Community-Led Growth: How Glossier and Notion Let Their Users Do the Marketing

Paid ads rent attention. Communities compound it. Two very different companies, a beauty brand and a productivity tool, show how a business can be built around the people who use it, and what can go wrong when the community stops feeling heard.

Glossier: a brand that started as a comment section

What happened

In 2010 Emily Weiss started Into The Gloss, a beauty blog where she interviewed women about their routines. The comment sections became a community where readers swapped tips and complained about products they could not find.

In 2014 Weiss launched Glossier with just four products. Product development leaned on that community: for its cleanser, the team asked readers what their dream face wash would be, collected hundreds of comments and used them to shape the product that became Milky Jelly Cleanser. Customers were not just buyers; they felt like co-creators.

Glossier grew mostly through word of mouth and customer photos on Instagram, with stores designed to be photographed. By 2019 the company was valued at more than $1 billion.

The other side

Glossier later went through layoffs and a strategic reset, and some long-time fans felt the brand had moved away from the community that built it. That part of the story matters too: a community-led brand has to keep listening after it gets big.

Notion: from near-failure to a template economy

What happened

Notion's early product struggled. In 2015 the founders reportedly moved the small team to Kyoto, cut costs and rebuilt the product from scratch. When Notion 2.0 launched in 2018, it topped Product Hunt and early users started doing something the company had not planned: making and sharing their own setups.

Users posted their workspaces on Reddit, YouTube and X. Some built and sold Notion templates, some became consultants, and a community of creators started teaching Notion to others. Notion supported this with an ambassador programme, a template gallery and local meetups, and leaned into what users were already doing rather than replacing it with ads. By 2021 Notion was valued at $10 billion.

Why it worked

• The product was a blank canvas. Every user's setup was unique, which made it worth showing off.
• Users could earn from the community. Template sellers and educators had a financial reason to keep creating content about Notion.
• The company amplified, it did not control. It featured community templates and creators instead of producing all the content itself.
• Communities formed on platforms people already used. Reddit (r/Notion), YouTube and X, not a forum nobody visits.

Five principles of community-led growth

1. Start with conversation, not content. Glossier asked questions before it sold products. The first job is to listen.
2. Give members a reason to show off. Customisable setups, before/after results, collections, routines. People share what makes them look smart or interesting.
3. Let members win too. Recognition, early access, revenue share, affiliate commissions, featured spots.
4. Meet people where they already are. Most startups do not need their own forum. They need to be useful in the subreddits, Discord servers and comment sections where their customers already gather.
5. Close the loop. Show the community what you built from their feedback. "You asked, we built it" posts are among the highest-trust content a brand can publish.

A 90-day community-led growth plan

Days 1–30: listen and help

• Find 5–10 communities where your customers ask questions: subreddits, Facebook groups, Discord servers, X lists, niche forums.
• Read the rules of each one. Many subreddits ban self-promotion entirely, and breaking that rule can get your domain banned.
• Answer 3–5 questions a day without linking your product. Build a history of genuinely useful answers under a real name.
• Keep a spreadsheet of recurring problems and the exact words people use.

Days 31–60: share your work

• Publish long-form, value-first posts: a teardown, a guide, real numbers from your own experiments. Mention your product only where it is genuinely part of the story.
• Invite 20–50 of the most engaged people to try the product free and give feedback.
• Ask one specific question publicly ("What's your dream X?") and show how the answers shape your roadmap.

Days 61–90: give the community a stage

• Feature users' setups, results or creations on your own channels.
• Launch a simple ambassador or affiliate programme for the 5–10 people who already talk about you most.
• Post a "you asked, we built it" update with names (with permission).

Mistakes to avoid

• Dropping links on day one. In most communities that is the fastest way to get banned and labelled as spam.
• Building a branded forum too early. An empty community is worse than none. Join existing ones first.
• Using fake accounts or bought upvotes. Moderators and users notice, and the backlash lasts longer than any short-term gain.
• Treating community as a campaign. It is a long-term commitment. If you stop showing up after the launch, trust disappears.

How SENERVerse applies this

For B2B SaaS and developer tools, we run value-first discussions in niche subreddits and technical threads on X: rules-compliant, under real identities, focused on helping before selling. For consumer brands we combine that with creator content, so the community sees your product both in discussions and in their feeds.

Want a community plan for your niche? Take the 2-minute fit survey and we will name the communities and threads where your customers already are.