[Success Story] Discourse Cannabis Community - Growers Network

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that makes Discourse possible and for all your help when I first joined your community seeking guidance. @codinghorror @sam @HAWK @pfaffman and many more!

I launched our private Beta Discourse community for cannabis professionals in December 2016. We started with zero members, as most communities do, then went live in March with our awesome founding members and team. It took a lot of research, development, conversations, failing, humility, learning, and improving, but we got to our one year mark last Friday (12/1). I wanted to share my story with you, since the Discourse team helped me when it was just an idea in my head.

Here is a quick infographic of what our community is about:
GrowersNetwork.pdf (7.5 MB) and our public website. Our Discourse instance is private.

Some fun facts at our one year mark:

  • We currently have 2,166 users
  • Our membership base is global, consisting of members from Canada, USA, Israel, Colombia, Netherlands, and more
  • We are one of the leading professional communities within the global cannabis community.
  • And we have successfully monetized our membership base through monthly subscription rates ($100/month) and monthly advertising via custom banner advertising we coded.
  • We currently have an amazing team of 9 employees. Our community manager is unfortunately leaving as of this month, as he accepted another job offer - we are currently seeking a replacement if you know anyone with cannabis community experience.

We are so happy that we chose Discourse over the plethora of other community options on the market. From the strong open source development support to the helpful admins that provide clarity on questions we get stumped on. Choosing the software to run our community was the most important decision we had to make before we launched. And if I went back in time, I would make the same decision: Discourse. :slight_smile:

Thank you again for everyone that is involved in this amazing community of communities.

If you are ever available to talk further, I am always available for your calls at 520-278-5084 and your emails at nick@growersnetwork.org.

Sincerely,
Nick

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Totally welcome Nick ā€“ Iā€™m glad I was part of your journey. Thanks for the update and a massive congratulations on your success to date.

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