Brief summary:

Melanie Aronson is the founder and CEO of Panion, an all-in-one community management platform that builds privacy, empathy and meaningful connection into online and offline communities. After researching integration at Lund University in Sweden, she birthed the idea of an app that would help facilitate meaningful connection between people. This idea launched her into the world she lives in today. Listen in as Melanie shares, how her drive to reduce loneliness and increase a sense of belonging for all has driven her on her journey thus far.

Key insights from this episode:

• (at 1:55) Melanie talks about her brainchild, Panion, how it differs from any other social platform and what value it can offer to its users.

• (at 14:53) MA: I felt like there were impacts I could make that could slightly change the world. And it's the same with products. I would never build a product that didn't somehow enhance people's lives in some way. It wouldn't drive me.

• (at 19:00) Melanie shares how leadership has been the hardest part of her journey and how she’s developing in that area. 

• (at 31:51) Melanie shares a great tool for connecting an organization's mentors to mentees via her platform

Want to make sure you don’t miss future episodes?

Sign up here and we will alert you every time a new episode comes out.

Transcript:

FUEL Podcast hosted by Leila Ansart
EPISODE 3: Interview with Melanie Aronson, Founder and CEO of Panion

INTRO: Welcome back to FUEL podcast. My guest today is Melanie Aronson. Melanie is the Founder and CEO of Panion, an all-in-one community management platform that builds privacy, empathy and meaningful connection into online and offline communities.

Now a tech founder, Melanie's background is in social anthropology, project management and design. After researching integration at Lund University in Sweden, she birthed the idea of an app that would help facilitate meaningful connection between people.  This idea launched her into the world she lives in today. 

Listen in as Melanie shares, how her drive to reduce loneliness and increase a sense of belonging for all has driven her on her journey thus far.

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Welcome, Melanie, to the podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here today. Thank you for joining us. 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Thanks for having me. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Absolutely. Melanie, why don't you tell us a little bit about the company that you run currently and perhaps if you don't mind, share a little bit about your background, how you came into forming this company. What gave you the idea and then we'll go from there. Sure. 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Sure. I have a background in anthropology and documentary filmmaking.  In 2014, I received a Fulbright Grant to move to Sweden, to do research for a documentary I was working on integration. It was the height of the migration influx into Europe. I wanted to understand people's experiences moving completely to a new country, a new culture and how their social experiences integrate into that culture. I was working on a documentary at the time and in my research, I realized that there was this recurring theme of people struggling to rebuild their social circles again. I could relate to it a lot because I've lived in quite a few different countries and the older I got, the more I felt like it's really hard to build your social circle as an adult. You know yourself better and it's a lot harder to find those people that you connect with and you also have less time. 

You want an efficient way to meet people because you're working and you're not surrounded by potential friends anymore. I started off with just creating a prototype for an app that I thought would solve my problem and the problem of the people that I had met, which was about connecting people through common interests, values and experiences based on the geolocation. 

The idea was to use technology to connect people in person. That would hopefully help people when they move to a new place to find some other people that they could connect with, people to do different hobbies with, this kind of thing. I raised a bit of friends and family money, built a prototype, hired some developers and ended up with this MVP and got into an accelerator in Sweden for the product. I ended up doing the accelerator by myself, not really not knowing what I was getting myself into and knowing that I had to grow this into a team, get investors and what it was like to build an actual tech company. 

I just had an idea and wanted to see how far I could take it. I started to build a team within the first year of launching our version one. We had over a hundred thousand members on our platform and we were building it out, but then COVID hit. We were building a platform for meeting people in person at a time when it was highly advised not to meet people in person. You were like, okay, we need to think fast. How are we going to shift this? We also saw during COVID that our platform was being used in a way that was really supportive for people who were really freaked out about the pandemic. We saw these kinds of natural support groups arising inside the platform, because we did have some group activity functions and people were actually checking in with each other every day, supporting each other at the beginning of the pandemic. 

