Why Community Matters More Than Ever in the Age of AI of AI w/ Scott Tran | S2E3

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (00:03.682)
Community isn't just where you belong, it is where we become. Because in a world of AI and technology, the people who show up for each other will always matter most. Welcome to The Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future. I am your host, Mykel Salomon. Today's guest is someone who built a movement long before building communities was cool.

Scott Tran is with us today, is the founder of Support Driven, a global community of support professionals who didn't wait for permission to grow, connect, and lead. They build the future of customer experience, one Slack message, one summit, one story at a time. And in a time when so many are asking, where do I belong? The answer is still here, it still echoes, right here, together.

Scott, my friend, welcome to the Human Protocol.

Scott Tran (01:06.906)
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be on the podcast.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (01:09.738)
Awesome. I'm very happy to have you today and I appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation with us. And to kick things off, I would like to ask you something that I ask every guest that comes to the show, which is when you remove everything LinkedIn knows about Scott, Slack, who is Scott at his core?

Scott Tran (01:40.1)
would give you a different answer depending on when you ask me that question because before I started Support Driven, I was a programmer, right? In San Francisco, working at startups, working at tech companies, and now with Support Driven, you know, we're figuring out how to build community, right? How to build a company that

exist to serve the community rather than the other way around. And then on a personal note, I've been playing a lot of pickleball, right? I started doing tournaments this year. Yes, I'm a fan and I've started doing tournaments this year. And so like that has been great because I think that's been great because it's so different than being online, right?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (02:21.262)
I see. I see you're a fan.

Scott Tran (02:38.69)
and being in tech that yeah, it's been a lot of good things from it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (02:46.698)
Awesome. Thanks for sharing that with us. And I have to ask you, do you still miss programming or you still find yourself doing it here and there?

Scott Tran (02:56.89)
I've always enjoyed aspects of it, right? And I've recognized that...

You know, I can still like do it. I can still pick up pieces of it. You know, it's like riding a bicycle. Like you never fully forget it. Right. But it's not practical for me to do it. It's also like not the best way or most effective use of my time. You know, but the thing that I enjoyed about programming was making things happen. Right. Like taking an idea, writing some code and now this exists in the world. Right. And

I get to do that with support drive in a different way where it's, I don't make it happen because we're, cause I'm writing code to make it happen, but you know, we make it happen in other ways.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (03:47.138)
Yeah, you definitely make it happen bringing people together and people feeling that they belong. And that's something that everyone that knows support driven or have been on support driven event, that's what they take out of it. Right. And it's such a beautiful feeling from all of us that we always live in. And I think that's

the best return on investment that anyone can get is really that sense of belonging, the friendships, the relationship, the knowledge that you get out of these events. And I'm curious, Scott, if you can take us back to the beginning, how this whole idea started.

Scott Tran (04:28.451)
So I'm happy to go back to the beginning, I think you make a point that I'd like to also speak on of, you know, can go through your career and not care about anybody else, right? Like just do it as a solo mission, if you will, right? Or you could do it with friends, you can do it with colleagues, right? And what I've seen, not just in the industry of customer support, but just across many industries, right? Is that the people who are connected, right? The people who enjoy

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (04:38.476)
Right. Right.

Scott Tran (04:59.001)
working with other people in industry are the ones that last, right? Like they're the ones who stay in the industry and succeed in the long term. So when you said that, think that I just wanted to chat on that a little bit. So yeah, so going back to the beginning, the beginning of Support Driven was, I was the first hire at a startup. I wrote the iPhone app, which also meant I had to support it.

And I could tell after, you know, afterwards, right, after providing support that I was pretty bad at it. Because typically at a lot of companies, a lot of larger companies, engineers don't talk to customers, right? Like there's always someone else in between. So I went to a local meetup to, cause I figured I could learn from people who do it all the time. Found out that there was a conference happening. I went to the conference totally.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (05:44.782)
Right.

Scott Tran (05:57.934)
felt out of place because it wasn't the main thing that I did. But I met so many interesting people at that conference who were doing super interesting things. And so I started Support Driven as a podcast to talk about all the interesting things that were happening in customer support, but not related to doing it better.

Right? Because at that time, this was back in like 2013, you know, I interviewed Andrew from Automatic, right? And he had given a talk at that conference about how they, at that time, had fully, you know, remote, you know, a remote team, right? They did no scheduling, right? Like people just worked on their own schedules and they just made it work, right? And I thought that was super interesting, you know, back then, like how do you make that work?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (06:46.99)
Wow

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (06:52.418)
Yeah. Interesting. And that was back in 2013.

Scott Tran (06:57.549)
Yes, yes. So, Support Driven Style is a podcast and then I interviewed the head of customer success at Yammer at that time. And he was telling me about how what they would do as a part of onboarding process was connect new customers to existing customers because those existing customers could help their new customers get value out of their product far better than a

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (07:25.112)
Yes.

Scott Tran (07:26.521)
customer success manager could, right? Because they can't be experts in every industry or every niche that their customers are in. But the interesting side effect of making those connections was that their new and existing customers started hosting their own breakfasts and meetups and workshops at each other's offices, right? And so I thought that sounded amazing, right? I loved the idea of

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (07:47.886)
Hmm.

