Living in poverty, I never thought I'd make it to 30, let alone 31.

So to celebrate, here are 31 people who had a significant impact on my life this year.

This list isn't in any particular order, but if you're on it, know that you made a difference and I think of you often 🙏

@BunnyDoss @pjzzapje
@tamcdonald @freeformflo
Kim + Ola

There is no HomeRoom without you 💚

@lolitataub @Josh_Taub

The reason my career got its start 💚

@_rpgbx @SterSchuyler
@dyoder @heyalexfriedman

Friends who've helped me through pivotal moments in my life 💚

@nicolejarbo @josephpalbanese
@benWTNB @GeoffTRoberts

Founders who I deeply respect and admire 💚

@0xisabelle @jakezinnnn
@Alexiomar @callmeacelegit
@andrewhvuu @gabewarshaw

My Techstars fam I will forever treasure 💚

@bobmoz @TanakaTava
@dazayah

For giving me a chance 💚

@daveambrose @MatthewZiskie
@dpteran @chess_is_ok

The 1st to see the true potential of me & HomeRoom 💚

@ArlanWasHere @saraledterman
@Steph_Gaither

Setting an example for the type of investor I aspire to be 💚

Thanks to every one of you for living your truth every day; inspiring me and countless others along your journey.

I sincerely hope this year treats you as well as you've treated me.

Celebrating my 31st B-Day with 31 People Who Made a Significant Impact This Year

ICYMI - Last month @HomeRoom_Club published a blog article about SPEC, our community framework model designed by @tamcdonald .

SPEC (Support Product Evangelists Connection) provides a roadmap to align business objectives while still delivering value to community members.

Support communities in which members help each other problem -solve can reduce the workload on staff.

This in turn reduces cost of running support teams, increases customer retention, and increases revenue.

Finally, this type of support generally has quicker response times!

Product innovation is another key business objective.

Communities can help achieve this by delivering insights into features the audience wants.

This feedback from community members ultimately reduces costs needed for market studies and engineering unwanted/unneeded features.

Evangelists are people (usually from within a community) who promotes the brand, product, or service beyond what is expected.

Communities that foster these types of audience relationships can significantly reduce marketing costs by utilizing members to promote the product.

Well-connected communities increase knowledge shared among members.

This leads to higher retention rates, increased loyalty, and greater potential for connections.

Fostering these communities can lead to self-sustainment, which reduces workload and cost on managers and staff.

Building communities that deliver value to members while aligning with business objectives remains a surefire strategy to best serve audiences while paving the road for future growth.

HomeRoom's SPEC Model helps to deliver both business and community value.

Be sure to RT this thread + follow @Homeroom_Club for more community insights and deep dives!

Check out the full article on our blog:
https://www.homeroom.club/blog/homeroom-s-spec-model-aligning-community-outcomes-with-business-objectives

The Benefits of SPEC Community Framework Model.

Can Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters (DMs) teach Community Managers skills to improve strategy, foster creativity, and promote community inclusivity?

We think so!

Here are some key lessons that can help you build stronger and more engaged communities:

📄COMMUNITY STRATEGY📄

Meticulous planning AND accounting for unanticipated needs is instrumental in community development.

Entry-point stakeholders should be considered in initial planning phases to ensure member journeys remain consistent, but also dynamic and individualized!

🦺SAFETY & STANDARDS🦺

Both DMs and Community Managers must provide clear guidelines for behavior/engagement including enforcing rules concerning language, conflict resolution, and content moderation.

Establishing expectations for all members nurtures cultures of inclusivity!

🪢FLEXIBILITY🪢

Just as DMs must continually adapt to their players’ choices, Community Managers must be able to adapt to their audiences needs.

Continual strategic improvements are paramount to effective community management.

Read the community and adjust strategy as needed.

🖇️BELONGING🖇️

DMs and Community Managers both aim to increase engagement.

Instill ownership among community members to provide them with emotional equity that inspires participation.

Involve them in decision-making, recognize contributions, and offer leadership opportunities.

Dungeon Masters and Community Managers both strive to tailor the best possible user experience for the individuals they serve.

With minds set on continuous improvement and community evolution you will create a home for your audiences.

Meet their needs and they’ll meet yours!

Be sure to RT this thread + follow @Homeroom_Club for more community insights and deep dives!

Check out the full article on our blog:
https://www.homeroom.club/blog/lessons-from-a-d-d-dungeon-master-building-stronger-communities

Dungeons & Dragons Lessons for Community Managers

Can Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters (DMs) teach Community Managers skills to improve strategy, foster creativity, and promote community inclusivity? We think so! Here are some key lessons that can help you build stronger and more engaged communities:

Community Strategy: Meticulous planning AND accounting for unanticipated needs is instrumental in community development. Entry-point stakeholders should be considered in the initial planning phase to ensure member journeys remain consistent, but also dynamic and individualized!

