Community Building as a Business — What Works, What Doesn't

1. Market Overview

The Numbers

Key Statistics (2025)

• Average paid community charges $48/month
• 54% of creators now use paid memberships as their primary revenue stream
• Community members generate 5.4x more revenue than non-community customers
• Every $1 invested in community returns $6.40 in value on average
• Subscriptions with community features reduce churn by 23%
• Cohort-based courses boost completion rates from 10% to 85%
• 59% of organizations now operate online communities (up from 50% in 2015)

Platform Economics

The infrastructure layer is already a big business:

Patreon

Processes over $2 billion annually; 25+ million paid memberships; $10B+ paid out to creators lifetime.

Substack

5+ million paid subscriptions; ~$450 million run-rate in gross writer revenue; 50+ publications earning $1M+ each.

Skool

$26.6M revenue (2025); 174,000+ community creators; bootstrapped, no VC. Founded by Sam Ovens, invested in by Alex Hormozi. Growing faster than Circle.

But the interesting question isn't the platform layer — it's the communities themselves. Can a community be a standalone, venture-scale (or at least lifestyle-scale) business? The answer is: sometimes, but the failure rate is brutal and the models that work are very specific.

2. The Six Business Models

Every paid community ultimately falls into one (or a blend) of these models. Each has different economics, different failure modes, and different ceilings.

The most important pattern: the higher the price, the higher the retention. A $7,000/year community has dramatically lower churn than a $10/month community, because the commitment filters for serious members and the sunk cost keeps them engaged. Cheap communities have a revolving door problem.

3. Hampton (Sam Parr) — The High-Ticket Peer Group

Founder

Sam Parr (The Hustle, My First Million podcast) & Joe Speiser

Founded

June 2022 (launched publicly March 28, 2023)

Revenue

~$8M ARR (2025)

Members

1,000+ members; average member does $23M/year in revenue

Pricing

$5,000–$10,000/year, paid annually

Requirements

Business generating $3M+ annual revenue (raised from $1M in 2025), or $3M+ in VC raised, or previous exit

Why It Works

Hampton is the most successful new community business of the 2020s. The mechanics:

1. Distribution advantage — Sam Parr had 2M+ Hustle subscribers and the My First Million podcast audience before launching. He didn't need to cold-start the community; he already had trust and attention from exactly the right demographic.
2. High bar = high value — The $3M revenue requirement means every member is a serious operator. You're paying for the room, not the content. The average member doing $23M/year means the peer group is genuinely valuable.
3. YPO for the internet generation — YPO costs $9,000–$15,000/year and requires $15M+ in revenue. Hampton is cheaper, more accessible, and designed for a younger cohort of founders who built businesses online.
4. Core groups — Members are placed in small "core groups" of 8–10 people who meet regularly. This is the real product. A Slack channel with 1,000 people is noisy; a small group of peers at your level is transformative.

Sam Parr has publicly stated he believes Hampton will become a $100M+/year business. Given the $8M ARR with only 1,000 members, the math works if they can scale to 10,000+ members while maintaining quality — which is the central challenge.

The Lesson

Charge more, accept fewer people, and make the peer group the product. Hampton's insight is that Sam Parr learned from his first community attempt (Trends.co at $299/year, which HubSpot eventually shut down) that pricing too low attracts the wrong audience and creates the wrong economics. He's said publicly: "I charged $300 a year for Trends. I should have charged $30,000 a year and sold it to companies. That was a massive mistake."

4. Small Bets (Daniel Vassallo) — Lifetime Access, One Price

Founder

Daniel Vassallo (ex-AWS engineer, indie entrepreneur)

Founded

November 2021

Revenue

$400,000+/year; sold to Gumroad in 2025 for $3.6M (~50% cash, ~50% options)

Members

4,500+ lifetime members

Pricing

$375 one-time for lifetime membership (price has varied)

Platform

Discord

The Model

Small Bets is a community for indie entrepreneurs — people building small, profitable online businesses instead of pursuing venture-scale startups. The community runs on Discord and offers 1–2 live events per week, a member directory, negotiated group discounts on courses, and peer feedback.

