Is there a magic number for community viability?

Hello Chris,

that is a very interesting question! Although it seems like asking "how long is a piece of string"? But there's merit to it.

When you have access to your competitors and comparators data, you can see the different user counts they have. That might give you an idea of how much they need to survive. I can see our competitors ranging from only a few hundred paying logos and others with 100x. And sometimes you can see that the latter doesn't come close to their competitors ARR. Size does and doesn't matter, and here is why: Unit economics play a big role in defining your "MVPopulation" because it defines how much effort (time and money) you have to invest in winning+keeping that user. That leads to one critical addition to your question. For how long do you keep a user and what is the average LTV (long term value)?

You want to run two basic scenarios:

Let's assume you acquired 1000 super loyal users (or any number) in a certain time frame i.e. 3 months. After one year you still have 1000 users. You will now look into the revenue you make minus (–) the cost for sales and other resources you spend per user to roughly get your CAC, LTV + ARR.
You come back another year later and still, nothing changed. Still the same 1000 users.
In this dream scenario, you have eliminated your CAC and simply run the operational cost against your revenue (health).

In another scenario, you also have 1000 users in three months. And after one year you still track 1000 users. One difference those is that you lost 500 users in one day through the same period and won another 500 users the next day after that. In this scenario, you have to bring your CAC back up and will be more expensive for you to run your platform/community. You will also see a reduced LTV (long term value) and a longer payback period.

As you can tell both scenarios display extremes you would want to investigate.
I hope that illustrates that various components you want to consider and test in your decisions making against. Or in other terms: How long is a piece of string over what period of time and how often does the size fluctuate. Ideally, you find the right model to keep any size stable ;)

P.S. from all product metrics out there, make sure to look into unit economics as a health indicator.

All the best,
Fay

I think you'll need at least a few core people for a community. I recently launched IndieStack.org, and there's not much going on with just myself posting hah.

My initial reaction is 'nope'.

You can create a real community (vibe) from just a handful of people, but that's not too helpful if your goal is to grow and make it sustainable.

I think very much like the 100 or 1000 true fans concept, people assume we need thousands or tens of thousands of people to become viable, but that simply isn't the case. The (hard to figure out) key is create a model that works for your community. It won't be the same for everyone.