Jess Lee knows how to build a community of delighted users at Hustle Con

About this video

Jess Lee, CEO and co-founder of Polyvore, shares community growth strategies centered on cultivating delighted users rather than traditional growth hacking tactics. She outlines three principles—Live, Learn, and Love—that encompass building community values internally, actively listening to and incorporating user feedback, and demonstrating genuine appreciation for members. Lee illustrates how this approach led Polyvore to 20 million monthly users and drove organic word-of-mouth growth, fundraising, and organic social media amplification.

Key takeaways

• Community growth starts internally: embed user appreciation into company culture, core values, and hiring (Jess notes Polyvore hired a community manager as the sixth employee), and ensure all team members genuinely care about users to avoid tone-deaf external communication
• Learn from community feedback early and often through beta testing, prototyping, and soliciting input, then transparently communicate why changes were made and how user feedback influenced product decisions to overcome change aversion
• Show genuine appreciation through spotlighting top members, handwritten thank-you notes, personalized gifts, and helping users achieve career aspirations—small gestures of care drive disproportionate loyalty and organic advocacy

Episode details: published February 3, 2015 · 7.9K views · 21:29 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.

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