Gina Bianchini, CEO of Mighty Networks, the secret to building lasting community in a digital age!

Okay, so we have a new episode of Legends and Leaders, and today it's great to have Gina here. Gina, you're the founder and CEO of Mighty Networks. It's, you know, you've really built up a great community and a platform to help people build their own communities and their own groups through, you know, a subscription model, but also giving them the tools necessary to really create modern-day community in a world where, you know, there are people fragmented and it's not as easy to do that. This is something that you really care about. So I'm excited to have you here and to get into your story.

Thanks for having me.

Awesome. So early on, you know, you started out, I think, as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs. And, you know, how was that impactful to kind of setting you up on a path to be an entrepreneur?

Well, actually, I would say, going all the way back, I don't remember a time and a place where, you know, even as a little kid, I wasn't an entrepreneur. You know, I had my first business when I was like, 8 or 9, and I bred mini lop rabbits. And I always had, you know, sort of when I played, I played like I had this, I crocheted because my grandmother crocheted. So I had like this little, like I turned my playhouse into a, I called it the Ye Olde Crochet Shop. Now I could only do like one crocheted string. So I had bracelets, necklaces, headbands. But I always looked at entrepreneurship as kind of a natural path. So, the reason I, as my first job out of college was, you know, in investment banking, had nothing to do with my desire to be in finance or anything like that. It had everything to do with when I was between my sophomore and junior years in college, I went to Washington, D.C., and I worked for a political action committee, and I was like standing outside the White House with a sign, and I like looked around, and I was like, I don't want to be outside. I don't want to be like— I like the sign and everything, like it was fun, but I knew I wanted to be inside. I knew I wanted to have impact, and I wanted to have a voice. And so what seemed to me at the time that would be a good way to do that was through this thing called business. And, you know, my grandparents had been entrepreneurs. They ran a nursery in Cupertino, California. Um, but everybody else in my family, they were teachers. And I never thought I'd be a teacher. I always thought I would do something that was, you know, leading something. Um, so I came back to college and I was like, well, I'm gonna go into business. And so I got an internship the next summer between my junior and senior year working for a company in Francisco that did large container and airline leasing, a very sexy field, if I say so myself. And if I don't say so myself, actually. So, I found myself working in the management information systems department, or MIS, and I didn't realize until my first day that that actually meant computers. So, I learned computers because people were very lovely and taught me things, and I like, you know, figured out a bunch of stuff around how to get a system built related to a budget upload process. So, again, it kind of requires strategy, it requires implementation and software as well. And so, I came back to school my senior year and the 2 kinds of companies at the time that recruited on campus that people wanted to work for were investment banks and management consulting firms. And I interviewed with Both. And I really liked the investment bankers. I really was like, oh, these people, some— there's something about them. And so I actually, you know, was really fortunate to get a job. It was super competitive, but I got a job working in their high technology— Goldman Sachs's high technology group in San Francisco, because it was becoming very clear— this was before the internet hit— that technology had momentum, but it was not viewed as like the sexy place to be at that point in time. So, that's how I ended up working on IPOs and doing M&A transactions for technology companies right out of undergrad. And it was just a really incredible experience because I graduated from college, it was right at the beginning of the dot-com boom and the internet even being a thing. And I just got exposed to just amazing people and amazing situations. And learned a ton in a really short period of time, and then obviously came back to entrepreneurship. So that happened in a few different steps and stages. So I worked on the IPO for a company that was one of the first digital marketing companies, and it was it was three founders out of Apple at a time when Apple. was sad before it became happy again and just the juggernaut that it is today. And I was recruited after their IPO to come work on acquisitions and equity investments and new business unit development. And it was just an incredible experience. So that was sort of one step back to entrepreneurship or one step into entrepreneurship after my rabbit breeding days. And then After that experience, which I did for 3 and a half years, I went back to business school. And in my second year of business school, at just sort of the height of the dot-com boom and just the frothiness, my CEO from that company had moved over to a venture capital firm called Sequoia Capital and called me up and was like, Gina, let's start a company. And I was like, okay, that sounds cool. That's how I became a technology entrepreneur. Started down that path and have not looked back since.

