How should a founder launch a community-driven product and cultivate the culture of the first 100 users?

2026-04-23 · Marketing

What changed? At Netflix there wasn't any purpose to having each customer engage with another. It was simply transactional. But at Wizen and Neverland community is very much the product. Having either of them work, depends on people creating value for each other, so culture is the product.

For your first month: hand-pick the first 100 like you’re casting a movie. Reward generosity, curiosity, and constructive participation, not just enthusiasm. Set norms visibly and early. Over-engage with the right behaviors. Kill toxicity fast, even from “power users.” Don’t chase scale yet; chase repeatable trust. Your first users won’t just join the community, they’ll teach every later user how to behave.

At Wisen our first users are largely drawn from the people we knew and trusted from NeverLand. That is not because they are easy to find, it's because we know who they are and trust them to make the product better just by being here.

Public Hand Raises only. Questions anonymized; answers are Marc Randolph's mentorship responses with names redacted.