How the Founder of General Assembly Built a Massive Community - Hustle Con 2015

About this video

Matt Brimer, co-founder of General Assembly, shares six community-building tactics he used to transform GA from a grassroots startup hub in NYC into a global educational institution with 25,000 alumni across 14 cities. He discusses how to activate core believers, foster reciprocity, establish clear values, design memorable offline experiences, balance exclusivity with openness, and authentically live your mission.

Key takeaways

• Activate a core of true believers through one-on-one conversations, group dinners, and space tours before launch—Matt built GA’s first email list of 1,000 manually through personal interactions and pre-sold co-working memberships to fund the initial build-out.
• Practice ‘give karma, get karma’ by making well-placed introductions and offering advice without expectation of return; this builds goodwill and serendipitous support when you need it later.
• Codify your founding principles early—Matt used physical ‘search engine’ bulletin boards to encourage reciprocity and chose core values like ‘people before the machine’ and ‘own your own path’ that shaped every community decision.
• Scale intimate community through nested structures: start with tight groups (e.g., 25-person classes), layer up to city-level networks (hundreds), then to global alumni events, so members feel personal connection at every level.
• Balance curation with openness by keeping membership selective (to maintain quality) but opening all classes, workshops, and events to the public (to avoid feeling exclusionary) and appearing clubby.

Episode details: published May 13, 2015 · 5.3K views · 28:52 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

← Previous: How Tim Westergren Went From $400k in Debt to the Founder of a Public Company - Hustle Con 2015 · Next: How to Get Your Product in 10,000 Retail Stores - Hustle Con 2015 →

All My First Million videos · My First Million profile · My First Million (official site)