Joe Speiser, co-founder of Hampton, calls their community for big-name entrepreneurs and CEOs “group therapy on steroids.” It’s a space, he says, where founders can drop their guards, swap insights, tackle challenges, and support one another.
Joe turned to Bubble to build the Hampton app — a community networking platform for founders with at least $3 million in revenue or funding — despite having a background in legacy systems like Linux and PHP. It was a move that paid off: With Bubble, their team was able to launch their app five times faster, hitting the market in just three months. With only one part-time Bubble Developer, Edward Li, they’ve driven 100% year-over-year user growth every year and are moving faster than ever.
Community for founders of Figure AI, ProfitWell, Morning Brew, and more
The idea for Hampton started in May of 2022 when Joe and his co-founder, Sam Parr — founder of the $27 million newsletter The Hustle, which grew to 1.5 million subscribers and sold to HubSpot — were meeting with fellow founders during the pandemic.
“We were getting so much value out of it. We thought, ‘Why don’t we just start hosting a few groups like this with our friends?’” Soon, they found there was far more interest than they anticipated. The demand inspired them to start Hampton, a networking community app that was fresher and more niche than others on the market.
“We wanted to create something that was more targeted toward high-growth, digitally enabled software companies,” Joe says.
With Hampton, founders from businesses like Figure AI, ProfitWell, and Morning Brew meet with seven or eight other founders once a month — either over Zoom or in-person at group dinners, retreats, and conferences. Each gathering is designed to give entrepreneurs the space to talk about their challenges and get fresh perspectives.
Building without technical debt
To organize these meetings, and create a more cohesive experience for users, the Hampton team needed to make an app. Though Joe had previously used Linux and PHP, he decided to go no-code, hiring a developer to build on Bubble.
“I was looking for something that I could quickly build a prototype on ... We quickly realized that Bubble was able to do a lot more than we thought.”
“I was looking for something that I could quickly build a prototype on, and Bubble was exactly that. We quickly realized that Bubble was able to do a lot more than we thought,” he says.
Within just three months, Joe and his Bubble Developer built their app — a process that Joe says has been a breeze.
“One of the things I love most about Bubble is that I haven’t seemed to have accrued the technical debt I typically do in the legacy architectures out there like PHP. I don’t have that with Bubble — I don’t have to spend the majority of my developers’ time rewriting code and fixing database structures and schemas. It’s been a lot faster,” he says.
The result of their efforts is a fully-functioning member platform that includes a dynamic member directory with an interactive map, and event functionality that allows users to view and RSVP to upcoming gatherings. Plus, it has a Slack integration: The app crawls the group’s Slack channels — where all member communication happens — to create a vendor guide filled with member-recommended resources and endorsements.
“I don’t have to spend the majority of my developers’ time rewriting code and fixing database structures and schemas.”
5X cost savings, double user growth, and less headaches
If the Hampton team had gone the traditional development route, Joe says, they most likely would have had to hire five to six developers to build and manage the app. But, with Bubble, they’ve only needed one part-time developer.
Not only has this resulted in almost five times the cost savings, but it’s also prevented some stress, too.“It’s been phenomenal. Just a lot less mental headache than having to manage a whole crew of people, which has its own set of issues,” he says.
Since launching their Bubble app, the Hampton team has achieved impressive results. They’ve doubled their user growth rate every year for three consecutive years — and they’re not slowing down.
Joe and his Bubble Developer hope to integrate AI-driven functionality for personalized newsletters. Users will be able to set their preferred cadence and topics, and the app will do the rest. It will automatically scan Slack conversations, categorize key insights, and deliver a concise, personalized newsletter straight to their inbox.
Aside from app updates, the Hampton team is hoping to incorporate more in-person meetups.
“We’ve found that the bonds you create online are never as strong as they are in person. You can’t hug someone on Zoom. You can’t go get a drink with them afterward. So we’re moving a lot to in-person to help foster those connections and build deeper relationships,” Joe says.
Using Bubble to bootstrap — and beyond
Part of what made Bubble such an essential tool for Hampton, Joe says, is that it enabled them to launch quickly and without high development costs.
“I see most entrepreneurs spend six months building a perfect-looking MVP just to find that they’ve spent too much time trying to perfect something that no one even wants.”The key, Joe says, is getting a product into users’ hands and gathering critical feedback. “The sooner you get it out there, the better,” he says.
As for scaling? “Our next big push is to build a native mobile app with Bubble’s new mobile features,” says Joe. “We’re very excited to be able to launch that without having to re-write any of our code from scratch.”
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