Community-Led Growth at Pre-Launch for AI-Native Product

dais entered the market at peak AI hype, crowded with open source projects and flashy demos. As an enterprise-grade product that couldn’t go viral through consumer-style adoption, dais faced critical challenges:

• Earning trust signals in a skeptical, noisy market without a live product
• Creating a community to validate positioning and generate feedback loops for adoption
• Avoiding costly, low-credibility awareness campaigns that would burn cash without traction

Architected a multi-layer community framework that built credibility and informed product strategy.

• Activated SMEs, vertical leaders, and peer networks across finance, healthcare, and energy
• Curated meetups in San Francisco and virtually, creating early momentum around real use cases
• Designed a practitioner-led “template marketplace” concept to share workflows and architectures
• Personally drove outreach via LinkedIn and introductions, documenting insights into a central loop
• Shared thought leadership openly, positioning dais as an enterprise-first player before launch

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Community-led growth turned early engagement into tangible adoption readiness.

• Built a database of 100+ thought partners across verticals
• Established a design partner backlog for structured feedback at launch
• Generated a groundswell of credibility, placing dais visibly in enterprise AI adoption discussions
• Informed product positioning and GTM strategy with direct input from practitioners

The community is set to become both a research engine and a GTM accelerant.

• Every conversation, meetup, and shared workflow refined product direction
• By launch, dais had networks of engaged users ready to act as validators and early customers
• Demonstrated credibility in a noisy market, proving dais could stand apart from consumer/open-source hype

• 100+ thought partner relationships pre-launch
• Design partner backlog established
• Community insights directly influenced GTM positioning and product architecture

• Community Demo Walk-thru on Loom (P.S. Don't judge me this was a Saturday when I filmed and was creating a quick video to share my progress)