For a consumer-facing technology startup, the people who make the biggest impact on the company’s success or failure are not the founders. They’re actually not even employed by the company at all. They’re the users — a group that’s often referred to as the “community.” What these people think, feel, and say is the real pulse of how a company’s product is performing out in the real world.
For this week’s episode of Inside Jobs, I sat down with Nadia Hussain, the community director at Polyvore.
Polyvore has attracted one of the largest fashion-focused communities on the web today with some 20 million monthly unique visitors worldwide, so the company’s community management team never has a dull moment. Hussain’s job is to interact with them on a personal level, and relay their feedback to Polyvore’s engineering and product teams.
Doing this means hours of emailing, chatting, and often speaking on the phone with people all over the world who use Polyvore. So it made sense to hear Hussain say that community managers often form real friendships while doing their jobs:
“I keep love letters on my desk. I have these cards that members have sent our team, and it’s just a nice reminder every day to just think about, this is who I’m supporting, this is why I do what I do, it’s for the community.
And what’s really awesome is we have members all over the world, and I think they’ve all invited me to come stay with them. We were thinking about going to Brazil for the World Cup, and one of our members was like, ‘If you come, you’re staying with me! I have a room for you, and you can bring your friends.’ And that’s really cool. We’re developing these really awesome relationships with our community members.”
Take a step inside Nadia Hussain’s job by watching the video above.
Inside Jobs is a 12 episode miniseries from TechCrunch TV that gives an in-depth look at people in the job roles that really make the tech industry tick. Last week’s episode of Inside Jobs profiled Dan O’Leary, a solutions architect at Box.
Producing, shooting, editing, sound, and lighting for Inside Jobs is done by John Murillo. Production coordination and creative direction is done by Felicia Williams. Original logo design by Bryce Durbin. Motion graphics and graphic design by Eden Soto.