Nova expands through Europe: launching our City Leaders program

Hey, we are Ramón Rodrigá?ez and Andrea Marino, Co-Founders at Nova, the Global Top Talent Network.

Welcome to Talent First, our newsletter where those who believe that talent is the most important resource in the economy get together.

Every week we cover a new topic related to attracting, hiring, developing, and retaining talent, as well as the learnings from our journey building Nova.

Summary:

• In this issue of Talent First, we’re excited to share a behind-the-scenes look into our latest initiative before we fully roll it out. As we see Novas living all across more than 80 countries and a fast-growing community, we’re now ready to bring Nova’s unique model to every major European city during 2025.

1. How we’ve run the Nova Community so far

Since Nova’s founding, we’ve experimented with various models for nurturing and expanding our community. We’ve grown and evolved, learning from every step along the way. Our team structures, roles, and responsibilities have shifted through three distinct phases as we’ve developed a more refined approach to managing our talent network across markets. Here’s a look back at how we arrived at this new City Leaders Program. If you are interested in some of our lessons learnt, you can read our series on Community Building here.

If you are a reader, you might know by now how it all started. At first, Nova started off in Spain by organizing small gatherings and curated events, thanks to the local founding members and their nominations Nova quickly became much bigger than we imagined beyond the Spanish borders. At our core, our most successful growth and expansion engine has always been our members. We have experimented a lot during these past few years with different community management models and we are now gone the full circle. We have decided once again to put members at the center and empower them with new tools and incentives so they can help us reach the next phase of our global expansion. Before we get to it, let us share how our journey has been so far.

Phase 1: Talent Managers - Building community from the ground up

In the early days of Nova, our primary focus was on creating a robust, supportive, and engaged community in our initial markets of Spain, Sweden, and then Italy. We hired 2-3 Talent Managers in each of these markets, who not only built connections within the Nova community but also spearheaded growth initiatives and supported our headhunting services by bridging members with job opportunities.

These Talent Managers were our Swiss Army knives, managing a broad scope of responsibilities from fostering community to handling assignments and contributing to overall business growth.

While this model was effective in starting Nova at a time when our tech was not great, we soon realized the limitations: by doing too many things, these Talent Managers could not get the best results across tasks, which were hard to prioritize. Also, such a model was too human-intensive for us to make a profitable business, so we decided to change it.

Phase 2: Community Managers - streamlining roles

To address these challenges, we transitioned to a model of “Community Managers”, with one of them assigned per market. This single person managed community-building activities like events and member engagement, as well as strategic growth initiatives such as Nova 111. They served as the primary contact for members not directly assigned to a Talent Agent, creating a more direct and focused relationship with the network.

This model enabled us to maintain high-quality connections and support for our members while simplifying our approach and bringing us closer to profitability. However, as Nova’s network continued to grow, the need for even more focus on engagement became clear. Managing an entire market single-handedly was demanding if this person also needed to play a pivotal role in the growth of our community.

Phase 3: Community Builders - focusing purely on engagement

Our structure finally evolved in late 2024 into the current model where we utilize Community Builders, professionals tasked solely with fostering engagement and organizing events in their local markets. This role eliminated the responsibility for community growth, enabling these individuals to concentrate fully on curating a vibrant member experience and maintaining relationships. However, the model still required us to hire at least one person per market, which created challenges, especially in smaller or emerging markets.

Additionally, the rapid evolution of Nova’s technology has enabled us to transition from an event-heavy model to a professional social platform where most of the value happens online. With members increasingly able to engage with these online features, events are not anymore the main source of value, which means our team only needs local presence for very specific in-person events happening once or twice a month.

Moreover, we have come to realize that the caliber of community leaders we ideally want—those who can inspire members through their expertise and reputation—is rarely aligned with a traditional full-time community-building role for which we cannot pay a huge amount of money. We acknowledge that the best potential leaders for our network are often individuals with demanding careers and busy schedules who can only commit to a few hours a week.

These lessons led us to design a model that could harness the talent and insights of influential local leaders without requiring them to join as full-time team members. Having experimented with City Leaders in other geographies for a few years, the idea to build a new City Leaders Program was born.

