---
aliases: ["Launch Refactoring Community"]
Is A: Project
Belongs to: "[[25q3]]"
Advances: "[[responsibility-grow-newsletter]]"
Status: Open
Owner: "[[person-luca-rossi]]"
---
# Launch Refactoring Community

## Overview

This project is building a private Discord community for Refactoring's most engaged readers — a space where engineering leaders, indie hackers, and technical founders can connect, share challenges, and learn from each other beyond the one-way format of the newsletter and podcast. The community concept was validated during the [[25q2-team-retreat]] strategy session and represents the most significant new product surface since the podcast launch.

The approach is a soft launch with a small, curated initial cohort rather than opening the doors to all subscribers at once. The [[25q3-discord-community-soft]] experiment is testing engagement patterns, channel structure, and moderation needs with approximately 150 founding members before a broader rollout. The community is free for now, with potential for a paid tier once the value proposition is validated. This is a fundamentally different approach from the failed [[24q3-premium-tier]] — the focus is on community value, not content gating.

## Goals

- Set up the Discord server with initial channel structure (introductions, weekly discussions, resource sharing, career advice, project showcases)
- Recruit 150 founding members from the most engaged newsletter subscribers (based on open rate, click-through, and referral data)
- Establish community guidelines, moderation policies, and a code of conduct
- Host 2 live events during the soft launch period (AMA sessions with podcast guests)
- Achieve a weekly active member rate of at least 40% during the soft launch

## Key decisions

- **Discord, not Circle or Slack.** Evaluated all three platforms. Discord offers the best combination of real-time and async communication, has robust moderation tools, and most of the target audience already has accounts. Circle has a cleaner UX but lacks real-time chat. Slack is too work-associated — people do not want another Slack workspace.
- **Soft launch with curated cohort, not open launch.** The lesson from [[24q3-premium-tier]] was that launching to everyone at once creates a spike-and-fade pattern. A soft launch with hand-selected engaged members builds genuine activity and social proof before scaling. The founding members become community champions.
- **Free entry, no paywall yet.** The community needs to prove its value before asking members to pay. Charging too early kills participation momentum. Will evaluate a paid tier once weekly active member rate stabilizes above 40% and there is clear demand for premium features (private channels, exclusive events).

## Notes

- The soft launch began in late July with 150 invitations sent to subscribers identified through engagement scoring. Acceptance rate was 72% (108 active members), which is strong for a community invitation.
- Early engagement is promising but uneven. The "weekly discussion" channel (a prompted discussion thread posted every Monday) generates the most activity. Organic conversation in open channels is still sparse — this is the typical early-community challenge.
- The two AMA sessions (with guests from [[25q2-podcast-season-3]]) were well-attended (~60 members each) and generated follow-up discussions that lasted several days. Live events appear to be the strongest engagement driver.
- [[person-paco-furiani]] is handling day-to-day community moderation. His operational experience and even temperament make him well-suited for this role. The time commitment is currently about 3 hours/week.
- The biggest risk is that the community becomes another content channel (one-to-many) rather than a genuine peer space (many-to-many). Actively encouraging member-initiated discussions and resisting the urge to "fill the silence" with content is important.
- This project feeds into the broader question of whether the community becomes a revenue stream or remains a free engagement tool. Will evaluate after the soft launch period ends in [[25q4]].