So in that path, you created a company called Ning with Marc Andreessen. How did that like originate? Why was he such an ideal co-founder there for you?

Well, so my first startup, we incubated out of Sequoia, and that's where I met Marc. So he joined the board, was an investor. We got to know each other and we're friends. And then when we sold that company, it was right at the beginning, 2002, 2003. Another very good friend of mine, Reid Hoffman, was at PayPal and starting to really understand like all of this very early social networking, user-generated content, what kind of became known as like Web 2.0. And so what was happening was like, I was friends with Mark, I was friends with Reid, they didn't know each other. And I would basically learn things from Reed and Mark Pincus and like all these guys doing some really cool, interesting stuff. And I'd go talk to Mark about it and he was intrigued and interested and was like, oh, that's really cool. Let's just, let's keep talking about this stuff. And so after, you know, Friendster happened and Reed started LinkedIn, you know, Mark and I were talking about ideas and he came to me and was like, well, let's go build a programmable platform for social applications. And let's build it for developers to be able to have all the primitives that they would need to be able to create the kind of social applications that were starting to emerge during these very early days of social networks and social applications, like video and YouTube, like social networking in Friendster, like photo sharing, like Flickr. And the list sort of went on and on. And so, We launched, that was Ning. So, we started it as a programmable platform for social applications, built an incredible technical team. And what we found is the first version didn't really work. It was just a little, like, people weren't necessarily interested in that being, you know, those primitives being the things that they would take and develop. But we had this concept in it called, you know, which was the same thing that happened with the browser and websites, which was view source, copy and paste. So, we built that into Ning. And so, what I saw, and we saw as a team, was, well, what if we took all of these individual primitives and put it together so that it's just drag and drop, and that anybody could create their own social network with whatever features that they're interested in having, and pull it together in a more fully featured social network? These were in the early days of MySpace, and Facebook was still just on college campuses at the time.

Right.

So, we did that and we launched it in February of 2007 and it just took off. So, you know, the ability to create your own social network with your choice of features, with all of your branding, with all of the things that your own members on your own website and had a layer of programmability to it as well. So, you could even develop new features for it. That launched and overnight we you know, doubled the number of Ning networks created than we had had in the prior 2 years that we had been out kind of with a more programmable platform. And then it just took off from there. So, you know, eventually we sold the company and when we, when we sold it, we had, you know, over, over 3 million Ning networks created, 300,000 active on a monthly basis, reaching nearly 100 million people around the world. And they were for every interest. It was, you know, we had We had social networks for people who were interested in cricket. We had social networks for hip-hop lifestyle. We had, you know, political candidates were using it for their campaigns. We had teachers as a really important constituency for not just how to use it in the classroom, but also how to use it with other teachers. And so That was really exciting. I think we got, you know, two things wrong. You know, it was a we thought it was an advertising business when it was a subscription company, huh? And a and a SaaS business. You know, we charged a grand total of like the only thing you could pay us was like thirty-six dollars a month. Like that was the max that you could you could pay us. And meanwhile, we had, you know, IBM had an intranet on Ning that was like. Some crazy number, tens of thousands of people. And so that was a really important lesson. The other thing that we—I wouldn't say we got it wrong, but we just—it—we didn't have a product that translated to mobile as easily as we needed it to or wanted it to. And so when I started Mighty and you know Mighty Networks today, there was a precursor to Mighty Networks. So started Mighty Networks in 2017, and really the goal was fundamentally make sure that it was mobile first, which again, saying that now in 2024, it's like funny, but really making sure that we could create these incredible network effects. So the way a Mighty Network works is it's It is designed to connect your members to each other such that the value of these relationships and connections, you know, gets more and more valuable with every new person who joins and contributes. So there's more people to meet, there's more people to learn from, there's more people to talk to, there's more people to do things with. All of that leading to, you know, what today is extraordinary engagement, especially related to people that are building, you know, whether it's community platforms or courses platforms, like a Mighty Network is different because we have this North Star of how do we get everybody, every creator, every entrepreneur, every brand, their own network effect such that You own it. You can create amazing experiences for the people who are on their same path. And this is all in pursuit of what is— oh, and by the way, Mighty Networks is a subscription company. So certainly took and applied that lesson from Ning. But my ultimate vision, my ultimate goal, like why I get up every single day and work as hard as I work, to do the things that, that we're doing is I want to live in a world where everybody is a member of not just one, but multiple, absolutely amazing communities. And that's not possible without the, the platform that is not a community platform, but is actually a network effect platform. But The problem is that when I say network effect, people's eyes glaze over. Ben, your eyes look like they're glazing over. And so, I just call it people magic. I'm like, you want to create people magic? You want software that creates people magic? Because if you create people magic, you're going to get extraordinary engagement with no work, no content, no you doing— like all this stuff where community has become this thing where it's like, unless you work really hard and grind it out, you can't have a community. I disagree with that. But fundamentally, you got to connect people to each other. So we're using AI and advanced technology to really make those connections just feel natural. And we do that really well, more people come in and create communities, create these network effects, create this people magic. And what we're finding is that, you know, we have, we have creators today that are launching, you know, generating $1 million in 14 days and doing it with 99% margins. Like, that's the power of people magic. That's, that's what's different about Mighty Networks, uh, you know, compared to anything else out there.

