b03 Hero - How to launch your group on Geneva

A group leader's guide to setting up your home.

When you create a group on Geneva, you are creating what we call a 'home'. One of the most exciting parts of creating a home is getting to decide how you want to design your space. You can mix and match from the different room types (chat, post, audio, video, and broadcast), layer on gates like new member surveys, and even host welcome events to introduce new members to the space. 

Because of this, no two homes on Geneva look the same — each one has its own feel and experience. For casual conversations, some Homeowners load up on chat rooms while others use post rooms for more structured content, courses, or announcements (and many do both)! Some review new members at the door with multi-question new member surveys, while others take a "the more the merrier" approach. 

Whichever direction you choose, you may want some inspiration, so we asked a few Homeowners to share their firsthand advice on how to get started, what they've learned so far, and a few things you may not think of...

### Meet [Per](https://www.pertheworkedit.com/), an emerging network of young women in the workforce

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**Who we are:** Per is a community for next generation women in the workforce. Our Geneva home is the “connection” part of the larger online platform that we’re building, which also includes content that is hosted on our website.

**How we've set up our home:** Our rooms are meant to facilitate conversations about a variety of topics related to “work life”. For now, every room is relevant to all members of the community, but as we grow we will create more specific rooms for women across different industries.

**Our must-have room:** We have a room called “Ask Pauline” which is inspired by the famous advice column Dear Abby. Abby was in fact the pen name for the real author, Pauline Phillips. In this room I share community members’ questions anonymously with the entire group to get feedback and advice without revealing their name or identity. Members will DM me the questions that they want to have anonymously shared!

### Meet The BTS Fan Club, a global group of friends obsessing over their favorite band

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**Who we are:** We are a close knit group of fierce ladies who love the band BTS. There is a lot of content out there, and we wanted to have a centralized group where we could all talk about and consume the content together. BTS's fanbase (army) is very close knit and armys instantly connect with each other no matter what, just because they share love for BTS.

**How we've set up our home:** As we all have different biases (a favorite BTS member), we have special BTS member-focused rooms where our home members can collectively bond over their unabashed love for a specific person. They are all post rooms so that updates and photos don't get lost easily!

**A favorite moment in the home:** A fond memory I have is when I streamed some BTS tunes for the first time in our Bangtan Radio FM audio room. It really made me feel connected with our members, who were just enjoying and vibing to their listen-along from across the Atlantic Ocean. We had this ‘request the next song’ radio DJ-type situation, which made it feel all too real! It had us really psyched to see the boys perform live one day.

### Meet [August](https://www.itsaugust.co/ "August"), a startup pioneering a new playbook for community-first brands

b03 August group image

**Who we are:** The Inner Cycle is a tight-knit community of menstruators AND non-menstruators working everyday to reimagine the period experience to be more empowering and inclusive.

**How we're setting up our home:** We wanted to create a space that is conducive to open and vulnerable conversations, whether they are about periods, mental health, or everyday life experiences. Periods alone are such a stigmatized topic, and often as menstruators, we shy away from talking about our own bodies without shame. We wanted to reimagine this narrative and provide a virtual space to encourage our Inner Cycle family to unapologetically do so! What that meant for our Geneva home was that most of the rooms are chat-based, but for conversation topics that can be informative and useful for reference in the future, we also created a few rooms based on posts!

**A ritual in our group:** Whenever an Inner Cycle member is on their period, they add a 🩸 emoji next to their name! It’s a small way that we continue to break the period stigma within our Community! No one needs to bleed alone!

**Our #1 piece of advice:** Be open to changing the structure of your Geneva home, whether that be deleting a room or changing the format of a weekly Community check-in! Your home serves people, so let the people tell you what they want most out of this experience!

### Meet [Kode With Klossy](https://www.kodewithklossy.com/ "Kode With Klossy"), a nonprofit connecting the next generation of women in tech

b03 Kode with Klossy group image

**Who we are:** The Kode With Klossy alumni community includes over a thousand inspirational young women and non-binary individuals who have participated in the program. The community uses our home on Geneva to connect, share opportunities, and inspire one another as they continue pursuing their passions in STEAM.

**Our advice for launching your home:** Get feedback early and often from the members and use it to make adjustments along the way! Before launching to the entire alumni community, we piloted Geneva with a smaller group. They helped us to develop the vision for how we used Geneva - from the rooms we used to the way we catalyzed engagement and built investment in the platform. That group became our “hype squad” when we launched - drumming up excitement for the space, welcoming everyone onto the platform, jumpstarting conversation, and sharing feedback with our team about how to improve the experience for all.