Scott Tran (07:55.77)
people helping each other out. And so I started Support Driven the Community as a place for people and customer support to help each other. And so we started on Slack, and it was very slow. And then eventually a few more people showed up, and a few more people showed up. And then it just, it's a bit like a snowball going down a hill. We picked up momentum.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (08:20.398)
That's awesome. And for you that have been all along from the very beginning, when you got started, I know your mission and the purpose was to bring people together. But did you ever think about getting as big as you guys have gotten today as part of building this community?

Scott Tran (08:39.213)
No, no, no, because in the beginning it was, it was, you know, it's a place where people can come and talk about, you know, working in customer support, get help from other people in customer support, right? And I didn't know where it was going to go. And, you know, there were at that time, very few examples of Slack communities, right? That became more than Slack communities.

And so, you know, so I figured, well, we'll just keep doing this until we'll see what happens. Right. And then the community asked if Support Driven could host a conference in 2015. And I had no experience doing it. so was like, initially I said like, no, because.

Yeah, yes. Yeah. So the community asked if SupportDroga hosted a conference. Because one of the things in customer support is there's not a lot of conferences that are not owned and run by vendors, right? So you've got like Zendes Relate, you've got Intercom Pioneer, you've got all these events that are like vendor-owned, right? Vendor-produced, right? And at first I said no because what it sounded like was

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (09:41.227)
Right.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (09:48.14)
more vendors than, yeah.

Scott Tran (09:58.179)
people asking if you would throw a party and they may or may not show up. But eventually people kept asking and so I knew we had people with experience in organizing conferences and so I talked to them and did a lot of research and so eventually we decided with the support of the community to do it. So one of the key things was Andrew from Automatic arranged for us to use their space in San Francisco that they had at the time. So we had a venue and that was the biggest

the biggest risk, the biggest challenge. And then we did a Kickstarter for it, right? And that really changed everything. The Kickstarter changed everything. Because up until that point, I had no idea was anybody gonna show up. Did anybody care about this? Right?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (10:44.579)
Yeah.

and how many people showed up that first time.

Scott Tran (10:51.32)
think we had around 150, 160 people for that first conference, which was great for something that had never existed. On the Kickstarter, we asked for 10K. We hit that in the first 24 hours. We had people, because of the Kickstarters, reach out and say, I would like to sponsor this. What can I do? And for us, because I was so new at it, we had no

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (10:57.902)
was a great turnout.

Exactly.

Scott Tran (11:20.406)
We had no plans for sponsors for the first conference. So we had to make up some stuff for them to have as a sponsor. And that was the beginning of support driven as a company. And from that first conference, had other people who said, we have a space in New York.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (11:25.934)
I'm sure.

Scott Tran (11:50.467)
We'd love to offer you that space to host that conference in New York. so we said, yes, that would be awesome. And so we did a conference about five or six months later in New York.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (11:56.397)
Wow.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (12:04.888)
That's amazing, Scott. You know, and I'm sure going through that initial rush and seeing things materialize in this way, right? It was an exciting feeling, most probably on your end, right?

Scott Tran (12:07.81)
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Tran (12:20.01)
It was exciting. It was stressful. My thoughts were, let's do this. If it flops, can find another job. And so after that first one, I went back to the community and talked to a lot of people. wrote a blog post at that time. It's just saying, I didn't start the community with the intention of starting a company, but I would like to take a shot at

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (12:27.81)
We'll go back to it.

Scott Tran (12:50.006)
turning this into a full-time job because I want to put more time into it. And so since 2016, I've been working on support-driven full-time.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (12:59.118)
Wow, that's awesome.

That's amazing. You have been telling this story and I've been listening very quietly because it's almost like building a company as a startup, right? And then building and building and building.

Scott Tran (13:19.606)
Yep, we're navigating that, right? Because I think for me, I see the company exists to serve the community rather than the community exists to serve the company. And I think that's an important distinction, right? And it's something that we're figuring out because I haven't seen a lot of examples. I've seen a couple of other examples of communities that became, you know,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (13:32.994)
Right. Absolutely.

Scott Tran (13:49.709)
companies. Right. And so we're figuring out how what does that mean for us? What does that mean for our community? Right. And we're still figuring it out. But I'm excited about the potential. Right. You the things that we've worked on, the things that we've accomplished over the years, but also the potential of what we could do in the impact we could have on the industry, because now we're about around 20,000 people in the slack. Right. And then 30,000 people across like

Slack plus email plus LinkedIn. know that, you know, we're at a place where together, right, we can start shaping what's happening in industry rather than just reacting to what's happening in the industry.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (14:34.25)
Absolutely. It's good challenge to be thinking about what the future may bring by looking at where you are, what you have built, and what else we may bring for this community, right? That we will still be asking for belonging for spaces like this, like they can share knowledge and learn from each other. Absolutely.

Scott Tran (14:51.096)
Yes.

