Bailey Richardson
“
If you want to know who you're going to be in five years. Look at the people you're spending time with now. Those people really matter, they can really affect you”
Co-Founder of People & Co
If you have watched the Social Dilemma with your jaw on the floor learning all about the addictive nature of the apps we use you will have seen Bailey in the film based on her time spent with Instagram. The fact that apps are using ever more intrusive ways to get us to engage seems frightening. What it does show is that now more than ever we all seem to crave the feeling of belonging, the feeling of being part of something, but for many people those opportunities have never been more limiting. We are always looking at our phones, we’re not conversing with people the way we could, we’re focused on our own life way more than engaging with others. That sense of belonging though is what many companies are striving to create every single day. Whether it's your favorite brand regramming you in your new outfit, your frequent flyer card, or the shoes you wear that signify your sport, it’s a constant challenge for brands and one that despite the algorithms and machine learning, building organic community is something that brands find as that secret ingredient they are striving for. Bailey and her company People & Co, wrote a book on the subject and even have a podcast, giving the information away for free on a daily basis. I mean, if anyone was to know about building a community it would be Bailey, after all, she was employee number 8 at Instagram.
Jon Weaver: So what prompted you to write a book focused on community?
Bailey Richardson: It actually happened after we started our business. I did not grow up in a house of books so the publishing world feels a totally foreign culture to me. I never thought I would write a book; it wasn't really on the horizon for me. Even now, I think I feel some amount of disbelief that we published it. We wrote it because we had to establish a shared language with anyone we talked to about community building because it tends to just float around without any routing so we built out the 9 steps that go into it.
Is it counterintuitive to basically give away the ingredients to your business?
It could be, but I think I am recklessly open for better and for worse.
You also have a podcast on community building, how long have you had that?
I guess, a year and a half or so, It started as a connection to the book. We figured we would just make the entire story of most of the groups that are in our book available to listeners. So if you love the Cloud Appreciation Society, or you really want to know more about creative mornings, or whatever, you can.
Your partners in the business, did they both work at Instagram with you?
Yeah, one did and one did not. Kai was an early member of the Facebook team and opened their office in Canada and then when Instagram launched ads internationally he led. We were both into surfing and he was adamant I should go to Bali.
Is this when you quit Instagram?
Yeah, I quit. And I just put my life in a backpack and got rid of my house and I traveled for eight months to a year and spent a significant amount of that time, in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
We hung out a lot and surfed a bunch and had great conversations until one day we decided there needs to be more rigor on community building. Everybody's talking about it but people talked in abstractions, never in specifics, and so we thought, ‘can we get clear on this?'" So he and I really wanted to start the company together and Kevin, my other business partner, weirdly had just quit creative mornings and also traveled around the world and we all just started from there.
So what did you do at Instagram and when did you join?
I joined in February of 2012, which was a month or two before Facebook bought them. So it was a weird time to join a company, but Instagram was three or four people for the first year and then they did a hiring push and a number of us were brought on two or three months before Facebook.
And you were employee number eight?
I think so. They had one of the most successful launches in the history of any product in Silicon Valley. It took off on basically day one when it launched October of 2010
I remember, as all of a sudden the Olympic athletes had it at Nike.
That's right. That was the first Olympics that Instagram existed for and when I ran the suggested user list. I was on the community team and we were the conduit between people building Instagram and people using Instagram. So that meant for both directions we did all the communication from Instagram out to people.
How do you think social media has changed over that time for the end user, are we in a better or worse place?
Right in this exact moment (July 2020) I feel social media is doing better, but if you'd asked me, a year ago I would have said a worse place. I think the apps that have been popular and dominant have been dominant for too long. Yeah. They are full-on businesses with major trust and safety issues, and you know the ad economy is driving them because Facebook owns all these different apps and products and companies. The business model is sort of designed around addiction, which is a huge issue and needs to be solved and talked about. And that I think is dangerous, so that’s where it's bad now.
How do you keep learning in this space, because obviously working in the tech industry is very fast moving?
Yeah, I think the way that I learn is through conversations with people. It allows me to ask people questions who have a great sense for finding interesting things in the world. I find talking to those people helps me really learn, but I think you can add structure to that to make it more consistent, or more diverse than just dinners with your friends.
Another thing that I'm doing is article clubs with friends. So some of my favorite smart people get together, someone picks an article or a podcast, something that takes less than an hour. We all read it and then we all talk about it. The biggest thing to do with learning is just having a project, having a system, having a structure.
What would you tell your teenage self?
I think the biggest thing would be that there's some kind of stigma around creating a community intentionally for yourself and to just get over that. In the past, the way we grew up is we lived in a town or we lived in a city and you should have friends through just going to school or playing sports. If you don't have a community, maybe it signals something shameful about you, but it shouldn’t, the modern world isn't like that anymore. People don’t move their bodies as they used to. They work differently, companies are not as consistent and many meeting moments have disappeared. We shouldn’t just lean back and expect to receive a community, we should be able to go seek or go create a community. You can't expect it to just land in your lap once you get out of a college or high school structure.
If you can build a community it's really special. It's very soothing. If you want to know who you're going to be in five years. Look at the people you're spending time with now. Those people really matter, they can really affect you.
And your top ideas for building community?
1. Spark the flame, 2. Stoke the fire 3. Pass the torch. Communities feel magic, but they don’t come together by magic. That’s why we have to be comfortable being the person creating the community you want to see.
Thank you so much for your time.
Go check out her book here I just finished reading it and its amazing!