**Our must-have room in our home:** Events & Opportunities is one of the most frequently used rooms. We set it up as a “post” room so it serves as a virtual board where alumni can easily find events that may be of interest to them as they continue on their coding journey and pursue opportunities in the STEAM world. The “College Chatter” room has also been an invaluable space for alumni to gain clarity on the college application process, connect with other alumni of the program attending the same school, and uplift one another while navigating the challenging process of making it to and through college.

### Meet [TheAList](https://www.instagram.com/thisisthealist/ "TheAList"), an exclusive network for under-represented execs

b03 TheAList group image

**Who we are:** TheAList is an exclusive community of senior and C-Suite executives of color at brands & companies across all industries who control P&Ls, simplifying access to influence business and culture, while curating authentic connections. TheAList is a platform where our members can build personal and business relationships, in an open forum. We want our members to conduct business with each other, share experiences, and learn from each other in a safe space that they may not find so easily outside of TheAList. 

**A ritual in our group:** We have created “Look What Happened!” and “Take A Minute To Focus On…” moments in our home, where we spotlight members in our community. These are usually daily notes that highlight a major life change for some of our members, such as a major career change, or the addition of a new family member. We love to highlight our members' greatness and celebrate those important moments in their personal and professional lives. These rituals allow us to learn more about each other and help bring us together.

**Our advice for starting your group:** Think about your members and what it is they want from your community. Ask them questions. With all of the digital platforms that people are on, you have to make sure that you are creating something unique and personal to them. Let them drive what your home should look like. Also don’t be afraid to start slow. Growth takes time. You can build out your home as needs arise. Simplicity is usually the best route.

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How to launch your group on Geneva

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When we started building Geneva, our goal was to create the world's most flexible group communication app — a new kind of digital infrastructure for groups, clubs, and communities of all shapes and sizes. We wanted a place where our 10-person workout crews, 100-person course cohorts, and 10,000-person podcast listeners clubs could live right next to each other and all work just as well.

And sure enough, during our beta period this past year we saw group and community leaders start using Geneva to bring people together in all sorts of ways — some that we expected and others that totally surprised us. 

Over the next few months, we'll highlight some of those leaders and groups in more depth — but we wanted to start with a quick overview of the most common & interesting uses of Geneva we've seen so far...

__COLLEGE GROUPS & CLUBS__ 🎓
We've been building Geneva with college in mind since day one. We've gotten to know a lot of different groups on campuses — sororities, investment clubs, a cappella groups, sports teams, radio stations, Model UN organizations — and consistently hear the same feedback from them: "Geneva's way easier than our old combination of GroupMe chats, Facebook groups, listserv announcements and Zoom meetings." We've also seen students use Geneva for off-campus orgs like a regional [Girls Who Invest](http://www.girlswhoinvest.org/) cohort and a college rep program for [Rent the Runway](https://www.renttherunway.com/). We're really excited to see what happens when IRL classes & club activities pick back up in the fall too. If you're still using GroupMe, come on over!

__NONPROFITS & MOVEMENTS__ 🌎
Many non-profit and movement leaders have told us they love the balance that Geneva strikes: it's fun and easy to jump into yet robust enough to house serious, productive conversations. [Kode With Klossy](https://www.kodewithklossy.com/), a coding bootcamp for young women, has a home on Geneva where their scholars and alumni help each other with engineering challenges, offer tips for applying to college, and share internship and hackathon opportunities. [Smile On Me](https://www.smileonme.org/) has built a cozy space where members share hobbies, ask questions, and just casually hang out with new friends. And special shoutout to [Earth Uprising International](https://earthuprising.org/) and all the other groups using Geneva to organize solutions to the climate crisis!

__CREATOR-LED GROUPS__ 🎨
From podcasters to newsletter writers to people with big followings on IG or Tik Tok, creators of all kinds have spun up homes on Geneva to give their audience new ways to connect — with them and each other. We love the [Sea Moss Life](https://www.instagram.com/seamossgirlies/) home started by Kate and Emma (the creators of the lighthearted health & wellness podcast "What The F*ck is Sea Moss") and [Parachute Club](https://www.theparachutemedia.com/), a media startup x global community of Gen Z women and nonbinary BIPOC who use Geneva to chat, organize book clubs and movie nights, and run monthly challenges. John Brennan's [5 Minute FC](https://twitter.com/5MinuteFC) started as a newsletter about European football but has evolved into a thriving fan community. Now, the community feeds the content, and vice versa — a perfect match.

