford, Model A Ford, excuse me, with like a rumble seat and like the whole thing super old and restored it from parts was always interested in building. We totally had that garage with the car studio and fancy cars that we weren't allowed to touch as children and also like put to work in terms of whether it was scraping paint or whether it was doing other forms of child manual labor.”

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41. “Context, what do we have to build at Mighty Networks to be able to deliver results and transformation for members, an amazing, easy experience for that host of that community? And then if we do those two things right, we can unlock that world with a million unique and vibrant communities mastering something interesting or important together. Now, that's all to just even get to, okay, great. Now what are we going to go build? That's what leadership is.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Unlock results and transformation for members, especially when they are fueled and funded by digital subscriptions or payments, because people pay attention to what they pay for. And when somebody is paying attention, they are much more likely to achieve the results that they want. They stick with something longer, especially if they're in a community. And like the example I was using is you wake up in the morning and you're like, oh, I don't want to get up. It's too cold out. I don't want to like go work out. And you look at your phone and there's like a bunch of people posting messages about having worked out. What do you do? You're like, okay, fine, I'll go work out. And if you do that enough times, guess what? You've achieved the goal of health or stamina that you want. And that is where a community is just better than any gadget or elixir or equipment or anything that promises transformation. A community actually gets you there. So in that”

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43. “That is our vision. And living in that world where everybody can show up in a community and instantly feel welcomed. And when it's the right community for them, there's a strong motivation for that community that they are able to meet the most relevant people very naturally and normally. And the amazing magical world of software delivers on that relevancy, especially when you have the context of a specific interest or passion or goal. And then from there, this ability for the software to really make and build deeper connections that make membership so exciting and powerful and just ultimately help members achieve the results and transformations that they want in their lives. Community is amazing at that. So that to me, and for our team is the why. We're doing this because community.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Leadership is the why and what we are going to go do, whereas management is great. How are we going to go get there? How are we going to execute on it? What are those smaller strategic questions that we need to go answer? But leadership is why are we doing what we're doing? What is it that we're doing to deliver on that why? So for example, for us at Mighty Networks, we are building towards a world where there are a million unique and vibrant communities that are mastering something interesting or important together, that are building their own cultures with their own look and feel and their own people and their own mixed and matched combination of features so that they can actually create in a way that only really engineers have been able to create up until this point in time.”

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45. “Are really good at it. And I do think there is a difference between management and leadership. And I invest heavily and think a lot about leadership and what that looks like. And that's also why that time in the morning is so important. Because as a leader, more than a manager, as a leader, it's critical to always know where we're going and anticipate things three or four steps ahead.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Look, I think that there are people that are better managers than I am here at Mighty Networks. We think that as the eye, the we, and the it. So it's like, how are you managing your own energy and your own contribution? And then there's the we of how are we working together? Is there a high degree of trust? Do we have the right agreements in place? And then there's the it. What is it that we are trying to do together? And I think that for a very specific kind of executive, I'm great with what that we dynamic looks like. I'm very confident that in terms of creating those team dynamics that we can create and have created something really healthy and really invest in that. But if you want a manager coach, I'm probably not your person. And that's why our other executives, I've really gone out of my way to make sure that we're hiring people who are fantastic manager coaches. And I have a lot of confidence that the people that we've put in roles of managers.”

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47. “Is why I love my job. So there is not a lot of meetings that I have in any given day that I'm just like, oh, I'm so glad we're going to have another 30 minute Zoom where everybody gets to check a box that we all sat around and looked at this thing and feel really good about it. There's a time and a place for that, but I try to minimize it as much as I can.”

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48. “Don't go. Don't, especially as I've gotten what I hope is better as I go along. I also am like much clearer in terms of the people that I'm going to work with and that are going to report to me that are going to be what is that successful dynamic and like the kinds of people that are going to have a great time working together. And then there are going to be other people like if you want a lot of direction. I'm probably not your person. And at the same point in time, if you want to be challenged that we can build something together, I think I'm a great partner. I think that I pay very careful attention to wanting to work with the people that I work with and that I respect them. I feel like I can learn from them. But I also feel in addition to learning from them, we can collaborate and together, we're going to come up with better ideas than certainly I can come up with on my own or that they can come up with on their own. And that kind of”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “No longer creative. To me, that protected morning time where it's not about slack and it's not about Zoom and it's not about meetings and it's not about other people. That has been one of the most important things that I've done.”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. And that has been fantastic because then what happens is that time of like 30 minutes to an hour, it's my best thinking. And then I basically think about the rest of my day is implementing whatever those ideas were first thing in the morning. So I'll work out. And then I start my day. I know some people start by working out. I feel totally different. When I work out versus when I don't work out. And then the other thing is I feel absolutely no guilt. Sense of obligation. To be in any meeting that I don't want to be in. And I know that that might almost sound controversial, but I think there are so many meetings that just don't have to take place. That I just don't need to be in. And then there's other meetings where it”

    2021-09-23 · Invest Like the Best · Gina Bianchini - Helping Creators Build Communities - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 51] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source