Scott Tran (15:01.462)
Yes. Yeah, I think with you know, there's been a lot of changes in the industry in the past couple years. I'm sure we've all either seen it been affected by it or know somebody else that has been affected by it. Right. You know, because I think AI came to customer support first. Right. Layoffs came to customer support first. Right. And then, you know, all the

all the advances in AI, all the new ideas, the changes that are coming out of AI, I think are also coming to customer support first as well.

literally on the bleeding edge of a lot of those changes. And I think as we are navigating that, I think community becomes even more important because everything else, thanks to AI, is getting noisier and it's harder to filter through the noise. And I think community is a way that we have seen our community members

utilize and get value out of.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (16:17.452)
Yeah, and you touched on a very valid point because I think, I agree with you, AI, it's amplifying everything that we as humans don't like, like the noise, the bad news, what's happening, you know, the things that it's happening to people during this disruption. And it's making people to try to appreciate these communities and these spaces even more. And I think that's where we're going to be kind of

Scott Tran (16:32.023)
Mm-hmm. Great.

Scott Tran (16:43.617)
Alright. Alright.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (16:47.47)
asking more into this future is those spaces that are safe spaces where we still can be human and feel like it's human helping human beings. And this type of community, it's really for that as well.

Scott Tran (16:57.397)
Right. Right.

Scott Tran (17:01.975)
Right. so, I know you have also had a first-hand view on all the changes that are happening in the industry. Like, what are the, you both the positives and the negatives that you're seeing in the past couple of years?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (17:20.526)
You saying regarding to AI, for example.

Scott Tran (17:24.427)
Regarding AI and kind of its effect on the customer support industry.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (17:28.684)
Yeah. So when I look at AI, it's, and I'm a very helpful and optimistic person. I'm always trying to see what are the benefits that AI, for example, brings to our operations, right? And of course, depending on where you are, it may mean something totally different, but I really believe AI is bringing a lot of benefits for improving customer support and improving our operations.

Scott Tran (17:36.919)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Scott Tran (17:56.203)
Mm hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (17:58.178)
The main mindset shift that I've seen, Scott, and that I talk to everyone about is, I think we as support leaders and overall support and customer experience, we need to get into a mindset that we are going to be builders of this future. It cannot be anymore that we are waiting for things to happen to us.

Scott Tran (18:13.217)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (18:22.994)
It's we need to leverage AI and build with AI whatever that future we need to be. If not, we're going to be left behind. And I would like more people, and I talk to everyone, to all our colleagues and friends in support, it's just get into the builder hat. And start looking at your operations and see how you can improve. Because AI, the first thing it does, it really challenges the status quo.

Scott Tran (18:31.127)
Alright.

Scott Tran (18:40.853)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (18:49.47)
everything that is not working, will amplify it and it will show up for you. Those are the main things. And during these transitions, you're going to have to keep as good as possible communication with our people, making sure that your people understand this is a transitional period and what is it going to be for them, right? Roles will change. We're all going to have to adjust. But I think if we do this right,

there will be a future for everybody in our organizations and our team. And that's what I really look at when I look at AI and the impact in our organizations. Yeah.

Scott Tran (19:32.459)
Right, right, and you know.

Scott Tran (19:41.174)
You know, and I think we're very much in the middle of the tunnel of like figuring it out, right? Because I think a couple of years ago, there were some stories of like people were like, we fired our entire department. It's all AI now. Right. And those same companies have come back since then. It's like, well, that maybe that wasn't a good idea. We need to hire some people. Right. And so I think we're seeing kind of the whole range, right, of how

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (19:51.574)
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Tran (20:10.593)
people, companies are responding, right? And looking to use AI. And I think that's going to continue to happen, right? But also I think with AI, like, for example, like email, right? So email was fantastic, because now we could, when email came out, it was like great, because now we could send messages to each other. We didn't have to wait like for days or, you know, to send.

or pick up the phone to send messages, but also email brought spam. Because the cost of sending those messages went down to effectively nothing. So now we also get drawn by spam. And I think that's also what we're gonna see with AI, because AI makes a lot of things quicker to do. And so we're seeing a lot of spam on kind of a next level spam.

I right? And just a lot of other like AI sloppiness out in the world. Or I suppose I say AI noise, right?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (21:10.616)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (21:16.097)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (21:21.858)
Yeah. And yeah, you're totally right. We're going to continue to see what is the good, but what also is the bad that this new tool and new technology is bringing. Like with any new technology, we get always both of them. It helps for some and it doesn't help for others. But you were touching on a point about companies rushing to fire people and then finding themselves this was not a wise...

Scott Tran (21:38.391)
Exactly.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (21:50.57)
a choice, right, a decision. Yes, and I hope more companies are paying attention that, you know, the right thing is to, what is your end goal? Analyze how you can still bring your people together into this new future because we're still going to need people, right? So, and that's something very important.

Scott Tran (21:50.645)
Right. Right.

Scott Tran (21:56.631)
Mm-hmm. All right. All right.

