A lot of teams are interested right now in investing in communities. So who better to learn the tricks of the trade from than Dave Gerhardt of Exit Five – a company whose product is, quite literally, the community!
What started as a side project for Dave became a paid membership community with 6,500+ marketers, sponsorship revenue, and its own media and events engine. But the reason it works isn’t just Dave’s audience. It’s how he runs the business.
Community = Product (Really)
Most companies launch a Slack group, add “community” to someone’s job description, and hope it becomes a growth lever. Exit Five was different.
Dave doesn’t treat Exit Five as a support function or a brand layer. The community is the business. And that mindset changes how you build, what you prioritize, and how you measure success.
As Dave explains, “We have a product owner… we have a roadmap, we have features, we do NPS… we're treating it like a real product.”
Every part of the community is structured like a SaaS product team:
- Dedicated owner (community manager)
- NPS tracking to benchmark value
- Member feedback used like user research
- Engagement metrics treated like activation data
- Weekly discussions and metrics reviews
- Goals, sprints, and a roadmap
And it's all run by a team of five, which includes operations, content, and support. The message? You don't need a 30-person team – but you do need structure and ownership.
This level of scale is also possible because the team views AI not as a threat, but as a “super-intelligent co-pilot” that levels up what creators and strategists can do solo.
Why Most Communities Fail
Does Dave think every company should be building a community?
The answer: a resounding “no.”
He broke down the common failure path: launch a Slack group, assign community management to a junior hire, lose steam after a few weeks, and end up with a ghost town of link drops and promo posts.
The key mistake? No strategy. No ownership. No reason for people to show up and stay.
Start With This Instead
Dave argues that most companies should start with the broadest definition of community – stewarding good conversations, helping people do their jobs better, creating a consistent POV – before building a walled garden.
“You’re selling a product. But there’s probably something that your audience can rally around that has nothing to do with your product. You can be the stewards of that conversation.”
How to Measure Brand and Community Impact
So how do you measure the value of community and brand?
Dave keeps it simple: “Believe it or not, people will tell you.”
At Drift, the first million in pipeline came from people who told sales reps they listened to the podcast. There was no UTM, no last-touch magic. Just conversations.
And for brand? Dave says how many people went directly to your website is still one of the simplest ways to measure brand impact.
He’s not arguing against data – just that not everything worth measuring can be measured perfectly.
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