Camille Ricketts

Notion's ambassador program started with just 20 people in 2019 — the 20 most vocal users they could find on Twitter. They grew it slowly, inducting ~20 new people per month to preserve community quality.

Community strategy depends on where you are: pre-PMF + enterprise → customer advisory boards. Post-PMF + enterprise → champions & consultant communities. Post-PMF + consumer → ambassadors & influencers.

Ironically, if you grow your community to 5,000 ambassadors, the conversation gets muted. People feel like they're speaking to an auditorium. Slow, organic growth creates denser, more valuable communities.

Stripe Atlas wasn't core to Stripe's product, but it built community around their core customer: founders. You don't have to build community around your product — build it around what your customers actually need.

Notion now hosts 30 in-person community events per month around the world. The Notion subreddit has 210,000 members. Vietnam's Notion Facebook group has 250,000 members — all run by community members.

One Notion creator made $35,000 in four months selling a single template. That became a common story from mid-2021 onward — and some consultants in the Notion ecosystem now employ dozens of people.