So you've created like a proven framework for growing community, you know, community design. What are some of the aspects of that that really help you not only like grow a community, but also maintain it and make it something that's really— that can become a revenue stream, but also provide value to those people? What are some of those fundamentals?

Yeah. So, you know, I've taught community design and the promise of community design is create a community so valuable you can charge for it and so well-designed it essentially runs itself. Over 10,000 people have taken The course, and we've done it live. You know, we did it live exclusively for the first three years, and the part though that made me, you know, unsatisfied was it's still too hard. I was like, "It's still too hard. It's still too hard. It's still too hard." So a couple weeks ago, I launched what we're calling People Magic Profit. And the point of People Magic Profit is to be the absolute essential pieces to unlock a profitable community monetized through courses, monetized through memberships, monetized through challenges, monetized through events. So that is taking community design and making it even easier and then offering it for free so that everybody can see just how easy this is. Now, partially the reason why we were able to make community design so much easier is because of the software as well and, you know, where it is today and certainly where it's going next. So what is in People Magic Profit? Well, there are 9 steps. The first 3 are about like who are— who and how do you find the most motivated members? The second 3 steps are, what are they going to do together? Like, how are you going to set it up so this thing like is dialed in and runs itself? And the final 3 are, how are you going to get somebody to pay for it and then keep paying for it? And so what I can say with great confidence is that these 9 steps deliver exactly what you're talking about. You will get the right people in, they will be the most motivated people. You will be able to set it up and like let it run itself, and you will be able to charge for it, uh, because you have created the conditions by which members are really creating a culture of finding each other, talking to each other, delivering value for each other, and that you are there to guide that. You are there to set up the scaffolding for it. And it really does come down to 9 simple things.

So there really is a formula to grow a community, and there's certain things that you can do that definitely stand out.

