Wanjiru Kamau

Grow the first 100 members of a community for a small product

A cold-start plan for a product community: who to hand-invite first, one repeatable ritual, 14 days of seed posts, milestones and warning signs.

At a glance

Best for: Indie makers and small SaaS founders with a few hundred users and a quiet Discord, Slack or forum they want to bring to life.
Tested on: Claude · Opus 5.5
You fill in: productplatformcurrent_statetime_per_week
You get: Scope: 4 hours a week covers one ritual, hand invites and replies. I've cut your 9 channels to 3 ( weekly-prep, show-your-campaign, feedback) and… (full result below)

Prompt

I'm starting a community for {{product}} on {{platform}}. Where things stand: {{current_state}}. My time: {{time_per_week}}.

Plan how I get to the first 100 active members (active = posted or replied in the last 30 days), not just sign-ups.

1. The first 10: who they are, specifically, and how I find them. I'll invite these people by hand.

1. Why they'd come back: one recurring ritual (weekly thread, office hour, challenge) that works with 10 people and still works with 100.

1. Seeding: what I post in the first 14 days so an early visitor never lands in an empty room, as a day-by-day list of post titles.

1. Invite: a DM template for one of the first 10 (under 60 words, no hype, says why them).

1. Milestones: 10, 30 and 100 members, and what changes at each (when to add channels, when to recruit a helper).

1. Metrics: 3 numbers to track weekly, each with a warning sign.

1. Don't: 3 common mistakes for a community this size.

Keep it doable in my time budget. If it isn't, cut scope and tell me what you cut.

Fill in

{{product}}: What the product is, and pricee.g. Plotline, a $6/month app for tabletop RPG game masters to plan campaigns
{{platform}}: Where the community livese.g. Discord
{{current_state}}: Users, members, activity and channels you already havee.g. 340 paying users; a Discord with 45 members, last message 3 weeks ago
{{time_per_week}}: Hours you can give ite.g. 4 hours a week

Example input

product: Plotline, a $6/month app for tabletop RPG game masters to plan campaigns (session notes, NPC tracker, maps)
platform: Discord
current_state: 340 paying users; a Discord with 45 members and 9 channels, last message 3 weeks ago; I email users monthly with a 38% open rate
time_per_week: 4 hours a week

1.5k0

Generated Outputs (1)

3 hours ago

Claude

Opus 5.5

3 hours ago

Generated Output

Scope: 4 hours a week covers one ritual, hand invites and replies. I've cut your 9 channels to 3 (#weekly-prep, #show-your-campaign, #feedback) and dropped live events until you have 30 members.

1. The first 10
Paying users who've planned sessions most weeks for at least three months, plus anyone who has replied to your monthly email or sent a feature request. Pull the list from your own usage data and inbox, and invite them one by one.

2. The ritual: Monday prep thread
Every Monday: "What are you running this week?" GMs post their session in two or three lines and one thing they're stuck on. At 10 members you answer everyone; at 100, members answer each other.

3. Seeding (first 14 days)

• Day 1: Start here: what this server is for

• Day 1: Prep thread #1 (you post your own campaign first)

• Day 3: Show your campaign map (yours first)

• Day 4: The NPC your players still talk about

• Day 5: What's next in Plotline, and what I've decided not to build

• Day 7: The worst session I ever ran

• Day 8: Prep thread #2

• Day 10: Share a session-notes template

• Day 12: What did you build a workaround for?

• Day 14: Two weeks in: what should this place do more of?

4. Invite DM
"Hi [name], you've been planning sessions in Plotline most weeks since [month], so you know it better than almost anyone. I'm restarting our Discord as a small place for GMs to swap prep and tell me what to build next. Would you be one of the first ten? No pressure either way."

5. Milestones

• 10: reply to everything within a day. No new channels.

• 30: invite all 340 users through the monthly email. Ask one regular to co-host the prep thread.

• 100: add a channel only when a topic keeps recurring (a specific game system, say), and hand a monthly showcase to a member.

6. Metrics

• Weekly active posters. Warning: fewer than 5 by week 3.

• Share of prep-thread posts answered by someone other than you. Warning: under 30% at 30 members.

• Invitees who post within 7 days. Warning: under half, meaning your start-here post isn't working.

7. Don't

• Reopen with nine channels. Empty channels make a server look dead.

• Announce to all 340 users before the first 10 are posting.

• Let it become a support desk. Send bugs to #feedback or email, or support will eat your four hours.

Weekly time: about 1.5 hours replying, 1 hour on the prep thread, 1 hour on invites, 30 minutes on metrics.

Why it works

Defining "active" as posting in the last 30 days stops the plan from chasing sign-up numbers, which is how most product communities end up as ghost towns. Hand-inviting the first 10 and a ritual that works at 10 and at 100 reflect how small communities actually start. The day-by-day seed list solves the empty-room problem concretely. Milestones stop you adding structure too early, the warning signs make it measurable, and the time-budget rule forces the model to cut scope rather than hand a solo founder a plan for a community team.

When not to use it

If your users don't have much to say to each other (a utility people use once a month), a community may be the wrong bet; a good changelog and email list may serve them better. Don't treat a community as your support desk. And if you have no users yet, go and get them before building somewhere for them to gather.

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