Hey guys 👋 This November, I’ll be speaking about Communities as Investable Assets at Lisbon Community Week. I’ve put together the first skeleton of the talk, but I don’t want to finish it in isolation. I want to use the collective intelligence of Community Industry to make sure I answer the questions that actually matter to you. The talk will roughly cover five areas. 1. Money is still taboo Why are we still uncomfortable talking about money, ownership and investment in the Community Industry? 2. The 5 Levels of Community Investment Mastery The industry is relatively mature around Levels 1–3. Levels 4–5 move into ownership, exits, capital, M&A, valuation and deals. 3. Community M&A is already happening I’ll look at real examples including. - Stripe → Indie Hackers, - Salesforce → The CMO Club + Slack - Higher Logic → Vanilla - Bending Spoons → Meetup - IgniteTech → Khoros 4. You don’t need to be a billionaire Community M&A is not only a Big Tech game. I’ll look at smaller transactions such as - Bevy → CMX - Semrush → Traffic Think Tank - Magical Teams → Dreamers & Dooers.

Most of you here already know the thesis, so I won’t repeat it here. I mainly wanted to show how I framed the idea publicly and used Traffic Think Tank as an example. Small plot twist: Semrush acquired TTT in 2023, and Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush in 2026 😁 So in a way, the community asset ended up becoming part of an even bigger acquisition story. If you want to see how I framed the idea, check the post on my LinkedIn. source: https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/04/adobe-completes-semrush-acquisition

First of all, hello everyone! I'm new here. Over the past few weeks, I’ve started realizing that digital communities are becoming the new type of real estate, I called it "Digital Real Estate." This market is going to be huge in my opinion, and being here right now feels like discovering Bitcoin back in 2010. :) A bit about my background: I used to run a B2B lead generation agency in the Czech Republic, helping Tech & SaaS companies scale their outbound sales and increase their MRR. Recently, a close friend of mine who is a very smart investor, reached out to me for help. He completely owns one Facebook group with over 108,000 members. From the outside, it looks like a goldmine making thousands of dollars. But as you all know, it’s not that simple. Currently, the monetization is struggling because the members don't pay a single cent to be there. He brought me on as the Growth & Strategy Manager to help him transition the community to a paid Skool group (called Yachtusiasts) for $10/month. Our immediate target is to convert just 1% of the audience (approx. 1,000 members) to validate the concept and make the community self-sustainable. Since I come from a traditional B2B SaaS background, I wanted to ask this community of experts: 1. What is the most friction-free way to move people from a free FB group to a paid Skool environment? 2. Should we focus on a low-cost value loop (like a lead magnet on a landing page) or dive straight into direct outreach with active members? 3. Have any of you successfully monetized a massive niche like golf through B2B sponsorships instead of member subscriptions? Would love to hear your insights, frameworks, or any mistakes we should avoid.

I've been deeply immersed in Community Cultivation over the last 5 years especially. My husband and I personally have a BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) company, aka the services swiss army knife. We build websites, set up call centers, manage a founder's community, produce podcasts, run ads, help with backend operations you name it. We tend to be VERY holistic with our founders/c-suite so we only take a few on at a time. Currently we are working with CoSpark.us , a member owned financial network, with David Befort (Wealth Warehouse Podcast and Skool community, David Befort Show, davidbefort.com , author, speaker, CEO etc). I run with some SaaS startups as a Fractional CMO both here in the US and also the UK (some other regions as well). You can find out more about me on rebekahwaller.com and by connecting with me on Linkedin. I am curious about this CommunityIndustry because I see the value we are building with these communities, they they are themselves assets (in addition to the business, the real estate, the software, the service.... the community itself adds a value). I am looking forward to being a part of future discussions. PS: I also work with venture capital, so if there's a project that needs funding... shoot me a DM.

Hi everyone👋🏾 I am Miriam Siale, a community & experience strategist. I design the systems, experiences, and feedback loops that turn first-time members into long-term, engaged ones. My background is in psychology, so I’m particularly interested in the behaviour behind community: why people join, what makes them stay, and what causes them to quietly drift away. I’ve worked with global remote teams, including Remote Year and Talmond, as well as Complete Farmer, a leading African agritech company. Across these experiences, I’ve worked with communities of 10,000+ members across 40+ countries, driven a 60% increase in engagement, and contributed to a €200K+ crowdfunding campaign. I am currently putting my community experience into practice with my own bakery, Loafed, where I am building a customer community and experimenting with retention, loyalty, member behaviour, and offline experiences. I am also exploring my next opportunity in community-led growth, retention, and engagement roles, particularly with teams where community is core to how the product or business grows. I am happy to be here to learn from other community professionals, share my experiences, and connect with people doing interesting work in this space. You can find me on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miriamsiale/