“we kind of bootstrap your initial audience where you have other people in the community not necessarily that are going to be that interested in your writing but you're going to find one or two or three people who do really want to read whatever it is you're writing about”

Bootstrap each member with 2-3 peer readers

Cohort retention isn't your curriculum — it's giving each new member a seed audience of 2-3 peers who actually read their work. That early feedback loop hooks them on the act of publishing, which is what brings them back to subsequent cohorts. Build the peer matchmaking explicitly into onboarding.