Just got a masterclass in community from two 19-yr-old college students ✨

@brandonthezhang & @aaditsh run Maker’s Mark (MM) — a cohort-based course on Twitter audience building

Here’s the secret to how they built one of the most engaged learning communities I’ve ever seen 🧵
1/ Teach fundamentals that can be applied instantly ✅

MM's feedback loop:
1️⃣ Teach skill
2️⃣ Students apply skill
3️⃣ They win

Wins can be small. Get people through this loop fast & engagement sky-rockets.

Week 1: MM taught thread writing. Students gained 100s of follows fast.
2/ Learn WITH your students 📚

Aadit & Brandon are experts with a student mindset

Even as Aadit was writing his own threads on Twitter, he'd actively post in Maker's Mark's community & share his personal learnings.

Instantly made us all comfortable "learning in public"
3/ Craft a culture around consistent feedback ✍️

Brandon regularly gave detailed, personalized feedback. Often through short @loom videos

This increased the bar for everyone:

You work harder when you know others are actually looking at the final product
4/ Tailor learning to personal goals 🏁

Brandon offered to jump on a 15 min call with everyone.

During mine, I shared my main goal: get more communities on @HeartbeatChat. He showed tactics to do this instantly

I was able to prioritize MM bc it made immediate impact for me
5/ Adjust as needed 🧭

We gave a ton of feedback during sessions:
• Longer breakout rooms
• Different AMA requests
• Different feedback formats

@brandonthezhang and @aaditsh really took them to heart & made tons of improvements on the fly
6/ End at a leaping off point 🚀

We'd learned the basics of writing threads, growing engagement, and most importantly — building genuine relationships with as many followers as possible.

In 3 weeks, I genuinely got everything I need to scale to 10k follows
That's it for now.

If you enjoyed the thread, please:

1. RT the first tweet
2. Follow me @murtazabambot for more community insights
📣 Big shout-out to @aaditsh and @brandonthezhang for being so thoughtful & intentional while building Maker's Mark.

+1 to @MavenHQ for empowering incredible course creators like these

Ready to build an audience, yourself?
Cohort 2 starts Nov 8 👇👇

maven.com/brandonaadit/m…
TL;DR
1/ Teach basics that students can apply fast
2/ Learn with your students
3/ Craft a culture around feedback
4/ Tailor learning to student goals
5/ Adjust as needed
6/ End on a leaping off point

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More from @MurtazaBambot

5 Oct
After my first thread blew up, 17 founders reached out about fundraising.

I was happy to coach all of them 😄

But, I found myself sending the same threads over & over.

SOOOO....

If you're about to start fundraising for your startup, here's what you should read 🧵
{1 of 5} Strong fundraising pitches center around market tailwinds 📈

@Julian frames this perfectly:
• 1-2 new tech/legal infrastructure changes
• a new cultural acceptance

Doing this makes your pitch bulletproof 💪

{2 of 5} Learn to raise 100% virtual

💻 Run meetings & close on zoom calls
💌 Use forwardables & blurbs
🤝 Get a lead investor in 2 weeks

@ericbahn & @HustleFundVC gave the best workshop I've ever seen on this:
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4 Oct
Every new competitor scares me.

My insecurities take over 😬
"Are we REALLY doing enough at @HeartbeatChat?"

As a founder, I'm working to process competition in a healthier way (& you can, too)! Here's how...

THREAD ↓↓
1/ Realize that every startup is rife with problems 😫

Competitors leave these problems out of Techcrunch articles, but they're still there.

You've likely solved some of these without knowing 🚀

"Every one of you is sh*tty in your own special way"
- @supalyt to YC startups
2/ Even celebrity founders fail

Look at Atrium (founded by @justinkan, prev built @Twitch)

Raised $75M —> dead in 3 yrs

At my last co, I was terrified of Triplebyte & Hired. Today, both are struggling. No shade — startups are hard.

Next: using competition constructively...
Read 9 tweets
1 Oct
1 year ago I knew nothing about communities.

But building @HeartbeatChat, signing customers, and raising our $700k pre-seed — I became an expert. FAST.

Now you can do it too 😉

Here's my curated list of resources to make you a "community" expert overnight 🧵
1/ The Community Building Crash Course by @jayclouse

People join communities for either
(A) transformation 💪
(B) support ❤️

Pick one to start. (Add the 2nd later)

Reduce time to gratification on your chosen goal to create insane community retention.

bit.ly/3B1pTFS
2/ 100 True Fans by @ljin18

Massive communities are overrated. Lower retention, harder to monetize, and members don't know each other.

🤔 Instead, what if you REALLY helped only 100 people for $84/mo each?

🤑 100 true fans —> $100,000/yr

bit.ly/3mcD3tt
Read 9 tweets
28 Sep
I failed out of Georgia Tech's coding classes.

Now I run a tech company.

Over 5 years, I taught myself to code. I found the right community & learned enough to even build my own products.

This is how I did it & how you can too 👇
I started where everyone does: CodeAcademy

I whizzed through their beginner courses — Python, JS, Ruby, and others. But I didn't learn much.

Yeah, now I knew what a print statement was, but how tf do you use them?

I needed something practical. A project.
I started the famous Ruby Tutorial from Michael Hartl.

The goal: build a Twitter-clone in a week.

The next 5 days, every waking hour was this. I was ready to be the next @jack

But I couldn't even set up my environment.

This was taking way f*cking longer than a week 😫
Read 11 tweets
17 Sep
I want to introduce myself 👋

Over the past 4 years I...
• Built a startup
• Became homeless
• Lost $2,000,000 & all our customers
• Started @HeartbeatChat
• Built a team, new product, & raised $700k in 6 mos

Here's my story 🧵
(2017) In college, I saw my friends struggle to get hired.

So built a job board with my roommate — you could 1-click apply & submit 150 tailored applications in 15 min.

It grew fast.

n.pr/3lO0glR
We reverse-engineered other job boards & figured out how to get our site links posted to the job boards for every major college in the US.

In 8 months, we jumped from 1,000 to 25,000 users

But we had no way to monetize.
Read 14 tweets

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