54 min
The Power of Mighty Networks with Gina Bianchini Cashflow Diary™
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- Investing
Gina Bianchini is the Founder & CEO of Mighty Networks. Her mission at Mighty Networks is to usher in a new era of creative business built on community. Mighty serves “creators with a purpose” selling experiences, relationships, and expertise to their members via community, content, online courses, and subscription commerce–all offered in one place under the creator’s brand.
Before Mighty Networks, Gina and Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen launched Ning, a pioneering global platform for creating niche social networks. Under her leadership, Ning grew to ~100 million people in 300,000 active social networks across subcultures, professional networks, entertainment, politics, and education.
In addition to Mighty Networks, Gina serves as a board director of TEGNA (NYSE: TGNA), a $3 billion dollar broadcast and digital media company, and served as a board director of Scripps Networks (NASDAQ: SNI), an $12 billion dollar public company which owns HGTV, The Food Network, and The Travel Channel that merged with Discovery Communications in 2018.
Podcast Highlights
Who is Gina Bianchini?
The seed that ultimately became Gina’s mission in her work was growing up in a time and place and a family of incredibly curious people. Gina’s father had a passion for restoring old cars and her mother was always curious about the world around her, so much so that Gina can’t remember a time when she wasn’t reading a book.
Growing up in Cupertino gave Gina incredible opportunities because she found herself surrounded by people who would go on to be involved with things that would become LinkedIn, Facebook, and other major social networks. It was then that her friend came to her with the idea to create a new platform that gave people the ability to create social apps the same way they could create websites.
The common thread in Gina’s work has been the realization that people are awesome. Being able to bring people together around an interest or passion or goal is something that unlocks people’s abilities to create and participate in the world. One of the most powerful ways to go from point A to point B is through connecting with other people.
What is so different about Mighty Networks?
Gina has a very specific definition of community that helps describe what she is doing, namely “bringing people together to master something interesting or important together”. The real power is when there is a person leading a community and curating it to create those conditions of mastery.
The network is the evolution and refinement of what’s going on at the intersection of online courses, podcasts, and communities. When you move away from thinking about all of those as separate pieces and start thinking your mission is to create the conditions for people to master something interesting together, that’s when the magic happens.
People are craving transformation in their lives, and being able to master something interesting is how they do that. If they could do that on their own by reading a book, they would, but that isn’t always the case. That’s why they pull out their credit card and pay for courses and communities. People will pay a premium for being a part of courses or communities that master something interesting or important together in pursuit of results or transformation in people’s lives.
What was your first step into entrepreneurship like?
Gina passionately believes that it’s as simple as taking on one or two new risks every week. If you can take one or two new risks each day, you will progress more quickly than you would believe is possible.
The role of curator and community builder and designer is going to become more important to people’s ability to create passive income. You will be providing them another source of value in the connections they are able to make and the journey they’re on to mastering something interesting.
When Gina got started with Mighty
Gina Bianchini is the Founder & CEO of Mighty Networks. Her mission at Mighty Networks is to usher in a new era of creative business built on community. Mighty serves “creators with a purpose” selling experiences, relationships, and expertise to their members via community, content, online courses, and subscription commerce–all offered in one place under the creator’s brand.
Before Mighty Networks, Gina and Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen launched Ning, a pioneering global platform for creating niche social networks. Under her leadership, Ning grew to ~100 million people in 300,000 active social networks across subcultures, professional networks, entertainment, politics, and education.
In addition to Mighty Networks, Gina serves as a board director of TEGNA (NYSE: TGNA), a $3 billion dollar broadcast and digital media company, and served as a board director of Scripps Networks (NASDAQ: SNI), an $12 billion dollar public company which owns HGTV, The Food Network, and The Travel Channel that merged with Discovery Communications in 2018.
Podcast Highlights
Who is Gina Bianchini?
The seed that ultimately became Gina’s mission in her work was growing up in a time and place and a family of incredibly curious people. Gina’s father had a passion for restoring old cars and her mother was always curious about the world around her, so much so that Gina can’t remember a time when she wasn’t reading a book.
Growing up in Cupertino gave Gina incredible opportunities because she found herself surrounded by people who would go on to be involved with things that would become LinkedIn, Facebook, and other major social networks. It was then that her friend came to her with the idea to create a new platform that gave people the ability to create social apps the same way they could create websites.
The common thread in Gina’s work has been the realization that people are awesome. Being able to bring people together around an interest or passion or goal is something that unlocks people’s abilities to create and participate in the world. One of the most powerful ways to go from point A to point B is through connecting with other people.
What is so different about Mighty Networks?
Gina has a very specific definition of community that helps describe what she is doing, namely “bringing people together to master something interesting or important together”. The real power is when there is a person leading a community and curating it to create those conditions of mastery.
The network is the evolution and refinement of what’s going on at the intersection of online courses, podcasts, and communities. When you move away from thinking about all of those as separate pieces and start thinking your mission is to create the conditions for people to master something interesting together, that’s when the magic happens.
People are craving transformation in their lives, and being able to master something interesting is how they do that. If they could do that on their own by reading a book, they would, but that isn’t always the case. That’s why they pull out their credit card and pay for courses and communities. People will pay a premium for being a part of courses or communities that master something interesting or important together in pursuit of results or transformation in people’s lives.
What was your first step into entrepreneurship like?
Gina passionately believes that it’s as simple as taking on one or two new risks every week. If you can take one or two new risks each day, you will progress more quickly than you would believe is possible.
The role of curator and community builder and designer is going to become more important to people’s ability to create passive income. You will be providing them another source of value in the connections they are able to make and the journey they’re on to mastering something interesting.
When Gina got started with Mighty
54 min