Below is a lightly edited version of an internal resources guide I wrote during my time on the Talent team at Paradigm. When I started in 2022, Community Management was one of the most in-demand roles across the portfolio, and we wanted to provide better guidance on how to hire for this important but ambiguous position. I did research through 2022, wrapped up writing in April 2023, then published in October 2023.

Huge thanks to all the folks that provided context and insights for the piece — Alisha, Bhaumik, Nader, Brent, Deeze, Latasha, Zagabond, Luis, Oops, Stevey, Tyler, Tangle, Nadia, Matt, Ken, Justin, and many more. And, of course, thanks to Dan McCarthy and Dan Miller for editing and Paradigm for allowing me to open-source the content for the rest of the ecosystem.

Founders frequently ask us what makes for a great community manager and how to hire one – a quarter of teams in the portfolio hired for this type of role in 2022. Despite the rapid growth in the role, not much is written on the topic, and many teams struggle with where to start. Given the rise in demand and ambiguity in the role, we talked to 30 of the best community managers in crypto to gather their insights.

Why is community important in web3?

"The secret to getting people together is this: build your community with your people, not for them. Amateurs try to manage a community, but great leaders create more leaders. Nearly every challenge of building a community can be met by asking yourself, 'How do I achieve this by working with my people, not doing it for them?'" (Get Together, Preface)

The history of the internet so far could be told based on the connections and communities it has allowed humans to form. Today, web3 is a natural extension of this inclination for online community-building – except users now have the ability to invest in, shape, and govern their online communities like never before.

Many founders see their community as an extension of the project they are building. ZAGABOND (founder of Azuki) told us, “Web3 is all about community, and you have to think about the community as part of the team, as part of the brand, where the community can own part of the brand. If you think about it as an afterthought, you’re not utilizing the strengths of web3. Without community, the project will fall apart.” When users can buy into and shape a brand, cultivating a strong community becomes core to building your product and company.

Strategically, building a robust community creates legitimacy and credibility for your project which can lead to improved adoption and resiliency over time. Nader Dabit (Aave Lens) explained, “In web3, the network effects and first-to-market are much more important than in web2. Having a strong community attracts more developers, which attracts more projects, which attracts more companies … Sometimes teams don’t pick the ‘ideal solution,’ but rather the one with other top companies in that ecosystem because it seems less risky.” For established companies entering web3, seeing other reputable teams building in an ecosystem is a sign that it is a safe and attractive place to build. For instance, Polygon successfully built a strong community of developers and projects, which led to major partnerships with Starbucks, Amazon, Reddit, Stripe, Draft Kings, Walt Disney, the NFL, and others. Ryan Watt (President of Polygon Labs) commented in a Rolling Stone article, “Bear markets help bring your community into focus. The fact that the number of Web3 developers continues to grow despite the economic downturn is proof-positive of the resilience of these communities.” This flywheel takes time and effort to build, but pays off as the community and surrounding ecosystem matures.

It's clear many companies in crypto feel the role serves a critical purpose and will be a major theme going forward in how web3 companies get built.

Why hire a community manager?

“John Resig, creator of the Javascript library, jQuery, confesses ‘the very first person I brought on to the jQuery project wasn’t another developer to help contribute – it was someone to help manage our community. Because we were just getting so much feedback, so many issues coming in, and so many people using us – we needed a way to keep track of it all and ensure that people's concerns were being heard. And so being able to delegate some of that responsibility meant I could spend more time focusing on writing code.’” (Working in Public, Chapter 5)

Given the philosophical and strategic importance of building community, founders must stay attuned to it as their project scales up, and hiring a dedicated Community Manager can help solve this. Latasha (Zora) explained, “I’m constantly on the ground level, connecting with the community, hearing their feedback, understanding what they want to see from Zora, and sharing that back with the team. I’m the middle person between the team and the community … it’s hard for a CEO to be on the ground level when they’re spread across so many things.” Hiring a community manager enables founders to stay close to their community while also running the rest of their company.

Additionally, founders rely on community managers to be a bridge between the core team and the community. Bhaumik Patel has been a community leader in multiple web2 and web3 projects and sees his role as advocating for the community within the core team. “My role is to be the voice of the community, their speakerphone. They don’t have a seat at the table within the core team, so it’s my job to be that seat.”

Over time, community leaders create structure that enables others outside the core team to take on responsibilities for the project. Alisha (ENS) uses processes to empower community members. “Cultivating a community is like building a house. The core team is responsible for setting the foundation, putting up the walls, and establishing the floor plan. When people see each room, the expectations are clear, but there is still enough blank space for the community to stamp their contributions on the house and make it feel like a home."

When to hire a community manager?

Your timeline for when to bring in a professional community manager will depend on the type of project you’re building, its maturity, and your goals moving forward. Rafa (prev. Mirror) published an interesting essay on the sequence of developing digital-first organizations, which posits that your initial focus at the start of your building process (e.g. focusing initially on protocol, product, or community) informs when a team might prioritize a formal hire for community.

