UiPath is one of the fastest growing SaaS businesses of all time, and community has been a strategic advantage from its earliest days. It has an extensive range of programs. Its MVP program, an advocacy program, has become a cornerstone of their community that's been running for over five years. I spoke with Corina Gheonea, Global Community Director at UiPath, to find out how they build programs for the long haul.
Corina:
It's an important one for us. It's an important pillar that builds the community for us - it helped us be successful. It helped us be relevant.
So the MVP program, or Most Valuable Professionals advocacy program, through which we recognize the ones who have great expertise in using automation, in using AI automation with UiPath, but also the ones who share. So invites others to learn, invites others, train others, mentor others, contributes in the overall AI automation space. So this is how we run the program and the main objective why we have it.
“It started with a genuine intention to recognize contribution in a time when we were just establishing as a technology.”
And it wasn't just the UiPath employees or the UiPath founder who was building and going for this success. It was an entire ecosystem. So this is why we started in end of 2018, so in 2019, with having the first MVP program. Because we wanted to give back as fast as possible. We want to recognize you as fast as possible. Because they believed in us when we were just establishing ourselves, establishing a new technology, establishing a new market. So this is how it started. And then we started to recognize them. We started meetups. We started hackathons. So all came in 2018. When I also joined and I started to build the team and everything like a proper structure, a proper function.
Corina:
It was a program that just recognized the ones contributed on the forum, because that was everything we had as a community ecosystem. So they were there with us, contributing to the growth of the community. And community was known back then. It was mentioned by anyone in the company and around the company that community is a strategic advantage. Community is helping us grow. So it was known. So it made a lot of sense for us to say, we need to give back this appreciation. It's not just what we do inside. It's also about them.
“It started with us just sending a box with everything we had to the first 11 MVPs and telling them, look, you are one of the greatest. You contributed a lot. You did it with no expected return from us. And we want you as an MVP.”
And with that, we also invited them to meet in person. So we had all of them on stage with us. And we showed them to the world. From there, the program started to grow, because with the recognition, then it comes also a full year of commitment, of continuous engagement. They contribute. They participate. And then it's a renewal if they want or not. So up to them, up to us also.
But in time, we started to have more processes in place, criteria in place. We went beyond the forum. So it started to be about other ways of contributing and make those relevant, also make those matter also. And it started to be a bit more of a selection process, application process, interviews, and so on. So this is how the program evolved in time. And now we are at the 125 MVPs for the year.
Corina:
For the first ones, we were the ones that did the selection with the help of our forum moderator. For the next ones, it was based on encouragement and the MVPs to encourage others around them, peers of them. But we still want to keep the number so high quality. It's quite a difficult process to be recruited, also to be selected. Like they go through some really thorough phases. So we want to also maintain this culture. Like this group created a culture and we want to maintain it. New ones to influence it, but still the core to be there. So it's important in that sense. It also creates a lot of collaboration between them. So especially when we meet in person with them, at MVP summits or developer conference, they get to interact. And after they start new projects together, building initiatives.
So it's quite normal for them then to want to stay. Like you have access to the best group of peers that trigger you, that push you to be better. So you want to be among them. You want to stay in that club for as long as possible. But we also try as much as possible to bring the new ones and for them to feel welcome, to feel that they still can contribute. It's not like they lost something by not being there in the past.
Corina:
So when they apply, we ask them, because also in time, our platform evolved a lot. So it's quite difficult for one MVP to say that he's an expert in everything, you or she is an expert in everything. So it's more about them telling us that, "Hey, these are my areas of focus and growth." And they can choose one or two or three, like for them, they can go in the entire platform. And also we ask them about their preferences to contribute. So we try as much as possible to encourage people to maximise their talent and what they want to do. So it's not mandatory for someone to do something that it's against their talent, their will, what they want to do. Like we try as much as possible, every MVP to be on spotlights, if they are more like introverts or there are things to do as an introvert.
“You don't have to be on a big stage to contribute. If they want to write blogs, if YouTube is their thing, if it's more about sessions in which they share product feedback, if continuing on the forum moderating is the thing, anyone can contribute in the way they choose.”
And through the year, there are other opportunities that maybe they didn't mention or they were not considering a particular method of contributing, but then the invite comes and they can say, yeah, let's try this too. Maybe someone was not thinking of being a mentor with someone else or being a trainer in an event and now they want to do that too.
Corina:
There are people who choose not to continue as MVPs because they know, like it's a commitment for a year. So it's not just, I'm getting the title and that's it. So there are people who say, look, for me it was a lot, it was enough. I need to rest a bit.
So we are at around 65, 70% that renew. And so the group that comes, it's not as big as the ones who stayed, which is something that we also like. And if we find that there are more that need to join us, we can reconsider a bit more like the number of MVPs that we accept. So yeah, like I think 70% is the ones who renew. And if we find that there is huge talent that contributes a lot, we can reconsider the number. But we are steady in staying around. I think the last three years we stayed around 100.
“Initially in the first years we doubled and we were growing fast because we came from 11, but now we are at 100, 120, 125. And we want to stay there for them to really be able to build relationships and have the spotlight that we promise and we want to give them.”
Corina:
So we have different spaces for them. And without that anyway, you become informally a special community, but we do encourage them that way. And we have also some WhatsApp groups with them, quite well structured, forum group with them. So for different reasons to communicate, we have different channels. And yeah, they have access to many resources, people.
