How to Build a Community That Thrives — with Entrepreneur/Investor Caterina Fake (Etsy, Kickstarter, Flickr)

These days, when you talk about your “communities,” you're less likely to be referring to a small town like “Our Town's” Grover's Corners, than you are to your friends on Facebook, or an Instagram group chat. Online communities have simply become communities. Yet while these new communities are central to our lives, we're still figuring out how to establish and enforce norms to keep them healthy and welcoming. This week's guest, Caterina Fake, has probably thought more about — and had more impact on — how these (online) communities develop than anyone else in the world.

As a founder or early stage investor in companies like Etsy, Kickstarter, Stack Overflow, and Flickr — Caterina forged a clear view on the practices that allow communities to thrive. Her early experiences at Flickr — which introduced many now-standard conventions, like followers, feeds, and tagging — combined with her years as an angel investor and board member — imprinted on her the importance of shaping the culture of a community from Day One. And that means making clear decisions about what behavior you do and do not tolerate, whether that's Britney Spears' bare midriff (which actually drove away many of Flickr's early users), or white supremacists.

You'll hear Caterina's controversial take on where today's social media went wrong, and also what she saw in Etsy that convinced her to invest (admittedly, I dismissed the company at the time, thinking it could never become a big business. Oops!) You'll also hear from MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, who turns to, of all things, fecal transplants as an inspiration for how to mitigate the effect of trolls in a community.

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As always, I'd like to hear your thoughts and reactions to this episode. What communities are an important part of your life? How did their cultures get set during the very beginning? And what interventions could you perform to drown out bad culture with good?

Please write a short post on your LinkedIn newsfeed to share your answers with the wider community. Tag your post #mastersofscale so I can find it. And if you’d like, tweet it at me (@ReidHoffman) and @MastersOfScale.