Safety & Standards: Both DMs and Community Managers must provide clear guidelines for behavior and engagement including enforcing rules concerning language, conflict resolution, and content moderation. Establishing expectations for all members nurtures cultures of inclusivity.

Flexibility: Just as DMs must continually adapt to their players’ choices, Community Managers must be able to adapt to their audiences needs. Continual strategic improvements are paramount to effective community management. Read the community and adjust strategy as needed.

Belonging: DMs and Community Managers both strive to increase engagement. Establish ownership among community members to provide them with emotional equity that inspires participation. Involve them in decision-making, recognize contributions, and provide leadership opportunities.

Dungeon Masters and Community Managers both strive to tailor the best possible user experience for the individuals they serve. With minds set on continuous improvement and community evolution you will create a home for your audiences. Meet their needs and they’ll meet yours!

Be sure to follow @Homeroom_Club for more community insights throughout the year!

Explore the entire blog entry here https://www.homeroom.club/blog/lessons-from-a-d-d-dungeon-master-building-stronger-communities

Twitter's attempted ban on its competitors was the final straw for many, and people tried to move on.

But the 🐘 app, one of the most popular alternatives, is too complicated for everyday users.

So I built something to help.

Introducing Tuskany – Your Gateway to the Fediverse!

Joining the 🐘 app has never been easier.

With Tuskany's quick-start wizard, anyone can create an account and join the Fediverse in a flash!

Tuskany simplifies the process by pre-selecting an instance for you.

No more poring over endless pages of instances.

Just click start, accept the rules, enter your details, and go!

Creating a profile for the first time? No worries!

Tuskany helps you every step of the way with easy-to-follow guides powered by @arcade_demo.

While there are official 🐘 apps for iOS and Android, 3rd party developers have gone above and beyond.

Want to compare the options?

Tuskany can help you find which app works best for your needs.

Say goodbye to Twitter, say hello to the 🐘 app.

Take back control of your social media in a decentralized way - no blockchain/crypto hassle needed!

Drop the Musk and Join the Tusk now 👇
https://tuskany.xyz

Introducing Tuskany - Gateway to the Fediverse!

Building a Discord community can be daunting...

But don't worry, with @HomeRoom_Club you can do it in 3 easy steps! 🤩

1️⃣ HomeRoom offers multiple templates to help get the building process started quickly.

You can select from a range of options, each crafted for a unique type of community.

Launch your server in no time with pre-configured channels, roles, & permissions - just one click away!

2️⃣ Create powerful server experiences with our Bot Library!

Search by keyword or tags to find the perfect tools for your needs, like @dots_hq for new member onboarding and @boto_io to unlock Web 3 features.

3️⃣ It's finally time to share your server with the world and watch it thrive!

Spread your invite link across all socials, forums, or other channels you use.

Monitor activity in real-time as new members join—it’s an exciting experience that will only get better over time!

Creating a vibrant community has never been easier with @HomeRoom_Club.

Sign up today and let us help you craft unique experiences for your people!

https://homeroom.club/product

How to build a full-stack Discord community in minutes with HomeRoom

As @HomeRoom_Club kicks off its next round of fundraising, I want to share something personal.

Many of you have met me, but few know how I started my journey.

So, here's the story of how a sex worker and makeup artist became the founder of what will be the Google of Web 3 👇

Life in 2019 was vastly different than it is now.

I'd been a sex worker since my late teens, primarily with wealthy clients. This wasn't by force; I liked my job!

I met people from worlds I could only dream of.

And the sex worker community helped me stay safe and fed.

By fall, I had decided to try my hand at a career in makeup. I applied for a job with MAC and was off to the races.

Customers at my location were mainly POC women ranging from 40 - 60 years old.

So I would teach classes, helping these women feel beautiful in their own skin.

They quickly became the most successful series of community classes our store had ever done.

I was only making $250 a week and eating one meal a day, but I spent every spare moment I could working.

Producing content for IG presented me with several opportunities in early 2020.

Weddings, features on Instagram, and I was offered a spot backstage at Fall 2020 New York Fashion Week!

Then the pandemic hit. Overnight, my life evaporated.

I'm HIV positive, so my immune system isn't the best, and MAC laid off all their part-time retail workers by April.

Suddenly, I was without an income or any meaningful things to do.

If you've ever met me before, you know that I'm not the kind of person to take things lying down.

So I got to work.

I started my own direct-to-consumer brand, focused on sex workers and the kinkster community.

With the last $600 I had saved from sex work, I created a Shopify store and spent weeks on YouTube learning how to create an apparel brand.

We launched in April 2020 with masks, slowly expanding into tees and hoodies.

I made $53,000 in sales the first calendar year, 100% solo.

I brought on a VA (now my EA) to help manage orders and customer support.

Eventually, I hired several sex workers from the community.

