Why I Launched the Sveltos Ambassador Program and Why You Should Too
When I launched the Ambassador Program, I didn’t expect it to take off so fast. But within days, contributors across Slack, GitHub, and social channels were proudly sharing their badges and stories. The response was overwhelming. It was clear this recognition was long overdue.
As the fractional CMO at Sveltos, watching this community grow has been one of the most rewarding parts of the role. Over the past year, contributors have written documentation, shared blogs, given talks, built integrations, and welcomed newcomers.
The Ambassador Program is how we celebrate that momentum and continue to build on it.
Why Community Advocacy Wins in 2025
Startups in the cloud-native and Kubernetes space face a familiar challenge: breaking through the noise. Paid channels are expensive and crowded. SEO is increasingly a game of diminishing returns. And outbound isn’t trusted by technical audiences.
What consistently outperforms? Community.
An engaged, empowered community delivers real benefits:
💡 Deeper loyalty and product stickiness
🧭 Product feedback that drives smarter roadmaps
💬 Lower support costs through peer-to-peer answers
📣 Authentic, shareable awareness you don’t have to pay for
But what makes this even more powerful now is what’s changed in how people discover products.
Sample AI query
How AI-Powered Search Changes the Game
People no longer just Google their problems. They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or GitHub Copilot. And these tools don’t rely on backlinks or keywords alone. They gather insights from content across the web, blogs, forums, repos, documentation, videos, talks, and comments.
That means every piece of content your users create is now a signal for discovery. It feeds directly into how AI models understand and suggest your product
Here’s how your content shows up in AI answers:
A tutorial on Medium becomes a quoted walkthrough
A comment on Reddit becomes a recommendation
A GitHub README becomes a trusted config
A YouTube demo becomes a featured resource
If your community is talking about your product, AI will too.
Community isn’t just engagement anymore. It’s visibility. And in an AI-native era, it’s what determines whether your product is part of the conversation or invisible. Visibility doesn’t come just from optimizing your own site. It comes from activating your community to share their experiences across the platforms and formats AI systems ingest.
If you want your product to show up in the places people are now looking—in conversations with AI—you need your community talking about it everywhere they already are.
That’s why investing in community advocacy is no longer just a marketing strategy. It’s how you future-proof discoverability.
Advocacy Doesn’t Just Happen. You Have to Design for It.
As founders and marketers, we often celebrate when someone becomes aware of our product. We measure progress when people consider it, buy it, and eventually buy more. But the ultimate milestone—the one that drives sustainable, compounding growth—is when people advocate for it.
Advocacy means your users don’t just use your product, they tell others about it. They write about it. Teach it. Build with it. That kind of energy doesn’t come from conversion funnels alone. It comes from people feeling real ownership.
You have to design for that. Give them a reason to share. Give them the tools to shine. Recognize them publicly. That’s what the Ambassador Program was built to do.
What the Digital Badge Actually Gives
Sveltos Cummunity Ambassador Badge
For the Ambassador:
✅ Credibility and authority
✅ Stronger visibility across GitHub, LinkedIn, bios, slides
✅ Greater impact at events and talks
✅ A sense of belonging to a vibrant community
✅ Career edge—especially in DevRel and open source
For the Project:
🎯 Organic amplification
🔁 Stronger engagement and loyalty
🧠 Candid, high-signal feedback
🌱 Self-sustaining growth
📈 Visibility in AI-powered discovery tools
This is more than recognition. It’s a flywheel.
The growth loop
Who Can Become an Ambassador?
Here are some of the ways contributors can qualify:
Enterprise/Internal Influencer: Lead internal workshops or sessions to help teams adopt Sveltos
Blogging: Share tips, use cases, or tutorials in written form
Code Sharing: Publish tools, scripts, or integrations that help others
Event Speaking: Present at meetups, webinars, or conferences
Podcasting: Host or guest on shows where you explore real-world usage
Video Content: Create explainers, walkthroughs, or hands-on demos
Online Forums: Help others in Slack, Reddit, or GitHub Discussions
Each of these touchpoints expands the Sveltos ecosystem and helps feed discovery through AI tools.
Ready to Turn Your Users into Your Loudest Advocates?
If you’re a founder or B2B marketer looking to build advocacy through community, here are two things that helped me:
✅ Use Badgr.com – free, flexible, and scalable for digital badges
🎨 Invest in design – if you like our badge, I’m happy to connect you with the designer
Final Thought: Recognition Is Just the Beginning
A special shoutout to Gianluca Mardente, the founder of Sveltos. His vision and humility shaped the kind of community culture that makes programs like this possible.
The Ambassador Program is more than a recognition tool. It’s a celebration of what open source does best: bringing people together around a shared mission.
To everyone who’s been part of it -> Rachid Zarouali Kahiro Okina, Safouen Turki, ⎈ Dario Tranchitella, Adriano Pezzuto, Artem Lajko ☁️ ⎈, Colin J Lacy, Randy Bias, Paolo Mainardi, Filippo Merante Caparrotta, Oliver Bähler, Ahmed Belhoula, Marco Marinò, Serhii Ivanov, Maithili Narasimha, Medha Kumar Amit Patel Ahmed Belhoula Eleni Grosdouli: thank you. Let’s keep building.
Let’s keep building.
And to those just discovering Sveltos, now’s the perfect time to get involved.