We were like, wow, community is really important. Maybe it doesn't have to be about meeting in person. Maybe it is just about the meaningful connections, whether they're online or offline that make you feel mentally well and give you a sense of belonging.  So We kind of shifted our perspective on, does it need to be in person or can you have meaningful connections that are virtual as well? It really changed my perspective on that, during that time.

So we started to shift the platform more towards building communities where we bridge the gap between online and offline. Panion is a community management platform, but it helps communities find a balance between the two, so you could host in-person events, you could host virtual events. You could use the geolocation features to find people inside a community that are nearby, who share your interests so you could go meet them. 

But all of it is now done within the context of a community where you share some sort of goal or experience, and then you go deeper and find common interests within that. Because we did realize that when you're searching for people in the whole world who happened to like things you like, it's not necessarily that you would have enough in common to become friends because you both like playing football and you both like listening to hip hop. I mean, it might not be enough. But when you're in a community that's about a shared experience or a shared goal or a professional community experiences like being a female founder or being a parent who maybe has a child with a disability, like suddenly that shared experience is already connecting you quite a bit and then digging deeper and finding connections within that community where you already have that baseline. 

There's a lot more probability that you'll actually create like a real friend or a real meaningful connection there. That's the path we shifted towards during COVID and now we, for the last year, were focused mostly on shared interest communities, shared experience communities and impact communities. We don't really want to be a free-for-all where anyone who can create Facebook group can create on our platform, but more people are really trying to bring some sort of impactful experience to their community. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Thank you for sharing that. Tell me a little bit about what's the difference between Panion and a Facebook group from my side as a user.

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
As a community manager or as a member in a community?
Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Maybe both.
Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Sure. For one, you don't have to be on Facebook.  (both laugh)

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
I know there's a lot of people who are definitely pushing away and myself included, and there's a lot of privacy concerns and the ads that they're running, the information they're collecting, those are all very big concerns for many people.

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Yeah. For one it's that you don't have to have a Facebook account. You don't have to have a public profile for everybody to see. In a Facebook group, you actually can't connect peer to peer, unless you're already friends. You have to send this request, it goes into another inbox. It's not actually encouraging one-on-one connections. It's really focused on the feed. Whereas Panion is really focused one-on-one connections or group connections, like really facilitating the members to get to know each other on a deeper level. And so the technology actually enables this.
Another thing we've heard a lot of complaints about regarding Facebook groups is the way events are managed within the community. We're really working hard to make sure that events can seamlessly integrate into your community; that you can manage events; that you can communicate with the people who say they're going to the events or who might be interested in events; that you can communicate with the coordinators; that you're running the event with all within one platform.

