Latest / Solopreneur Sessions with Fexingo: One-Person Businesses, Freelancing, and Independent Work / How a Solopreneur Built a Community Before a Product
Transcript
- Lucas: You know the standard advice for a solopreneur launching a product — build a minimum viable product, get it in front of people fast, iterate. That whole Lean Startup playbook. Luna: Right, ship early, ship often. Test the market before you over-invest. Lucas: But there is an alternative approach that I think is more interesting, especially if you don't have a big audience or a paid ad budget. It's what I'd call community-first launch. You build the audience before you build the product. Luna: Isn't that what a waitlist does though? We covered that in episode nine, the waitlist strategy. Lucas: Similar in spirit, but different in execution. A waitlist is passive — you collect emails, maybe send a few updates, then hit launch. Community-first is active. You create a space where your target customers are talking to each other, solving problems, building trust with you as the host. By the time your product exists, you already have a relationship. Luna: So you flip the order. Instead of product then audience, it's audience then product. That sounds like it takes more time upfront. Lucas: It does. But for a solopreneur with limited resources, it can actually de-risk the whole process. Let me give you a concrete example. There is a solopreneur I've been following — let's call her Sarah. She was a freelance brand strategist. She wanted to launch a software tool for freelancers to manage client feedback. But instead of building the tool first, she started a Slack group for freelance brand strategists. Luna: Just a Slack group. No product, no beta, nothing to sell. Lucas: Exactly. She spent about six months growing that group to around 300 members. She didn't use ads. She just posted in a few freelance Facebook groups, mentioned the Slack community in comments, and invited people one-on-one from LinkedIn. Her one rule: the group had to be genuinely useful. Every week she posted a prompt — 'What's your biggest client feedback headache this week?' — and she'd answer questions herself. Luna: So she's giving away her expertise for free. Building trust and authority. Lucas: Right. After about six months, she had a very engaged group. People were sharing templates, venting about clients, even collaborating on projects. At that point, she started a conversation in the group: 'Hey, I'm thinking about building a tool to make this feedback process easier. Would anyone use it?' The response was overwhelming. 80 percent of the members said yes, and many offered to beta test. Luna: So she essentially did market validation without building anything. She knew people wanted it before she wrote a line of code. Lucas: Exactly. And when she finally launched her product — a simple web app for collecting and organizing client feedback — she announced it in the Slack group first. Within two weeks, 120 of those 300 members had signed up as paying customers. That's a 40 percent conversion rate from community to paid users. Her first quarter revenue was about $120,000. Luna: Forty percent is insane. Most email lists convert at like 2 to 5 percent on a product launch. Lucas: That's the power of community. These people weren't just names on a list. They had spent six months interacting with Sarah, seeing her expertise, and building trust. When she said 'I built this for us,' they were ready to buy. They felt like insiders. Luna: What's interesting is that she didn't just get customers. She got feedback during development too. The community probably shaped the product. Lucas: Huge. She actually built features based on specific conversations in the Slack. There was a thread about how annoying it was to get feedback via email chains, and that directly led to her core feature: a simple link that clients can click to record voice feedback. She never would have thought of that if she had built in isolation. Luna: So the community becomes both the market and the R&D department. Lucas: Exactly. And now she has a group of super-users who are also her biggest advocates. They share the tool with their own networks because they feel ownership. It's a virtuous cycle. Luna: I want to get into the practical side though. Six months of building a Slack group sounds like a huge time commitment. What if you're working full-time or have client work? How do you sustain that without burning out? Lucas: That's the number one objection I hear. But Sarah's approach was sustainable because she didn't try to be everywhere. She focused on one platform — Slack — and one format: weekly prompts and light moderation. She spent maybe 30 minutes a day on it. Post a question in the morning, check in during lunch, answer a few messages in the evening. It's not like running a 24-7 customer support line. Luna: So consistency over volume. One meaningful interaction per day beats sporadic deep dives. Lucas: Exactly. She also made it clear that the community was member-driven. She encouraged people to post their own questions and offer help. She wasn't the sole source of value; she was the host who set the tone. After a couple of months, the group started generating its own conversations. Her job became more about weeding out spam and occasionally chiming in. Luna: That's smart. If you're the only person answering questions, you become a bottleneck. But if you foster a culture of peer support, the community runs itself. Lucas: Right. And that's actually a great lead-in to something I've been thinking about. A lot of the content we create here — these episodes, the show notes, the resources — they're built on the same principle. We're trying