You launch. You post about it, email your list, talk about it on your stories every day for two weeks. Then you hit 100 members.
That’s the milestone. That’s the number you were chasing. And you drop a discussion prompt into the feed and it just sits there. Nobody shows up to the calls. A hundred people are paying you and the community feels dead.
You filled the seats before you built the room.
Here’s how to choose founding members, the first 10 people who set the tone for everyone who joins after them, plus a simple filter to run before anyone gets in.
Why Do Your First 10 Members Matter More Than Your First 100?
Your first 10 members set the culture. Every person who joins after them reads what’s already happening and acts accordingly.
I’ve watched communities with 50 members that are electric, full of people helping each other and showing up every week like it’s the best part of their Thursday. I’ve watched communities with 500 that are ghost towns, where the newest post is three weeks old and the founder is doing emotional gymnastics to get anyone to care.
The difference almost always traces back to who the founding members were, and whether anyone chose them on purpose. Design matters, and so does a solid community onboarding process. But I’ve seen a beautifully designed community die because the wrong people were in it first, and I’ve seen one with clunky tech thrive because its members were so well matched they made it work anyway.
Walk into a restaurant you’ve never been to and within 30 seconds you know whether it’s loud or candlelit, whether people are lingering or eating fast. You adjust without thinking about it. New members do the same thing. They read the depth of the conversations, the humor and generosity on display, and they act accordingly.
Your first 10 are that room. If they’re passive lurkers who joined for a deal, that’s the atmosphere every later member walks into. The people you let in early shape the experience of everyone after them. That’s a responsibility, not a reason to be exclusive for its own sake.
Can You Fill the Seats First and Fix the Culture Later?
No. Culture sets like concrete: there’s a short window where it’s workable, and after that you’re chipping at it instead of shaping it.
“Get people in and worry about engagement later” sounds reasonable, especially when a brand new community feels empty. It’s also how you end up with a hundred members and a dead feed, because the first 50 or 80 people who join before the culture is intentional decide what normal looks like. Then you’re trying to convince everyone that normal is something else entirely.
A client of mine launched with a promotion built to hit 50 members fast. She got there in two weeks and was thrilled. Six weeks later, nobody was posting, nobody was showing up, and she was the only person consistently creating content in a community she was paying to host.
A good chunk of those 50 had joined for the deal pricing, not because they were aligned with what she was building. They treated it like a subscription they’d forgotten about, and every member who joined after them assumed that’s how the community works. We had to relaunch it internally. That’s doable. It’s also much heavier than getting it right the first time.
What Happens When You Get Your Founding Cohort Right?
The energy sustains itself, the community starts to co-create, and your founding members become your best marketers without being asked.
The energy sustains itself. You post something and people respond. You ask a question and get a conversation instead of a void. That isn’t magic. It’s the result of having people in the room with a genuine reason to be there.
The community co-creates itself. Well-chosen founding members tell you what they need, suggest things, and start habits you never had to design, like a weekly thread everyone loves that nobody prompted.
Your founding members become your best marketers. Not because you asked them to. When people get real value from something, they talk about it, mention it in conversations, recommend it to colleagues. That word of mouth is worth more than any ad you’ll run, and it starts with those first 10 people.
How to Choose Founding Members Who Will Actually Show Up
Start with warm people who already trust you, then run each one through three questions.
You already know some of them. They reply to your emails, comment thoughtfully on your content, have worked with you and gotten results, and are already talking to you about the problem your community was built to solve. Start there, not with your broadcast audience. Reach out directly: “I built this with people like you in mind.”
Then run the founding 10 filter.
Do they have a problem your community solves?
Not a vague interest in the topic. An actual, active problem they’re working through right now. People with a problem are motivated to engage, because they need something and your community is where they’ll find it.
Are they at the right stage?
This is about fit, not gatekeeping. Too early, and they won’t follow the nuance of what’s being discussed. Too far ahead, and they’ll feel like they’re waiting for everyone else to catch up. Either way, it’s not a good experience.
Have they given you a signal they’ll show up?
Not that they’ll post every day. Some sign of active interest before joining: they’ve engaged with your content, replied to your emails, asked a thoughtful question. It’s not a perfect predictor. It’s a real one.
Bonus question: is this someone whose presence will add something? Curious, generous, good at asking questions. Get 10 people like that in a room and the whole room gets smarter and warmer.
How Do You Treat Founding Members Once They’re In?
Tell them they’re founding members and why that matters, then give them something to own.
Choosing them is half the job. When you reach out personally and say, “I want you to be part of what we’re starting,” they feel chosen, and feeling chosen creates a different kind of member than feeling like someone who stumbled across a launch offer. Their questions and feedback are shaping what the community becomes. That isn’t a manipulation tactic. It’s the truth, and telling them so builds a ritual around the role.
- Give them a founding member space inside your community
- Give them a badge
- Run a founding cohort call where you talk about what you’re building and ask for their input
Members who feel ownership over what they’re part of don’t leave. They refer their friends and become the reason people keep joining long after the founding period ends.
Try This Prompt
Not sure who your first 10 should be? This turns the founding 10 filter into a shortlist and a first invitation.
“I run a [type of community] for [who it serves]. Here are the people already in my world who might be founding members: [list names or short descriptions, including how each one has engaged with me so far]. Run each person through three questions: do they have an active problem my community solves, are they at the right stage for the conversations I’m planning, and have they shown any signal they’ll show up. Sort them into ‘invite now,’ ‘maybe,’ and ‘not yet,’ with one line on why for each. Then draft a short, personal invitation for the ‘invite now’ group. Give me the sorted list as a table, followed by the invitation draft.”
It sorts and drafts. You decide who gets the invitation.
You Can Always Grow Your Numbers. You Can’t Unset a Culture.
There’s a reason so many founders default to getting the numbers up, and it’s fear: fear that being selective means nobody joins, that starting small means no momentum, that a community of 10 doesn’t look like enough.
A tight, engaged community of 10 is far more powerful than a sprawling, disengaged one of 100. Those 10 tell their friends, give you testimonials, and show you what your community actually needs. They’re the proof of concept you show the next 10 people. That’s the same reasoning behind why quality beats quantity in community engagement, and if starting small is what scares you, the smallest membership you can launch is worth a listen.
Numbers feel like progress. Engaged members are progress. I’d rather you launch to 10 people and not knock it out of the park than launch to 100 and spend the next year working out why nobody shows up.
Your first 10 aren’t the start of your community. For a while, they are your community. And when you have a hundred members talking to each other and bringing their friends, it will be because those first 10 made the room worth being in.
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Listen: The Contributor Goldmine: Why Your Community Needs a System (Like, Yesterday!) with Candice Grobler. Members want to contribute and don’t know how, so this builds the system for it.
Watch: The Pre-Launch Validation Nobody Does (But Should). For the work that comes before you open the doors.
Watch: The Retention Audit: What to Look for When Members Ghost. If your feed has already gone quiet, start here.
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coCreator Society is where community builders and membership founders work through this together, with the templates, the walkthroughs, and people who are one step ahead of you. Join coCreator Society
If you would rather not do this part alone, Rachel and the team build, migrate, and run communities for founders who need it done properly the first time. Talk to the team
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