Using Community to Scale Your Business Growth
Thu Sep 18, 17:30 - Thu Sep 18, 19:00
Innovation City
ABOUT
Using Community to Scale Your Business Growth
Date: Thursday, 18 September 2025
Time: 17h00 - 19h30
Venue: Innovation City Cape Town
While startups burn millions on customer acquisition, the smartest founders build communities that acquire and engage customers for them.
Mark Birch, who scaled communities at Amazon Web Services and Stack Overflow, reveals the approach he wrote about in his book Community-in-a-Box. Going beyond theory, Mark shares the steps for turning community into your most reliable growth channel for predictable customer acquisition, organic referrals, and defensible competitive advantage.
Get the Community Flywheel framework and 11-step launch process, learn from real failures, and discover the metrics that matter to ensure a successful and sustainable community that delivers business results.
Who it’s for
- Founders and startup teams
- Community managers and builders
- Growth marketers and customer acquisition leads
- Anyone looking to grow without massive ad spend
What to expect
- Insights from Mark Birch, ex-AWS and Stack Overflow community leader
- The Community-in-a-Box framework explained
- Community Flywheel model for predictable growth
- 11-step launch process for building from scratch
- Lessons from real-world failures and successes
- Key metrics to track for sustainable results
SPEAKER
Mark Birch is a community builder, startup advisor, and author of Community-in-a-Box, a practical guide to building professional communities that drive real business results. He is the founder of TribeROI, an AI platform that measures community health and impact, and previously served as Global Startup Advocate at Amazon Web Services, where he worked with founders and created programs to support startup growth across Asia-Pacific. Mark also helped scale Stack Overflow’s enterprise business in the region and founded the Enterprise Sales Forum, a global network of over 25,000 B2B sales professionals. With a background spanning engineering, sales, and business development at companies like Oracle and Siebel, Mark brings a wealth of hands-on experience in using community as a competitive growth engine.
PARKING
Location: We're just off Kloof Street on Darter Road.
Traffic Alert: Please be cautious of traffic heading into town.
Parking: Paid parking is available at Kloof Lifestyle Center
Recommended: It's always best to use Uber for convenience.
INNOVATION CITY MEMBERS
NOTE: Innovation City members can get free access to all IC weekly events. (You will find the discount code on the IC app.)
EVENT ATTENDANCE
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VIDEO
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