__LEARNING COHORTS__ ⭐
Another common group type we've seen is some sort of teacher, coach or course creator setting up a home for ongoing discussion and support. The Creator Now community started by [@airrack](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyps-v4WNjWDnYRKmZ4BUGw) and his crew brings together up-and-coming Youtube creators and is one of the most supportive places we've ever seen online. [Endurance Nation](https://www.endurancenation.us/) is a group of ~150 elite endurance athletes led by Coach Patrick, with a post room for announcements and chat rooms like "Bike Squad", "Swim Squad", and "Ultra Squad". Online marketing expert [Amy Porterfield](https://www.amyporterfield.com/) invites all of her events' attendees into a Geneva home as a base for live discussion and announcements. The possibilities here are endless...

__INTEREST GROUPS__ ❤️
There are a lot of groups on Geneva that we don't really know what to call other than...*interest groups?* [The Conversationalist](https://www.theconversationalist.com/) is an inspiring community of almost 2,000 young people chatting about politics and other hot-topics, exposing one another to new perspectives as they work to amplify Gen Z voices and "unify the world" one relationship at a time. The Waves, a group led by [Casper ter Kuile](https://twitter.com/caspertk) and [Erica Williams Simon](https://twitter.com/missewill), is a casual and intimate online community exploring the future of spirituality, religion, and belonging. Xepa is a home started by fans of one of the biggest TV shows in Brazil, and word on the street is there's a fast-growing BTS fan home too 👀 . There are also, of course, a ton of IRL groups that use Geneva as their online home base; [Greenpoint Art Circle](https://www.instagram.com/greenpoint_art_circle/?hl=en), a local art club in north Brooklyn, is an OG that's been using Geneva to share ideas and run their programs for almost a year now!

__PROFESSIONAL NETWORKS__ 🤝
We've seen a number of exciting groups that toe the line between work and play. There are exclusive entrepreneur communities like [Good End](https://good-end.com/) and leadership circles like [TheAList](https://www.instagram.com/thisisthealist/), an invite-only network of executives of color. Then there are more open groups like [Per](https://www.pertheworkedit.com/), a fast-growing community of young women in the workforce sharing job opportunities, advice, and just showing up to support each other during times of transition. [Nik Sharma](https://twitter.com/mrsharma)'s 1,000 member CPG / DTC group is focused on the future of consumer brands and products and falls somewhere in between (it's free and open, but only to his most engaged newsletter subscribers.) And while we definitely didn't set out to replace Slack for *internal* communication at work, we've been surprised to see a bunch of teammates at retailers and restaurants start using Geneva to chat and organize day-to-day operations.

__BRAND-LED COMMUNITIES__ 🛍️
A new generation of product brands is building community-first, using Geneva to organize their fans, ambassadors, and friends together in all sorts of fun ways. We've seen startups like [August](https://www.itsaugust.co/), [Geenie](https://geenie.world/), and [Bubble](https://hellobubble.com/) bring people together before they'd even officially launched to do bottoms-up product development (i.e. Which items should we launch first? What's everyone's favorite packaging concept?) Later stage brands like [What Do You Meme](https://whatdoyoumeme.com/), [Mejuri](https://mejuri.com/), and [Thousand Fell](https://www.thousandfell.com/) are using Geneva to run their ambassador programs while others like Hannah Bronfman's [HB Fit](https://www.hbfit.com/) and [Pattern](https://www.patternbrands.com/) are a bit more free-form, open to anyone who vibes with the values and vision.

__FAMS & SOCIAL CLUBS__ 😊
Last but not least we have friends & families. While iMessage and WhatsApp are great for small groups, once things start to get bigger or more active they can get...a little chaotic (we've all been there!) A ton of friend and family group chats across the world have made themselves at home on Geneva. One family has a ritual of popping into their video room every Friday night to catch up and wind down the week (hi mom!) and another group called "spooky movie club" came together throughout the pandemic for live chats while they watched scary movies. We've heard about people using the app with their neighbors and alumni networks, and even more formal digitally-native social clubs like [Jet Black](https://www.instagram.com/friendshipclub_nyc/) that give people a fun way to broaden their circles and make new friends.

