Engineering Manager

Common Room was born from a vision to revolutionize how companies connect with their communities. Founded in February 2020 by a team of four seasoned tech veterans from the Seattle area – Linda Lian, Francis Luu, Viraj Mody, and Tom Kleinpeter – the journey began with a shared understanding of the evolving landscape of software adoption and customer engagement. Linda Lian, with her background at Morgan Stanley, Lookout, Madrona Venture Group, and Amazon Web Services, recognized a critical gap: companies needed a way to unify and understand the myriad of interactions happening across diverse community platforms. Her initial concept, a 'Slack-forum baby,' evolved through conversations with B2B SaaS founders who highlighted the need not for another community channel, but a way to integrate existing ones.

This insight became the cornerstone of Common Room. Linda reached out through LinkedIn to find her co-founders. Francis Luu, a designer with a decade of experience at Facebook, was the first to join, bringing his expertise in user experience. Viraj Mody, who had led engineering teams at Convoy and Dropbox and was a founding engineer at Audiogalaxy, brought his deep technical leadership as CTO. Tom Kleinpeter, a former principal engineer at Dropbox with a history of successful startups, joined as Chief Architect. Together, they embarked on a mission to build an intelligent community growth platform. The company emerged from stealth mode in April 2021, backed by significant funding from prominent investors like Greylock, Index Ventures, and Madrona Venture Group, signaling strong belief in their vision. Common Room's platform was designed to integrate with popular communication channels like Slack, Twitter, Discord, and GitHub, providing businesses with a unified view of their community, enabling them to identify champions, gather product feedback, and ultimately drive growth through genuine engagement. The platform helps companies make 'community' a competitive advantage by fostering connections and surfacing valuable insights from user interactions.