Today, it's a community-led media brand:

🎤2 podcasts w/ 200K+ downloads
📰Bi-weekly newsletter w/ 2.5k readers
📱 Mobile app w/ 2k+ downloads

Seeing the impact community had on me personally and professionally, I wanted to share that sense of joy, purpose, and belonging with the world.

My first startup had built a Discord server, a private community for sex workers who were being censored by social media platforms.

And as a business owner, I searched for tools to evaluate the impact of the community and how it could affect my business.

Imagine my surprise when I realized few tools existed!

Tons of information about community, but barely anything to measure how it affects my company.

So I started looking for a job as a community manager in the tech space. I was learning no-code and was becoming quite adept.

I didn't go to Standford. I had no fancy degrees. My network was non-existent.

But I had my voice.

So I made a Twitter account and started connecting.

I began by following the voices in the tech who truly understood community.

I stumbled across a thread by @chiefgayofficer with a list of investors who focused on underrepresented founders.

That's how I discovered @ArlanWasHere, @MacConwell, @dunkhippo33, and several others.

One name, in particular, stood out. And one day, she posted a job offer.

@lolitataub needed some help with her community.

My chances were slim, but I knew I could improve them if I used my best asset: my voice.

I applied and included a @loom video.

A week later I got the job.

I immediately started learning as much as I could. I was new to VC and knew she'd be too busy to teach me what I didn't know.

So every day after work, I read Investopedia. I joined several communities for angel investors. I'd DM people on Twitter to ask questions.

I learned so much in those first six months. The challenges of building a community and a startup are eerily similar.

So I became a sponge, learning everything I could about operations, managing people, and building communities.

With time, I decided to start something new.

In September 2021, I officially incorporated @HomeRoom_Club with a single mission:

Improve the quality of online communities and create a better, safer, and more inclusive future for the internet.

And nowhere was that work needed more than in Web 3.

So I started building.

I began building a company that could live up to that goal.

Things were bumpy initially, and I heavily underestimated the challenges ahead of me as a black and queer founder.

Most investors didn't take me seriously.

And those that did only did so out of curiosity.

But soon, we became impossible to ignore.

We worked with several Web 2 and Web 3 companies to build and launch their communities.

As they say, "do things that don't scale." And boy, did we.

Eventually, we were signing $10k monthly contacts to build complex Discord servers.

In just under three weeks, we raised a pre-seed in January of $760k.

The day we secured our lead investors, I remember walking along the water near my new home in Emeryville.

It was happening.

I was starting to live the life I had seen as an observer for most of my adulthood.

Soon we had built an all-star team.

@tamcdonald joined as Head of Community, @freeformflo as Head of Engineering, @pjzzapje as our Ops Manager & Community Architect, and @BunnyDoss as Human Relations, People, & Culture.

We launched our SaaS in August and hit $400 MRR in 2 days.

Throughout the process of building our software, we met with and interviewed 100+ customers.

We'd listen to their problems, iterate on solutions, and immediately ask for their feedback.

We've quickly grown to $16.8k MRR and 110+ servers with 140k+ combined community members.

Today, HomeRoom is generating $200k ARR, has secured partnerships with several community platforms, and is building integrations for @TribePlatform, @CollabWORK_co, and @guildxyz

As we've all observed, paid ads are no longer enough; community is your moat AND vehicle for growth.

HomeRoom has built the first Community Management SaaS to build, manage, and scale a community on ANY platform.

Our integrations and partnerships allow our customers to build communities faster, hire from a global talent pool, and access the best 3rd party tools and plugins.

Eventually, with enough communities under our belt, we can achieve our mission:

Building community-specific content moderation AI and empowering private communities to police themselves.

We're creating the infrastructure necessary to solve online content moderation for good.

Community is the word that describes my life's work.

It's how I stayed safe as a sex worker.

It's how I grew my first startup.

And in the wake of the Twitter fiasco, many will begin to realize that communities are their new home to replace the void left by social media.

I may have a long road ahead of me.

But know this:

Google's success came from making paid ads accessible to businesses.

Amazon's success came from making e-commerce accessible to businesses.

HomeRoom's success will come from making community accessible to *everyone*.

My story should not be unique.

It should not be rare for a black, queer, non-binary founder to achieve his goals and build a venture-backed startup.

But that's not the world we live in.

Sadly we live in one where only 0.43% of VC funding went to black founders last quarter.

So I hope that by sharing my story, it not only explains why HomeRoom is on the path to greatness but why it's more important than ever to invest in underrepresented founders.

Because when you spend your entire life facing problems...

All you can think of are solutions.

My Story: How an ex-sex worker and makeup artist became founder of the next Google.

The community industry is in a dangerous position.

If we don't do something now, it could end up in a similar situation as the blood testing industry after Theranos.

With companies AND investors turning their back on community.

