🔴 150K designers, $1M in revenue

A couple of things have changed since last week’s newsletter!

Firstly, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Natalia Pérez-González, Creator Spotlight’s new Assistant Editor. I’m excited to be popping into your inboxes every week, and especially honored to keep building on the trust and rapport Francis has built with you over the past year — connecting you with stories, insights, and strategies from all fascinating corners of the creator economy.

As mentioned in Friday’s issue, we’re expanding our newsletter. On Tuesdays, I’ll introduce you to the latest creator featured on our podcast, and on Fridays, Francis and I will send you essays, reported features, opinion pieces, and more content to help educate, inspire, and empower you as you explore creatorland.

I can’t wait to see how our conversations evolve in future issues. We look forward to your feedback — there’s a poll at the bottom of the letter if you want to share your thoughts!

Our guest this week is Grace Ling, founder of Design Buddies, a community that’s grown from a pandemic-era Discord server to a network of over 150,000 designers, generating $1 million in ARR. Beyond managing her design community, Grace also cohosts the new podcast How Creators Make Money and has built a dedicated following on LinkedIn, where nearly 50,000 people track her insights.

In this episode:

• 💰 Turning a Discord server into a profitable design community

• 📈 How organic community engagement fuels Design Buddies' growth

• 🪴 Monetizing sustainably, and without sacrificing authenticity

— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor

• 00:00: Introducing Grace Ling and Design Buddies

• 1:52: What is Design?

• 03:30 What makes the Design Buddies community different?

• 05:46 The first 1,000 members

• 08:31 The first 150,000 members

• 12:00 Maintaining a healthy community at scale

• 15:46 $1M in revenue — what’s the breakdown?

• 18:18 Rizz as a service

• 20:39 Gatekeeping, use it wisely

• 22:40 How to spend $1M

• 24:49 LinkedIn’s untapped potential for growth

• 35:51 A lesson in diversifying your revenue as a creator

• 39:37 How Creators Make Money, the podcast

• 42:16 The two labor models of content creation

• 45:00 From creator house to party mansions

If you prefer a podcast platform other than YouTube, we’re on all of them.

Have a question for our next guest?

The business of community

Grace Ling launched Design Buddies for two simple reasons: she was eager to learn how to design and wanted to make friends with others interested in learning together.

It was April 10, 2020 — the height of the pandemic — and Grace joined the wave of 100,000 new users who took to Discord to join or start digital communities. Within the first month, hers quickly swelled to 1,000 people and became a supportive starting point for designers — a place where they could ask questions without judgment and ultimately find suitable job opportunities. Now, it’s expanded to voice chats where designers collaborate in real-time, share their work, seek feedback, and connect over professional experiences. On a given day, there might be 5-10K users online and active in the chat. (I checked this morning, and 7,052 were online.)

Designing is a collaborative journey, never a solitary pursuit, and this community is evidence of that. In the five years since its inception, its growth has mirrored the natural career progression of its members: the junior designers who joined the Discord server in 2020 are now senior designers mentoring the next wave of talent — keeping a continuous loop of knowledge transfer.

As I listened to this conversation, I found it worthy of noting the intentional guardrails Grace has built around this community:

• In the Discord’s feedback channels, members are encouraged to provide feedback on others' work before seeking feedback for themselves, creating a culture of mutual support.

• Grace has deliberately avoided venture capital; she's wary of investors who might push growth strategies that compromise her core mission. It's a calculated choice: maintaining the community's integrity matters more to her than rapid scaling. This marks a larger, more significant trend in creator and founder spaces to retain autonomy in their businesses.

• Grace is exploring a network of creator houses, hosting events across multiple cities. Her goal isn't virality, but rather a sustained, meaningful connection —nurturing spaces where creators can learn, grow, and build together. Read more about this below under Steal This Tactic.

Connect with Grace on LinkedIn or Instagram.
Learn more about Design Buddies.

How to build and monetize a community

Ultimately, Grace created the community she needed the most — a supportive space to learn about design, grow her network, and eventually make IRL connections. That authenticity became the foundation of Design Buddies, and there’s much to be gleaned from her journey in building a sustainable, thriving space for creators and designers.

1. Lead with a common goal:
   Grace’s community thrives because its members share a common purpose: building successful careers in design. They’re eager to learn, support one another, and grow together. This unified goal is what drives engagement and fosters genuine IRL connections.
   
   Also, make sure to audit your community regularly. Stay attuned to their needs by asking: What challenges are they facing? What value can you offer to help them grow? Recognize how your community will evolve over time and adapt your offerings to meet their changing needs.
   

2. Authentic engagement:
   Grace has grown Design Buddies through in-person and online events across multiple countries, starting with small Zoom gatherings where members would collaborate on design projects together. Her authenticity, partnered with the timing (most of us were hungry to engage and build online community in 2020), bolstered these events as they eventually reached up to 300 people in cities like Bangkok and 200 in Singapore.
   

   Her approach to these events is personal. She hosts meetups in various cities, aiming to connect with community members directly. For her, it’s not just about professional networking but creating genuine human connections — allowing designers at different career stages to interact and support each other.

3. Monetize:
   Grace has strived to keep this community fun, warm, and most importantly, accessible. While she doesn’t charge members to join the Discord server, Design Buddies' revenue comes from three primary sources:

• Design cohorts: This is the bulk of their revenue. A recent partnership with UXGO, a member-driven career platform for UX career development, bolstered this side of the business. Grace runs four cohorts per year with about 40 students, priced at $6,600 each.

• Brand deals: This stream fluctuates. She made $100,000 in brand deals last year, and $40,000 so far this year (at the time of this interview), mostly from design tool companies and events.

• Recruiting: Companies have paid up to $30,000 to match with a founding designer, $15,000 for senior designers, $10-15,000 for mid-level, and $5,000 for junior designers.
  

4. Long-term contingency
   Though Grace has shifted from day-to-day design work, she remains deeply involved with Design Buddies. Her team currently consists of three full-time members and several part-time contractors, and they’re exploring potential expansions, including the possibility of a nonprofit branch to provide scholarships and support designers who can't afford their current programs.

• Almost anything created by and for “weirdos and outsiders” is honestly worth our attention

• He reached his $10K a month challenge in 125 days 

• Always a treat to read a Casey Lewis breakdown on influence, fame, and fandoms

• As an em dash advocate, I’m so here for this reclamation