We also did something quite new, bold. We have them. So as a company, we stay on Slack as communication between us as colleagues and with many, many groups and all that. And we have MVPs that are also on Slack with us as external guests to be in direct communication with the product managers. We want them to give product feedback. We want them to be in direct communication with our product, yeah. So it's not like you need to do this in order to get that like a special pass. No, if they have the feedback and they want to contribute this way, they are invited.
Corina:
So we have three MVP summits, one in every large region that we have. So the one for EMEA happened in Bucharest where we have a big team, product team, because it's important for us like this event, it's about MVPs coming together, but the MVP is coming together with many product leaders around. So it's a big opportunity for our product team to hear from MVPs, to connect with them, to hear new ideas, to show them the roadmap, to show what's coming and to contribute to that decision making and roadmap. So we had the one in Bucharest. Now this week, we are hosting the one in Seattle where again, we have a big product team and in August, we'll meet in India for the one in APJ.
People come from all the countries. So we see people coming from absolutely everywhere for the summits. And it's two and a half days kind of event to almost three days. So it depends on how the specific and the flavor that we bring from that region. We start with celebrating them and offering the trophies as MVPs together with our leaders. And they get some visionary talks from different leaders that are there.
We continue with two intensive days specific to product sessions, so different product sessions. And then we have quite a lot of fun also, some parties, some interactive sessions and drumming or doing different activities that just build the social life of the summits or visiting something that makes sense for that place, that culture, to immerse in them, not only in the professional side, but also in where they are, like to understand a bit the local attitude, local food. We invite them to bring sweets from their countries to get a bit of know each other from where they are coming also.
“It's a nice mix of professional work, ideation, envisioning the future of the AI automation platforms with this more humane touch. Because in the end, they go as friends, they go as collaborators.”
There is a lot of camaraderie between them. And it was quite nice when one MVP said, because MVPs are from customers and partners. So especially the ones that are from partners, there is in a way in the market, some of them they are in competition with each other. And they also observed themselves, when they are there is nothing about that. Like it's just becoming better, each of them, and becoming better together. And that's huge.
Corina:
We are in marketing and we work with many teams, from product, from marketing, from customer success, from sales, from customer support. Like we work with everybody. We have the regional community managers, so three of them. We have a colleague for advocacy, and then we have a colleague for content. So the blogs, the YouTube, we also run a survey. We have a colleague dedicated to our community platform and operations, and one dedicated to our forum.
So in our community team, we do have one, advocacy leader, so who is in charge of the advocacy programs, especially the MVP program. And then for the summits, and not only for the summits, like for selection, for trying to find scouting for new MVPs, so preparing new MVPs, but selection and everything. We have three regional community managers in every region. So they contribute together with the advocacy director. So as a team, this is how we dedicate time in what we do.
For the summits and in general, there is also huge contribution from product. And we prepare the agenda with them, it's on them to propose the topics. We are putting more like the structure in place, and then through conversations, we decide together. But this is becoming more of an event that makes sense, a lot of sense to them also, like they know in advance, they plan things in advance, and they consider it in their, as a blocker in their agenda. They don't want to miss this.
Corina:
There are a few things that we do. So we also have, as a team, we regroup to see what worked well, what we need to improve, what we need to consider. There is a lot of product feedback that gets centralized. So this way we get a bit of the quantity or the value of the summit, if it made sense, if it was a lot, if it was something new, or they heard the same things over and over. We ask the product managers, we run a survey to the MBPs to see how the event was for them. We ask also the product managers to give us feedback how the event was for them.
Then it's also something informal that happens from time to time, is that we hear rumors that, I don't know, some great ideas from MBPs were shared to the CEO level. So that's when we know, okay, something good happened there.
Corina:
So we do look at the quantitative things, like how many people applied, how many got through the stages, through the interviews, how many are new MBPs, how many are renewed MBPs. And then their contribution. So contribution, like how many of them really contribute in the first half of the year, the second half of the year.
And then it's sort of like something that is not only quantitative, I would say. Some, a bit of like greater achievements, which is like putting them on large stages or putting them on large stages together with product managers from UF. So showing that level of collaboration. Product manager from UF is sharing something and the MBPs coming together and showcasing that demo, like how they are really using. So these kinds of things. Or writing some white papers together, or publishing a book. So things that are a bit more like highlights, and we try to learn about them, find them. And a reusable component on the marketplace that can be used by other developers.
So these kinds of highlights also matter. And yes, it's a bit more difficult to track them or to give them the same value, or how do you quantify that? But the good thing that I think is there is a good brand of the MVPs overall in UiPath, and the leaders support us and encourage us to continue to grow the community and the program. So there isn't that much of the push, like if you can't put them in this specific cell with this specific value attached, this is not value and we no longer support you with the investments, time, and what we get from the company.
So that's the good thing for us. Like having a bit more narrative, having a bit of outliers, not putting things in this very standardized unity of what value is, helps us. We do show many other numbers on other things. Videos on YouTube, use cases on our use cases repository, community blogs, like this kind of quantitative things. But the most interesting things is this outliers contributions.
For some years already, we standardized having a report every quarter for community. And that's where we put it. Now what we see, and it's something that we start to consider because we start to have a few more advocacy programs and to have quite a lot to say, we want to think of something just about the advocacy programs, just about the MVPs to be shared.
We do so much, and to be honest, like I share to my team, every time I see our quarterly report, it's like, if I can scratch that where it says quarter and I put annual, I think people will believe us.
So there you have it. That's how Corina and team built and grew the MVP program. I hope that helps. ✌️
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