Communities

A community is the greatest asset a company can have. Communities consist of people who are genuinely excited about what you’re building—so much so that they tell others about it, creating a contagious effect. The most successful tech companies today share one thing in common: they all have a strong community.

You don’t need to be open source to build a community. In fact, communities can form around a database hosting service or a subscriptions SDK. The key is to find something that brings people together. Whether it’s contributing to a shared cause, being part of a movement of indie developers, or simply rallying around a tool that directly impacts their bottom line, like the SDK they use, communities thrive on shared passion and purpose.

Few marketing books emphasize communities as a marketing tool, but let me tell you this: it’s the most powerful marketing tool you can have. Recognizing this requires courage—especially when the easier route is to spend money plastering your company’s logo on newsletters or conference banners. The moment you stop spending on those efforts, the marketing impact disappears. While paid promotions might increase brand awareness, it’s nowhere near as impactful as having a community that’s genuinely excited about what you’re doing and talking about it organically.

Paying people to talk about you isn’t effective marketing. It’s marketing from a position of privilege, where money is used to try to buy influence. A far better approach, inspired by the constraints of limited capital, is to invest your human capital into building a community of people who are genuinely excited about what you’re creating. It’s about being human, fostering connections, and creating something people truly care about.

At Tuist, we’re constantly exploring ways to grow and nurture our community because we firmly believe it will be the key to building a lasting product that stands the test of time. Open source contributions are one of the pillars of our community, but we don’t want that to be the only one. We’re considering developer experience (DX) excellence as another pillar, much like Linear has done with their focus on UI and UX craftsmanship. This is why we’re investing in a design system. Additionally, we’re committed to supporting the Swift ecosystem by contributing to shared resources and initiatives—like our “Swift Stories” newsletter—without expecting anything in return.

Many people may not know about us yet, but that’s a feature, not a bug. We believe building a strong community takes time, and we’re convinced that taking shortcuts would only harm the health and authenticity of the community we’re striving to create.