The lifetime pricing model is unusual. Most community operators avoid it because it front-loads revenue and creates no recurring income. Vassallo made it work by:

1. Building in public on Twitter (300K+ followers), creating a constant funnel of new buyers
2. Selling through Gumroad, leveraging Gumroad's built-in audience and discovery
3. Keeping costs near zero — Discord is free, events are hosted by members and guests
4. Stacking products — the community is one of several small bets Vassallo runs simultaneously

The $3.6M Exit

In 2025, Vassallo sold Small Bets to Gumroad for $3.6M with staged payments and options vesting over time. He committed to keep running it post-acquisition. This is notable as one of the very few community acquisitions — communities are notoriously hard to sell because the value is often inseparable from the founder's personal brand.

The Lesson

Lifetime pricing works when you have a strong personal brand and near-zero operating costs. The economics only make sense if you can continuously attract new members through organic channels (social media, content, word of mouth) without spending on acquisition. The moment you need paid marketing to fill a lifetime-access community, the math breaks.

5. Interintellect (Anna Gát) — The Salon Model

Founder

Anna Gát (Hungarian-born writer and community builder)

Model

Marketplace for intellectual salons — online and in-person events centered around ideas, hosted by members and guests

Membership Pricing

$9.99/month (Supporter plan) or $134.99/year; includes one free salon ticket/month, 30% discount on series, access to members-only events and in-person gatherings worldwide. Most individual salons are $10–$30 for non-members.

Revenue

Not publicly disclosed (small team, bootstrapped)

What Makes It Interesting

Interintellect is reinventing French salon culture for the internet age. The core idea: anyone who is "obsessed with ideas" can come to host events, build their reputation, and earn money through the platform. It's a marketplace model, not a traditional community — hosts create and price events, Interintellect provides the infrastructure and audience.

Key characteristics:

• Two-sided marketplace — hosts earn revenue from their salons; Interintellect takes a cut. This means the community generates its own content and events without the founder doing everything.
• Low barrier to entry — most events are open to the public (no membership required). The membership layer adds convenience and access, not gatekeeping.
• Cultural positioning — explicitly targets "the politically homeless" — intellectually curious people who don't fit neatly into political tribes. This niche is underserved.
• In-person expansion — increasingly hosting IRL gatherings in multiple cities worldwide, not just online Zoom salons.

The Structural Challenge

The salon model is beautiful but hard to scale into a large business. Revenue is directly proportional to event frequency and attendance. Each event has a natural capacity limit. You can't 10x revenue without 10x-ing the number of events, which requires 10x more hosts. It's more like running a venue than running a SaaS. Interintellect works as a sustainable, meaningful project — but it's unlikely to become a venture-scale business, and it doesn't seem to be trying to.

6. Pavilion (Sam Jacobs) — Professional Network at Scale

Founder

Sam Jacobs

Founded

2016 (as Revenue Collective; rebranded to Pavilion)

Revenue

Bootstrapped to $10M ARR, then raised $25M growth round in early 2021 (Elephant Ventures, GTM Fund)

Members

10,000+ paid subscribers

Target

GTM (go-to-market) leaders — sales, marketing, and revenue executives

The Growth Problem

Pavilion is a case study in what happens when a community scales too fast. The playbook:

1. Started as an exclusive, small community of revenue leaders in NYC (Revenue Collective)
2. Built genuine value through peer support, job referrals, and shared knowledge
3. Bootstrapped to $10M ARR — impressive for a community business
4. Raised $25M, which created pressure to grow faster
5. Expanded to 10,000+ members
6. Rapid expansion diluted the community's focus and exclusivity
7. Had to course-correct — Sam Jacobs publicly acknowledged the over-expansion

By end of 2025, Pavilion is launching "Pavilion Cabals" — small, curated groups of executives meeting bi-weekly for moderated discussions, with private events and 1:1 sessions with VIP investors. This is essentially retreating back toward the Hampton model: small groups, high touch, exclusivity.

