Inside Exit Five: How We Doubled Community Growth in Under a Year (with Matt Carnevale)

#233: Inside Exit Five | In this episode, Matt Carnevale (Head of Community at Exit Five) joins the team at Circle to break down how we’ve doubled Exit Five community membership and boosted engagement—all by treating Exit Five like a product. He shares our playbook: audience growth, engagement systems, how we use member feedback to shape what we build, and why “curate, don’t create” has been key to scaling. If you’re running (or joining) a B2B community, this is how you make it work.Matt covers:Why we think of community like a product, not just a channelHow Exit Five grew community membership over 100% in under a yearThe systems we use to drive 40% monthly active user engagementThe power of “tripwires,” onboarding, and member matchmakingHow feedback loops shape what we buildTimestamps(00:00) - – Intro to Matt (02:30) - – Exit Five’s approach to community (05:00) - – What it means to treat community like a product (09:00) - – Why audience is the foundation of community growth (12:00) - – How Exit Five builds and converts audience from LinkedIn (15:00) - – Using content tripwires to drive signups (17:00) - – Offers that work: Why we use a 7-day free trial (20:00) - – How Exit Five got started as a paid community (23:00) - – The product mindset: build, test, iterate (26:00) - – Using member feedback to drive product decisions (28:00) - – Real example: member matchmaking feature (30:00) - – Promoting new community features like product launches (33:00) - – How we drive 40% monthly active usage (35:00) - – The value of member-led events and how we do them (38:00) - – Other plays: tagging experts, matchmaking, onboarding (41:00) - – Why self-promo was hurting our community and what changed when we cut it (43:00) - – Final takeaways + advice for small communities (47:00) - – Audience Q&A: re-engagement, matchmaking, content cadence Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Brought to you by:Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, helping modern marketing teams build fully custom sites—no developer needed—that perform in AI search. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.Markup AI - A content quality platform that scans your content against brand voice, preferred terms, messaging standards, and AI-search readiness before it goes live, right inside Google Docs. Learn more at markup.ai.Optimizely - A no-code AI platform where autonomous agents execute marketing work across webpages, email, SEO, and campaigns. Learn how to deploy agents on your marketing team at Agents in the Mix. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive. Walker Sands - An integrated B2B marketing and growth services agency that helps marketing leaders turn strategy into measurable business impact through their Outcome-based Marketing model. Learn more at walkersands.com/exitfive.Knak - A no-code, campaign creation platform that lets you go from idea to on-brand email and landing pages in minutes, using AI where it actually matters. Learn more at knak.com/exitfive, or check out the MCP server by clicking this link.***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more