For sure. And it's, I think one of the fun things about it is that, you know, for a lot of people, it's, wait a second, you know, it can't be this easy. It can't, it can't be this easy. And then their second thought is, But it kind of makes sense. And so what I what I think if I just sort of zoom out and you can find it hopefully we'll have show notes Ben but you can just find it at mighty networks dot com forward slash people magic. You can also subscribe to it because we launched it as a masterclass and companion podcast. But there's this weird moment we're in. Where on one hand, everything is promised to be, you know, really easy, like make a billion dollars, you know, over a weekend, right? And then the reality is that, oh, when you really get into it, it's like, well, you're gonna have to grind it out. So there's this promise of passive income, and then it's like, reality is you got to grind it out. And so then if you think about like You know, I'm on Twitter. I see like almost every, you know, post that's served up to me on Twitter is, you know, grind it out. You know, it's like, are you posting every day on every platform 5 times a day? And like, you know, it's like if you're not working out every day and eating exactly right and like, you know, building these productivity systems in Notion, then like there's something wrong with you. And here's what I can say about these 9 steps combined with, you know, the software we've created at Mighty Networks. It works and it's only going to get easier and easier from here. But it's, it's not about building an audience. It's not about producing content and more content. And then after that, some more content. It's about how do you start with Who is somebody I want to serve? I want to bring together and provide value that comes from introducing them to each other. People who are in a transition. Those, those are the ideal member. The people, if you can serve people in a transition, they are by far the most motivated. Full stop. We see this over and over and over again. And then what do they want? Yeah. They want to have their best year ever in the context of that transition. And then you add your ideal member or that person who is in a transition who wants or needs your community the most right now, you know, the most right now with right now being in all caps. Well, that's your big purpose. And you can start pitching your community without any content at all. You just need who are you bringing together? What, what do they want to get and how are you going to deliver it? You deliver it with monthly themes, a weekly calendar, daily polls and questions. And by the way, we've used AI to automate the daily polls and questions. Finally, you've got your offer. We've got a specific launch formula and creating a magical first experience. Because Ben, the reality is that unless you have a magical first experience, it's going to be real hard to drive retention. Real hard to drive retention. So you've got to have, you've got to have software that's introducing people to each other, and you got to have software that is designed to introduce people to each other and get them value starting in their very first session. And that's what we've built at Mighty.

So, you know, there's lots of different social media platforms today. You focus on really crafting community. Why do you think that it's like, how do you think that there's, you know, kind of like, what do you think the differences are overall from like, you know, creating content, consistently posting where anybody can have access to it, to having community? Like, what kind of differentiates that? And from a content standpoint that you need to, like, what can you create that is valuable enough to monetize a community versus traditionally posting on social media platforms?

Well, it's apples and oranges. You're not producing content. You're creating the scaffolding for people to meet and build relationships with each other and for them to take action to get results and transformation in their lives. It's not about what they consume from you. Think about it. You're probably sitting there or anybody listening and it's like, oh my gosh, look, I just did 10 hours of a course and look at how valuable this is. The brutal truth is the person on the other side is like, thanks. I have to consume those 10 hours. That sounds like work to me. But here's the thing about people: conversations, talking to people, being together with other people, doing projects together, applying things together—that doesn't feel like work. It's a lot more. You have a lot more energy for it because people love people. That's— we're made for people. That is what we are here for. We love to collaborate with them. We love to debate. We love to build together. We love to explore together. This is what we do. So this idea that, you know, human nature is how do I sit around and just consume content all day long? Yeah. I think about it as we're in an awkward adolescence, and we're going to be pushing through that, especially as the software gets more and more sophisticated for making connections and sparking those conversations and building those relationships, both online and IRL. That's what's happening. So, you know, if anything, it's about— it's thinking about content through the lens of What is going to bring people together and give them something absolutely awesome to do such that they get results and transformation, such that those results and transformation lead to their best year ever?

Then Gina, just the last question that I have. You know, what do you aspire to accomplish at this point now? I mean, you've done a lot with Mighty Networks. You had a different business. You were involved in other areas. You know, what do you want to accomplish at this point over the next, let's say, 5 to 10 years, some of your short-term or long-term goals?

Well, I have one. I have one very simple goal, which is I want to live in a world where every person on the planet is a member of not one, but multiple amazing communities that help them realize their fullest potential, bring the most joy. And look, if we do our jobs right, help every person make the best friends of their lives. So I've got a fair amount of work to do, Ben, and enjoying every day working on it.

That's awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on, taking the time to do this, and I'm definitely excited to see how you connect people. I think in this world today, it's super important to be a part of a community and to be around people that are like-minded and share your ideas and your values. And I think what you're doing is helping that, you know, in the digital age and pushing it much more forward and helping people all around the world connect in ways that wasn't possible. So I look forward to seeing your success.

Certainly trying. Certainly trying. All right, Ben, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.