The Lesson

Raising venture capital for a community business creates a fundamental tension. VCs want growth; communities want intimacy. Pavilion reached $10M ARR bootstrapped, which is exceptional. The $25M raise created pressure to scale in ways that damaged the product. The community that made Revenue Collective special at 500 members couldn't survive at 10,000 members without structural changes. Jacobs himself has said: building something great takes "time — and restraint."

7. Chief — The $1B Women's Network

Founded

2019, by Lindsay Kaplan and Carolyn Childers

Valuation

$1 billion (2022 funding round)

Members

20,000+

Pricing

$5,800/year (VP-level) to $7,900/year (C-suite). Clubhouse access became a $1,000 add-on for new members.

Estimated Revenue

Up to ~$130M/year (based on average membership fees × 20K members; actual figure not disclosed)

The Rise

Chief positioned itself as the premier network for women in senior leadership. The value proposition: a private community where women executives could be candid about the challenges specific to their positions, plus curated content, events, and physical clubhouses in major cities. At peak hype (2022), Chief had a 60,000-person waitlist and a $1B valuation.

The Cracks

• April 2023: Cut 14% of staff (43 jobs), citing the economy and need to refocus on member experience
• October 2023: Another round of layoffs (numbers not disclosed)
• March 2023: Shut down UK expansion
• 70% of memberships were employer-paid — when companies started cutting budgets in the 2022–2023 downturn, Chief's revenue was directly exposed
• Members publicly questioned whether the experience matched the price, especially after rapid growth diluted the exclusivity
• New CEO brought in to restructure

The Lesson

Employer-paid memberships are a double-edged sword. They make growth easy (the member doesn't feel the price) but create massive downside risk. When budgets get cut, your revenue disappears overnight — and the member who never paid $7,900 out of pocket isn't going to start now. Chief also demonstrates the tension between venture-backed growth targets and community quality. At 20,000 members and $1B valuation, the pressure to grow further risks destroying what made the community valuable at 2,000 members.

8. Reforge — Cohort-Based Learning Community

Founders

Brian Balfour (ex-VP Growth at HubSpot) and others

Pricing

$1,995/year (individual); $9,995/year (10-seat team Starter); $23,995/year (30-seat team Scale); custom Enterprise pricing

Revenue

Not publicly disclosed; 90% from subscriptions; 35% YoY growth reported in 2023; 15% subscriber growth in Q1 2025

Model

On-demand courses + live cohort programs + alumni Slack community + AI tools

Why It Works

Reforge is the best example of the course + community hybrid. The courses (Growth, Product Strategy, Retention, etc.) are the draw; the alumni community and peer network are the retention mechanism. Key advantages:

• Enterprise sales — team plans at $10K–$24K+ create large contracts with low churn. When a company buys Reforge for 30 people, they're unlikely to cancel.
• Expert instructors — programs taught by practitioners from top tech companies, not generic educators
• Professional development budget — positioned as a career investment that employers pay for, similar to an MBA alternative
• 2024: Partnered with Microsoft for product management training
• 2025: Acquired Monterey AI to build AI-native product tools

The Lesson

If you can sell to companies instead of individuals, do it. Reforge's team plans generate far more revenue per customer than individual memberships, and corporate buyers churn less because the purchase is institutional, not personal. The course content provides a concrete, measurable reason to buy (skill development), while the community provides the stickiness. This is a much healthier model than trying to sell "community access" alone.