to build a community of people who are interested in these ideas. And it's why things like listener support matter so much. If you've gotten value from these conversations, a couple of dollars a month at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo genuinely keeps this ad-free and independent. It's a small way to say this matters to you, and it makes a real difference to us. Luna: Yeah, it's exactly that community mindset. When people chip in, even a little, it reinforces that we're all in this together. And it means we can keep digging into stories like Sarah's without worrying about sponsors. Lucas: Anyway, back to Sarah's story. Once the community was humming, she started thinking about the actual product build. She's not a developer, so she used a no-code tool — Bubble — to build the first version. It took her about three months of evenings and weekends. Luna: So total time from community start to product launch was about nine months. That's longer than a typical MVP cycle, but the launch itself was much less risky. Lucas: Way less risky. And her churn in the first year was under 5 percent. Compare that to a typical SaaS product that loses 30 to 50 percent of customers in the first three months. The community had pre-sold the value, so people came in with the right expectations. Luna: What about people who aren't natural community builders? Some solopreneurs are introverts or just don't enjoy managing a group. Is this approach still viable? Lucas: I think you can adapt it. You don't have to use Slack. You could start a public Notion page with resources and invite people to contribute, or a simple email newsletter where you ask for replies and feature reader questions. The core principle is the same: create a two-way channel before you have something to sell. The medium matters less than the relationship. Luna: So it's about shifting from broadcast to conversation. Instead of saying 'here's my product, buy it,' you say 'here's a space I'm creating, join me, and later I'll have something that helps us all.' Lucas: Exactly. And I think the key insight is that this approach works especially well for solopreneurs because you can't outspend bigger competitors on ads or brand recognition. But you can out-connect them. A community of 300 dedicated people is worth more than 10,000 random visitors. Luna: I want to talk about the financials. Sarah spent six months building the community with zero revenue. How did she fund that? Did she have savings? Client work on the side? Lucas: She was still doing freelance brand strategy during that period. So the community was a side project. She'd spend 30 minutes a day on it, and then in the evenings she'd do client work. It wasn't until the product started generating revenue that she transitioned full-time. That's actually another lesson: you can build a community while earning a living. You don't need to quit your job. Luna: That makes it more accessible. The biggest barrier solopreneurs face is time, not money. If you can invest 30 minutes a day for six months, you can replicate this. Lucas: And you don't need 300 members. Sarah's case is impressive, but I've seen people launch successfully with 100 engaged members. The key is engagement, not size. If you have 100 people who are actively participating, that's a solid base. Even 50 could work if they're the right people. Luna: What about the risk that you build a community and then the product flops? You've invested all that time and now you have a group of people who were expecting something. Lucas: That's a real concern. But if you're engaging with the community honestly from the beginning, you can test the idea before you build. Sarah didn't announce 'I'm building this' until she had strong signals. She started with a simple poll: 'What tools do you use for feedback?' Then she followed up with 'If I built something that did X, would you use it?' By the time she committed, she had data. If the response had been lukewarm, she could have pivoted or just stayed a community leader. Luna: So the community itself becomes the validation engine. You don't have to guess what people want; you can ask them and watch their behavior. Lucas: Exactly. And if the community is genuinely useful, it has value even without a product. Some people build communities that never lead to a product, but they monetize through sponsorships or premium memberships. That's a viable business in itself. But for solopreneurs who want to launch a product, community-first is a powerful de-risking strategy. Luna: I think the takeaway for our listeners is this: before you spend months building something, consider spending a few weeks or months building a group of people who care about the problem you're solving. It might feel slower, but the launch will be faster and more successful. Lucas: And if you're already a freelancer or consultant, you probably have a network you can start with. Invite your past clients, your LinkedIn connections, people from online groups you're already in. You might be closer to a community than you think. Luna: What's the first step someone should take tomorrow if they want to try this approach? Lucas: Pick a platform — Slack, Discord, a Circle community, even a WhatsApp group — and invite 10 people who you know face the problem you want to solve. Don't pitch anything. Just start a conversation. Ask them what their biggest challenge is this week. Listen. And then do it again next week. By the time you have 50 people, you'll know whether there's a product to build. Luna: Simple, actionable, and low risk. I like it. Thanks Lucas. Lucas: Thanks Luna. And to our listeners, if you try this approach, let us know how it goes. We'd love to hear your stories.