All the communication done in general within the community is done from the same piece of technology, so that you're not trying to use an event bright and then use a MailChimp for example, and then also use a Facebook group. Most of that can be kind of done in one central space. I would say that, of course, we're not trying to be a piece of technology that can do all of those to the extent that those technologies can do them, but a lot of people don't need all of the features in any of those tools. They literally just want to send mass communication, like a very simple email to everyone, or they just want to schedule an event, they want to charge that event, they want to collect RSVPs. Most of those simple things people want to do, and they want to do it in one central place.  They want to have a dashboard where they can track all the analytics on their events, on the communications and how many people are actually communicating with each other.  Like am I doing things right? Are people engaging with my content? I'm really digging deep and understanding the community on a deeper level so that they can actually curate the community and give an even better experience to their members. I think a lot of people are blindly running community without actually looking at the statistics and the analytics behind the community. And because we started as an app that was about sharing interests and using keyword tags to find each other, we've built that into the community now so we could tell you what are the top interests inside your community from your members and how can you create more relevant events around those interests because that will probably engage people more, for example. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
So as a user, if I'm wanting a vehicle to find friends, to find people that I could genuinely really hang out with, whether that's virtually or in person depending on our situation and as this progresses, you're saying that I could go on there and create an account and not be subjected to the ads and the tracking that Facebook, to be clear that you're not doing any of that? 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Right. We don't have any ads built. The whole point is to not have ads built into anything. We make money when the community managers make money. So if you charge for an event, if you charge a membership fee, because I think the model is shifting and if we look at the models right now, it's going from I want to subscribe to this space that gives me value and I'm willing to pay to have no ads and to have valuable people and to have it be curated for me. That's the motto we're working with, which means we'll take a commission on, say a membership fee or an event fee. We'll grow with you rather than just bombard your members with ads, I mean that doesn't bring value to them. You're not offering a good experience for your members and therefore they're not going to stick around and then nobody benefits. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Right. To have someplace where I can really express my values, you mentioned values a few times. I'd love you to talk about that a little more, but where I can find people who value the same types of things. This is a tool that I could use to do that without kind of getting deluged by typical social media, Facebook, Instagram, whatever the platform is that you happen to be using, is what you're saying. 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Yeah. Essentially we have built a tool that community managers can use and they can customize and they can brand so you could have a community link on your website and have your own community, enter the community directly through your website. It would be branded with your logo and it would feel like a part of your website. In a sense, this is like people building their own small social networks. We're linking them together as a way for people to maybe find new communities and discover new communities through our platform. The entry point can also be through the actual communities website itself. It is in a sense like it would cost a lot of money to hire a developer and build your own community into a website and then keep it maintained and upgraded with new features. It's in a sense like also white label service that allows you to have this kind of service and offer this service to your audience without actually having to manage developers, pay those development fees and running a tech product.

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Yeah, that's really cool. I recently watched the Social Dilemma on Netflix, which completely freaked me out. I knew a lot of it already, but just the way that they described that we are the user and this is a whole rabbit trail that we're not going to go down right now, but I'm excited about your platform and excited about trying it out.

I kinda wanted you to share more about it today because I think it's important for people to realize what's possible, but let's pivot back to what drives you. I mean, to go from somebody who's interested in  documentary filmmaking, doing research, I mean, what was it that got your attention and made you say, I'm going to launch myself into this world of tech that I, if I'm hearing you correctly, you didn't have a whole lot of knowledge on exactly what you were getting into. And now you've founded this company that is really growing and doing well and has really unlimited potential. What launched you into that space? What was that driving force? 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
First off I moved to Sweden from New York city. I moved to the third largest city from New York city and suddenly I didn't have very much to do. I had been really efficient. In New York I learned how to be super efficient then suddenly I'm like in this really quiet place where I'm biking around everywhere and there's not so much going on. I'm like, wow, I have all this free time.

And then I had this idea and I really just wanted to use the product myself and give it to people, and then I told them I had this idea and they were calling me, asking  “is your app done yet? I really need it now.” I'm like, wait, that's just an idea. Many people wanted it and I had all this free time and I was like, I'm going to just try this and see where it goes. 

I had worked for Apple for a few years, so I was familiar with the tech industry, but I'd never built anything. I'm very self-taught when it comes to design and tech so I've never really felt like I couldn't do anything. I've never actually been one of those people that was like, oh, that's too difficult for me. I've always had this internal drive to be like, I'll just figure it out. I know I can. I don't know where that came from, but I really like problem solving. I'm a really curious person. I like learning. I messed up a lot and I learned from it also, it wasn't a smooth journey by any means. But I love creating things. I am an artist, I'm a filmmaker, and now I'm in product. 