Scott Tran (22:09.354)
Right. I want to share kind of when I came to San Francisco many years ago as a software programmer, software engineer, right, I was interested in, you know, like understanding like how do people build software businesses, right? And my thought at the time when I came was like, I can be really good at coding, find somebody else who's really good at like the sales and marketing, right? And then like you could just build a business that way, right? And so...

And I think probably like a lot of other engineers, like you think your code is going to make for a great business, right? But have... Just that like the quality of your product is what builds the business or how good it is, right? Builds the business. But I don't think that is the key. Because...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (22:49.134)
change the world.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (23:06.743)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Tran (23:08.97)
Part of my experience of working at a startup was trying to understand how do people start businesses, right? And what makes one business successful versus another business, right? And certainly the code, the quality of the code and kind of the features all plays a role, but I think fundamentally and increasingly, right?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (23:17.763)
Bye.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (23:22.796)
Nuts.

Scott Tran (23:37.408)
The thing that distinguishes businesses is how well they understand the customer and the relationship they have to the customer. Because you could frankly have an OK product, but if you have a very good understanding and very good relationships, you can still build a more successful business than somebody on the opposite end of that.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (24:01.23)
It's about building those long-term relationships, right?

Scott Tran (24:04.619)
Right, right, and so it's the customer, know, kind of the strength of that connection, right, the strength of the understanding of the customer is the key. And that's why I think if any company were to like fully remove the people out of that relationship, right,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (24:24.686)
Peace will be gone.

Scott Tran (24:26.186)
Well, that piece will be gone and that creates opportunities for competitors, right? And like, I would be skeptical that that company survives long term because you've disconnected the customer from the business.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (24:37.038)
Totally Scott and and that's part of the conversations that some of the conversation that I have on this and these podcasts with people is Especially in customer overall customer experience support success when customer doesn't trust you and Something happened that you built a trust issue It's hard to overcome and that customer will be leaving you and it can happen very quick. It can be

Scott Tran (24:47.958)
Mm-hmm. All right.

Scott Tran (24:54.742)
Mm-hmm. All right.

Great.

100%.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (25:06.734)
an AI solution that it was not very well implemented, a bot that is giving the wrong recommendation and feedback to customer. So we need to be very careful on how we approach and implement technologies like some of these AI solutions, for example, because at the end of the day, it's still a human being that is the customer that is going to be the one receiving the feedback.

Scott Tran (25:10.198)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Scott Tran (25:33.013)
Yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (25:33.526)
And there is a trust there because we are humans. That's how we build relationships.

Scott Tran (25:37.386)
Yes, yes. And beyond the trust, right? think it's the like, even if you have a perfect product, your customers are human and they're not perfect. Right? So every business needs to support their customers. Right? And I think the increasingly, right, that is where the competition is. Right? Because, you know,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (25:48.046)
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Tran (26:04.983)
Because all the other pieces are increasingly commoditized, Like software is increasingly commoditized. Features are increasingly commoditized. And so what is the thing that separates companies?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (26:22.722)
Very interesting that you're touching on this point, kids. Competition is there looking at each other and take a look at the first mistake you make as a company to get that customer from you. So it's not our customers are hooked up to us. They have options in the market.

Scott Tran (26:29.972)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Tran (26:44.214)
Absolutely, Right. Yeah. And. Yeah, so so so I know that's the point, not the point of our podcast, but.

But I'll just go on a quick tangent, you can edit this out later, because I mean, I fit in. But one of the things that frustrates me is this is especially in the AI space, is how much more attention, right, the product managers, the markers, and also the, like, all the teams that are involved in building the product pay attention to what other companies are doing versus paying attention to the customers and what their customers say and what their customers need, right? You know, and that's why...

a of the marketing, you go to lot of AI companies' landing pages, right? They all say very similar things, right? They all make very similar promises. They're kind of like sound interesting, but like aren't really clear about what the end result's going to be, right? Right, and so, you know, if they put that energy to understand the customer, they could stand out more than they currently do, right? And so it's just one of those things where I think that's the...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (27:39.534)
What is it for me exactly?

Scott Tran (27:56.982)
I'll say a pet peeve of mine of like, just like, why are you care more about what your competitors are saying and doing than what your customers want you to do? Yes, exactly.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (28:06.05)
I'm telling you what you should be doing.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (28:12.01)
It's a very, very valid point. people kind of, you know, we find ourselves year after year just discussing about this. Pay attention to your customer, to what your customers are doing. There is a reason why they are with you. It's really your responsibility to keep them with you. And it's, you know, and it's not as complicated if you listen and work with them.

Scott Tran (28:39.593)
A lot of companies say they care, right? But do they work that way?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (28:43.638)
Yeah, it's one thing is saying another thing is putting in the work and work with your customers and make it happen.

Scott Tran (28:47.903)
Right, because.

I've worked at a lot of software companies and I think the majority of the time the things I was working on, the features I was working on was a VP's pet project, a VP's pet feature, or a product manager's pet project. It's just what people do when you give them a lot of resources.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (29:10.926)
That's a recipe for failure.

