What are examples of successful companies with thriving user communities?

I think Notion and Figma are good examples of this. I believe it is harder to thrive a community on a B2B company. Good thread to follow @johannes_pittgens

The first one that immediately pops to mind is Wikipedia. There's a great section in 'The Cold Start Problem' about them that goes into more detail. Similar to Ryan's comment below, the company frankly wouldn't exist, and arguably pump out such great content, without its user community, particularly their hard side users who spend hours a day on the platform simply for the love of sharing information, improving the product (i.e., the quality of information shared on the platform), and its community of both writers and readers. It's an incredible success story!

I think Substack may be a good example of this. They are only as successful as the top writers that they are able to bring into their community. If all of the top writers leave the platform (similar to what has happened to Medium) they would be in some serious trouble.

This might not be a relevant example, but the first company that popped into mind is WeWork. This is essential because their community was the core of their business, not tangential to it. We're looking to build some community forums at Fresco so thanks for sharing this discussion.

honestly product hunt's community is pretty good, the best digital communities I know of are built with Web 3 and are blockchain based. Absolutely insane bunch, great folks though, learn a lot from them. Bitcoin, Luna, Cardano, Solana, and Ethereum all seemingly have the most ravenous communities

If think Notion is the best example of community-led company with its subreddit with 150k people sharing and discussing about the product, creating services and content on top of it (we see every week such projects featured on PH). Also, you wouldn't think about it but more than 80% of questions asked by Salesforce customers are answered by other customers, which means you don't have to be a startup to be community-led. My vision is that community-led startups will be the future. That's why I'm building https://dupple.com, a community platform dedicated to startups and projects that are community-led :)

These are great answers :D I heard a quip a while ago that strava was the least fake of any social media platform, and the most encouraging! I still buy it. + it taps into people’s existing routines, and encourages them to keep going, rather than just becoming addictive

I think blockchain/crypto leads the way (Bitcoin, Luna, Cardano, Solana, and Ethereum) -- but I also think that Yelp, TripAdvisor and similar sites wouldn't be what they are without authentic (at least, in early days) participation. And, I'm still in awe of Wikipedia -- amazing and what a powerful outcome.

Vercel seems to be doing absolutely great. The people involved are diverse and always working with the community to create a great atmosphere.

Notion is amazing at community. I think figma also does a fantastic job within a very targeted space.

In the health/fitness world, Strava is huge, Peloton; despite the recent fall off, is still an 8 billion dollar company that's largely community driven.