Old Girls Club uses Disco to operationalize onboarding and scale a high-engagement, premium community experience for women in tech and venture.

At a glance

• Organization: Old Girls Club (OGC)
  
  
• Founded: 2022
  
  
• Members: 2,700–2,800 paying members
  
  
• Growth: ~800 → 2,800 members in ~2 years
  
  
• Pricing: $15/month or $130/year
  
  
• Trial-to-paid conversion: ~95%
  
  
• Messages exchanged: 2–3M+
  
  
• Team: Founder + 2 contractors
  
  
• Use case: Premium onboarding, segmentation, Slack automation, scalable community ops
  
  

Placeholder: Confirm exact current member count (2,700 vs 2,800).
Placeholder: Confirm total message count (2M vs 3M+).

The Challenge: Scaling a Premium Community Without Losing the Signal

Mallory Contois didn’t start Old Girls Club as a business.

She built it for herself.

In 2022, she launched OGC as a free, open community for women in tech and venture — primarily women in their 30s and 40s navigating leadership, investing, and building careers.

It grew fast.

Too fast.

“It grew really quickly. I got overwhelmed.”

To regain control, Mallory added a paywall — expecting many members to leave.

Instead, most stayed.

That’s when OGC transformed from side project to serious product.

Today, Old Girls Club is a paid membership community with nearly 2,800 members and millions of messages exchanged — spanning job seekers, founders, consultants, operators, and leaders across tech and VC.

But scaling from 800 to 2,800 members introduced real operational complexity:

• 100+ Slack channels
  
  
• Sub-communities (job seekers, business builders, mentorship)
  
  
• City-based meetups
  
  
• Virtual programming
  
  
• Resource libraries across multiple tools
  
  

Mallory didn’t think of OGC as a “community.”

She treated it like a product.

“I’ve always treated building community as building a product — not just a community.”

That meant the experience needed to feel premium — even as it scaled.

The Solution: Disco as the Operational Backbone

Mallory implemented Disco primarily to solve one core challenge: onboarding and segmentation at scale.

Rather than dropping new members into 100+ Slack channels and hoping they found their way, OGC built a structured onboarding flow inside Disco.

Personalized channel onboarding

During onboarding, members:

• Identify their interests
  
  
• Select career stages and goals
  
  
• Choose city-based communities
  
  
• Indicate professional identity (founder, consultant, leader, etc.)
  
  

Using Disco automations and Slack integration, members are then automatically added to only the Slack channels relevant to them.

While OGC has 100+ channels, the average member joins just 10–15 — a curated experience tailored to their profile.

“The onboarding flow helps them self-identify — and then they land in Slack with a fully customized list of channels.”

This level of automation allows OGC to scale without manual channel management.

The Impact

Growth from 800 to 2,800 members

Since implementing Disco as part of the onboarding flow, OGC has grown from approximately 800 paying members to nearly 2,800 — more than 3x growth.

And it’s not a passive audience.

The community has generated over 2–3 million messages, reflecting high engagement and active participation.

95% free-trial conversion

OGC runs a short free trial:

• 5 days (monthly plan)
  
  
• 7 days (annual plan)
  
  

Trial-to-paid conversion sits at approximately 95%.

While that success is multi-factor — programming, culture, positioning — the structured onboarding experience plays a meaningful role.

“Even just feeling like we’re using a real onboarding flow helps people trust it.”

The experience feels intentional, premium, and thoughtfully designed — reinforcing the value of the paid membership.

Operational leverage for a lean team

OGC operates with:

• 1 founder
  
  
• 2 contractors
  
  

Without automation, segmentation, and onboarding infrastructure, supporting nearly 3,000 members across multiple sub-programs would require significantly more manual coordination.

Disco enables:

• Automated Slack channel assignment
  
  
• Segmented onboarding flows
  
  
• Structured member categorization
  
  
• Centralized resource hubs (expanding in 2025)
  
  

This keeps operational overhead low while maintaining a high-touch experience.

Designing OGC Like a Product

Mallory’s product mindset shapes how OGC evolves.

Rather than building high-pressure networking events or mandatory programming, OGC prioritizes asynchronous value.

“The core value prop is that it’s asynchronous. You can drop in for five minutes a month and still get value.”

Members don’t need to:

• Dress up for events
  
  
• Attend long networking sessions
  
  
• Block hours on their calendars
  
  

Instead, they can:

• Ask questions
  
  
• Access resources
  
  
• Join interest-based channels
  
  
• Participate in optional programs
  
  

As OGC expands mentorship programs, job seeker cohorts, and business builder groups, Disco provides the infrastructure to:

• Segment sub-communities
  
  
• Gate resources by group
  
  
• Automate communications
  
  
• Scale without chaos
  
  

What’s Next for OGC

With core infrastructure stable, the next phase focuses on layered value:

• Expanding mentorship programming
  
  
• Strengthening job seeker and business builder cohorts
  
  
• Building a more centralized resource hub
  
  
• Reducing tooling fragmentation
  
  

As OGC continues to grow, Disco remains the operational backbone that makes scale possible without sacrificing experience quality.

Why Disco Works for Old Girls Club

Old Girls Club didn’t need just another chat platform.

They needed:

• Structured onboarding at scale
  
  
• Automated segmentation
  
  
• Premium user experience
  
  
• Slack integration
  
  
• Operational simplicity
  
  

Disco enabled OGC to move from scrappy startup to structured, scalable membership product — without adding headcount.

For a founder-led community growing 3x in two years, that foundation matters.

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