Scott Tran (29:20.731)
And they don't have to tie it back to like, well, what customer asked for this?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (29:28.334)
How is this new future going to help our customers? So at the end of the day, we'll build product and services for someone to use them. And that's part of why I talk to everyone. You can have the best product in the world. If you don't have a customer to sign up for it and use it, that's not the best product in the world. So.

Scott Tran (29:32.095)
Bye.

Scott Tran (29:49.769)
Right, right, right. It doesn't matter how good it is technically, right? It's not serving anyone's needs.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (29:57.954)
What's the problem you're trying to solve at the end of the day?

Scott Tran (29:59.828)
Right, right, right. And so I think as the world gets noisier with AI, because think of all the AI content generation, right? AI spam, right? It's going to be increasingly harder for people to find good sources of information, right? And things that they count on, because now we have to question every, you know,

piece of content we come across. Is this real or is it generated? Right? Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (30:33.836)
And if it was generated, did someone actually take the time to review it? Proofread it. Make sure that this is...

Scott Tran (30:39.765)
If history is any indication, the answer is no. It's just put it out there and then hope nobody... Right. Right. Right. And hope nobody notices the mistakes. But that's one of the things that when we're talking about community, right? That's one of the things that we have seen that our community, that people come to our community and what they look for.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (30:47.63)
It's copy and paste. I'm seeing a lot of copy and paste basically. Yeah.

Scott Tran (31:09.343)
So I'll give you example, like let's you know, if for whatever reason, right, you needed a plumber, right, would you call every plumber in the city or would you ask your friends, right, who do you use? Who do you trust? Exactly, exactly, right? And so we see that in the support driven community where people are asking, you know, what are you using to solve this problem? Or do you have experience working with this type of company? Right, and I think that's part of the...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (31:20.878)
someone for recommendations.

Scott Tran (31:39.219)
the power of community that helps cut through the AI noise that's out there.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (31:45.932)
Yeah, it's like a filter, right? That when you are part of the community, the noise is not getting down and you can focus on what really matters.

Scott Tran (31:50.377)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you can get, let's say, real information from a real person, right? Whereas, for example, you go to a review site. What percentage of those reviews are real? What percentage of those reviews are fake? Right, who knows? You know, another way that, you know, I've seen community, you know,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (32:06.828)
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Tran (32:28.169)
the way that people use the community, right, is both in hiring and getting a job. And that's something that we've had pretty much from the beginning. Because especially, and this is also something that AI is making worse, right? Because now, let's say you put out a manager position, you put out a director position, right, online. We've heard from our community members that they will get like thousands of applications. But out of those thousands of applications,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (32:48.814)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Tran (32:58.577)
only a small percentage of them are actually qualified for the role. And so now it actually creates more work to try to find the qualified people out of that stack of 1,000 applications.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (33:14.956)
And it also impacts sometimes even qualified candidates from getting through ATS. Because now, because of that many applications, they need to rely on automated tools like ATS system. And sometimes good candidates qualify because they don't have maybe good resumes or ATS proven resumes they got through.

Scott Tran (33:20.469)
Yes, 100%. Yes.

Scott Tran (33:39.509)
Well, who knows, The ATS algorithm is going to judge the application, And of course, it's not going to be perfect. And so that's another thing that we've seen people get value out of the community, right? Because when you post in a job in support driven, then at a minimum, you're also seeing

being seen by people who care enough about what they do to join a community and spend time in a community, right? You know, in the industry.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (34:17.494)
And again, back to your point about if you need a plumber, for example, you ask for recommendation from a friend. If you're looking for a job and you're building relationships within the community, most probably you have worked or people know you, right? Those hiring managers also looking for referrals in a way for people that are part of the community. So it's kind of a win-win for everybody. And that's what the community and this type of community also brings to the table.

Scott Tran (34:31.583)
Yes, 100%.

Scott Tran (34:43.785)
Yeah, so I think that's a great example of the power, the value of community and relationships. It's because the best way to get a job is for someone to come to you with the job and say, I think you would be amazing for this. Would you consider taking this job? Versus someone seeing a job post and then trying to fill out an application and hoping they make it through the ATS.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (35:11.534)
Absolutely. I see a great value. if someone is looking for what is it that this type of community brings and can help me with, this is one of the reasons why this type of community, especially support-driven, is great out, because everybody's looking for each other. People are usually building relationships, making friendships out of this community.

Scott Tran (35:33.717)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (35:39.32)
which is something beautiful to witness, to be honest.

Scott Tran (35:39.591)
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right. Because for me, I know people come to often come to me because they have a question related to work or looking for a job, but they stay because of the relationships. Right. They stay because this is support driven is that place where like you talk to your friends. Right. We've also had people who like they all work together, let's say 10 years ago, now have moved on to different roles.

But support driven is that shared space where they're still connected. And so they're all working at different companies, but they can all catch up and kind of continue those relationships in the community.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (36:24.248)
Yeah, absolutely. I can witness to that. Many of the people that I met back in Austin in February, those have been already guests in this podcast, Yeah. And I talk to them with some of them almost every day. So it's that type of relationship building that the type of settings and energy and community driven, human community driven.

Scott Tran (36:35.412)
Excellent.