9. Ness Labs (Anne-Laure Le Cunff) — The Solo Creator Community

Founder

Anne-Laure Le Cunff (neuroscientist, ex-Google)

Founded

~2019

Revenue

$352K (2024, cumulative over ~7 years); $75K ARR reached within a few months of launching paid membership in 2020

Members

2,500 paying members; 75,000+ newsletter subscribers

Pricing

$50/year for community membership

Revenue Streams

Membership, newsletter sponsorships, online courses (one course generated $30K in 30 days)

The Playbook

1. Built a large free audience through consistent, high-quality writing about mindful productivity and neuroscience
2. Grew newsletter to 75K+ subscribers over several years
3. Introduced a very affordable paid membership ($50/year) — low enough that conversion feels easy
4. 1,500 members at $50/year = $75K ARR — a solid foundation but not life-changing
5. Diversified with sponsorships and courses to reach $352K total

The Structural Limitation

Ness Labs is a great illustration of the solo creator community ceiling. At $50/year, you need 2,000 members to make $100K. Anne-Laure has 75,000 newsletter subscribers — a ~3.3% conversion rate to paid. This is actually good by industry standards, but the low price point means the revenue per subscriber is tiny. To meaningfully grow, she would need to either raise prices (risking churn) or massively grow the free audience (diminishing returns).

The 88% gross margin is excellent because costs are near zero (it's one person with a newsletter tool and a community platform). But $352K over 7 years — roughly $50K/year average — is a good side income, not a business that supports a team. This is the reality for most solo creator communities.

10. Superpath (Jimmy Daly) — The Lean Niche Community

Founder

Jimmy Daly (content marketer)

Revenue

$500K+/year run rate

Model

Free community (large Slack group) + paid Pro membership + sponsorships + writers marketplace

Revenue Split

Roughly one-third each from paid memberships, sponsorships, and marketplace

Operating Costs

~$500/month

Why It's Notable

Superpath is the leanest profitable community business I've found. Jimmy Daly runs a $500K/year business with $500/month in operating costs. The free Slack community (~thousands of content marketers) serves as the top of funnel; the paid Pro tier offers courses, office hours, and networking calls. Sponsorships from brands who want to reach content marketers provide a third of revenue without burdening members.

The three-revenue-stream model is smart:

• Memberships — recurring revenue from the most engaged members
• Sponsorships — brands pay to reach the audience (monetizes the free tier)
• Marketplace — freelance content marketers connect with hiring companies (transaction revenue)

The Lesson

A niche community doesn't need to be big to be profitable. Content marketing is a narrow niche, but it's B2B and the people in it have budgets. By keeping costs at $500/month and diversifying revenue across three streams, Daly built a sustainable, profitable business without venture capital, a large team, or a celebrity personal brand.

11. YPO & EO — The Originals

Every modern community business is, consciously or not, competing with or imitating the models that YPO and EO established decades ago.

What They Got Right (Decades Ago)

• Small peer groups ("Forums") — both YPO and EO place members in small groups of 8–12 who meet monthly. This is the core product. Hampton copied this directly.
• Strict membership criteria — revenue requirements ensure every member is a peer, not an aspirant
• Chapter-based structure — local chapters create real relationships; global network creates reach
• Confidentiality culture — "what's said in Forum stays in Forum" creates psychological safety
• Longevity — YPO has been running for 75+ years. The best proof that peer groups work is that people keep paying $10K+/year for decades.

The new wave of communities (Hampton, Pavilion, Chief) are essentially YPO/EO for specific demographics: internet founders, GTM leaders, women executives. The model is the same; the positioning is different.

12. The Failures & Cautionary Tales

On Deck — The Cautionary Tale of Over-Expansion

Founded

~2019 by Erik Torenberg (Product Hunt, Village Global)

Peak Valuation

$650M (Series B, led by Tiger Global)

Total Raised

$60M+ ($20M Series A at $250M valuation, $40M Series B at $650M)

What Happened

On Deck started as a prestigious founder fellowship (ODF) that helped aspiring founders find co-founders, validate ideas, and launch companies. It worked: ODF alumni started companies worth over $8B.

