175: Treat Your Community Like a Product (w/ Dave Gerhardt, ExitFive)

Databox is an easy-to-use Analytics Platform for growing businesses. We make it easy to centralize and view your entire company's marketing, sales, revenue, and product data in one place, so you always know how you're performing. Learn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreDave Gerhardt built Exit Five by treating community like a product—not a side project.In this episode, he walks through how the Exit Five team runs community with the same rigor as a SaaS org: dedicated product roles, roadmaps, feedback loops, NPS, and sprint cycles. He also shares why most B2B companies shouldn’t build a community, and what to focus on instead.We also dig into how to justify the ROI of brand and community work, why direct traffic is your best brand metric, and how AI is reshaping what lean GTM teams can do.In this episode, you’ll learn:Why Exit Five runs its community like a product orgThe biggest mistakes B2B companies make when launching communitiesHow Drift’s podcast helped drive $1M in pipeline – with no attribution modelDave’s take on brand, content, and the new AI-powered marketerThe exact metrics Exit Five tracks to grow and retain members