Scott Tran (36:46.196)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (36:53.902)
aspects of support ribbon brings to it and it's just amazing. It really is.

Scott Tran (37:02.078)
Well, I'm excited to hear that you are experiencing that firsthand, right? And that it's, you know, that it's helping you with all the, you know, with things that you're working on.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (37:13.922)
Yeah, absolutely. And Scott, if there's someone out there thinking about building a movement, a community, what would be your recommendation or your advice to those with a dream and maybe a dreaming of building a community? And we know it's a lot of work, but what would you tell those people?

Scott Tran (37:33.46)
Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

Scott Tran (37:42.44)
I would tell those people build it one person at a time. So for example, in the first six weeks of support driven, the community, was me and one person from the UK. That was it. And we were just, yeah, on Slack. It was just literally a two person Slack. And we would just chat like, hey, how's your day going? Eventually more people showed up. And after the first year.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (37:58.496)
on Slack.

Scott Tran (38:11.561)
we had like 100 people, right? But imagine, yeah. But imagine, if, let's say if this was a community that was started by a company, I would have been fired, right? Like, are you telling me, you know, you've been working on this for how long, right? And we have this many people in the community, right? And so definitely it's one person at a time because it's also.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (38:17.304)
So don't panic at the beginning, right? That's the message.

Scott Tran (38:41.298)
essentially quality over quantity. I've never focused on how big can we grow the community, how fast can we grow the community, because that's not what's important. That's not where the value is. The value isn't having a bigger user number. The value is that you have people that want to be a part of community, that you have people in there that want to help each other.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (38:43.534)
you

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (39:02.03)
People engage exactly.

Scott Tran (39:03.954)
Yep. Yep. And so my advice is, yeah, yeah, and start one person at a time, right? And, you know, and create the space, right, as a community founder, right? Create the space that serves the community. And they will let you know, right, if it's serving them or not.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (39:05.979)
And it's definitely quality over quantity. Love that. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (39:32.706)
Beautiful. Was there a moment that you say, damn, I have something special, we're building something special and that you know, that moment arrived when you saw that or experienced that.

Scott Tran (39:45.652)
I would say I knew it was special from the beginning because I just enjoyed being in the community, right? I enjoyed the people, the conversations. was just a great place to be. But I didn't know how does this work? How do we like...

you know, how does this, how does, how would this sustain itself? Right. And I think the turning point was when we did the first conference and like, okay, now, you know, now we have a model, right? Because back then I had to decide like, where, where does support driven go from, you know, here, right? Because a lot of people assume like, you should become a nonprofit, right? you know, but for me, I had no experience.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (40:29.39)
from that point.

Scott Tran (40:37.778)
And I still have no experience. I still have zero experience with nonprofits. However, I did not like the idea of donations and that we would, the way that the community is sustained is through donations because I don't feel comfortable going around asking people, you donate money to keep support driven going? so I'd rather, and so we went with a for-profit model of like, would rather create something that

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (40:40.366)
You're still learning. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (40:56.397)
Right.

Scott Tran (41:07.54)
people want to be a part of, people want to you know, buy, you know, access to, like buy tickets to the conference, sponsorships, right? And, you know, essentially compete in the marketplace, right? And so I think that after the first conference was when, well, it's probably after the second conference, right? The first conference kind of opened the door, but the second conference was what like, helped me see like, okay, this, we can build a business around this, right?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (41:13.56)
Right. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (41:38.594)
And at the beginning was only once a year.

Scott Tran (41:43.262)
Well, we did the first conference, I think it was in May, right? And then, you know, and the conference did well, right? But also I was living in San Francisco, right? And so, so we ended up doing two conferences that year, right? Because, you know, because one conference wouldn't have been enough from a sustainability perspective.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (41:56.056)
Right.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (42:00.12)
Got it, got it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (42:08.846)
Right. Right. Yeah, that makes total sense. And from all the cities in the US, which one is the one that you feel like support-driven belongs? Is it San Francisco? Is it...

Scott Tran (42:16.816)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Scott Tran (42:29.299)
I think it's less about the city and a lot more about the people and bringing the people together. Because we've done the conference in, we don't have a fixed location for the conferences. So we've done it in San Francisco, we've done it in Portland, Seattle, Boston, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Austin. And so I think it's where...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (42:35.459)
Bye.

Scott Tran (42:57.171)
You know, and what makes a support-driven conference a support-driven conference, right, it's when the people come together. And so it's not any particular city, right? I think we're always...

you know, looking at hosting the conferences in different cities so that it's easier, right, for people to be a part of because, for example, we only did it in San Francisco, New York, which is great and convenient if you live in those cities, but not so convenient if you don't live in those cities.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (43:28.334)
Yeah, I agree. And you also, need to look at giving also people that maybe want to stay one or two days, maybe they haven't been on that city, always something like an extra flavor to the travel, right? Yeah.