Then it raised $60M and tried to become everything: On Deck Founders, On Deck Writers, On Deck Angels, On Deck Product Managers, On Deck Climate Tech, On Deck No-Code — dozens of fellowships across every conceivable vertical.

• May 2022: Laid off 25% of staff (~72 people)
• Late 2022: Another round of layoffs (73+ full-time employees)
• August 2022: Spun out career advancement programs, sunsetted multiple communities
• Erik Torenberg stepped down as co-CEO, returned to a chairman role, and eventually joined Andreessen Horowitz as a General Partner

On Deck still operates its core Founder Fellowship as of 2025, but at a fraction of its peak ambition and staff. It went from a $650M valuation to a cautionary tale about what happens when you try to industrialize community.

The Family (France) — Fraud and Collapse

Founded

2012 in Paris by Alice Zagury, Oussama Ammar, and Nicolas Colin

What Happened

The Family was a startup accelerator and community that was a darling of the French tech scene. It never turned a profit in nine years of existence.

• 2020: Co-founder Oussama Ammar was suspected of having diverted €3 million of company funds — allegedly used to build a luxury property in Normandy
• November 2021: Ammar left the company
• March 2022: The Family sued Ammar
• August 2022: French subsidiary placed in liquidation

The Family's failure wasn't just about fraud — it was about a community/accelerator model that never found sustainable economics. The embezzlement scandal just accelerated the collapse.

Trends.co (The Hustle) — Wrong Price Point

Founded

~2019 by Sam Parr (as part of The Hustle)

Pricing

$299/year

Members at Peak

15,000+ paid subscribers

What Happened

Trends was a premium newsletter + community for entrepreneurs, bundled with The Hustle. When HubSpot acquired The Hustle, Trends came with it. HubSpot shut down Trends in 2024.

Sam Parr's own post-mortem: the price was wrong. At $299/year, you attract individuals who are price-sensitive and churn easily. At $30,000/year (selling to companies), you'd have fewer but stickier customers with real budgets. This exact lesson informed Hampton's $5,000–$10,000/year pricing.

Indie Hackers — The Acquisition Paradox

Founded

2016 by Courtland Allen

Acquired by

Stripe (April 2017)

What Happened

Stripe acquired Indie Hackers to inspire more people to start online businesses (and presumably use Stripe for payments). The community thrived for years under Stripe's umbrella, but after six years, the Allens bought Indie Hackers back from Stripe in April 2023 to run it independently again. Stripe remains an investor.

Indie Hackers is a free community (forums, podcasts, interviews), so it never monetized members directly. It survived as a strategic asset for Stripe, not as a standalone business. This is a common pattern: free communities can be very valuable, but they need a patron (Stripe, in this case) because the community itself doesn't generate revenue.

13. What Actually Works

Across all the communities studied, the successful ones share these structural characteristics:

1. High price + strict membership criteria

   The best communities (Hampton, YPO, EO) charge $5,000+/year and reject people who don't meet the bar. High prices filter for committed members. Strict criteria ensure everyone in the room is a genuine peer. This creates a virtuous cycle: the quality of the room justifies the price, which funds the operations, which attracts more quality members.

2. Small groups as the core product

   A Slack channel with 10,000 people is a noisy feed. A small group of 8–10 peers who meet regularly is transformative. Every successful high-ticket community uses some version of this — YPO's Forums, EO's Forums, Hampton's Core Groups, Pavilion's Cabals.

3. Founder has pre-existing distribution

   Sam Parr (2M+ Hustle subscribers + podcast), Daniel Vassallo (300K+ Twitter followers), Anne-Laure Le Cunff (75K newsletter subscribers). Cold-starting a community without an audience is nearly impossible. The audience is the moat.

4. Sell to companies, not individuals

   Reforge, Chief (70% employer-paid), Pavilion — when companies pay, deal sizes are larger, churn is lower (institutional inertia), and the buyer doesn't feel the price personally. The risk is budget cuts (as Chief discovered), but the upside is dramatically better unit economics.

