What actually makes people participate in a new community early on?
Hey everyone — I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately, not just as a growth channel, but as a product question.
At Hirey, we’re exploring an agent-native product direction around helping people make better introductions for things like hiring, collaboration, and customer discovery. One thing that keeps coming up is this:
Even if you can bring the right people into the same place, that does not automatically create a real community.
Some communities feel alive very quickly.
Others have members, but no real participation.
I’m trying to understand the difference more deeply from people who’ve actually built communities, not just studied them from the outside.
A few questions I’d genuinely love input on:
In the early days, what made people participate instead of just lurk?
What kinds of prompts or rituals actually created conversation?
Did you find that people joined for content, connection, identity, or something else?
What are the earliest signs that a community has real pull versus artificial activity?
My current belief is that people do not stay because a platform exists.
They stay because something about being there feels useful, specific, and human.
Would love to hear what you’ve learned from building communities that people actually wanted to return to.
I know a couple of experienced community builders who might be willing to answer your questions for free, happy to forward them if you'd like.
Early communities grow when members get value from participating, not just consuming.
People stop lurking when contribution gives them status, usefulness, connection, or momentum.
Totally agree — this is a helpful way to frame it. Participation has to give people something back, whether that’s momentum, recognition, a useful connection, or the feeling that their input actually shaped the space.
I also like the distinction between consuming and contributing. Early on, I think the community has to make contribution feel low-friction and meaningful, not like “posting for the sake of activity.” That’s probably the line between real pull and artificial engagement.
Exactly. A lot of early communities focus on getting people in, when the real challenge is giving them a reason to matter once they arrive. When members feel their presence changes something, participation becomes much more natural.
Exactly — and I think “matter once they arrive” is the key part.
A lot of early communities accidentally train people to lurk because the only obvious role is to consume. But when people can see a clear way to contribute, get a real response, or help shape the direction of the group, participation feels much more natural.
That’s also part of what we’re exploring at Hirey. Our broader initiative is around agent-native warm introductions — helping people find the right collaborators, candidates, customers, or advisors with more context and trust, not just another list of profiles.
One question we’re thinking about is whether better introductions can also help communities feel more useful early on: not by forcing activity, but by helping the right people find each other at the right moment.
We’re opening up early access for a small group of founders, builders, and community-minded people who want to test this direction with us and give honest feedback.
If anyone here is exploring community, hiring, partnerships, or customer discovery and wants to try it early, happy to share access.
That framing makes sense. If introductions are done right, they don’t just connect people, they give them a reason to engage immediately. That might solve a big part of the empty room problem early communities face. Curious to see how that plays out in practice.
Totally agree — “they give them a reason to engage immediately” is a great way to put it.
That’s exactly the kind of thing we want to test with Hirey: whether better, more contextual introductions can help people move from passive members to active conversations faster.
We’re still early, but we’re opening access to a small group of founders, builders, and community-minded people who want to try it and give honest feedback.
Would love for you to test it if this problem is interesting to you: https://www.hirey.com/agent