So all of this is to say, the possibilities are endless! If you're interested in bringing your groups over or starting some up, check out our home templates for a quick start. And if you're already running a group on Geneva and want to be featured in the future, hit us up!

We're excited to see what you do on Geneva next.  😊

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Who's using Geneva?

Group 639

An introduction to Geneva including why we started Geneva, how the app works, and our vision for the future

Thanks for stumbling onto this post. It's our first one, our hello world, and in it, we're excited to share what Geneva is, why we built it, and where we're going.

Geneva is an all-in-one communication app for groups, clubs, and communities — designed to give you everything you need to stay connected to the groups you love and help you make new friends through the groups you've yet to find.

After 2 years of developing Geneva — including a quiet live beta period since last August — we're excited to finally open our doors fully and say hi 👋.

Let's start from the beginning. We know that participating in social groups — from school clubs when we're young to professional networks as we get older — is vital to our happiness and well-being but there wasn't a single app that let us connect online with all our groups in all the ways we wanted.

iMessage and WhatsApp worked great for our 1:1 or few:few conversations but they'd quickly become chaotic when dozens of people were in a group chat. Many of us were falling back on GroupMe or Facebook Groups, the same apps we used in college for our clubs, classes, and Greek life, but it seemed like they hadn't changed in a decade. At work and for gaming, we'd embraced Slack and Discord respectively, but found they weren't quite right for our social groups.

When we started designing Geneva, we knew we wanted something that had the ease of use and feel of a social app. We also wanted a place that was free of bots and pseudonymous trolls. And most importantly, we wanted to solve the problem that had been giving us the most stress: no matter which core messaging platform we settled on, we inevitably had to duct-tape together a bunch of other apps like Zoom, Google Calendar, and Typeform to make it all work.

With Geneva, we've tried to bring together the best of these platforms into a single, intuitive product: an all-in-one group communication app that works just as well for a 10 person book club as it does for a community of 100,000 cat lovers.

Let's show you how it works.

## How do all the pieces work together?

__Account Creation__ - You can easily create an account on Geneva on our web, iOS, or Android apps (desktop app coming this summer). We require everyone to sign up with a phone number, not an email address, to prevent trolling and spam accounts. We also encourage you to use your real name and profile photo on Geneva — not a screenname or avatar. Real identities ensure we know who we're talking to and encourage us to be our true selves with one another. That said, we know you might want to present yourself differently in different groups you're a part of, so we'll soon launch features that let groups add fun profile fields and nicknames.

Account Creation (6 screenshots 4 account creation steps + connect contacts)

__Homes__ - Geneva’s core architecture was inspired by Slack and how organized channels create better group conversations. On Geneva, every group is called a home and you can join or create multiple homes for all the groups in your life. Each home is divided into rooms, which are separate spaces for different conversation topics or subgroups (they’re like channels).

Homes2

__Rooms__ - Now here’s where it gets fun. On Geneva, rooms aren’t just for real-time messaging. We have different types of rooms because we know people talk with their groups in a range of ways. No more sending announcements to your people via email or herding everyone onto a different platform for a video chat. Instead, you can do all that (and more!) inside Geneva with our five unique room types (and more to come):

1. __Chat rooms__ are like GroupMe groups or Slack channels. They're great for casual, spontaneous conversations like introductions, making plans, college chatter, or, of course, sharing your favorite pet photos — complete with @s, threaded replies, emoji reactions, polls, GIFs, and more.

2. __Post rooms__ are like Facebook Groups or Reddit posts. They're great for structured, asynchronous sharing of content like announcements, job & internship bulletins, or articles or recipes — and you can upvote and sort posts to easily find the best stuff.

3. __Audio rooms__ are like a big group phone call that you can easily pop in and out of. They're great for things like casual late night convos and for scheduled events like chapter meetings or group podcast listening sessions.

4. __Video rooms__ are like your own private FaceTime or Zoom line. They're great for things like book club discussions, live study groups, or roundtables that are just more fun when you can see everyone's faces.

5. __Broadcast rooms__ are like your own interactive Instagram Live or Clubhouse with video. Up to nine people can live stream to thousands and pull audience members who've raised their hands onto the stage. They're great for hosting planned virtual events or casual talks like live fitness classes or expert Q&A panels — complete with a live chat feed for your audience.