5. Multiple revenue streams

   The healthiest communities don't rely solely on membership fees. Superpath's three-way split (memberships, sponsorships, marketplace) and Ness Labs' diversification (memberships, sponsorships, courses) create resilience. A community that depends 100% on membership revenue is fragile.

6. Keep costs radically low

   Superpath: $500K/year revenue on $500/month costs. Small Bets: near-zero costs on Discord. Ness Labs: one person with a newsletter tool. The communities that die are often the ones that raised VC and hired too fast (On Deck: 200+ employees for a community business).

14. What Kills Communities

1. Growing too fast

   The single most common cause of community death. Every member added dilutes the existing relationships. At some point, the community stops feeling like a community and starts feeling like a feed. Pavilion at 500 members was magical; Pavilion at 10,000 members needed "Cabals" to recreate the intimacy. On Deck at peak had dozens of verticals and lost its identity entirely.

2. Founder dependency

   Most communities are inseparable from their founder's personal brand. If the founder gets bored, burns out, or moves on, the community dies. Small Bets solved this by selling to Gumroad (with Vassallo staying on). Most communities don't have that option.

3. The "engagement death spiral"

   Community engagement follows a power law: a small percentage of members create most of the value. When those power users leave or disengage, the quality drops, which causes more people to disengage, which drops quality further. This is nearly impossible to reverse once it starts.

4. Venture capital misalignment

   VCs need 10x+ returns. Most communities are lifestyle businesses or modest-scale businesses ($500K–$10M revenue). Taking VC money creates pressure to grow beyond what the community model supports. On Deck ($650M valuation), Chief ($1B valuation) — both raised at valuations that demand venture-scale outcomes from a business model that may not support them.

5. Pricing too low

   A $10/month community attracts tire-kickers who churn in 2 months. The activation energy to engage is low, so engagement is low. The revenue per member is too small to fund meaningful programming. Sam Parr's Trends.co at $299/year vs. Hampton at $7,000/year is the clearest before/after in the industry.

6. No concrete value proposition beyond "community"

   "Join our community" is not a value proposition. "Get placed in a small group of 8 CEOs at your revenue stage who meet bi-weekly" is. "Access courses taught by VP-level practitioners at top tech companies" is. The communities that thrive have a tangible thing you get for your money, not just access to a Slack channel.

7. Up to 40% of churn is involuntary

   Failed credit card payments, expired cards, and billing issues account for a shocking proportion of community churn. Many communities lose members who didn't intend to leave. Proper dunning management (automated retry, card update reminders) can recover a significant portion of this.

15. Summary & Key Takeaways

The Brutal Truth

1. Most communities are not venture-scale businesses. The best community businesses (Hampton at $8M, Pavilion at $10M, Superpath at $500K) are excellent businesses, but they're not the kind of thing that returns a $100M VC fund. Chief's $1B valuation is the outlier — and it's struggling. The healthiest communities are bootstrapped or lightly funded.
2. The business model that works best is the oldest one. YPO has been running peer groups at $10K+/year for 75 years. Hampton is YPO for internet founders. The innovation isn't the model; it's the positioning and distribution.
3. Distribution is everything. You cannot cold-start a paid community. Every successful community founder had a massive existing audience (newsletter, podcast, Twitter following). The community is the monetization layer on top of distribution, not the other way around.
4. Charge more or charge nothing. The middle ground ($10–$50/month) is the worst place to be. It's too cheap to filter for serious members, too expensive to feel free, and generates too little revenue to fund real programming. Either charge $5,000+/year (and deliver peer-group-level value) or make the community free and monetize through other means.
5. The ceiling is real. A community of 500 serious members is valuable. A community of 50,000 members is a social network with all the problems of social networks. The best community operators resist the temptation to grow beyond the model's natural ceiling.