It's really fun to create things that other people consume. Especially if you can do it in an impactful way. So I was creating documentaries, I was hoping that people were having a new perspective, opening their minds, when watching my films. I felt like there were impacts I could make -- that I could slightly change the world. And it's the same with products. I would never build a product that didn't somehow enhance people's lives in some way. It wouldn't drive me. I think the fact that I had this experience and I saw all these people who are feeling isolated, feeling lonely, especially in Scandinavia when it's in the winter, I was like, oh, maybe I can solve this. That drove me to figure it out. I've always had this internal motivation to create things and if I can keep creating them, then the motivation is somehow there.
eila Ansart, Podcast host
It's really interesting how you drew a connection between your creative side, your art, calling yourself an artist and actually viewing, creating a tech product, an app as a piece of art. It's so cool. I never would've thought of it that way, but in essence what you're saying is it was your ability to see a problem, have an idea and then say, I'm going to create this. And then under the larger umbrella, the context of this has gotta be impactful for people for me to put my time into it. It's got to make a difference in some way.

You made a little gesture and said little change in the world. I would imagine that for the people who are using the app now who have found communities based on, you mentioned earlier a child with a disability or being brand new to an area or an expat or something like that, you've changed the world in more than just a teeny tiny way. 

It's probably been a great connection point for so many people who were looking for something like that. I would say that your drive is making an impact in quite a way already.

When things get tough, you mentioned it wasn't a smooth journey and you've messed up a few times, which I thank you for being honest and real. That's a big draw on this podcast. Let's talk about the real real. Give me a story, if you don't mind sharing, when something happened and knocked you off your game and then how you were able to recover from that.

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
I'm trying to think of something specific, but I can say that one of the hardest things for me has been the leadership side of this journey, because I've always been a freelancer and I've always worked for myself and suddenly I had an idea and then I was trying to build that idea. And then suddenly I had a team and suddenly I was the boss. I was like, wait a second. How do I be the boss? I started reading books on leadership. I had people give me feedback like, hey, this is confusing for me. Or I don't feel like I was on-boarded well. And I'm like, wait, I need to think about this. I need to be able to do this better. You have conflicts in the team and everyone's looking at you to solve them.

I started having one-on-ones with my teammates to make sure they were all happy because I really didn't want to have to hire new people. I wanted to make sure that they were happy and that they were feeling good and that they were getting things done in a way that made them feel like they could work well with each other. It's just important for me that my team is happy and enjoying what they're doing. All of that has just been really challenging because it takes a lot of confidence to be able to lead. I was always confident in my own skills and my own abilities to deliver a service, but I was never the one that wanted to be the loudest in the room or I was always good being behind the camera and suddenly I'm leading. That was just a big transition for me. 

I started having to get on stage and pitch and talk publicly. All of these moments that put you in the spotlight. I think those have been the hardest for me. But there's no one else to do it, so I have to do it. I just have to get better at it and it'll get easier.  I'm also one of those people that like being outside of my comfort zone. I've been one of those people who's traveled around the world by myself and slept on people's couches. I've always got the adrenaline rush of being outside my comfort zone. But when I hit this point where I was outside my comfort zone, being on stage and having to be the face of a company, I was like, wow, this is maybe too much outside of my comfort zone.
Leila Ansart, Podcast host
It’s like combining three or four different ways to be outside your comfort zone together at the same time.

