Charlie Locke

As we’ve scaled Circle to 250+, the hardest skill I had to learn was how and when to delegate. Factoring leverage, trusting others to follow through, and having a constant RACI matrix in my head didn’t come naturally to me when we started the company. All of it had to be learned. Most of it had to be learned the hard way: by over-working myself on tasks I should have delegated, or by realizing I ended up being the bottleneck. This is precisely the skill I am having to un-learn today, at warp speed. And it’s happening at a time when I thought I was mastering the art of delegation. It is now often better, simpler, and faster, if I take on certain tasks myself with my new found AI leverage, or work directly with the point-person IC. This is as true for me as a CEO as it is for our executives with multiple levels under them. The AI is no longer the bottleneck. The new bottleneck is the speed of signals between the final decision maker and the person with the Publish/Merge button at their fingertips. So when @jack says he sees a world where all 6,000 Block employees could report directly to him, I take him seriously, but not literally. It’s hard to deny that flatter orgs make a lot of sense in this world. That said, I don’t think hierarchies are going away. I see orgs simply getting as flat as they can, but no flatter. The Chinese whispers of middle management are now being drowned out by the chorus of the skip-level Nike slogan.

Introducing the Circle MCP. You can connect your community to Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini and use it to look up members, queue up posts, analyze threads, create spaces, develop courses, send DMs, bulk-create tags, and 100+ other things from your own AI ecosystem. It comes with both read AND write access, which makes it a lot more fun than other MCPs!

14 years ago, I made my first ever trip to New York City as a tourist from New Zealand. After a month of walking every inch of this city while blasting Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind”, the city started to seep into my soul. A day before I was supposed to fly back to New Zealand, I got the chance to go in an interview at a young startup, where the founders were kind enough to offer me a job on the spot (thanks Stefan & Michael!) That interview happened in a building near Times Square, and the whole experience was right out of a movie scene. I finally made it to New York City, where I’ve lived for the past decade+, met my wife, became a father, and started a company. Flash forward... I finally made it to New York, where I’ve lived for the past decade+, met my wife, became a father, and started a company. A couple days ago, we took over Times Square with a Circle campaign featuring some of our coolest customers, including Ali Abdaal, Entreprenista, TroopHR, Jay Clouse, Mila, Codecademy, The Running Channel, and Pat Flynn! The theme of the campaign was: “Whatever it is, there’s a Circle for that.” This campaign was our love letter to New York City and our community builders, both of whom make dreams happen for millions of people ❤️

Today, we complete Circle’s stack with the launch of our own website builder. A quick backstory: When we started Circle, my co-founders Rudy, Andy, and I would often talk about how most websites for creators and digital products felt disconnected from what they actually sold. Visitors might land on a beautiful website, but the moment they signed up or became a member, the experience fractured — dropping them into a different platform that felt fragmented and transactional. As a contract CTO for dozens of creators, it was Rudy’s job to build these websites, and no single platform let him create a cohesive end-to-end experience for his clients. For a while, we were almost convinced the world needed a new website builder for creators that tightly integrated the post-purchase experience. But we talked ourselves out of it after attending the Webflow conference in SF, realizing how daunting it would be to build a full ecosystem for it to succeed. Five years later, we’re finally completing the vision we had from day -100. I’m excited to announce that Circle can finally power the whole experience for creators and community builders. With the launch of our website builder, you can now create beautiful, high-converting landing pages, sales pages, and funnels. Unlike other builders which bifurcate your content and community, we built ours to unify every part of your experience — and by extension, your entire business. This includes your: - Community - Courses - AI agents - Events - Live streams - Memberships - Paywalls - Email marketing - Mobile / desktop app - Workflows Fun fact: Rudy personally led this mega-initiative at Circle. We’ve always believed that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and it feels good to come full circle today 🥁 (Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of using ‘circle’ puns internally, but this one feels warranted 😆 )

Just relentlessly heads down on making Circle the best we can make it👌🏽 community.circle.so/c/produc…

PSA: Circle is 100% remote international and we don't ever plan on changing that. Most folks in our team will tell you this is the hardest they've ever worked and the most satisfied they've ever been. Our eNPS on CultureAmp is typically 98/99. careers.circle.so

AI doesn't just make us more efficient. The power of AI can also bring us closer together to create transformative relationships. That's why we're excited to announce Community AI — a suite of AI features in Circle to help you build better communities✨ circle.so/ai

Circle had its highest growth, lowest churn, and highest NRR month ever in March! 🚀

One more thing... Circle is launching courses! 🎉🎉🎉 Future of courses = blended learning, discussions, chat, events, student directory, and resources — all on the same platform. community.circle.so/c/produc…

We just emailed 85% of our customers with an invitation to activate our redesigned @circleapp 2.0. LFG 🚀🚀🚀 (the other 15% have code customizations and will be hearing from us in the next 1-2 months) Recap of what's new in Circle 2.0: community.circle.so/c/produc…

It's a big day at @circleapp once again. Beyond excited for what's ahead. community.circle.so/c/produc…