Scott Tran (43:35.869)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Tran (43:40.275)
Yes. Yes. So we do have a fair number of people who make a trip out of it, right? Especially the people who come internationally. always naturally make a trip out of it because it is a lot of time to get there. Yeah. At the last one, we had someone come from Australia, right? We had someone come from Estonia, London, Portugal, right? You know, and so...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (43:46.892)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (43:51.992)
Yeah. It's a long flight, right? Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (44:01.441)
Wow.

Scott Tran (44:09.479)
Yeah, they definitely made a trip out of it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (44:13.282)
Now that you mentioned Portugal, when was the last time that Support Dreaming was in Europe?

Scott Tran (44:19.963)
It was in 2019, right? So we have a good size number of members in Europe. And so after the first one, they were asking like, great, this sounds amazing. When can support driven do a conference in Europe? And so we did it, you know, we did a Kickstarter for it. We did it in Europe, right? We actually did it in Belgrade, Serbia, right? And then...

We had planned to do a conference, I believe it was Prague and I think it was Prague and Madrid, in 2020. Yes, and then we had to cancel both of them. We had to cancel all of our conferences in 2020. Exactly, exactly.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (44:57.368)
Beautiful, beautiful place.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (45:02.51)
because of covid my god so never happen in Prague or Madrid

Scott Tran (45:08.923)
No, because nobody was traveling, right? You couldn't be indoors, right? And so, however, next year we have committed to doing a conference in Europe next year. And we're currently looking at venues right now. We have suggestions. Yeah, so a lot of...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (45:12.822)
Yeah, damn it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (45:23.918)
I saw that. Have you picked a place already or not yet?

Scott Tran (45:29.341)
We're looking at venues, right? So the venue ultimately is going to determine it, right? But we have narrowed down the list and I put out a poll last week between, so Amsterdam, Lisbon, Barcelona and London were on the poll.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (45:32.845)
Got it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (45:46.228)
All amazing places!

Scott Tran (45:49.937)
Yeah, you should come.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (45:52.824)
Probably will find myself on it. Probably going to schedule my visit to Budapest and my team's is based in Budapest around it. So as soon as the date is picked, I'm probably going to schedule something around it.

Scott Tran (45:54.86)
hahahaha

Scott Tran (46:03.11)
nice, nice. Yeah. So our plan is to do it end of May, early June. Right? So that's the general timeframe because that's when we can fit it into our event schedule from an organizing perspective. And it's also when it's generally good weather in most parts of Europe.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (46:20.76)
That makes sense.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (46:30.65)
yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. May is still, yeah, May is good definitely at that time and early January, June, it's good weather for sure. Good. I'll be looking out for the announcements next, but that's going to be exciting. I think that one in Europe will bring a lot of people because there's a lot of excitement around it.

Scott Tran (46:33.032)
Yeah.

Scott Tran (46:38.951)
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Tran (46:48.36)
Nice.

Scott Tran (46:52.071)
Yeah, it's going to be exciting because, yeah, I think it would definitely be exciting because, you know, we talked earlier about like how there's not a lot of options in the US. There's even fewer options in Europe when it comes to like conferences and other resources.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (47:08.12)
That's a very valid point as well. Now that you put it that way, I haven't heard for lot of options or events being that focused on customer support in Europe either. It's usually customer experience or success.

Scott Tran (47:12.039)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Scott Tran (47:17.64)
Yeah.

Scott Tran (47:24.135)
Yeah, it's a lot of customer success. a of like contact center conferences, right? Which I think serves a different crowd than our community members. Yep.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (47:28.642)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (47:36.846)
Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Scott, have you thought about what's the legacy you want this to be for you? So what you are building.

Scott Tran (47:43.665)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Tran (47:51.325)
Yeah. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (47:54.059)
What's the legacy on it for you?

Scott Tran (47:55.983)
I have, right? this came up. So in the history of Support Driven, we have received an acquisition offer three times, like a serious one. And the first one was pretty early in the journey of Support Driven. And I said no to that because we were just getting started and I wanted to explore kind of where we could take it. But we had another...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (48:07.778)
Wow.

Scott Tran (48:24.786)
A couple years later, another acquisition offer that I took seriously because I knew, because they themselves had taken an investment from a private equity firm. So I knew they had the money, right? Like I knew, you know, they were attached to a piggy bank, right? So I knew that that wasn't gonna be like an issue for them. But as I thought about, you know, what would happen to the community, right, if it got acquired,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (48:37.39)
Wow.

Scott Tran (48:54.928)
both from a community perspective and a personal perspective, kind of like where that would go. I talked to lot of people who'd been through acquisitions. I talked to people who had their community acquired, right? And ultimately decided that it didn't make sense for support driven because I think, one, I didn't want to live in a world where all the nice things are owned by big companies. And that tends to be what happens once you get

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (49:06.766)
Hmm.