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
It was a lot, but I’m finally starting to feel comfortable. There was a situation this week where I had to make a decision on hiring between two different people. I had this gut feeling and I had to go with it. I had to explain to the other person what my gut told me. There's all these uncomfortable moments when you have to talk to people, especially when you really liked them. You would love to hire both of them, but you can't. There's all those human moments that are really tough. There's always going to be more and you're like, oh, I just need to get past this one and then it'll be over. It's like if you're going to run a company, you're always going to have all these moments of uncomfortable human interactions that you just have to get past, but you get better at it or they feel less uncomfortable, I think, over time. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Yeah. I'm gonna repeat what you said a moment ago, which was, ‘well, I’ve got to do it and there's nobody else to do it.’ Is that something that you've heard inside a few different times? 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Yeah. I started this on my own, so it's been hard. I realized it's up to me and I don't want to do a lot of things sometimes, but I have to do them because they're just not going to get done. You start to get used to that after a while. I have a lot of friends running companies and some of them have 2, 3, 4 co-founders and they are splitting it up amongst themselves. Someone would go on stage one time. Now I'm so used to it. It's okay for me. I'm fine with it. I think it just was one or two years of a lot of growing pains. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Yeah. I'm reminded of the hero's journey. I'm sure you've heard that outline of great stories, so many good movies and books that we've read [or] talk about. The hero/heroine who's called to adventure. They get that, this is their destiny, this is their mission, they're the only one that can solve the problem. And, you know, it's nice. It's fun to watch that and disconnect your mind in a movie or a book. But when that call comes in your own life, it's interesting how there is a power there. I mean, I'm reflecting back to you and please correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a power there in realizing, okay, this is something I'm supposed to do. My words, not yours, but I had this idea. It is solving problems. Now there's growing pains and there's nobody else to handle this, it's me or no one. I've got to step into this role and do it. And that's what you've done. 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Yeah. I guess I have. Yes. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
I'd say you have. What do you think is the source of your, (this is kind of a funny question), but the source of your heart in the sense that you really seem to have quite a heart for people to feel connected and to have a sense of belonging, where do you think that comes from? 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Well if you ask my mom as a psychologist, you might have a different answer. I am an empath. I've always felt a lot. I think when you're creative and you also feel a lot, you sometimes also feel like you don't always belong because you feel a bit weird or you're different. I don't like labels, but I've read a lot about highly sensitive people. And I very much relate to that. I have very heightened senses and I'm very sensitive, so it might stimulate things around me. It makes me feel a lot. I've always just kind of been that person that feels so much empathy for everyone that I want to somehow do something about it. I think it is this drive to solve problems and help people who feel a certain way or feel the way that maybe I've related to in the past and find a solution for that in some way, I mean, that's my guess. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
I think it's a pretty solid guess. I'm not a psychologist, and don’t know whether you're an empath or not. I so respect the empaths that we have in this world because that's so needed. 

I think there's such a gift when (if I could label it a different way), when you've gone through some kind of pain, some uncomfortability, some sense of being the outsider and then you find a way to make sure that others don't have to feel that to the same extent that you have. 

Solving that problem for others, I think is such a beautiful way to take the pain of what you've been through and flip it and say, I'm going to do something that's meaningful so that others feel that connection that I'm not feeling right now.

I'm getting a little teary-eyed because that means so much to me. And when we can, as humans, no matter what our roles are, when we can take the pain that we've been through and find a way to find some fuel inside of it and to say, okay, I never would've signed up for that. It would be nice if it went a different way, but since I've been through this, I know what it feels like. Is there a way that I can make a difference for someone else? 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Yeah. I think it's really important that everybody in the world can do that in some way. Imagine what our world would look like if everyone could transform their pain into something more beautiful rather than let it snowball into something uglier, you know? 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Yeah, absolutely. So let's switch gears here. You mentioned your mom is a psychologist, which leads us into a fun fact you shared with me before we started recording. What is something that maybe those who don't know you well would find interesting about your upbringing? 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Yeah, my mom, my step-mom and my stepfather are all psychologists, so I was very psychoanalyzed and I'm maybe too self-aware to the point where it's a bit damaging maybe. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Were there some positives that came from that? 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Of course. I mean, I'm very in touch with my emotions and I know how to talk about them usually. 
I mean, also I think I was very resistant and I was like, I'm never going to become a psychologist cause they're evil. But then I ended up taking some classes in psychology in university and a lot of the work I do in documentary and now in building communities, all related to psychology. So I guess I can't escape it. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Yeah. I always find it so fascinating why people do what they do. First and foremost, when I think of psychology, it’s being able to kind of dive into why people do what they do, and understand it more from a human level. I would imagine that the upbringing you had had many results, one of which is to make you aware of your humanity, perhaps more than an average person who didn't have that insight. 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Yeah. I actually think I need to write a screenplay or like a Netflix series on all of that experience because there's a lot of comedy in there as well, I would say. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Yeah, I would imagine. Probably some great fodder for good stories. Awesome. 
Well, Melanie, thank you for being with us today and sharing so much of your personal story and what drove you and continues to drive you. How can our listeners get to know you better? And if they're interested, try out the platform that you've created as well. 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
So they can go to Panion.com and read more about our platform. Right now we're doing demos with people. We're doing it very manual at the beginning. Like I said, we want to have the right types of communities on our platform. We want to make sure that we can bring a lot of value to our customers so we have a very hands-on approach. It's easy to request a demo and we can get you set up with the community, have a conversation, and show you the platform. 

