Circle Moving From Creators to Enterprises
Sid Yadav, co-founder & CEO of Circle, on the 3 types of community businesses
Circle moving into enterprises means community software is turning from a creator tool into operating infrastructure for institutions. The same product that lets a coach sell memberships can also let a university run an alumni network, a nonprofit organize members, or a large company host customer education, partner programs, and practitioner groups, because Circle bundles discussions, events, courses, payments, email, branding, APIs, and branded apps in one system.
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Circle has steadily moved upmarket as the product expanded. It was built for creators in 2020, reached an estimated $21M ARR by May 2024, and later described customers using it for seven figure community businesses, enterprise deployments, and mature organizations.
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The enterprise use cases are concrete. Large organizations use community software for customer support and education, partner hubs, professional networks, and association style membership communities. That is why providers like Higher Logic built around associations and nonprofit customers, while Circle now overlaps with that budget pool from the creator side.
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This also explains the product race. Kajabi bundles courses, payments, email, and community for creator businesses, while Mighty sells branded apps and white label community products for established brands. Circle is pushing to cover both ends, from solo operators to institutions, with one stack and higher priced plans for migrations, APIs, branding removal, and concierge support.
The next step is that community platforms will split less by customer label, creator or enterprise, and more by how much workflow they can absorb. The winners will be the products that become the system of record for member identity, content, events, communication, and monetization across every kind of organization.