Scott Tran (49:22.258)
acquired by company, eventually they sell it onto bigger and bigger companies. And ultimately, I knew it was not going to serve the community as well as if we could stay independent. Because I knew at the end of the day, any company that owns support driven would squeeze the community to hit their quarterly numbers sooner or later. Because it's just sitting there.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (49:25.048)
to a bigger one. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (49:47.638)
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Tran (49:51.312)
Right? You know, if you haven't squeezed it yet, like exactly. It's just a matter of time. Right. But also, I think it would limit the ways we could serve the community, because if it wasn't connected to selling more software, selling more services of the parent company, then it wouldn't make sense to the parent company to even allow, you know, that, you know, that way of serving the community to exist.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (49:53.976)
It's just a matter of time, yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (50:17.848)
Wow. Thanks for sharing that with us. I did not know a lot of this conversation today. It's me being learning about support driven. And when you're saying that, it makes me think, and then back to the question, this is your legacy, right? Something bigger than just yourself.

Scott Tran (50:28.016)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott Tran (50:37.01)
Yes, yeah. Yes. And so that is a... I think that's one of the things that I think separates support-driven from other communities in this space, because I have seen other communities, both in this space and other spaces, right? And the thing that I see with a lot of communities, right, it comes back to...

founders, right? And kind of like the space that they create, right? Because I've seen communities where it's all about the founder. So like people join because they want to be connected to the founders. For example, like let's say if there's an author community, right? People join because of the connection to the author, right? Like that's the common thread, right? I've seen other people start communities to support their consulting practice, right? And so like it's all about like being a part of like that world, right? For that consulting practice.

But for support driven, it's not about me. I cannot answer your questions about how to your job better. I don't have that experience. I'm not qualified. However, there are other people in the community that can help you. And there's other people in the community that you can help. And that's the magic of support driven. And that's the legacy that I would love to have is that

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (51:42.83)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Scott Tran (52:01.254)
We created a place where people are helping each other, right? And that I would love to see that continue to happen after I hand off the torch.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (52:13.038)
And that ties beautifully with the guiding message and principle of why this podcast exists, right? How we're gonna continue to stay human. And this is how, just learning and helping each other more and more. This is how I see it.

Scott Tran (52:23.068)
Yep. Yes.

Scott Tran (52:28.006)
Yes. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's, I'm optimistic, right? In that way that, you know, we have to find a different way to move forward, you know, both personally, both as a society, right? You know, and that this can work, right? This is working in other forms of fashion, right? Because one of the most common ways,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (52:41.646)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Tran (52:57.872)
I would say the most common way I think of support driven and when it comes to deciding where we should go, what we should do, is to think of it as a community garden. So it's a shared space where different people bring different skills, different resources to the garden, but they also get different things out of the garden. And I see my role as how do we create that space that works.

for the people in a way that's sustainable.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (53:32.802)
You are that vehicle that is providing a platform for the community to determine what's next for us, basically.

Scott Tran (53:35.932)
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would describe our community as a place where people come together to help each other. It's a vendor kind of agnostic place, where, let's say, if you use Zendesk, you can have a relationship. You can talk to you. You can have somebody who uses Intercom help you.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (54:00.514)
Yeah.

Scott Tran (54:03.986)
And we have a Zendesk channel and we have an Intercom channel, right? But we're kind of that common ground where regardless of, you know, your industry, regardless of what platforms you use, right? Like you can come together and help each other.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (54:20.856)
And even for vendors, they know that if they want to be successful, they need to build a connection with this community. There's no other way.

Scott Tran (54:29.317)
I, we do get a lot of vendors come into the community because sooner or later, if you're looking for community and customer support, community and customer experience, we show up because I think we have been around long enough, right? That, you know, that we naturally show up. So one fun thing that someone pointed out to me a couple of months ago was when they were asking AI, right? Like,

What are the events I should go to in customer support? What are the communities I should join in customer support? We just naturally showed up. Not because we spent a bunch of money on SEO, which we have never spent any money on SEO, but because we have the longevity.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (55:13.134)
It's the worth of mouth as well, right? People already know the brand. Yeah.

Scott Tran (55:15.589)
Yeah, absolutely. The word about this is the heartbeat. Yeah. Yep.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (55:20.686)
Yeah, absolutely. this has been an amazing conversation. And before we get to the last part of this conversation, there's one last question for you, which is, what would be your piece of advice for a young Scott seeing him today and in this whole new feature with AI? What would you tell that guy today?

Scott Tran (55:51.889)
With AI, I think it's similar to what you mentioned earlier of harnessing it, building with it, using it, because it's a technology. And this technology is changing a lot of industries, it's changing a lot of how we work, but also with change comes opportunity. So it's identifying

the opportunities in those change, right? In those changes, right? And it's also considering what are the things that don't change, right? Humans aren't gonna change. Humans will continue being humans. Relationships will continue to matter, right? And so it's kind of balancing, it's seeing the opportunities but also focusing on the things that don't change.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (56:47.438)
Yeah, beautiful. I agree. Thanks for sharing that with us. And really thank you for taking the time again to be with us today. And also not just for the community you have built, right, but for the one that you made possible. And for everyone watching this episode, if this resonated with you, if it made you feel something, send it to your family, to your friends, to your loved ones.

and make sure that we keep dreaming whatever it's possible. So Scott, my friend, one more time, thank you for being with us today.

Scott Tran (57:26.449)
Thank you so much. had so much fun being on your podcast.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (57:29.43)
Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you all. We'll see you next week.