The Threadless Commandments

Founder Jake Nickell and Chief Creative Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless (skinnyCorp) presented the 4 commandments of creating a great community at Community Next (Link via Guy Kawasaki) a few weeks ago. Threadless runs t-shirt design contests, then produces and sells the winning designs on shirts and hoodies. The winners are decided by votes from the community. They are projecting 18 to 20 million in sales for 2007. (CNN news story here)

Here's the summary, excerpted from the speech entitled "The Patent-Pending skinnyCorp Method for Creating Online Awesomeness and Other Stuff":

Since Moses had 10 Commandments, each of these commandments are 2.5 times as important.

1. Allow your content to be created by its users. For example, Threadless is 100% user driven, as all t-shirt designs have been created by members. As a result, it has 500,000 registered users, but only 27 employees.



2. Put your project in the hands of the community. For example, always be accessible to allow for comments and criticisms to reach you. Reward your community by responding to their needs.



3. Let your community grow itself. Traditional advertising is not effective. Run a great community, and your community will spread the word for you. Currently over 150 new designs are submitted daily, and many submitters are recommending Threadless to their friends.



4. Reward the community that makes your project possible. Threadless has grown its prize money as the company has grown. Currently, and winner receives $2,000 for winning a design contest. The prize money will continue to increase in the future. In addition, the company has created themed contests, where winners get an additional $10,000. Although Threadless is constantly approached by advertisers, it has only taken sponsorship-in-kind, in the form of "cool merchandise", so that this merchandise can be given away as prizes to the community.

These guys have a lot of fun doing what they do - you know this when you watch their presentation, as they worked pretty hard to make it funny and entertaining. For example, they presented a graph displaying their progress in terms of "awesomeness". As long as they got more awesome as they grew, everything remains cool. It's hard not to like these guys!