🩹Here's how @HomeRoom_Club stops the bleeding 👇

First, we need to make something clear:

📣 An audience IS NOT a community

Social media followers are an audience; these people will come and go.

Your community is the group of people who are passionate about you and emotionally attached to your brand.

They're here to stay.

Everyone in your community is part of your audience.

❗ But not everyone in your audience is part of your community.

And here lies the first part of our problem:

"Community intelligence" startups focused on social media audiences, and customers are unhappy with the results.

Companies and investors saw the success of Hubspot and Figma, and they wanted in. So they threw tons of money at community intelligence platforms.

😞 But all these startups did was build integrations with Twitter, Instagram, and other social media apps.

Not community platforms.

The result?

Organizations spent tons of money on software that gave them numbers and dashboards with no context. And no way to measure the community's impact on the business.

Intelligence platforms faired no better; one raised over $68M and still has no public-facing product.

The industry now has a rapidly growing number of customers who are turned off to community and see it as a waste of money.

And here lies the second part of our problem:

Community platforms want large deals but can't commit the time and resources to onboard Enterprise customers.

You can make the fanciest community platform in the world!

🙅‍♂️ But no business in today's market will commit to a $100k+ contract unless they can be absolutely sure it's worth it.

They want to test the waters and see early promise before buying in.

A classic try before you buy.

But it's incredibly difficult to build software while teaching your customers how to use it.

The result?

Community platforms are struggling with Enterprise sales because they can't get these customers to commit to annual, long-term contracts.

Customers remain unconvinced.

And finally, we come to the customers themselves.

They see "community" as the hot new trend, so they hire a community manager and spin up a Discord.

When asked about scale, they say those fateful words:

"If we build it, they will come."

🤦‍♂️ Where have we heard that before?

We've spent 9 months interviewing 150+ companies and noticed a trend:

Very few companies built their communities with any strategy or defined goals. Nearly everyone says, "we want to see engagement."

🗣 Engagement is NOT a strategy!

Without context, engagement is just noise.

So, now that we know the problem, what can we do to fix it?

Well, that's what we're building @HomeRoom_Club

We've created the world's 1st CMSaaS:

Community Management Software as a Service

We focus on community platform integrations, NOT social media integrations.

🔨 Allowing you to build a brand-new community in minutes.

Just tell us the type of community you want to build, and your community is ready to go with a single click.

Numbers mean nothing without their proper context.

📊 We deliver actionable insights to measure the impact of the community on your business objectives.

Our "Community Report Cards" are custom tailored to you and your business goals, providing only the numbers that matter.

And finally, creating a community on your own is hard.

🤝HomeRoom is your full-stack community solution.

Build a strategy with our education courses, manage your community with our software, and scale your team with highly vetted talent, all under✨a single SaaS subscription.✨

Community is how I managed to stay safe as a sex worker.

Community is how I found help when I was nearly homeless.

Community is how I received my first opportunity in tech.

That's why I can say with full confidence:

🚀 Community is the future of growth

The problem with community and how HomeRoom plans to solve it.

I'm thrilled to introduce Harmony's Beta 2.0 update!

We've added a slew of new features, including:

🚀Templates: Build new servers in a single click
📊Insights: Metrics with improved readability & design
🤖Bot Library: Supercharge the power of your community

Let's dive in 👇

🚀We've made it simple to build a full-stack server in minutes.

Indicate the type of community you wish to build and select one of our suggested templates.

Within seconds you'll have a fully-built server; with channels, roles, and permissions pre-configured for you!

📊Numbers mean nothing without proper context.

We've updated all of our metrics. Now you can see not just the numbers but what they mean and their impact on the business.

You can even customize the visibility, so you can create granular reports of specific parts of the server!

🤖Extend the power of your server from our list of verified bots.

Instead of scouring the internet for shady bots that fit a specific need, you can instead rely on the expertise of HomeRoom.

We highly recommend checking out our favorites: @boto_io, @dots_hq, and @Spext_App!

Cut out the noise and bring Harmony to Discord. Sign up today to unlock the power of community-led growth 🚀

https://homeroom.club/harmony

Introducing Harmony's 2.0 Beta Update: Metrics, Server Templates, and Bot Library

A newsletter is not a community.

Newsletters are a one-way relationship and are essentially a megaphone for your voice.

While you can use them as a vehicle to build the audience who eventually joins your community, your readers are not a community amongst themselves.

The community comes from your ability to reach out to your audience and provides opportunities for that two-way relationship to form.

@lolitataub, @lennysan, and @mariogabriele are fantastic examples of how you can leverage a newsletter as a vehicle of growth for community.

All three have managed to grow a personal brand and business around the audience they initially built with their newsletter.

Their communities live on Twitter, Discord, Substack comments, etc., but in all those scenarios, they moved *beyond* just a newsletter.

THAT is community