These five room types are the building blocks of your home. You can set up your home with as many rooms as you want, in any combination you want. 🏠

Homes & Rooms (6 screenshots Side menu + 5 Room Types)

__Gates__ - You can add gates in front of your Geneva home that members have to pass through before they join. Pretty soon, we'll also allow you to put these same kinds of gates on individual rooms too. Here are a few of the gates in the app today and a few more we’ll be launching soon:

1. __Require Approval__: Allows you to create a “lobby” where members wait for approval before you admit them inside.
2. __Questionnaire__: If you’ve ever helped run a larger group, you’ve probably sent people a Typeform or Google Survey to learn about them and see if they’re a fit for your group. To simplify that multi-step process, you can use Geneva’s built-in questionnaire to collect info and get to know newcomers before welcoming them inside.
3. __Entry Fee (coming soon)__: Allows you to charge a fee (one-time or subscription) for people to access your home, room, event or piece of content.
4. __Nickname (coming soon)__: Allows you to ask your members to create unique profile fields and display names for your home before they join.

Gates-updated

__Events on Geneva__ - Live events and gatherings (whether IRL or virtual) are the lifeblood of healthy groups. But if you're like us, you've probably had to stitch together a bunch of different tools to attend or host virtual events. We built a full event stack inside Geneva so you can create, share, and host gatherings all inside your home. Try it out for a virtual workshop in a broadcast room, your sorority's chapter meetings in an audio room, a casual weekly celebration of personal wins in a chat room, and everything in between.

Events on Geneva (6 screenshots event calendar, suggestions, home selector, room selector, members vs. guests, export to cal)

## The Geneva economy

Geneva will always be free to use and we will never show you ads or sell your data.

Instead, our plan is to create an entire economy on Geneva that more directly aligns our incentives with our users.

We believe that one of the most essential things groups and communities need to succeed is peer-to-peer transactions. We've referenced a few above but over the next few years, we'll create more and more ways for people to transact with each other on Geneva.

If and when you earn money on Geneva, we'll share in the earnings with you (we keep 5 percent). Over time, we'll introduce exciting ways for everyone to be both a producer *and* a consumer on Geneva in a way that benefits all users — not just the top 1 percent of super-creators.

We also have a ton of premium features in the works that'll allow our super-users to upgrade their experiences and do more with Geneva.

More on these to come. ✨

## That's it (for now)

Thank you so much for taking the time to get to know us. We're just getting started and have so much more in the works. Over the next few months, we'll give you more ways to personalize and organize your home and more tools to grow and engage your group. We’ve also started working on a number of exciting web3 projects related to ownership and governance that’ll open up new possibilities for DAOs and other collectively-operated communities. Follow us on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/geneva) to get all the latest product updates.

When you're ready, feel free to [jump right in](http://app.genevachat.com). If you'd like some help or want to chat more with us, send us a [note](mailto:hi@geneva.com) and Kim, our Head of Groups & Communities, will reach out. If you’re interested in chatting with us about anything press or business related, send our team a note at [press@geneva.com](mailto:press@geneva.com).

We are fully committed to protecting your privacy and your data. We will never sell your data to third parties and we will never show you advertising. Homes on Geneva are invite-only, so neither Geneva nor people outside your home can see inside. You may sync your contact list from your phone to Geneva to easily invite your contacts to a home or discover the homes your contacts are in, but syncing contacts is entirely optional. To further protect your privacy, we're working on encrypting all audio and video transmissions on Geneva. Down the line, we'll encrypt messages as well. Click [here](https://www.notion.so/genevahq/Terms-of-Service-Privacy-Policy-152564f305ca4bb4a21059a525cb8be0#7c188d489c3246b8b3490d3e70df711c "Privacy Policy") to learn more about how we protect your privacy and data. 

We’re growing our team rapidly and looking for engineers, designers, product managers, community managers, and more — so if you’re excited about what we’re working on, please click [here](https://boards.greenhouse.io/geneva) so we can meet you.

One last thing... we named ourselves Geneva after the Geneva Convention, which was a unifying moment when people set aside their differences and came together to make the world a better place. We believe technology products can bring out the best in us or the worst in us and we've poured our hearts and minds into ensuring Geneva is for the better. Geneva is a reflection of the consumer product utility and business model that we want to see in the world. We'll strive to live up to these ideals each and every day and we hope you'll use Geneva to do the same.

❤🌼,

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Hey 🌼

Geneva announcements, product updates, and tips and tricks on how to build a group