Case Study: Health Tech Nerds

Q. Why do your members care about connecting with one another?

Abbey: Healthcare is deeply fragmented, which impacts those who work to fix it. By enabling our members to connect with those they may otherwise not, it helps facilitate knowledge exchange to accelerate impact.

This has led to members finding new roles where they can apply their expertise, finding co-founders, and building meaningful connections that have lasted over the years.

Q. How does making connections between your members help the Health Tech Nerds business?

Abbey: Networking is a major part of our value prop at Health Tech Nerds and the reality is everyone has a different way of going about it, so we try to meet them where they are.

Facilitating intros helps lower the burden and in many cases connects folks who wouldn’t otherwise meet (especially in our random pairing program!). As our members continue to form meaningful connections with one another, it makes the community stickier.

Q. You have a unique setup amongst all our members where you run multiple matching programs at the same time. Why?

Abbey: Our members join for a variety of different use cases and have highly diverse needs. We set up multiple programs to help match for different reasons.

For example, some folks want to connect with others in similar functions (e.g., Product), but may benefit from connections with members in different types of companies. Others may benefit from connecting with people in similar spaces (e.g., Women’s Health), but in very different roles.

Q. Why did you choose Curated Connections for your community among similar networking products?

Abbey: We’ve tested a number of different networking products with our community, and ultimately chose Curated Connections for a few reasons:

• Simple but powerful product: The idea of brokering intros between members is rather simple, but products we’ve used in the past have either been too complex for our needs, or lacked features that would help engage the right audience. Curated Connections seems to have found the sweet spot in being straightforward and reliable for our use case.
• Responsive team: One of the things I look for in evaluating community tools/investments is how receptive and responsive the vendor is to feedback. I think a lot of vendors are too tied to what they believe the product should look/feel/function like, but the reality is that our community is highly engaged and will test the limits of products, which means inevitably, there will be a lot of feedback. We take our member feedback very seriously, and look for vendors who are willing to be open to that and iterate with us over time.
• Value: Curated Connections is fairly priced, and we’re not paying for flashy features that will go unused, in lieu of platform stability. The team is focused on what matters.

Q. Have your members noticed any difference in experience since you switched tools?

Abbey: Yes, we’ve heard from 20+ members directly that they prefer this platform over other platforms we’ve tried.

I think it has a lot to do with what I’ve shared, which is around simplicity. While I appreciate innovative features and impressive design, there are far too many platforms out there that don’t focus enough on getting the fundamentals down first.

Q. How was your experience with the white-glove onboarding we offer?

Abbey: The white glove onboarding was helpful in accelerating the launch of the programs to our members. It was particularly valuable to be able to bounce feedback, ideas, and questions off the team throughout the process.

Q. What would you tell other communities to be successful with their networking programs?

Abbey: I’d recommend using Curated Connections! Keys to success for us so far have been:

• Directly reach out to networking power users to help with initial adoption. We saw 10x enrollments by doing this. It’s a good reminder folks will miss broad product announcements, and a combination of both tends to be most effective.
• Encourage feedback and take action on it. Be incessant about asking for feedback and make it a practice to review it consistently. We monitor feedback weekly and contact members who report 3/5 stars or less to understand how we can improve. If a member reports a negative experience, we address it directly.
• Share your feedback and your members’ feedback with the Curated Connections team. The Curated Connections team is highly receptive to feedback and quickly incorporates it.