2. Our beta of the City Leaders program

Over the past four years, we’ve experimented with variations of an early City Leaders Program, working with members in cities beyond our core markets who wanted to take a leadership position within the community. Cities like London, Zurich, or Paris, where we lacked an in-house team, still had Nova members who were eager to network and meet each other.

When we started to see how we could add value to these Novas outside of our core markets, we were inspired by networks like YPO (Young Presidents' Organization) or Startup Grind, which have expanded globally by entrusting local leaders to manage their cities’ chapters.

• YPO is a worldwide leadership community of chief executives, entrepreneurs, and high-level professionals, with over 30,000 members. YPO’s model relies on local leaders who organize events, discussions, and mentorship opportunities, tailored to their city’s professional landscape. These leaders are not employees but successful executives in their own right, contributing a few hours per month to foster their community’s growth.
• Startup Grind, an international community for entrepreneurs, takes a similar approach, establishing city leaders who build local chapters and hold regular events to bring founders, investors, and thought leaders together. This volunteer-based approach provides these leaders with professional networking opportunities and the chance to enhance their local startup ecosystem (besides a small revenue share incentive).

These two models guided our approach, showing us the potential of having local leaders help us expand the Nova network to new cities.

So, as we launched Nova in 2020, we soon created a beta version of the City Leaders Program, by which Nova members could volunteer to run the Nova community in their cities.

These Nova members would help us organize events, energize members, and cultivate Nova’s spirit in their communities entirely as volunteers. They also brought life to local WhatsApp groups, organized after-work gatherings, and became the go-to contact for members in their cities.

However, we are now ready to go one step further. We knew we had to offer incentives that matched the caliber of the leaders we wanted to attract. Our beta program had shown the value of local leaders but also highlighted the limitations of a purely volunteer approach. We needed to support them with tools, resources, and rewards that would encourage a stronger, longer-term commitment. Now that we have found a clear product-market fit with the Nova membership, it’s time to do it.

3. The new City Leaders program

After these 4 years of testing, learning, and refinement, we’re finally ready to roll out Nova’s City Leaders Program on a broader scale to help us bring Nova to the entire world. This program will empower talented, well-connected individuals to bring Nova to their cities, fostering engaged, local communities that contribute to Nova’s overall mission and growth.

The ideal City Leader profile

Our ideal City Leader is someone with:

• A well-established professional network in their city.
• A genuine interest in talent development, community building, and connecting high achievers.
• A respected reputation, inspiring others through their credibility and accomplishments.
• Enough flexibility to organize events and engage with members, while being engaged in their professional pursuits.

City Leaders will become the face of Nova in their city. They’ll manage community events, engage members, and act as the point of contact for Nova in their local market.

Commitment and responsibilities

City Leaders are expected to dedicate a few hours each week to:

1. Organizing local events: Hosting networking events, panel discussions, and workshops for Nova members in their city.
2. Engaging with members: Maintaining active communication within Nova’s local WhatsApp group, sharing relevant updates, and fostering a collaborative atmosphere.
3. Attracting new members: Encouraging new talent to join Nova and broadening the local network.

These responsibilities are intentionally designed to be flexible. We want our City Leaders to bring Nova to their city in a way that complements their own professional life.

Compensation and benefits

To make this role worthwhile, we’re offering an attractive compensation structure based on three main pillar

• Financial compensation: City Leaders will receive performance-based compensation based on the engagement and growth of their local sub-communities.
• Unparalleled access to Nova’s network: As City Leaders, they’ll have unparalleled access to Nova’s top talent network, including invites to exclusive events, networking opportunities, and access to Nova’s local database, which should prove incredibly useful in the right hands.
• Enhanced personal brand: By representing Nova in their city, City Leaders will strengthen their profile, gain visibility within the network, and build relationships with top professionals across industries.

With this structure in place, we believe the City Leaders Program will drive quality growth and create impactful subcommunities, extending Nova’s reach while delivering exceptional value to local members.

Are you passionate about building connections and fostering talent? Do you have what it takes to lead the top talent network of your city? If not you, someone in your network could be the right one? If so, we’d love to hear from you.

Apply here by November 30th, 2024:

City Leader Application Form

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