When founders think about building a community, they often start with good intentions—but to make it truly work, it has to be mission-driven. For Jared Robin, the mastermind behind RevGenius, a GTM community for B2B growth, the journey into community-building wasn’t planned. It started out of necessity.
When LinkedIn was still gaining traction as a content platform and COVID had disrupted everything, Jared searched for his next opportunity. He joined different communities, both paid and free, but none of them helped him meaningfully.
“I had always known that I liked community,” he said. “I like people. I had built one around a fashion magazine before, but I wasn’t trying to start anything this time. I just wanted a crew to help me land my next role.”
What started as a couple of connections within a LinkedIn group chat developed into a tight-knit group of people who genuinely liked each other—and had nowhere else to go.
Jared recalls they were talking so much that LinkedIn DMs kept crashing as they showed up for each other’s posts, shared advice, and built real relationships. That’s when he first realized that this feels like a community. But does it need to be one?
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There were existing communities within this landscape, but he noticed that each had barriers—some were exclusive to senior leaders, others were just glorified email chains, and a few were more content-driven than truly interactive. But where was the space for everyone—for those who weren’t senior leaders or unwilling (or able) to pay for access? The answer was: There wasn’t one.
That realization shaped everything for Jared when he launched RevGenius. It wasn’t just about inclusivity for the sake of it—though that mattered, too. It was about something bigger: If the goal is to move the Go-To-Market (GTM) function forward, how can GTM teams do that if we only let a select few into the conversation?
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Now, paired with the expertise of GTM leaders like Karthi Ratnam and others, Jared found something bigger than just a job search. RevGenius found a movement.
In this episode of Go-To-Market with Dr. Amy Cook, Jared and Karthi discuss the emerging advantages of building communities as a sales tool and compare relationship-building strategies in community-led versus audience-led go-to markets.
If your sales team is looking for a more effective way to connect with customers, here’s an idea–stop selling and start building a community around solutions.
Here are some highlights from that interview.
Amy: What is the difference between community-led and audience-led?
Karthi: When I say I’m a community purist, I think when community is done right—based on values and culture and change and truly empowering and championing other people—it is amazingly good. Throughout history and social movements, you can see how community can positively impact humanity. But community, for the sake of harvesting demand, is what I’m entirely against, which is what’s happened a little bit with the pandemic.
We all wanted to feel connected in this collective experience. So community became a thing. But then, unfortunately, companies started seeing communities as a place to harvest demand instead of a place to support each other, champion each other, and create a sense of belonging.
Now, people are generally averse to grand communities. Only recently have third-party communities like RevGenius been thriving because nobody mandates it. It’s totally different. It proves that when done right, a community can be really good.
Karthi: It goes back to the original thing, which I was saying is create demand versus harvest demand. I’m not trying to harvest you as a sale or somebody with a contract. I’m trying to genuinely build a relationship and a connection with you and champion you. If that turns into a demand sale, that’s great. If it doesn’t, that’s great too. We still champion you, and you’re doing well. And that’s the whole thing.
Jared: Now, the difference in the nuance between that and audience-led is that audience-led is more a demand movement. It doesn’t mean your audience, followers, and subscribers can’t talk to each other. But, it’s a centralized spot for creating content in many formats, webinars, or podcasts to attract your ICP to listen and partake.
Click here for more of this interview.
