Substance. The Precursor to Community.

Most companies launch member platforms and craft engagement strategies before they know what's worth gathering around.

The common question: "How do we build community?"

Better question: "What would make them care that you did?"

The companies that succeed with community aren't building community at all. They're solving practical problems. Community becomes the byproduct of the right conditions that steward members toward an outcome worth contributing to.

The Pattern that Actually Works:

Figma didn't build a designer community. They gave designers meaningful input into product development and better collaboration tools. The network emerged from that substance.

Open source projects don't succeed because someone built a platform. Developers need shared infrastructure. Community forms around solving actual technical problems together.

Professional associations that work don't start with networking events. They start with what members can uniquely contribute together: navigating competitive challenges, advancing the field, creating shared standards that none could create alone.

Substance → validation → network → commercial value.

Skip straight to "community," and the sequence collapses.

What This Means Operationally

Before you build a member platform or engagement plan, answer this:

What can this group accomplish together that none could accomplish separately? What problems are they uniquely positioned to solve as a collective? What would make someone choose to invest their expertise here instead of the dozen other places competing for their attention?

If you can't answer those questions with specificity, you're not ready to build community. But if you do, you’re on your way to performance theater. It’ll be about six months when participation flatlines. Twelve months until it's a ghost town.

Communities are living systems. Effective community strategy hears and responds to genuine needs, not manufactured engagement tactics or busy content calendars.

Before you build your next member platform, ask yourself: what's the substance they'd be gathering around? If you're wrestling with this question for your organization, let's talk about what comes first.

Abraham is a community strategist and founder of Heard.Social. Over 11+ years, he's built and advised organizations from zero to 600+ members and now works with executive networks, VC-backed founder communities, and professional associations with thousands of members. His Mosaic Method™ helps organizations design community systems that respond to what members actually need—not what they assume members want.