Communities are the next wave of attention

In February 2024 my friend Mark and I went for our first cold plunge at Crissy field on a dark, stormy night.

Being new to SF, we found awesome communities for fitness like Marina Run Club, but wanted a community dedicated to recovery + wellness.

We posted this tweet and soon had 80+ people interested in joining Marina Plunge Club. Now almost a year in, we're over 500 members and almost 50 plunges.

Soon, we had well-funded companies like Pie and Sweatpals reaching out to sponsor our events.

This confirmed a trend I already saw dominating marketing: communities are the next wave of attention.

Communities are the next wave of attention.

You'll find the most alpha in exclusive communities — IRL clubs + meetups, Discord, Reddit, Whats App.

And there will be 100x more groups like this in the next few years because communities have a natural flywheel with creators.

Creators aggregate like-minded people and capture that traffic in their own exclusive groups (now seeing Whop, Skool, etc.)

More creators = more communities.

And the reverse is also starting to happen — top communities are becoming brands + building audiences of their own.

The Community Economy will be like the Creator Economy.

Just like Tiktok has a creator fund, there already are community funds that pay out the top communities for being on their platforms.

So if you want to be the most powerful marketer in the world, become a content creator + community leader.