For example, a community-driven organization like Friends with Benefits benefited from a formal hire like Alex Zahng (Mayor of FWB) very early, whereas a product-driven organization like Sound.xyz will want to drive towards product-market fit, identify its core users, and then think about incentives and mechanism design (a protocol), before looking to build out a robust community.

Another way to think about when to hire a community manager is to decide if you want to bring them on pre- or post-product launch. If you hire before you launch, you’ll have community-building baked into your go-to-market strategy; however, you might make assumptions about the product and community and need to adjust course later. It can also be tricky to start building awareness around the project when there’s nothing for users to engage with yet. One developer relations lead told us, “Some people make the mistake of bringing in [growth] too early, and they end up marketing/hyping things too early. It’s a year away from launch, and then when people go to check out your product, there’s nothing there for them yet and you’ve burned some social capital with [users].” If you hire after launch, you’ll be able to gather more data about the community and will have a clear understanding of the needs and how to shape the role; however, it can take 3-6 months to hire and ramp a strong community leader, so you will be very hands-on for a while before you’re able to delegate to a full-time team member.

What does a good community manager do?

Not all community managers do the same thing. The sector of web3 / crypto that your company plays in should impact your thinking about what skill set your community manager needs.

In talking with 30 community managers across every sort of web3 company, we heard the following functional areas and activities called out:

The above list is exhaustive, but we recommend picking 2-3 areas where a community person can add the most value for your company and building the role around those functional areas. For example:

NFT projects might structure the role around customer support, growth marketing, and programs, with the goal of bringing in new community members and building excitement and engagement between community members. Additionally, they can play a cross-functional role with product in identifying how the community might respond to future points in the roadmap. Some examples of top CMs in this space include Deeze (Tessera), Tyler Chan (Royal), Stevey Trom (OpenSea), and Latasha (Zora).

DeFi projects might structure the role as primarily focused on marketing and business development, with the goal of attracting new users to provide liquidity and trade on the platform. In these projects, community managers might even play a partnerships-like role in seeking out connections with dApps. Some examples of top CMs here include Ken & Devin (Uniswap Foundation), Oops (Zapper), and Brent (0x Labs).

Protocols, infrastructure, or platform businesses might structure the role primarily around developer relations, customer support, and marketing, with the goal of guiding other builders on how to best utilize a tool for their needs. In these projects, the community manager is also a developer relations and support expert; they might be supplying training and documentation or host hackathons to speed up adoption. Some examples of top CMs in this space include Nader (Aave Lens), Rafa (prev. Mirror), and Alisha (ENS).

What should you look for when recruiting a community manager?

Many great community managers are internet obsessed.

Luis (Partiful) told us, “When I’m hiring or referring, I’m looking for people who are specifically knowledgeable around internet native communities … they led their Runescape clans, were in Reddit forums as mods, or were Club Penguin people.” Similarly, Deeze (Tessera) looks for people who are active in crypto already. He calls this “Proof of Work … because [before I joined Tessera] you can see all my tweets, see my engagement, building community around myself. I was doing the job for free, spending 12-16 hours per day in Discord, making friends with all the OG people.” This lived experience of online spaces ensures that a community manager will be adept at communicating online, will know how to adjust that tone across different types of communities, and also be able to avoid cringe attempts to connect with a community.

While being internet-native is necessary, it’s not sufficient. You also need to find somebody with sufficient professional skills to be effective in your organization and as an ambassador to the community. We talked with one project that hired an active and enthusiastic member of their Discord as their community manager. This person had many of the internet-obsessive markers you’d expect to find in a community manager. However, this person lacked polish and communication skills – they would frequently get into fights with other community members, and they couldn’t take on the other marketing projects that the role entailed. Ultimately, the project had to let them go and restart the search from scratch.

The ideal candidate will have some combination of internet nativity, ability to communicate and collaborate, and the functional skills outlined above.

Final thoughts

Crypto provides novel tools, mechanisms, and incentives that enable communities to do much more than previous internet communities. As a result, community managers with different and new skillsets may be required to take full advantage of the new paradigms in community-building that crypto enables. Your approach to community management – and thus the type of person you hire – will be unique to your project, but we’re also observing emerging frameworks that will professionalize this new and exciting function in a rapidly evolving industry.

APPENDIX: Additional Resources on Community Management:

Web3 Community Reading List – a reading list of community management resources aggregated by Luis Ocampo (Partiful).

Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People – a book by some of the original community team at Instagram (Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh & Kai Elmer Sotto). Broad frameworks that can be applied to web3 communities.

Building in Public – a book by Nadia Eghbal on building communities for open source software. Broad frameworks from web2 that can be applied to web3 communities.

WGMI – a community for current and emerging Community Managers. Could be a resource for information and potentially recruiting.

Community Tooling – a list of software tools Community Managers can use when designing their strategy for community management. Aggregated by 0xTangle (SushiSwap, LayerZero).

What We Can Learn from Decentralized Community Building – a deep dive on several web3 communities by Bethany Crystal (fmr. Union Square Ventures)

How to assess new community building hires for token networks – a great guide on hiring for community managers in crypto by Peter Pan (Partner @ 1kx)

*Questions or comments? Reach out on twitter @jacobkerr17 or LinkedIn *