marathon, not a sprint 🏃‍♀️

as we prep for our journey from 10,000 to 100,000 members, here’s an honest and unfiltered update on everything that’s to come over the next 2 quarters – true leap.club style 💣

for all of us at leap.club, 2022 has moved really fast. i think it's fair to say that it's been our best and toughest year yet. best because we have grown to almost 10,000 members and are now a 50 people team working hard to make leap.club a great professional network for women; and tough because the journey from 50 to 100 team members is very different from the 0-50 journey. you are still a small company that's hustling every day but suddenly you are also a big team and have to ‘grow up’. 

we have to constantly work hard to find the right balance between office v/s hybrid, growth v/s efficiency, perks v/s frugality, free v/s paid and lots more. as founders, we always try to find the right balance in everything that we do for our members, team, and the company. either all 3 win together or there is no winning. but there are times when all 3 pull us in (very) different directions. the points on the team and company are probably another blog altogether, but today let's focus on what’s most important - our members. 

(almost) 10,000 paying members – that still hasn't settled in.

just yesterday we were driving around town to convince our first member to pay us to be a part of this ‘network’. but since goalposts are ever moving in startups (and we’re quite an impatient bunch), the next milestone is already set at 100,000. to prepare for the 10k to 100k journey, we are excited and proud to share some honest, unfiltered and disruptive changes on how the leap.club network is going to work moving forward.

• the all new clubhouse – everything changes

hands down, the most popular feature on leap.club. clubhouses are micro-communities where members discuss topics, learn from each other, and make new friends. we have over 250 active micro-communities ranging from women in product, pet moms, gin & wine clubs, founders, legal beagles ++

what's breaking today- ‘too many messages’ in the current chat format is making it tough for members on multiple clubhouses to keep track; community founders don’t have enough visibility on community stats/ engagement; it’s tough to go back to conversations as multiple discussions happen at the same time on chats.

what's new - everything! 

→ members now get a clubhouse feed to see top posts from all the clubhouses they are part of. instead of chat, members can now start a thread on posts, comment, reply++ which makes it easier to track and have multiple conversations at the same time (sans the notifications). 

→ say hello to ‘bookmarks’ – go back to important conversations easily. 

→ if you are a clubhouse founder, you get a full view of what’s happening on your watch with a simple dashboard with all the engagement stats you need. 

→ to help you decide whether you want to join a clubhouse or not, you will be able to view previous posts and threads.

we can go on and on, but we will let you discover what else is new. launching next week but here’s a sneak peek 💣

• the feed - more distribution, bigger ecosystem

we have received a lot of feedback on how the feed is meant for distribution, building your brand/ presence, and interacting with a larger yet relevant ecosystem (also why members join leap). we are acting on all points and are launching a new feed which will make it easier to interact with trending posts; top members (read: cxos) will get more visibility; no moderation to ensure everyone gets a chance to address the larger network; and the ability to choose who/ what to follow → basically self curate your own feed. tldr; your feed is going to get a massive makeover!

• but wait, who’s a leap.club cxo 👀

all members start equal but some end up becoming extra special. all these extra special (read: active) members based on engagement, activity, recency, upvotes, and a few other sauces become leap.club cxos 👑 

what do cxos get? good ol’ bragging rights with a cool badge next to their name; better visibility on the feed and clubhouses to build their presence; early access to leap.club experiences; and a host of exclusive new features to help make career moves.

• industry specific champions

in the last few months, we have received countless requests from industry specific leaders, creators, and companies to become part of our ecosystem to engage with our members. we are taking the first step in this direction by inviting some industry specific champions to create more versions of themselves by sharing their experiences on the feed and clubhouses.

• rip superconnections; enter supermails - discover the best network to scope, close business deals, make career moves

building on member feedback, we are making it easy for our members to discover and connect with other members. we are primarily doing 2 things to make connections better:

1. moving away from ‘superconnections’ as some members are confused about how to use these. we’ve made this super simple —> ‘follow’ members that you wish to interact with, you can send a supermail (kinda like inmail) to other members which will either land in their primary or others inbox depending on whether they follow you back or not. simple!

use the follow + supermail feature to build your network, for business partnerships, to scope, make career moves or just new friends! 

2. you will also be able to search better + discover members based on your goals. for example, if you are looking to connect with someone at swiggy or dunzo for a business partnership, we will help you connect with the right person in a couple of clicks.

• member profiles - your personal page

every member has a profile on leap.club and we are constantly making them cooler. we recently introduced prompts to help other members get to know you better. 50%+ members have started using prompts on their profiles, and we are adding more features to make the profiles a true reflection of you.

members will now be able to share their leap.club profiles with non members and potential employers. during testing we have seen members use their leap.club profile links instead of the linkedin links » cleaner + better signalling.

• a rewarding referral program

50% of our members come via referrals - either through a member’s link or by word of mouth. we recently wrapped up a very successful referral campaign and to keep the buzz going we are stepping up our rewards game. 

members: stay glued to the app! announcement coming soon 👀

• double clicking on learning & dev

indra nooyi, faye d’souza, rashi narang, mayanti langer, roshan abbas - some of the best tutors are already at leap.club to help members upskill via the learn platform.

what we’re thinking through → offline learning workshops, certifications from top colleges and more.

• revised branding - a professional network for the top 1%.

we started as a ‘members-only professional network for women’, then moved to a ‘social-professional community’ as there was so much social activity enabled via leap.club. but now it's time to move to a sharper professional network for the top 1% - which will continue to stay women only.

we want to make it easier for new users to decide why they should join us as members. a reference to a professional network is easy to understand + immediately communicates that you can use leap.club to build your network, scope for business partnerships and career growth, learn from peers, build an audience, apply for jobs and a lot more. 

leap.club will continue to enable all the above in a curated, non-cluttered manner for members, with vetted users only. 

and last, but definitely not the least, diversity and jobs – our biggest bet yet 🚀

we have always believed that there are 3 factors that help our members live their best professional life:

» network - what we do today

» l&d - launched in july 2022, we’ll keep beefing this up

» career moves - in the making 🏃

in the last 6 months, 100+ (big and small) organisations have reached out to us to target and hire top talent from the community. with a very heavy heart, we’ve said no to them all. starting jan 2023, our members will be able to discover the best companies to work at, apply for jobs, rate and review companies based on diversity and other factors.

we will build employer side tools as well and invite them to showcase their dei efforts via company pages and interact with the top talent in india. recruiters will proactively be able to reach out to our member base for open roles. this is invite-only and we have already closed some of the top organisations in india. if you’re a company keen to know more - hi@leap.club 📧

leap.club is an investment you make in you to supercharge your social & professional life. the days are long, and the decades might be short - but we didn't come this far to only come this far. let’s keep running 🏃‍♀️

– anand, ragini and your friends at leap.club