There’s a particular kind of work that comes with inheriting a long-running community.
Community-building superstar Max Pete is currently at Sprout Social. In this conversation, we focused on his time at Square, where he stepped into a community that had been active since 2016.
By the time he arrived, the community already had structure, history, and habits. Engagement had settled into familiar patterns. Member behavior reflected a post-pandemic normalization. Nothing dramatic was happening. But nothing felt particularly sharp either.
That’s where his work began.
When a B2B community finds its equilibrium
As communities mature, they develop gravity. Programs continue because they’ve always been there. Rituals stick around because they once worked well. Engagement levels flatten into something predictable.
Max approached the situation with a quieter kind of rigor.
He revisited onboarding to understand how new members were entering the system. He evaluated gamification to see whether incentives still matched behavior. He looked at which programs were actively supporting members and which were simply consuming time.
Square’s members are business owners. Their time is constrained. Their reasons for participating are practical. That reality shapes the design decisions.
The team refined structure instead of expanding it. They created clearer spaces for asynchronous participation. They made it easier to find event recordings. They carved out room for business conversations that extend beyond product troubleshooting.
When a community reaches this stage, the question shifts toward integration. How does this space reduce friction for customers. How does it reinforce product understanding. How does it contribute to retention and expansion patterns.
Those are operational questions. They pull community into the broader GTM system rather than leaving it adjacent to it.
At the same time, the human layer never disappears. A thoughtful tag. A quick acknowledgment. A small seasonal badge. These signals compound. Even in B2B environments, people respond to being seen.
The reporting habit that changes your posture
One of the more honest parts of our discussion centered on a program Max ran earlier in his career. Members valued it. Participation was strong. When budgets tightened, the program was cut.
What stayed with him was not frustration about the decision, but clarity about what was missing. The connection between activity and business impact had never been formally captured.
Since then, his operating model has changed.
When new initiatives launch, baseline metrics are recorded immediately. Badge distribution. Rank progression. Monthly active users. Engagement movement over time. Even when leadership has not requested that level of detail.
Collecting data early shifts posture. It allows community leaders to speak in the language of the business when necessary. It makes engagement legible.
Qualitative stories still matter. Testimonials still matter. But narrative paired with data carries further inside executive conversations.
That pairing is what allows community to move from being appreciated to being relied upon.
What actually moves engagement
We also spent time on the small mechanics of engagement, which is often where community either compounds or stalls.
One tactic Max relies on consistently is thoughtful tagging. He looks at who has contributed to similar conversations in the past, who operates in a relevant industry, who has context to add. Then he tags them directly.
It’s manual. It requires paying attention. It works.
That kind of engagement assumes that participation is not evenly distributed. Some members need a nudge. Some members need a reminder that their perspective is useful. A well-placed tag can restart a thread that would otherwise sit quietly.
Broad calls for participation tend to fade into the background. When everyone is invited in the same way, no one feels particularly needed.
The same pattern shows up with recognition. A short thank-you message. A note acknowledging that someone helped another member. These gestures take seconds, but they reinforce something deeper. Participation is visible. Contributions are noticed.
Community grows through repeated signals of attention. Not spectacle.
Decoded insight
Community becomes durable when its activity can be translated into business-relevant signal without losing its human texture.
If the work feels meaningful to members but invisible to the organization, it stays fragile. If it is measurable but disconnected from real participation, it becomes hollow. The balance between those two is where community starts to influence how a company operates.
Why Max’s perspective carries weight
Max has worked inside startup environments and scaled SaaS organizations. That range shows up in how he thinks about tradeoffs. He understands when to experiment and when to stabilize. He knows that mature communities demand a different kind of attention than early-stage ones.
He’s also one of the most well-loved builders in the community space. Not because he’s loud. Not because he’s self-promotional. People consistently describe him as warm, honest, and generous with his time. He shares what he’s learning. He admits what he’s missed. He champions other builders.
That posture matters.
Community work is relational at its core. The credibility you build with members and peers eventually becomes part of the signal you carry inside your organization. Max embodies that balance between operator discipline and human care. Max is also featured in The Community Code book, and the themes we discussed here show up in his contribution there as well.
If you’re leading community in a B2B SaaS organization that has moved beyond launch energy and into operational reality, this episode is worth your time.
You can connect with Max on LinkedIn. He means it when he says his inbox is open.
If this conversation reflects something you’re navigating inside your own organization, I’m curious how you’re thinking about it. Community gets more interesting as it matures. It also gets more complex. That tension is part of the work.
Timestamps
00:00 – From freelancing burnout to community
05:40 – Stepping into a mature Square community
09:17 – B2B vs. B2C engagement realities
13:24 – Getting internal stakeholder input
21:19 – Capturing baseline metrics early
25:58 – Surprise and delight in practice
36:28 – Calibrating content and engagement
45:04 – When programs get cut and why
48:34 – Engagement tactics that actually work
53:58 – Why he continues to do this work