I'm on LinkedIn, Twitter, despite my dislike for social media, I have to be there. So people can definitely reach out to me there. I struggled with random friend requests left and right but if people tell me why they're there and why they're reaching out or how they heard it,  it's easier for me to be able to connect.  Because I get like all these, do you need developers? I get that once a day. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Yes. The pitches are there all at the time. I just realized we forgot to touch on one really exciting piece of your platform, which I'm going to sound like a commercial here and I really don't mean to be, but I'm very excited about it. You shared it with me before, and that is the mentor connection that you're creating within the platform. Do you want to speak on that just for a couple minutes? 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Sure. So as we were pivoting to this community building space, we've always been very research driven, but we decided we really need to just talk to as many community managers as possible. 

We talked to well over 200 and we saw this recurring theme of people having to manually match people inside their community because people really wanted mentorship. They needed a buddy because they moved to a new place. There were so many scenarios when they were offering matching as a service and we had already built this friend matchmaking, we're like, oh, that's perfect. We can use this inside the communities. We decided to build this way where you can add labels to different types of groups of people. So people can be called mentors or mentees or any type of label you want. 

And then you can do a match, like a batch matchmaking process. Say I want to match these people who I've labeled mentors with these people who are mentees. You can choose how many interests you want them to have in common. You can choose how far away they should be from each other. You can even choose if you want them to be the same gender or it doesn't matter. I mean, there's all these criteria you can choose. Then, we create the matches for you. You have a chance to kind of adjust it and then we send introductions automatically to all those people so that it makes setting up a mentorship program. You can do it in a matter of minutes, rather than all these people who have been telling us that they've been writing with a pen and paper and trying to match all these different people together. 

This is like a good service that you can provide inside your community because a lot of these communities are becoming businesses. People have an idea, they start a community because they're looking for people they connect with and suddenly their community grows and suddenly they're spending so much time and they realize, wow, I could quit my job and make this my business, but then needing the tools and the platform to be able to monetize on that community, for example, to charge membership fees, to offer matchmaking. So [we] offer these kinds of tools. 

Another feature that we're working on is bringing a job board into communities. There's a lot of professional communities where people really want to share positions or they're looking for jobs. And they can get outside companies who maybe want to post inside their community. I think the direction we're going, I said this a bit before, is that instead of having one large social network, we're going to have these small niche, social networks that feel more intimate, they feel more meaningful and people might be a part of a few of them rather than this free for all space where anything goes. You feel a lot safer in these more niche spaces. They're more curated and you feel like these people get you and that you're part of something, it's really hard to feel part of something when everyone is a part of in the world. 

Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Yeah, too broad. That's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing on that part as well. I think the whole mentor-mentee connection point is pretty fascinating for the possibilities that you could use and that you could, as someone who's looking for a mentor, so many people talk to me about looking for mentors and maybe they have a formal program at their work, or through some community group or religious organization. But so many people don't, and to be able to go into a place where you could know that someone's gonna be matched up with you and you have a cut few conversations and see if it's a good connection rather than having to find all that on your own is just a really great option. Awesome. 
Melanie, thank you. This was fun today. I appreciate your time. I look forward to having people reach out if they'd like to learn more. 

Melanie Aronson, Podcast guest
Great. Thanks for having me.
Leila Ansart, Podcast host
Absolutely.