Community Growth 101 for AI Product
โ๐ฏ Trust Is the New Growth Hack
โA SF Tech Week salon with nothing โ no venue, no sponsors, no agenda set in stone. Just builders talking about the only thing that matters now: how to earn trust.
โEveryone is building. Almost no one is using. ๐
โThe maker-to-user ratio has flipped. Thousands of products ship every week, but attention and trust haven't grown with them. In 2026, the bottleneck isn't your product โ it's whether a community believes you.
โSo here's the experiment: an event with zero budget, zero sponsors, zero fixed speakers. If we can fill a room (or a park bench) with people who genuinely want to talk about community-led growth, that is the proof that trust beats everything else.
โ๐ฅ What we'll dig into:
โThe trust gap โ why being a great maker no longer guarantees a single user, and what actually does
โCommunity as the growth engine โ how Product Hunt ๐, GitHub โญ, Reddit ๐งต, and private builder groups work as one connected system of trust signals, not isolated channels
โThe playbook โ how each launch artifact (a trending day, a starred repo, a real thread) becomes proof the next community can build on
โReal stories โ what's working (and flopping) across 300+ product launches
โ๐ This is for you if you're:
โBuilding an AI product and planning a launch
โA maker who's shipped โ and learned what didn't work
โA growth/community operator with lessons to share
โ๐ค Want to speak? No speakers booked. If you've run launches, grown communities, or have a real story (wins or failures), sign up and take the mic. We'll figure out the format together.
โ๐ Venue: TBD. Could be a coffee shop, a park, someone's office. We'll pick a spot based on headcount. Location drops 24h before.
โHosted by EPIC Connector โ a global AI founder community that's helped 300+ products launch and earn trust across Product Hunt, GitHub, and builder communities worldwide.