B2C founders: Have you successfully built a community around the problem your product solves? I will not promote

We’re a small team building a B2C marketplace around settling into a new city. One part of what we’re building is a community where people can find a place, find people, and contribute their own experiences/knowledge. We currently have a small WhatsApp community, but we’re struggling with the hardest part: how do you get people to stop being passive members and start helping each other without the founders constantly pushing conversations? For founders who’ve built B2C communities, I’d love to know: - What initially got people talking to each other? - How did you find the right first members? - What made people come back and contribute without being prompted? - Did you use WhatsApp, Discord, Reddit, Slack, etc.? Why? - At what point did the community become self-sustaining, if it ever did? - What did you try that completely didn’t work ? Especially interested in experiences where the community wasn’t just a marketing/audience channel, but actually became part of the product , helping users solve problems, sharing knowledge, validating the product, etc. Would love to hear what worked (and what didn’t).