  Online communities offer their members various benefits, such as information
access, social and emotional support, and entertainment. Despite the important
role that founders play in shaping communities, prior research has focused
primarily on what drives users to participate and contribute; the motivations
and goals of founders remain underexplored. To uncover how and why online
communities get started, we present findings from a survey of 951 recent
founders of Reddit communities. We find that topical interest is the most
common motivation for community creation, followed by motivations to exchange
information, connect with others, and self-promote. Founders have heterogeneous
goals for their nascent communities, but they tend to privilege community
quality and engagement over sheer growth. These differences in founders' early
attitudes towards their communities help predict not only the
community-building actions that they pursue, but also the ability of their
communities to attract visitors, contributors, and subscribers over the first
28 days. We end with a discussion of the implications for researchers,
designers, and founders of online communities.
